Great. I'm a scribe.

Great. I'm a scribe. This weekend I had an "Obsolescence Party" at my house. Guests were invited to play the Atari 2600 and Super Nintendo game systems, drink Tab or Bartles & James wine coolers, and bring obsolete items for show and tell. My items were a slide rule and a Bernoulli disk that holds 90MB of information.
I don't know what a slide rule's for, (Sam Cooke reference) but the disk holds a lot of meaning for me. It stored the first graphic I ever made as a professional broadcast graphic designer. And now its just a piece of plastic, the machine that I trained on for almost a year just to make a simple graphic was replaced over a decade ago by Adobe Photoshop. Instead of computer graphics being an exclusive club with only a few practitioners, kids are taking animation classes in high school. Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody says:

"The spread of cheap and widely available creative tools is sad for people in the advertising business in the same way that movable type was sad for scribes--the loss from this kind of of change is real but limited and is accompanied by a generally beneficial social change." (209)

I agree. It is sad. And sometimes I wonder what's so "beneficial" about the social change? The reading once again reinforces the theme of this class: we are in the midst of revolutionary change and as Shirky points out,

"The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest that we are entering a bright new future--for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the 1600's." (73)

Shirky's title Here Comes Everybody is appropriate because it sounds optimistic, but let's face it, we don't like "everybody". Its like public transportation. Convenient, yes. But it loses some of its appeal when a crazy, smelly dude sits by you and wants to strike up a conversation about UFO's. Don't get me wrong. (not a Pretenders reference) There are features of this revolution that are both trivial and wonderful. Never having to decode the "Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature" --awesome. Watching the season premiere of "30 Rock" on Hulu--awesome. But even these little conveniences have a price, some company is probably bankrupt because the "Reader's Guide" was their major client, and Hulu is contributing to the demise of broadcast television and my own career. Beyond these small conveniences, new ways to gather knowledge and express ideas are spreading to millions of people. In his epilogue and in this speech, Shirky explains how, social media tools after the China Sichuan earthquakes challenged the Chinese government's control over information. While they were prepared to filter the major media outlets they failed to realize that ". . . services like QQ and Twitter erode the the distinction between 'media' and 'communication.'"(297) Ordinary citizens now had the tools to "report" and "broadcast" to anyone. The tools are there, and its doesn't matter if I, or governments, or institutions like it. Shirky compares the dramatic improvement in socials tools to steering a kayak "We have a small degree of control, but that control does not extend to being able to reverse, or even radically alter, the direction we're moving in. Our principal challenge is not deciding where we want to go, but rather staying upright as we go there."

I think most of us are in the Emerging Media and Communication program, because we are trying very hard to stay upright. It would be nice if there were some clear answers. Do this, learn this, and you will never be obsolete. But for all of us who were on friendster or had a geocities web site, its pretty apparent that there's no solid way to predict the next "BIG THING" or know if this "BIG THING" has true staying power. Two things from the reading stand out to me. First, Shirky likes to compare elements of social media to barn raising, a group of people can build a barn or open source software in a short time, while individually a farmer or coder might never be able to. Much of the success of social media depends on the participation of the users and their willingness to contribute their work, time, creativity for free. Secondly, failure is tolerated, in fact its expected. Meetup groups fail, but new information about what works and doesn't work is gathered. So what's a 21st Century scribe to do? I think we have to contribute, participate, and can't be afraid to fail.

On that note, I was very intrigued by the social media tool, dodgeball, that Shirky mentions in Chaper 9, so I did a little research. Turns out it was bought by Google and the service was ended. But, the creator has a new service called foursquare. I've joined and even started contributing. Let's see if it fails. (By the way, right now I have 2 friends. It would be great to have more... hint?) Lastly, I recommend A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink if you are creative professional in need of a pep talk.

Fun with Public Spheres

Let's order some coffee, grab a seat, start up a conversation, change the world.

Who would have thought that the importation of coffee from the Ottoman Empire would contribute to transforming the social/political structures of Western Europe. Frequented by both aristocracy and bourgeois society, they were a place to learn the news and exchange ideas. They were the nexus of "the public sphere". Jurgen Habermas defines the public sphere as ". . . a realm of social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed." The public sphere was not the physical coffee house, but the discussion that took place within its walls. It was made up of private individuals who as a public body transmitted the needs of society. The newspaper became a vital element of the public sphere and was no longer just a compilation of notices or recent events, but influenced public opinion. This changed once newspapers became commercialized. (around 1830) Jurgen says, "In the transition from the literary journalism of private individuals to the public services of the mass media, the public sphere was transformed by the influx of private interests, which received special prominence in the mass media."
Peter Boeder sums this up nicely:

"According to Habermas, the emergence of the mass press is based on the commercialisation of the participation of the masses in the public sphere. Consequently, this ‘extended’ public sphere lost much of its original political character in favour of commercialism and entertainment."

The conversations at the coffee houses were silenced by radio and television. The idea of public opinion was transformed into publicity and public relations.

Habermas' ideas have become a source of debate since the digital revolution.
Are internet communities just another form of media commodity controlled by commercial interests? Or are they virtual public spheres?

Pieter Boeder says that "New forms of citizenship and public life are simultaneously enabled by new technology and restricted by market power and surveillance." He quotes Rheingold's argument that "The consumer society, the most powerful vehicle for generating short-term wealth ever invented, ensures economic growth by first promoting the idea that the way to be is to buy." With each new form of social media, commercialization occurs and effects the discourse. Bloggers are now sponsored by companies to write reviews. Facebook removes Scrabulous due to pressure from Hasbro.

Poster says:

"The question of the potential for new forms of social space to empower individuals in new ways is foreclosed in favor of preserving existing relations of force as they are embodied in the state."

Institutions will impose their will. Napster is shut down. YouTube videos blocked due to copyright issues.

Boeder concludes "The public sphere is alive and well, although it will never be quite the same. Habermas' coffeehouse discourse has evolved in the direction of mediated communication within electronic networks: Its future is with the digital media, which offer exciting possibilities as digital networks enhance and change social structures"
Twitter seems to meet that "coffeehouse ideal" because the users have determined much of its language and protocols. And of course its use during the Iraq elections is evidence of its power to spread news and information directly from the user/citizen.

The public sphere as a face-to-face community has been transformed into a form of electronically mediated discourse.
But what sort of discourse? Habermas believed that critical and rational discussion would minimize prejudices and fortify democracy. Looking at online discussions I'm not so sure. Are we debating or hurling insults. Is this really participation? Sometimes I agree with Fernback and Thompson:

"It seems most likely that the virtual public sphere brought about by (computer-mediated communication) will serve a cathartic role, allowing the public to feel involved rather than advance actual participation."

Final Note:
I really liked Poster's idea that the internet is not a tool but a social space. (Hammer vs. Germany) When I think of it in those terms, its potential seems so much broader. Its not just a tool to make money, or communicate, but a place. A place to shop (of course) but also to interact, learn, create, contribute, enjoy. Nice.

Thanks. Must pass out now.

Where's My Decoder Ring?

Stuart Hall in Encoding/Decoding explains the process of mass communication in terms of production, circulation and reception. He describes it as a "continuous circuit". Within the production process a message is created or "encoded". The viewer decodes the message. "Meaningful" discourse occurs at the junction of encoding and decoding. Institutions, personal experience, and ideologies effect both the creation of the message and how the message is received. He says the production process is 

" . . . framed throughout with meanings and ideas: knowledge-in-use concerning the routines of production, historically defined technical skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, assumptions about the audience and so on frame the constitution of the programme through this production structure."

This statement made me think about how production techniques influence the way televisions producers create a message. One thing I thought of was how all television production used to be tape-based. Its obvious that tape carries video and audio information. But it also has other types of information, control track and professional tape has time code. Time code is a data stream laid onto tape that assigns a specific time to each frame of video. This data allows a computer controlled editor to access a specific frame, allowing frame-accurate edit decisions to be made. In other words time code "translates" the information on the tape to a "language" that computers (and people) can understand and implement universally. For videotape editors, time code is the life blood, and tapes with breaks in time code can ruin their day. They may choose to omit a shot or soundbite if it doesn't have time code in favor of one that has. So, from one of the initial moments in the production process, a "code" is required to create the message and can influence the message. The production process constantly influences the content of a local newscast. The availability of a cameraman or reporter, a broken microphone, or fantastic video can all determine whether a story airs on a newscast. All of these factors effect the encoding of the message.

In new media the production process also effects the message and once again a code exists at its genesis. The very choice of a certain code (flash, html, java ...) impacts the message. The content of a web page is often determined by bandwidth, browser compatibility, screen resolution, or the limitations and preferences of the user's computer. A programmer may avoid using a flash animation, or large graphic files so that more internet users can view her page.

Another idea that really stood out for me is Hall's discussion of visual language and code in television. He says "The televisual sign is a complex one. It is itself constituted by the combination of two types of discourse, visual and aural." He adds that it is also iconic since tv uses a two-dimensional screen to translate the three-dimensional world. The newscast seem to be a perfect storm where these three forms meet.  While the anchor or reporter reads a story, there is a constant visual reinforcement with video or graphics. I find the graphics particularly interesting because they are an explicit example of iconic language yet they seem to be invisible to the casual viewer.

Here's an example of a typical OTS (over-the-shoulder). Without text or audio its easy to discern that the story is about school violence.

 

Or that this one is about hospitals. 

Even when using text there is a certain amount of "encoding" to further the meaning.

Programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are like a Russian nesting doll of visual language as they use the overall format of a newscast down to the graphics to create "fake" news. Internet sites like The Onion also use the visual language of a regular news site for comedic effects. These forms assume the receiver of the message is already versed in their particular visual language, and will interpret the message within the "dominant code". 

As the number of media outlets multiplies, and the language becomes more and more complex, its amazing that the viewers still manage to decode the message the encoders are trying to send.  

The Database

Last year while in Los Angeles I visited The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Its an odd place with a strange collection of objects. As I meandered through the museum, I came to realize the museum itself is the exhibit. The collections and information within its wallls are there to serve this purpose. It’s a simulation of a museum experience, with some real and some obviously fabricated exhibits. What was really important in this experience was the interface of the museum. Its presentation of the artifacts.

This experience came to my mind when Lev Manovich in his book “The Language of New Media” talked about the database as a dominant form in new media. Manovich divides what he terms “new media objects” into two forms, database and narrative. He says “ . . . works in new media can be understood as either constructing the right interface to a multimedia database or as defining navigation methods through spatialized representations.” Most often websites are some form of database, they are an interface to a collection of knowledge. Its easy to cite examples of this form, Facebook is a database containing information about people, what they like, the events they attend, the groups they belong to. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, one of the oldest forms of database. For Manovich,

“The database becomes the center of the creative process in the computer age. Historically, the artist made a unique work within a particular medium. Therefore the interface and the work were the same; in other words, the level of an interface did not exist. With new media the content of the work and the interface are separated. It is therefore possible to create different interfaces to the same material.”

In social media, the power of the interface is quite apparent. Why do people choose
Facebook over myspace? The information is essentially the same. Its about the way the information is presented and the ease with which we can access it.
Those examples are quite obviously database forms but Manovich asserts that

“Regardless of whether new media objects present themselves as linear narratives, interactive narratives, databases or something else, underneath, on the level of material organization, they are all databases . . . a database can support narrative, but there is nothing in the logic of the medium itself that would foster its generation.”

The way I understand it is that RPG’s (such as my favorite Final Fantasy VII) have narrative attributes, a storyline, but underneath, there is the database form. Instead of having immediate access to information, the user must perform certain tasks to acquire “skills” or “data”.

Manovich views the database as more than a “structured collection of data” but as a cultural form that is different from reading a story or watching a film. Manovich does not believe the database as cultural form exists solely in new media and cites examples in film such “The Man wth a Movie Camera”. The very structure of the movie is a database of shots arranged in a particular order to become a picture of modern life. Manovich says “. . .we may even call database a new ‘symbolic form’ of the computer age. . . the world appears to us an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database.”

Artists including Lev Manovich are still learning how to merge database and narrative into a new form. Games like The Path and the slow game movement may be the early stages of this new form. Or perhaps the new form will extend into the physical rather than digital world. The and/or Gallery’s YTMND show was a collection of internet memes, images, and animations displayed on video screens. A collection of collections. What is apparent in these exhibits and the Museum of Jurassic technology is that artists are aware of the relationship between interface and database and are using this relationship for expression.