Blog #12

Hello my friends! This is my last blog for class =D

Lessig and Rip! have several connections. First, we have the ideas of commercial and non commercial licenses. Lessig talks on how most artist produce their work under "all rights reserved" were no one is allowed to share, reproduce or sample the work. But also there are artist that give a "non commercial license" were the author of an art piece allows other people to take its work, but once it goes into a commercial economy then the author needs to authorize the use. in Rip!, Girl Talk stated how commercial economies in music slow down the production of culture. Moreover, some laws were changed in order to make it even harder for works to get into the public domain. Disney was the main posher to move from 14 to 90 years for works to get in the public domain.

Both Girl Talk and Lessing talk about the definition of "appropiately", the appropiate use of something. Girl Talk said that most of the time, no one is able to take a piece of music and sample it. It would take thousands of dollars in order to "appropiately" use the work and release a cd. When he created a piece of music in front of the lady in charge of copyright laws in the US (cant remember her title, sorry) and she said that she can see a problem with the remix because nothing was beign used appropiately. Lessig says many sharing economies take place and we all participate in them without knowing. He uses the example of Google, were we use google as a search engine and get information from them and google uses our "click" to collect pieces of information they can later use. he then raises the question - Is that appropiate use of our clicks? is google riding on your work for free? (lessig 234)

Lessig suggest that a hybrid can help decriminalize youth's creativity. But he state also that it would take change in the law in order to have more healthy and succesful business (lessig 248). Girl Talk suggest that by ackoliging someone that you took its work, kinda like when you cite a paper, should be good enough. This is because you are not stealing from anyone you are creating an original piece of art with the inspiration of others, just like disney did...

Blog #11

Lessig describes how there are 3 different kinds of economies: commercial economy, sharing economy and a mixed of both. He states that a commercial economy is an economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange (18). In short, this means that someone pays for a service or a product with money. It’s just like our everyday transactions when we buy food, pump gas, etc. Now, a sharing economy is one where money is NOT used as means of exchange. For example, you can spend time with a friend and that time together is part of the friendship relationship you both have. Once money is involved for the time you both spend together, the relationship is no longer a friendship (18).

Lessig explains that for the most part, the internet is a commercial economy (121), where users buy services on the internet; wetter is a book on Amazon, rent movies through Netflix, or bid for items on EBay. But there are also instances where sites like Wikipedia, which is more like a sharing economy because people volunteer to write articles that stay there on the site for free for anyone to copy and use. He called this “copyleft license” (157).

This concepts are important to understand because the internet it’s exactly that, a remix of both economies. The users of the web often do not realized how we are part of both of these economies. Also, Lessig’s argues that there should be more of a mid are of compromise when it comes to cultural creations (web, music, etc.)

Blog #10

http://bit.ly/l7zgUK

Soda Stereo - De musica Lijera

performed by spongebob???

I chose this remix because the author of the video took 2 main pieces, sponge bob and a song by an Argentinean rock band. The video is low quality, but it does a good job on how to do remix in other to produce original pieces of art. It shows spongebob performing De musica ligera. The cartoon is so well cut that the lip sync, the drum, the guitar, and even the fireworks at the end matches very very well with the song.

Lessig states that a good remix is one that delivers a message (71). In this case, this video is entertaining and fun to watch. Proof of that is the thousands of views that it has. The author of the video took the pieces to create something original and is contribution to YouTube has inspired other people to do remixes as well. People are taking the Spongebob clip and meshing it with other songs of different genres. The other videos are not very well done, but is still an amateur attempt to remix. Moreover, Lessig tells us that a remix culture pushes the development of new culture and thats what it was done here.

Blog #9

RO and RW

Read-Only is a term taken from the computer lingo. It means that a piece of information can only be read and thats it. Read-Write is the opposite: a piece of information can be read a be use to write something else, taken pieces and remix it, edit it, etc. It has to do a lot with copy right laws that Lessig talks about so much. Lessig believes that copy right laws are obsolete and need to be updated for a digital age because with computers and access to digital information, we are now moving to a different digital culture. The current Copy right laws are designed for analog information than can only be read and not reproduced. Now we have tools to share music online, personal videos, blogs, vlogs and the list goes on... information is meant to be remixed with in the eyes of lessig.

Blog #8

- Rhythmic Cinema

Any Shift in The traffic of information can create not only new thoughts, but new ways of thinking (86)

This relate to Web 2.0 and user based sites, where all the user share information. It kinda reminds me of music sharing, YouTube, Tagging, etc... All things Web 2.0 and the information highway (does anyone still calls it thaT???)

- Rhythmic Space

Panache - words and code modules, bits and bytes, temporal arbitrage. Follow the vector across a narrative arc and feel how the net's architecture resonates with the convergence on many cultures and styles. .. where people create and add modules of thought ware to the mix, making it all a little more interesting. (89)

This guy is high as hell

-Errata Erratum

In the remix, single notes are assigned not to playing cards, but rather to digitized “roto-reliefs,” on-line representations of the engraved cards that Duchamp made throughout his career and gave away randomly to people.” (96)

This is how people distribute information, in this case music, over the web. Also, in the late 90's, artist would burn CDs and give them away for free in order to get some exposure. This is the so called underground mixtapes.

- The Future is here

We're probably the first generation to grow up in a completely electronic environment (101).

True that Spooky! But guess what? my mom now had not one BUT TWO facebook pages to keep all her kids on check. What you going to say about that? The information we share and my friends share on my page gets to more people that what we can think of. This provides venues for artist, intellectuals and concerned mothers.

- The Prostitute

The music and art i create is an end result of a life lived in an environment where almost all aspects of urban life were circumscribed by the coded terrains of a planet put in parentheses by satellites in the sky beaming back everything long ago (108).

Life experiences and the history of ones culture shape the way we look at the world and it also shapes the way we produce writing/art, the way we express ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSNltEIqOpg&feature=player_embedded

A song by Rick Ross that sampled a song by the Mexican rock band Azul Violeta, who was covering a song by 70's mexican singer Jose Jose. How this beat from the 70's ended in Rick Ross's producers? The producer could have gotten this from a vinyl, napster, YouTube, someone else's iPod. The possibilities are endless. But what this proves is that the information that travels through the web is able to get to the hands of people that are going to put that information to good use.

Blog #7

DeBourgoing tells us how Hip Hop artist in the LA area use Transmedia to become successful artists. There are many ways transmedia is beign used, but the main one is the distribution of music over the internet. This allows artist to be visible to a wider audience without the need of a production company, and for very cheap. Hip hops has used transmedia since its beginnings with the use of sampling and collaboration with others, but with new media and technology artist are able to learn from each other, interact, produce and distribute music without the corporation. Moreover, they are able to connect with people outside of their cities with the help of social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube. The best example I can think of is Soulja Boy. He was a Myspace artist before making it to the mainstream.

Dj Spooky's argument in this section is somewhat complex. He says that DJing is like writing and writing is like DJing. Dj Spooky says that phonograph means sounds writing and in a era of rhythm science both serve as recursive aspects of information collage where everything from personal identity to the codes used to create art or music are available for the mix (64). The information we receive through the media we used like social networks allow us to create a mix of our identity and out thought.

Blog #6

Jenkins talks about how social networking sites are helpful learning tools. Jenkins states :

Collective intelligence can be seen as an alternative source

of media power. We are learning how to use that power through our

day-to-day interactions within convergence culture. Right now, we are

mostly using this collective power through our recreational life, but

soon we will be deploying those skills for more “serious” purposes (jenkins 4).

Collective intelligence is a way where all of the people involved in the internet are able to interact with each other and provide answers to problems. Wikipedia being the main example of it, but others sites like 99designs.com relies on input from hundreds of graphic designers. Weinberger believes that information is miscellaneous and i can come from several users, this means, users se the content they want to see in the internet.

Blog # 5

(image by jake prendez)

In chapter 8, Weinberger talked about labels and what we today call tags as a way to search for data. He used examples used in amazon and walmart and how when you type certain words the engine gives you results of similar words. This relates to the third order of order because tags and labels can mean different things to different objects and subjects. This means that for example a song "x" can be part of your hip hop collection, but can be my old school songs collection, or my roommate's workout mix. This same idea applies to stuff available on the internet. The tags and keywords users give to particular information on the internet does not depend on one finite perspective. By that, we shape the cyber world.

Blog #4

Weinberger suggest 4 new strategic principles to rethink the ways we organize physical objects and ideas.

- Filter on the way out, not on the way in.

Weinberger tells a story of his friends that works at The Harvard Business Review. The job of the friend was to filter all the work submitted to the Journal. In this case, this person's job is to make sure the stuff published is "worthy" for the readers of The Harvard Business Review, but who is this person to say that something filtered out can't be of use for a reader?. In the third order of order, filtering on the way in decreases the value of that abundance by ruling out items that might be of great value to a few people (Weinberger 103). What this means is that user should filter the information for the to assign the value of a particular work to a particular person at a particular time (uff.. that was long)

- Put each leaf on as many branches as possible

This concept is very easy to understand if you have some presence in cyberspace. We are use to think that a leaf hangs from only one branch, but with information in the internet, we must hang it in as many branches as possible. This is done by tagging pieces of information with as many tags as possible.

-Everything is metadata and everything can be a label

This one is a little hard to grasp even thought we probably use this concept every time we look for something online with a search engine. By everything is metadata, Weinberger means that any information you know can and should be used as a keyword to find data, and data is something you do not know. He gives us the example on how you can use the keyword "shakespeare" to find a shakespeare play which title you don't remember or you can use a quote from a play whose author you don't remember and gets as result "shakespeare. In the third order of order, everything is connected and therefore everything is metadata (Weinberger 105)

- Give up control

Users are now in charge of the organization of the information they browse (Weinberger 105). Remember the person that works at the harvard business review? that person is out of a job in cyberspace. Users help other user understand information and data out on websites. take for instance Netflix, user are able to rate movies and when you search for a movie it will show other movies users like and it will suggest you to also watch those.

All of these are important because in Web 2.0 the user has control of the content of the web. Before Web 2.0, the information was very linear. In web 2.0 most of the information out there is shared by other users and all of us customize the information to better suit our needs.

Post #3

I am a big music fanatic. I keep mu music in my computer and i have an exact copy of my music on my phone. The way i have my music "organized" its... well i do not have a particular way of organization. I keep all my music in one folder and every song is label Artist - song name. I have no albums, no genre, no artist, no nothing else. The reason why i keep my music like that its because it makes it easy for me to find. I just type the artist name on my search and it automatically pops out. Besides, i am pretty good at memorizing the names of the songs i listen to. Most of my music is Rock en Espanol, but i do have a good mix of other genre from classic rock, to hip hop, to reggae, to electronica. I also have music that fit in one that more genre and thats exactly why i keep my music the way i do.

Blog #2

in the first two chapters of Everything is Miscellaneous- the power of the new digital disorder, Weinberger explains different ways of thinking about "order" or the way things are organized. In the prologue, Weinberger explained how Staples organized its merchandise in the store. They use only 3 tags for each product because they believed that the human eye with a good 20/20 vision could scan through a price tag quickly through it. If you made them with 5 tags, then it was too much information for an eye to catch. This made me think on how physical things are catalogued in a store Vs. digital things are tagged in cyberspace. Staples tagged its product they way they think its going to be easier for customers to find in the store, but it does not take in consideration that people could think differently about products.

On Chapter 1, Weinberger stated that "everything has its place". He gives us the clever example of preparing diner and the "complex dance of order" we perform in order to complete the simple task of eating. It made me laugh but he is right, we juggle multiple principles of organization without even thinking about it (Weinberger 11) and we are so used to organize things that it just come natural to us. What this makes me think of is how there is a generational gap on the way we organize things. As a person who grew up with more technology than my parents, it takes me no time to find anything in the internet. But if my mom tries to find something online, it takes her decades to find. It comes natural to me to find something in the internet because I am familiar with the way things run on cyberspace. My mom on the other hand, she tries to find things online like if they are physical things in a shelf.

On chapter 2, Weinberger talks about one of the most common ways people organize things: Alphabetization. Even though is such a common way to organize, there are not too many things that are organized like that. Peoples files in a doctors office? Large video game or movie collection? students in a class? all of these have to do with names. Alphabetization only works with letters, and its conceptually confusing because space, time and atoms are forms of information that are not complete (Weinberger 27).

My favorite quote of the reading:

The world started out miscellaneous but it didn't stay that way, because we work so damn hard at straightening it up (Weinberger 10).

Web 2.0: the first 5 years and the future.

The internet is a relatively young technology that has been growing a lot during the 90 and 2000's. Part of the reason the internet is growing so much is the way people access the internet. People are now able to access the web from smart phones, from iPads, from gaming consoles, etc. Web 2.0 five years on Its about precisely that: the fact that the web's grow has not limit and that the applications available online are the main tools people use. From search engines, to video browsers, to picture finders, to maps; everything has become indispensable for internet users.

The application I like the most is video applications like Youtube and netflix. Youtube enables me to find videos from topics that interest me. It serves as a resource for pop culture videos, educational videos, online activism or just pure waste of time. I discovered Netflix during winter 2010 when i spend time in a house with no TV. I used netflix to watch shows and movies online for very cheap.

DTC 356

From now until i say otherwise, i will blog about my DTC356 class. Enjoy

Bridging the Digital Divide in Uganda

This video shows the impact and positive changes a community in uganda has after receiving a telecenter with phone, fax and a couple of computer. A lot of people in that community takes advantage of these resources. The farmer looks up information on how to be more productive with her land and crops, the bicycle repair man orders parts from distributors over the internet and kids have more access to books in their native language.

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Sources on Digital Divide

http://www.digitaldivide.org/harvardmit.html

One of the best websites with information about Digital Divide and the action taken by some organizations.

http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-858537.html

This article offers information about the digital divide and the 21st century civil rights movement

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/race-culture-and-the-digital-divide/#

This site offers a conservative point of view on the "myths" of the digital divide

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/net/net.html

Resources on multicultural technology education. The site also offers tool and guides for instructors

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/digital-divide.html

This site explains the different stages of digital divide. Very interesting take on the subject.

http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/newsroom/stats/

global statistics of access to computers and cellular telephone services

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-09-05-digital-divide_x.htm

This article talk about the access to internet among white and minority students.

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/cib/2001-02/02cib01.htm

Digital Divide in rural australia, its impacts and economic development.

http://www.edutopia.org/digital-divide-where-we-are-today

This site has information about how to bridge the gap in the digital divide.

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/-guestcolumn/3808-re-conceptualizing-digital-divide.html

Article about the re-conceptualization of the digital divide in Nepal communities.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canadas-digital-divide/article1521631/?cmpid=rss1

Digital Dive in Canada.

http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/the-developing-digital-divide.html

Article about projects to bridge the digital divide gap in bangladesh, sri lanka and nigeria

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3005493.stm

Article about the digital divide and rural communities of the united kingdom.

http://rsj.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/12/issue/3/article/1295/the-rural-digital-divide

more information about the digital divide in Australia

http://www.idrc.ca/panasia/ev-117803-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

intersection of gender and digital divide in pakistan.

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Race and the Digital Divide

I found some statistics about race and the digital divide in the US. These statistics are from a study done at UC Santa Cruz in 2003. Data shows how certain ethnic groups are more likely to have a computer at home and/or access to the internet. Here are some of the statistics that caught my attention.

• Language is an important determinant of computer ownership and Internet use even after controlling for education, family income and immigrant status. Spanish-speaking Latinos, especially Mexicans, have strikingly low rates of computer ownership and home Internet use.
• The Digital Divide is large and does not appear to be disappearing soon. Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latinos (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent). They are also less likely to have Internet access at home (40.5 and 38.1 percent compared to 67.3 percent).
• Among Latino groups, Mexicans have the lowest home computer and Internet access rates followed by Central and South Americans who have the next lowest rates. Although Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Other Latinos have higher rates, all Latino groups are less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are white, non-Latinos.
• Income differences are partly, but not entirely responsible for ethnic and racial disparities in computer and Internet access. Even among individuals with family incomes of at least $60,000, blacks and Latinos are substantially less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are whites.
• Roughly 1 out of 7 blacks and 1 out of 8 Latinos subscribe to broadband at home, compared to 26.1 percent of whites. One third of Asians and roughly 1 out of 8 Native Americans have broadband at home.

While the study did not provided any evidence of institutional racism being in correlation with access to technology, these stats did shows how different communities have access to computers. Another thing that the study failed to clarify is that these communities did not have computers because they could not benefit from one. For example, the study found that many families of color that make about $60,000 a year did not have computers at home. These middle class american families are able to afford a computer, but it is unclear why they do not have one.

Source: http://www.freepress.net/files/lccrdigitaldivide.pdf

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Project to bridge the digital divide in rural areas

I want to share this video because I thought it was very interesting to see the economic and educational impact of technology in a small rural town in Honduras. The people of the town have experience a lot of benefits from having electricity, phone lines and computers in their community.

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History of Digital Divide

The Digital Divide is simply defined as the gap between the rich people who benefit from the access to technology and the poor who do not benefit as much from access to technology (if they have any). One very important fact to not is that this gap is expanded because technology companies way to make profit. They believe that making solutions for the rich is profitable, while making solutions for the poor is not as profitable, because the poor cant pay for the technology.

Another important thing to note is that in certain parts of the world, technology brings more problems than solutions. For example, in a rural community in the middle east, a kid might stop going to school because the local cyber cafe has video-games in their computers. In this case, the access of technology is not benefiting this kid, or the community he lives on. This fact created a bigger gap in technology in the late 90's.

The term was used first before the 80's rarely. It was until the early 90's when the technology boom began with the access to personal computers. President Clinton and Vice President Gore first used the term in a speech in 1996, when the then technology adviser of the Clinton administration took notice on the problems of inequalities surrounding the digital divide. During the passage of the US Telecommunications act in 1996, Digital Divide became a term of friction between the public sector and the private sector. This happened Mainly because the private sector wanted the government to subsidize technology in order to drop prices of technology and make it more accessible. The public sector argued that technology companies should pay for the cost of bringing the poor into the information society.

Sources:

http://www.digitaldivide.org/history.html

http://www.dbfboston.org/index.html

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Digital Divide

For my blog, I am going to focus on the topic of digital divide. I learned about the topic a little while ago when I was exploring different forms of global inequality. In short, digital divide is the inequality of the distribution, access to and learning how to use technology and digital information (Computers and internet access, for example). The biggest factors that play a role in the digital divide are economic status, education level and geographical location. Societies with more access to technology are more capable of advancing economically and competing globally. I hope to understand more of this topic as I learn more about global inequality in my class.

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