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.