Yo Yo Ma

Bonus Mission #2: Not a Game

2007-04-07T23:04:00.000+08:00

I have a confession to make –Second Life did not interest me in the least bit initially. I would have never known about its existence if I did not have to take the COM125 class. Actually, that in itself is a lie. I did know about Second Life before I took the COM125 class. In fact, I learnt about Second Life through a friend’s blog.

Perhaps the sexual screen captures of Second Life she had posted in one entry turned me off and left me with a bad first impression of this virtual reality. I could not imagine who in his/ her right mind would enjoy having virtual sex. Perhaps my friend was making a mockery out of the realism Second Life is supposed to portray by posting those pictures up on her blog.

It seems everybody can be anybody on virtual realms like Second Life, which is no surprise because that is what new media brings with it –freedom of identity. Well, at least I like to think so. Being a non-gamer, I did not response at all to the influx of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or MMO but I am acutely aware of how people can be consumed by the gaming world since I have friends who are fanatics themselves.

In one Newsweek article, Steven Levy (2006) wrote on the power of MMOs, particularly the massive hit World of War Craft (WWO). While WWO displays obvious characteristics of a game more so than Second Life, there are similarities between the two. Just as how Levy observed about WWO, human choices and morals are essential for interaction in a fantasy world like Second Life.

Real people are sitting at those consoles and jabbing away at their keyboards. The act itself may seem passive but a lot of thinking is happening in the mind as a participant goes through the terrain in Second Life. So much so that it elicits sudden bursts of frustrations and elations from players (i.e. my observation of fellow classmates who were trying to get themselves off the ‘orientation’ island in Second Life).

What fascinates me about Second Life is how it is very much like the real world. As my friend has demonstrated with those screen captures on her blog, you can have sexual intercourse in Second Life. You can also earn Linden dollars, Second Life’s own currency and convert it into real money you can use in the real world. Plus, as told in a previous lecture in COM125, you can even use it to aid the marketing efforts of your product. A hotel, which has yet to be completed in real life, has already enjoyed visits from virtual citizens in Second Life.

It takes time and effort to be a participant in Second Life or any virtual fantasy world and it is nice to know that there are people who do so for a cause. Take the example of artist, Joseph DeLappe, (Clarran, 2006). Though he is a passive player in America’s Army, he types the names of real soldiers whose lives were claimed in the real life war of Iraq in the game’s chat interface. He is just one of the many Americans who feel they and the atrocities of the war needed to be remembered.

As I have said before, I am not much of a gamer but if worlds like Second Life, America’s Army and WWO can be utilized in ways a hotel and a concerned citizen have demonstrated to us, I have no reason to dismiss these worlds as just mere games you play to while away your time.

References

Clarran, R. (2006). Virtually dead in Iraq. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/09/16/americasarmy/

Levy, S. (2006). World of Warcraft: Is It a Game. Retrieved April 7, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/

QotW9: Citizen Journalism

2007-03-31T07:09:00.000+08:00

In his book, We the Media, writer and journalist, Dan Gillmor (2004) iterates the fact that readers know more than journalists themselves. He professes this is one reason why the voice of the public cannot be ignored in the virtual realm.

When providing an example, Gillmor explains that ‘people who want to improve what they’ve bought are studying how things work, whether products are traditional electronics or things with a software component, and these customers are making adjustments –hacks, as they’re known –that either make the products better or change their nature entirely’. This is to say experts of all kinds come out of the woodwork (public) online.

This sets the pace for citizen journalism. It is journalism by citizens with citizens setting the agenda (Chua and Peh, 2006). In comparison to traditions of competition, expertise and control practiced by big news companies, the marked difference citizen journalism has over professional journalism is that it shows transparency and encourages dialogue and collaboration between people (Carr, 2007).

Stomp was set up by the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) in an effort to stay relevant to a new generation (Chua and Reh, 2006). The national print giant could not afford to ignore what the digital advancement brings in its wake. It knows more and more of its readers are going online and this could harm readership. So in order to ‘get with it’, Stomp was set up with the basic principle of being a portal whereby readers generate the content.

Is this citizen journalism? There was a lot of debate about Stomp. Perhaps the answer lies behind the reason of its conception. According to Gillmor, it seems citizen journalism means that people are proactive and they volunteer to disclose information on their own free will. Stomp, in comparison, was marketed and advertised for it to be up and running.

This is not to say Stomp is a marketing ploy. It is not. In my opinion, Stomp is very much like an online community. Visitors are mostly SPH readers. Not only do they meet and exchange ideas in Stomp, they tip SPH off on the latest trends and news. Like Gillmor says: readers can know more about things than the journalists themselves.

Since Stomp is by SPH and SPH is a government dependant media, critics have a field day picking on that fact alone. How can something like Stomp portray an idea, which, in theory, exists outside the boundaries of government and corporation? What is so ‘emergent’ and ‘self-assembling’ about Stomp?

Although, I do not think Stomp is a good example of citizen journalism, I do not think it needs the backlash. Just as how Gillmor (2004) points out –feedback and assistance should be welcomed from both the business and the public.

The real representatives of Singapore’s citizen journalism are those who have readers commenting actively on their blogs or web spaces through conversation, argument and annotation (Carr, 2007). This, in turn, brings about insights and hard facts (Carr, 2007). The citizen newsmaker puts out something that piques his interest and, given time, what he put out will generate readers’ response. He can report about anything so long as what he reports produces a dialogue among his readers.

People should always remember –the name of the game is information and with the Internet, it would be unwise to totally ignore or, worse, dismiss the voices of people just because they are not trained professionals in journalism. People always have something to say and something to share with one another. If they have to utilize Stomp to do so, so be it.

References

Carr, D. (2007). All the World’s a Story. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/business/media/19carr.html?ex=1331956800&en=223e434f8bf020ab&amp;ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Chua, M. H. and Peh, S. H. (2006). Looking the media storm in the eye. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from Factiva.

Gillmor, D. (2004). We The Media. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html

QotW8: Democracy The Internet Allows

2007-03-24T05:59:00.000+08:00

It is mentioned in Kalathil and Boas’ (2001) study of the Internet in authoritarian regimes that the international community has long considered Singapore as a semi authoritarian state.

So it came as no surprise when Kalathil and Boas continued to illustrate how Singapore has managed to come up with a planned Information Communication Technology (ICT) strategy for implemention and that this strategy is a combination of legal, technical and social measures –all in the effort to control the development of the Internet within the country.

As Thornton (2002) points out people are wistfully thinking that the Internet can offer a public arena free from government control and commercialism. So the word ‘control’ used in the previous paragraph may not go down well with these hopefuls.

Over the years, the Internet has without a doubt, helped China to achieve a freer state of existence for its citizens although the Chinese government still holds an iron grip as Kalathil and Boas demonstrate.

Rebecca MacKinnon attested to this notion in an online roundtable conducted by Frontline. She brought forth a point that China has approximately 15 million blogs and conversations in these same blogs have become more wide-ranging culturally and socially –something unheard of in China 20 years ago.

What MacKinnon is referring to is called ‘citizens’ media’. This phenomenon is not only happening in China, it exists in this semi-authoritarian state of Singapore. In an online roundup of 2006’s politics of Singapore’s new media, Giam (2006) wrote about the major stories that the blogosphere brought forth to the public attention.

Some of these stories were satires, there were stories that were not reported by the traditional media and other stories were intensely thought provoking. Most importantly, all stories were written by citizens and meant for the benefit of citizens. It can be said that Singaporeans are making the effort to engage in participatory democracy.

One particular blogger I made a personal hero out of is Cherian George, an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University. While other blogs that make puns out of every local issue (governmental or otherwise) are creatively entertaining, George’s entries are serious, objectively written and provoking.

His earlier blog entitled Air-Conditioned Nation was a place where he wrote essays on local matters; particularly of the local media. I remember coming across his blog while doing research for an in-class speech I had to give. I chanced upon his entry, Freedom from press –Why the media are the way they are and thought that it was one of the most thorough piece I have ever read on the government versus the media.

Now, George has moved to a new blog called Singapore Media. It was set up in September 15, 2005 and it is ranked 265, 106 on Technorati. It goes to show that the academia should never be dismissed even online.

Anybody can engage in citizens’ media. In fact, everybody is encouraged to participate in it. This is the only way Singaporeans can realise a greater democracy. Blogs like George’s offer citizens relevant information and alternative perspectives on issues that need to be addressed online because it is not possible to do so anywhere else.

As rightly put by our dear marketing instructor, Neil Holbert, “Democracy is not so much the destination, it is about the journey.” I think it is because the journey is the most exciting part about it.

References

Frontline. (2006). Roundtable The Struggle to Control Information. Retrieved March 21, 2007 from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/internet/

Giam, G. (2006). Review -The politics of Singapore's new media in 2006. Retrieved March 21, 2007, from http://theonlinecitizen.com/2006/12/31/review-the-politics-of-singapores-new-media-in-2006/

Kalathil, S., &, Boas, T. C. (2001). The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution. First Monday. Retrieved March 21, 2007, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_8/kalathil/index.html

Thornton, A. (2002). Does Internet Create Democracy. Retrieved March 23, 2007, from http://www.zip.com.au/%7Eathornto/

QotW7: Online Communities

2007-03-17T08:54:00.000+08:00

Tweety, twatter, twitter, is it a community or something other? What we do know is that it is yet another social networking service the Internet has to offer. You sign up for a free account, take some time to figure out how the application works and then you spend hours on end finding friends and strangers in the network to add on your list. Or you use the social networking application to interact with people who are already online.

Wellman and Gulia (1996) brought up a term they called computer supported social networks (CSSNs). This term included electronic mail, bulletin boards, newsgroups and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as examples of CSSN. Wellman and Gulia also highlighted that all CSSN provide companionship, social support, information and a sense of belonging.

So we know a community can result from a social network. Fernback and Thompson (1995) were careful to interpret Richard Sennett’s notion of community culture. They said that although the concept of community usually refers to social relationships that occur within boundaries, whether geographically or not, there is an ideological dimension to the concept. Fernback and Thompson were referring to a sense of common character, identity or interests each community possess.

Twitter’s tagline reads ‘what are you doing’. It functions like a hyperactive bulletin board whereby posts get updated every available second of the day depending on how many friends you have on your list. Basically, it provides a textbox (much like a comment box) for you to type in what you are doing right at the minute. People on your friends’ list would read it off their own page about what you were doing with your time and they, in turn, would post about what they were doing.

In the initial stage, it does not allow you to know much about a user, just that you get to know where he or she lives based on a few lines about the user under the ‘Bio’ section. But if you were a friend of the user and an avid visitor of Twitter, you would be able to paint a picture of that same user from reading the few lines he or she types out everyday on what he or she is doing.

But the question is: is Twitter a community or not? My answer is yes simply because the very first thing I saw when I visited Twitter was the SXSW button on the Featured User box on the right-hand corner. SXSW stands for South by Southwest and it is a major event in The States because it is not only a festival for music and film but it also hosts interactive conferences for creators and their audience.

If you decide to click on SXSW the user, the very first thing you will notice is that the user has over 5000 friends on its list. These are all fans of the event and just like me they are following the SXSW page to get event updates. Which is perfect timing, might I add, because SXSW is happening from 9th till the 18th of March.

Curiously enough, as soon as I added SXSW to my own list, three other members off its list added me as a friend. Perhaps this goes in line with what was mentioned by Wellman and Gulia (1996) –the Net encourages the expansion of community networks. They made an example out of receiving unsolicited help from friends of a friend about an email virus. It can work the same way from me because now I have not only SXSW to read about what people are doing at the event but three other friends whose updates I can read from.

References

About SXSW. Retrieved March 17, 2007, from http://2007.sxsw.com/about/

Fernback, J., &, Thompson, B. (1995). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Wellman, B., &, Gulia, M. (1996). Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone Virtual Communities As Communities. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

QotW6: Privacy, Surveillance, Sousveillance

2007-03-10T02:34:00.000+08:00

Sleeping is a private affair, which is why I did not appreciate it when a friend of mine wiped out his latest Samsung mobile phone and started to take a video of an old man asleep in the train with his mouth agape. My friend took the short clip off his phone and mass-emailed it to everyone he knew just for the heck of it.

What would you have done if you had been the old man? You were asleep, you were caught unaware and you would probably feel grossly violated if you knew you have been caught on video by an errant youth.

With more advanced mobile gadgets, anybody can record a video of anybody else at any given time and at any given place. There is a danger to that notion but at the same time this can serve a noble purpose.

Take the example of the police officer who used a Taser on a student in the library just because he did not have his identification card on him (Sousveillance.org, 2006). The incident was caught on video by a citizen and put on YouTube.com. According to a blogger at Sousveillance.org, this led to a discussion about the importance sousveillance in college campuses.

When you have ordinary people going around the place with their own handheld cameras, recording moments on the fly, you start to wonder what they are going to use the footage for. So as far as sousveillance go, as long as it serves a purpose for the good of many, I feel it is fine. But if the footage is misused like the Taser gun in the library, then I would not consider that sousveillance. In other words, the video of the sleeping old man in the train does not count as an example of sousveillance.

In an article written by Jeffrey Rosen (2004), it was mentioned that the sociologist Thomas Mathiesen built on Foucault’s Panapticon concept (the few watched the many) and came up with the terms Synopticon –the many watch the few – and Omnipticon –the many are watching the many.

Within the same article, it was discussed that Americans are facing a dilemma of sorts regarding their tendency to ‘expose’ their Self to mere strangers. They are doing it online through self-disclosure on blogs and filling up user profiles on many social networking applications online. Personal data suddenly becomes easier to retrieve in the public domain.

When The Self is becoming more and more exposed and information about The Self becomes easily available where does that leave us with privacy? Rosen’s article seems to insinuate that we brought it upon us, that we feel the need to belong in a society where trust from strangers can only be achieved by disclosing the details of our personal lives.

There are a lot of issues regarding privacy particularly regarding security. I often wonder if the world will really become like the fictitious one penned by George Orwell in his book, 1984. How much does the government need to know or have under surveillance in the name of keeping its citizens safe (Sullivan, 2006)?

There already has been a case of mistaken identity whereby a woman and two teenage girls were charged for murder just because they were caught on a surveillance camera at the time of crime (Sullivan, 2006). It was not until later it was discovered that the camera was not synchronized to the correct timing.

It seems to me that the situation now is indeed a 21st century equivalent of being caught naked (Sullivan, 2006) and we are still unsure how much about ourselves should remain private.

References

Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Sullivan, B. (2006, October 17). Privacy Lost: Does anybody care? Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/
The Principle of Evidence: Practical Sousveillance 101. (2006, November 18). Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.sousveillance.org/journal/?p=373

QotW5: Identity & the Community

2007-02-23T07:23:00.000+08:00

The need for an online identity proves to be of great importance if one were to immerse one’s self in the social arena in the virtual world. According to Masum and Zhang (2004), a networked society can provide new applications and possibilities only if it can share opinions and access reputations with ease.

In real time, people will take the trouble to appear presentable to others –be it an organizational function, a seminar or a simple outing of tea and cake. Impressions are made and reputations are built. On the flip side, there are some who take on an identity because they choose to for a variety of reasons.

In the virtual realm, identity plays a great emphasis. For example, when one becomes a member of an online community, it is necessary to acquire an identity if one wants to be noticed and be set apart from everyone else within that community. If you desire your poetry to be read or a buyer to purchase what you have to sell, a positive identity within the community is one you would be aiming for.

In her article regarding identity in the virtual community, Judith S. Donath (1996) talks about identity cues and how they work. She believes that by looking closely at these, it is possible to build online environments that are vibrant. Meaning, ideas and information exchanged are rich and beneficial to others in the environment.

In the virtual world, people are prone to take on an identity that does not necessarily match up with the one they possess in the real world.

The video clip, The Parlor, could not have illustrated this notion better. The characters are first shown sitting around in a waiting room. They wear name tags and they begin talking to each other. This scene actually depicts the types of conversations that usually take place in the confines of an online chat room.

One instance during the video shows how a middle aged man uses a pseudonym so he can appear to be a teenage boy to a teenage girl. By speaking to her in a sexually suggestive way, he is hoping that the girl falls prey to his intentions. So the question is what should we do with the deviant few who wreak havoc within communities by taking on negative identities or worse, masquerading as someone else to fulfill their own self interests?

Is it better to always be on guard against such predatory characters online or is there a way we can exercise flexibility pertaining to online identities by engaging the use of the available monitoring means so as not to insult anybody with our guardedness?

As highlighted by Derek Lackaff (2003), online communities put moderation into practice as to avoid negative scenarios in the environment. This means members work together to keep a lookout for community troublemakers like “flamers” or “trolls” that might be lurking around the domain. According to Lackaff, moderators help to maintain the norms within an online group so information exchange, which is the primary goal of setting up groups, will not be disrupted.

To my knowledge, usually members are told to follow a set of rules or guidelines before joining a community like SGSPREE on livejournal.com. These rules were devised by the community moderators and sometimes may include community etiquette. So even if someone decides to go into a group and wreck havoc under a pseudonym by going against these rules, you can be sure he will not be a member for long. Sometimes sanctions are given to rule breakers. It can go as far as banning the offender from ever entering the group again.

I feel that to be guarded all the time will affect the information and social exchange when one goes into an online group. Donath points out that trust in other participants with regards to their social identity is significant in acquiring a sense of community.

It is far better to use that very same sense of community for controlling community activities and its participants.

References

Banshell Entertainment (Producer). (2001). The Parlor. (Available online from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge2FHDf_L78)

Donath, J.S. (1996). Identity and Deception in theVirtual Community. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Lackaff, D. (2003). Norm maintenance in online communities: A review of moderation regimes. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from http://lackaff.net/node/20

Masum, H., and, Zhang, Y. (2004). Manifesto for the Reputation Society. First Monday, 9(7). Retrieved February 22, 2007, from http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue9_7/masum/

QotW4: It's All In The Giving

2007-02-10T14:04:00.000+08:00

I remember when I was a lot younger and when I was still living with my grandparents, I was asked to pay the neighbours’ a visit with a dish wrapped carefully with tin foil to preserve the heat. This would happen regularly and always just before dinnertime. I never asked why I had to do it because when you are young, you never question the elders.

When an aunt got married off, the same people who received dishes from my grandparents on a regularly basis helped out with the wedding. It was the kind of community spirit I never experienced again since I moved out from my grandparents’.

In his definition on what is a gift, Peter Kollock maintains that it is something “exchanged between individuals who are part of an ongoing interdependent relationship” (1999). This definition was in comparison to what makes a commodity. My community spirit experience of giving-without-being-asked was a form of social exchange, one major example of the gift economy.

In the online world, there are numerous projects individuals take on to satisfy their own self-interests with other like-minded individuals –be it software developing, movements or information sharing. Richard Barbrook illustrates the situation of gift economies in the past when he talks about the open source movement that gradually became a mainstream affair after a few decades (2005).

Barbrook regards the open source movement as an example of early non-commercial productions one could find online at that point of time. Also, he regards blogging as a mass phenomenon from small minority beginnings. Barbrook points out that people do not realise that in sharing photos on Flickr and posting songs online may hurt media corporations. He goes on to say that there is a connection between perceived social altruism and commercial self-interest. Most people, some of whom are free market fanatics, tend to check the possibility of free download before they make their purchase online.

Despite the definitions, examples of sustainability and problems discussed by both Kollock and Barbrook about the mechanics of gift economies, there are still critics who feel the concept in itself is a naïve notion. They do not believe that people will want to cooperate out of mere self-interest in getting something done or willingly share information without expecting anything back in return. Some made the comparison that of the two –market economy and gift economy –the latter is the less efficient (Pollard, 2005).

In his concluding paragraph to his blog entry, Can We Make The Gift Economy Work, Dave Pollard poses a question:

“And if we could, could the Gift Economy be the key, the thin edge of the wedge to change everything, to save the world?”

Well, it saved my iPod.

I had my iPod given to me as a birthday present. I was careless with it and dropped it a few times. So one day, when it finally crashed on me due to the partially damaged hard disk, I happily went to have it repair, thinking they could fix the problem in no time. I was wrong of course. My iPod came without a warranty and the repair company could not do anything about it except to sell me a new one because they do not technically repair spoilt iPods, they give out new ones only if you present your warranty.

I told them I would think about buying a new one and started to fret as soon as I stepped out of the store. I went back home, got online and looked for good deals on iPods. When I could not find a price I was satisfied with, I googled for people who might have suffered the same fate as me.

I was in luck. I came across Josh Higland’s blog, his Replacing The Hard drive of An Ipod in particular. In this entry, not only did he come up with a solution, he provided step-by-step pictures to illustrate the procedure to his solution. This entry attracted a lot of attention and people post comments, offering other alternative solutions to iPod problems.

Josh Higland could have sold this information for quite a bit of money but he did not. I am sure if there are a lot of individuals like Josh Highland, in time to come the answer to Pollard’s question will be a resounding ‘yes’.

References
Barbrook, R. (2005). The Hi-Tech Gift Economy. First Monday Special Issue 3. Retrieved February 10, 2007, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/

Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retrieved February 10, 2007, from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Pollard, D. (2005). Can We Make The Gift Economy Work. Salon Radio Weblog. Retrieved February 10, 2007, from http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/07/31.html

QotW3: Rights -Are We There Yet?

2007-02-03T05:58:00.000+08:00

It is an insane tug-of-war. Just the other day, a friend of mine went into a spiel about the creators behind street labels Fuct and Obey. According to him, Obey’s Shepard Fairey ripped off Erik Brunetti’s designs for Fuct and it brought on blood bad between these two with things being said in interviews, forums and on sites like BrghtNghts.com (http://www.brghtnghts.com/blog/?page_id=33). Fans for both camps dug up evidence and such to prove their respective points.

Nobody wants his/her work to be used without permission. Everybody wants to be credited or reimbursed for the work they have done. But in the digital realm, wars are being fought surrounding this issue –people are facing lawsuits from the powers that be because works from images to sound files are being used illegally.

As website WhatsTheDownload.com highlights, even the creators themselves cannot come to a consensus. Should the industry come down hard on the people they are trying to get their creations to or should they give leeway to these same people who are sharing them with others by making copies without permission?

A book written by a Stanford Law School scholar, Lawrence Lessig, examines the problem from a different stance (Manjoo, 2004). He made Mickey Mouse the centerpiece for his explorations in technology and issues relating to the restrictions imposed in creativity and culture. He argues that copyright was meant to legally foster creativity, not deter it.

This same notion is supported by Australian lawyers from the Queensland University of Technology (Martin, 2007). After a team of DJs were in the red for remixing music without permission from its original artists, many were enraged. Petitions were signed resulting to heated discussions in online communities on IP rights and the stifling of creativity.

What Happened To Us?

What of the public who rely on the Internet for information-sharing? The public who are fans and enthusiasts who can ‘spread the word’ like a bee that goes to flower to flower to pollinate each one? The public who will be inspired to create something out of the content it consumes online?

We are either being hauled into court for our misuse of intellectual property or we are devising even more ways to avoid getting caught. The problem is if no one comes up with a solid plan to make both content creators and the public happy, these choices remain.

Perhaps we have to acquaint ourselves with the dynamics of copyright infringement in the online world. Carlos Ovalle of the University of Texas in Austin provides a list of objectives (2005). He addresses the importance of copyright and the limitations which entails the use of a copyright work.

The make up of the International copyright, copyright in a digital environment and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are just a few of the issues Ovalle elaborates on. With talk of licensing downloads and providing levies to compensate original creators (Litman, 2004) and the reforming of existing copyright restrictions, where do we begin to understand and begin to implement? There are so many forms of digital media and each follows its own copyright laws as Ovalle demonstrates.

There are attempts to tackle the problem and one notable effort is Creative Commons, a group which was set up under the ‘Free Content’ movement banner (Martin, 2007). To cater to both creators and the public, Creative Commons aim to provide flexible ways of sharing data without hurting the IP rights of their creators (http://creativecommons.org). Works are credited as they should and creators can choose to share their works in ways they see fit.

Though the group does not dabble in copyrighting software, it sufficiently covers areas of traditional creative work like music, film, photography and literature. The end result is a portal whereby users can consume data for free and share data whenever they can without having to worry about copyright infringement.

In my opinion, copyright infringement in the digital landscape has not been fully understood by users themselves. I find that it does not help that copyright laws in relation to the digital world vary from country to country. But I believe through education, we will be able to know the limitations and both creators and the public can work together towards resolving the matter.

References

Litman, J. (2004, September 20). Sharing and Stealing. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141

Manjoo, F. (2004, April 8). The mouse who would be king. Salon.com. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/04/08/copyright_culture/index.html

Martin, R. (2007). Remix culture: a rights nightmare. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/indepth/s1645533.htm

Ovalle, C. (2005). An Introduction to Copyright. Information in Cyberspace, 2. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/%7Ei312co/2.php

COM125 Week2: Hypertext Usability

2007-01-27T13:08:00.000+08:00

In the beginning, all the clever minds responsible for the computer age we experience today were engineers and computer scientists working behind government walls or within private industries.

All dreamt about the electronic brain which could combined human and machine thinking into one, resulting to a superior hybrid of sorts. That electronic brain is known as a computer. Earlier computers had access to networks which later make up the World Wide Web (WWW) and now, our lives are intertwined with the WWW.

The question is how did complex machines only engineers and scientists with college degrees could understand and operate in the beginning become something everyone could learn how to use with ease today? What allowed the usability?

The answer is hypertext. Without it, there probably would not be a lot of people online because its purpose is to link information on a page to other pages across a given network. This provided convenient information sharing and encouraged the usability mentioned above.

In his book, Howard Rheingold (1993) mentions humans tend to perceive the world visually. He maintains we humans extract information better with color and patterns then a page of numbers. As if acting in accordance to Rheingold's opinion, Ivan Sutherland and Alan Key, along with a group of young individuals from the Lincoln Lab and the University of Utah worked on interactive computer graphics.

What began as an alphabetic printout later evolved to graphic screen display. This paved the way for the design of the 'human-computer interface' and at the same time, being mindful to its users who are regular people.

With the advent of pattern manipulation across display screens, not only could text be displayed, graphics were allowed too. This breakthrough in turn spurred interchangeable usage between computer and graphics –you could use graphics to control the computer and vice versa. This then led to the user friendliness of the computers to non-programmers.

While in the earlier days, a person had to type in a phrase to command the computer, the modern user need only point to an image and click on a button to call up the command. This 'point-and-click' command is crucial where hypertext is concern.

The whole premise of hypertext was so that people could explore information in a new way through the use of computers. A computer scientist in the 1960s named Ted Nelson (Gralla, 2007, p. 161) thought up the concept of hypertext. He was concerned about how people would share information between computers.

The concept was later developed into something feasible. In 1989, CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, introduced its network to the public via the external Internet. CERN researcher (Kazmierczak, 1997), Tim Berners-Lee, was working on an idea he was waiting to put to the test. When the company opened its door to the public, it provided the opportunity Berners-Lee needed to implement his idea.

Throughout the 1980s he had been developing on Nelson's hypertext concept, created as part of the 'Xanadu project'. The concept encompasses a simple idea –authors of documents were allowed to add links and names to indicate to other items relevant to their documents.

A proposal for this idea was presented to CERN with the title 'Information Management: A Proposal: Introduction of linked information systems, non-linear text systems' in March 1989. Later, this laid out the foundations of the Internet.

Berners-Lee's proposed idea did not come without its setbacks. He needed to further revise his proposal in May 1990 because developments on his idea did not go according to plan. The first program he had developed on his NeXT machine in November 1990 was an effort to put things in the right direction. The program consisted of a WYSIWYG browser and editor that demonstrated his ideas of displaying information in a non-linear fashion through the use of hypertext.

Laying out the groundwork for the WWW was not an easy task. Brilliant minds needed to worked and developed on their ideas time and time again to get the desired results. Had the idea of hypertext not been thought of, the WWW would have been a portal only a chosen few with degrees could access.

We have the dedicated individuals who were visionaries and computer enthusiasts to thank for bringing the Internet to the masses and connecting people in the process.

References

Gralla, P. (2007). How The Internet Works. Indiana: Que Publishing

Kazmierczak, M. (1997). Enter CERN. Internet History. Retrieved January 26, 2006, from http://www.mkaz.com/ebeab/history/

Rheingold, H. (1993). Chapter Three: Visionaries and Convergences: The Accidental History of the Net. The Virtual Community. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/3.html

Among Other Things

2007-01-19T12:06:00.000+08:00

I was going through the archive of my first blog and discovered a few things.

Never have I blogged so much in 2003
I sounded like a whinny brat in 2003
I bitched about work alot, something I don't do much of now
A whinny brat who made a slow transition to become a fangirl
I was more public with my personal going-ons in my earlier blog days

How gross. But there were a few reasons behind some of these points. I did my internship in 2003 and while other people downloaded the lastest version of MSN Messenger to their work computers, a bunch of us set up blogs primarily to complain about our internship situation and to look like we were busy working when we were actually updating our respective blogs. So it was six months of bitching, ranting and raving about bosses, supers and the office brown-noser.

So that was how I discovered weblogs. When I made the transition from whinny brat to fangirl, I was fortunate enough to befriend people from around the world due to shared interests. Two of my best online mates are from Indonesia and Finland, fellow fans of the band, The Strokes. Power of the community, indeed. The Web is where the die-hard fans are at!

Recently, I have been thinking about RSS feed. For the longest time I didn't know what it was and I never got round to finding out. It is on almost all the web pages I like to visit. The only thing I know about it is that you can 'subscribe' to it. What else can you do with it? Oh but good news, we are getting the 411 on RSS feeds in the next lesson.

2007-01-16T18:46:00.000+08:00

Name: Siti Hamimah Binte Aminuddin.
Not fond of my name because it's a mouthful.
So Siti works fine.

I like magazines, myspace and songs.
I have a caustic sense of humor.
I don't like to elaborate that much when it comes to 'about me'.
I'll work hard if I have to so I'm no slacker.
I have plans and ambitions.

If you think I don't sound interested, think again. Your class is going to help me with my plans and ambitions. Like, really. I prefer to talk about them when they're fully realised, though.

So stay tuned.