CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media

1. CCT 300:Critical Analysis of Media Class 10: Information Overload/Web 2.0

2. Administrivia • Feedback on culture jamming/social influence proposals sent to one member either by email or internal Wikispaces email – find it and share it

3. Elitist Return? Net Neutrality • Is some information more important? Should it get priority access to “the tubes?” • Tiered access - who controls it? To what good purpose? How?

4. Tiered access • Internet 2, Can*net 4, private internal networks • Sheridan’s iChat server and other university bandwidth issues (e.g., YouTube filtering!) • Commercial censorship - Telus vs. union, Shaw vs. VoIP, AOL vs. anti-AOL consumer sites, US Military vs. progressive blogs, Google and Yahoo! in China, RIAA/file trading - others?

5. A Critical Take • Winner and mythinformation - technology adherents take to near mythical descriptions of how technology will change the world • See also Noble - Religion of Technology - designers themselves speak in terms of highly spiritual terms (creation, transcendence, inevitable utopia)

6. Four Myths • People are lacking information • Information is knowledge • Knowledge is power • Information access = equitable and democratic social power

7. Do we really lack information? • Many argue opposite - we’re drowning, and we are losing the ability to make relevant associations and connections as a result • Ex: 500-channel universe, academic journal explosion - little common ground, little opportunity for full analysis

8. Information = Knowledge? • Sheer quantity of information may lead to information overload and destruction of knowledge • Perceived knowledge vs. actionable and understood knowledge • 9/11 example - information regarding terror cells existed but was scattered, uncoordinated - it didn’t make sense

9. Knowledge = Power? • Knowledge available at the right time and context to people with the power and resources to act upon it might equal power • Knowledge itself might leave you powerless - and frustratingly so - e.g., blogosphere and politics (e.g., Deaniacs and Paultards) – but can be successful if tethered right (e.g., my.barackobama.com)

10. Information = Democracy? • Capacity for self-governance isn’t just information-based • Most people are simply not interested in all the relevant information • Direct democracy can be dangerous, even asinine - e.g., Stockwell “Doris” Day example from 22 Minutes)

11. Web 2.0 • What does this even mean? • http://www.go2web20.net/ - how many of these services can we really use? • A new bubble for a new age?

12. Web 1.0 • Web pages as simple publication - “brochureware” • Static content, little to no community participation or input

13. 1.0 -> 2.0 • Introduction of community and data management systems • Leveraging power of social networks • Data-driven content - dynamic page creation • Data manipulation and creation by users • Democratic, open-source generally

14. SLATES (McAfee) • Search • Linking • Authorship • Tagging • Extensions • Signals McAfee, A.P (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Sloan Management Review, 47(3), 21-6. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/

15. Another take (Carr) Carr, A. (2007). Designing for Sustainable Conversations. InteractionCamp 2007.http://www.slideshare.net/acarr/designing-sustainable-conversations-with-social-media-59204

16. Web-based Forums • A resuscitation of BBS and Usenet • Communities of interest built around particular topics, areas of interest • Example: Craigslist: “don’t be evil” approach, similar to Google - community of trust, simple functional interface, paid ads in major markets (mostly for quality control, and at user’s request)

17. Wikis • Collaborative writing and editing of material • Wikipedia as gold standard, but also effective for more localized communities of practice (e.g., TorCamp conferences) • Other examples?

18. Blogs • Webpage driven by content management system for ease of use/updating • Cheap platform for personal and group expression • Blogs withiin blogs develop and contribute new talent - e.g., DailyKos user journals • Communities of interest build through link exchanges, trackbacks • Examples?

19. Microblogging • Short, informal info bursts - similar to texting • Twitter - what are you doing right now (140 characters or less) - hence use of TinyURLs. • Facebook status updates

20. Social Networking • Building communities of friends by school, community, interests, etc. • Builds FOAF networks • Shared profiles with some privacy restrictions (e.g., keeping phone, IM to friend networks) • Examples?

21. http://www.xkcd.com/256

22. Examples: Orkut and Facebook • Orkut (Google experiment) - FOAF spam and a strange Brazilian takeover - now kind of useless if you don’t speak Portuguese. • Facebook - Ivy league roots, now broader audience • Facebook news feed - all actions of friends relayed - privacy concerns? • Facebook API - acceleration of services (and junk) • Google OpenSocial - Orkut and others to share common API • Has Facebook peaked?

23. RSS Feeds • Information feeds to create push vs. pull relationshiop to media • Feed aggregators (browser, online or application) collect new information feeds in one location • Increasingly mashed up with other services (e.g., Yahoo! Pipes)

24. Folksonomies • Collaborative tagging and categorization of materials • Tags and categories develop organically through community input • Opposite direction from taxonomy – top-down, enforced control (e.g., Library of Congress) • Use in TorCamp conferences

25. Collaborative Favourites/Bookmarks • Shared items/pages of interest • Services such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Fark, (too) many others become ways of tracking commonly bookmarked items • Del.icio.us tagging and its benefits

26. Collaborative Calendaring • E.g., upcoming.org and Facebook’s event calendar – events both you and your friends are interested in • Shared calendaring services (mostly based on iCal standards…)

27. Photo sharing • Sharing of photo albums, often with annotations, notes • Control of publication - publication to friends only or wide publication • Flickr, Picassa, (too?) many others • Local example: BubbleShare

28. Video Sharing • User-driven shared video services like YouTube, Google Video (others?) • (Increasingly) amateur content - some with surprisingly sizeable audiences • Exposure driven by user rankings • Easily leveraged by blogs/wikis as embedded media, easily shared

29. File Sharing • Peer-to-peer networks to trade files (all legal ones, I’m sure…) • Distributed bandwidth allows for transfer without vulnerable central nodes (e.g., torrents) • Community effect - learning about files shared by others

30. Podcasting • Downloadable audio or video broadcasts, related (but not necessarily tied) to popularlity of iPod • Itunes integration - a central repository for podcast feeds, but there are others

31. (Some) Games • Which games? • Multiplayer games - building of community around game actions, especially games that require group interaction to succeed • Examples?

32. IM? • Is instant messaging really 2.0? • To some extent, it adheres to SLATES, but the community is generally very insular – email isn’t really 2.0 for the same reason

33. Next week… • Last formal lecture – remaining notes on Web 2.0 and notes on creativity, its economic value, and why you should be concerned about being creative.