Author Archives: Steeve

No Speed Limit on This Information.

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At least that’s what the F.C.C said with their approval of the net neutrality rules, by voting 3-2 in its favor in the New York Times article by Ruiz and Lohr.  This was a very important ruling because now internet service providers will not be able to charge websites to increase their speed or slow them down if they don’t pay.  Being able to control the speed at which a website delivers data is a very powerful thing; the bigger corporations or media conglomerates would be able to control how we process information unless you don’t mind waiting for the other sites to load up. I mean it’s already hard to find websites that aren’t being controlled by big business, these niche sites would be quickly left behind by the faster moving giants.  This control would have also served as an added gatekeeper for information you would have to pay a fee at the gate for fast delivery.  Not to mention this would have damaged the original purpose of the internet which was (and still is) for people to share information with one another.  Hopefully reclassifying broadband or wireless connections as a utility will help keep internet service providers away for now or until they find the next loophole to try and regulate the speed of information.

An impressive work of plagiarism.

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I was somewhat impressed by Rowan’s act of plagiarism as described in Widdicombe’s article for the New Yorker, to create a book out of a multitude of different books is hard to even fathom.  One can even argue that were it not for his eidetic (photographic) memory writing a book in this fashion would have been way more difficult than creating an original work; you would have to take into account different tones, situations and then make them fit seamlessly into one story.  This was still an act of plagiarism but at the same it was still a work of art. I strongly believe like the article alluded to that if Rowan had initially come out before the book’s release and said that his book was created from a mash-up of different works there wouldn’t have been that much outrage.  At least Rowan admitted to his act of plagiarism unlike Senator John Walsh who flatly denied his act of plagiarism according to the New York Times article by Jonathan Martin.  Senator Walsh was accused of allegedly copying his thesis for the U.S. Army War College; after looking at the open interactive graphic in the New York Times article it’s pretty hard to deny that he did not plagiarize parts of his thesis.  Once you are caught plagiarizing the only thing you can do is fall on your pen and apologize there is no other recourse.

We Still Have Fair Use.

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I have always believed that if you come up with an idea it is yours to do with as you wish.  This belief is the reason as to why I don’t completely agree with the Grey video.  The video by Grey talks about the longevity of copyrighted works; you can tell from the tone of the video that he is for a shorter duration of copyright protection. He used Star wars which is George Lucas’s work as an example for something with a long copyright protection but I believe Mr. Lucas should be allowed to reap the benefits (money being the main one) of his work for as long as he wants since it was his idea.  Also as the creator he should be allowed some control in how his work is used and thus should be compensated for that work.  According to the Faden video you can still borrow a small portion of George Lucas’s work if you intend to use the work for teaching, news reporting or to even parody which all fall under the Fair Use doctrine.  Faden’s video actually captures the perfect use of the Fair Use doctrine; he created the video to teach the public about fair use, he did not change any of the works and lastly he only borrowed short pieces of each films.  Fair use still protects the original creator of the work because it doesn’t allow you to change the commercial value of the creators work; only the original creator should be allowed to do that.
“The code of best practices in fair use for media literacy education” reading does bring up the problem of the rapid rise of participatory media and how it will affect copyrighted works.  Participatory media such as YouTube and others do take some liberties with copyrighted works for example – the animated music videos (AMVs) mentioned in the Lawrence Lessig video or the millions of cover songs you will find on YouTube sung by a multitude of different artists. I believe Lessig had a great idea on how to solve the participatory media problem; the idea was for the original artist or creator to allow for their work to be used freely for non-commercial use.  This approach makes sense because the original creator can still profit from his work while allowing others to still use their work in an amateur way.  Also allowing this amateur use to their work can expose a wider audience to their work, I can’t begin to count how many cover videos have led to me actually purchasing the original work.  If that doesn’t work we can teach a monkey to use a camera and have him film a movie and the public can freely use that because according to the Jeanty article U.S. law as of 2011 claims that “copyright cannot vest in non-human authors”.  I joke but there is a part of me that would like to see Planet of the Apes 4 or 5 filmed by an actual ape.

A little Open Data never hurt anybody.

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I agree with the open data concept in the Wikipedia entry, especially in certain circumstances.  Imagine if the Tufte reading about John Snow finding the origin point of cholera happened today and that information was restricted to the public.  It’s basically like the Wikipedia entry states; data that contains information on “genomes, organisms, medical science, environmental” should be open to the public.  All of the previous things listed do not belong to anyone; facts about these things should always be open to the public domain.  Another reason which the Wikipedia entry brought up but I actually first read in Badke was the idea that if the data was funded with public money than it should at some point be made available to the public for free.  If the research was funded by government grants or through taxes then it was actually funded by the people and so why should we have to pay for it twice.  Some people might say’ if you discover something first you should be allowed to make a profit to fund future work or to be compensated for your time’, I do not disagree all I am saying is that at some point you have to turn that information over to the public.

Tufte’s reading on John Snow painted Snow as a man whose main focus was stopping a deadly cholera outbreak that was claiming nearly 100+ lives a day.  It wasn’t until after the incident he received the recognition of being called one of the fathers of epidemiology.  All in all I do not believe the advancement of humanity should be for profit, sometimes doing the right thing is truly its own reward.

Corporations in the press.

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The Thomas Eland and Fred Wright article both echo one of my beliefs which is there should be a separation between the press and business.  I have always believed that the press should be for the people instead of puppets being manipulated by large corporations.  I have no problem with the press being for profit, but I do have a problem when they are cancelled because of low ratings or poor circulation.   The news should exist outside of the control of gatekeepers and thus shouldn’t be judged on the criteria of ratings or circulation.

According to the Eland article alternative press does not believe that news can be told from a neutral “objective” perspective, which I disagree with.  Mainly because if the news is not neutrally objective then it can affect how it is reported – for an example I give you Fox News.  Another thing about alternative media and zines is that they are the trees falling in the forest with no one being around to hear them.  Alternative press and zines are so obscure that were it not for these two articles I never would have even known that they existed.

Media Convergence creates less clutter.

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The reading “Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life” by Meikle & Young talked about media convergence which is basically the coming together of media content, computer hardware & software and communications.  ITunes is the example chosen by the reading to illustrate this but I would go one step further and say the IPhone, Androids and other mobile phones really capture the idea of media convergence.  Imagine this scene you’re a passenger on the train and you want to listen to music so you take out your Mp3 player, then you have an urge to watch a movie so you take out your portable DVD player but all of a sudden you feel your cell phone starts to  vibrate so now you take that out.  I know it’s a very scary scene but that was probably what it was like for someone who wanted to be tech savvy in 1999.  Today we take the train and we can make a call, check your social networks, listen to music, watch a video and browse the web all on the same device.

Another theme of the reading is that individuals may build new technology but it is society that decides its purpose.  One example the reading gives is that when the phone was invented it was marketed for business it wasn’t until after the masses got a hold of it that its social impact was realized.  Even twitter which was originally invented to get messages out to friends, but twitter as helped to accelerate the Egyptian revolution and at times it is the fastest way to get relevant news.  I don’t think even the creators of twitter could of foresaw this coming.

When it comes to my own personal use of media, I tend to be all over the place. For video of course I use Netflix, I also have a lot of TV apps like ABC, NBC, ESPN and many more.  If I want to watch live TV I just use the Optimum app on my IPad, it’s also able to control my DVR.  For music I tend to use Spotify to listen and I use either iTunes or the Google play store to purchase/download music.

The Wayback Machine and a bias in the Digital Age.

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When I first saw the title of “The Cobweb” by Jill Lepore I couldn’t even imagine what it was alluding to, once I read the article I realized that it was talking about how fragile web pages are.  I never knew that the average life of a webpage was hundred days, like the article stated I always thought these web pages lasted forever.  Don’t get me wrong not everything on the web is worth saving but a major event like Strelkov’s VKontakte post about downing the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shouldn’t disappear.  So I was relieved to read of Brewster Kahle’s Wayback Machine at archive.org, the Wayback Machine releases a web crawler that makes a copy of almost every web page and is then saved in San Francisco at 300 Funston Avenue.  Like it or not these web pages are our time capsules and they are an important piece of the information cycle that should be preserved.

“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age” by Ferris Jabr is an article which compares the tangible book to the intangible book (E-readers and tablets). From the very beginning the article seems to have a bias against E-readers and tablets, most of the research that is referenced seems to favor books.  I remember my mom reading me books when I was little; I grew up on tangible pages so I too share the same bias.   The next generation is growing up paperless so reading a tangible book will be foreign to them, they will most likely have a bias against tangible books.  They will more likely approach screens with a serious attitude for learning.  The article even realize this when it states”……her peers will grow up without the subtle bias against screens that seems to lurk in the minds of the older generations”.  So I wonder if I still would have the same bias against screens if my mother was swiping pages with her finger instead of flipping them.

Reinhold’s article gives an almost too accurate prediction.

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While reading the New York Times article “Study says technology could transform society” by Robert Reinhold, I was amazed by how spot on some of their predictions were.  Especially when I read this “there will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.” They basically predicted the whole social network phenomenon (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and etc.) and how people are now able to connect in new ways.  We are no longer bound by the old social constructs that they had in their time.  All you need now is a screen name/handle and you can talk to almost anyone who shares the same interests as you.  They even mentioned that there might be some unintended social side effects although at the time they did not know what it would be.  Unfortunately the side effect is a loss of some basic social skills, now someone will take their phone out in the middle of a conversation just to update their page.  Eye contact is slowly becoming a lost art, as more of us make it with our phone than with each other.  This article leaves me to wonder what side effect the next technological innovation will bring.