Author Archives: Kimesha

Improvements Sept. 23

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Web 2.0 sites allow users to interact and collaborate by creating content in the siteā€™s community. Web 2.0 allows users to do more than just retrieve information like with the Web 1.0 sites. Without realizing it, most people use Web 2.0 sites every day, whether it be through social networking sites, blogs or Wikipedia pages, just to name a few. The idea of Wikipedia is very progressive. It allows for anyone to claim the title editor, which in hindsight might not have been the best idea because those ā€œeditorsā€ can sometimes pass off false information as truth. Wikipedia also provides a convergence point for experts of all kinds. In this Web 2.0 world, a man who knows all things Star Wars can have the same power in that ā€œfieldā€ as the astrophysicist in his.

Zines Sept. 18

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Since zines are self-published prints by one or more people, they can be subject to various amounts of creativity. The publisher is free to discuss any topic they so choose without the information being censored in any. Although zines work in the same way as blogs, for example. However, the printing of a zines give it permanence, in the same way a book has permanence compared to an eBook. The problem with zines are that many people are unaware that they exist primarily because they are independent of the normal publishing system. Therefore, people are not privy to the information in vines, not through exclusion but through ignorance.

Is quantity more important? Sept. 16th

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As consumers, we are given many options when it comes to how we listen to music, but by far the most popular is downloading mp3s. Mp3s digitize the music and ultimately make it more accessible and portable for everyday users. People with phones or mp3 devices easily carry around thousands of songs in their pockets, a feat that is quite impossible with CD’s or even the bigger vinyl. But are we actually listening to those thousand songs? Not in the qualitative sense but literally. I am certain that no one has ever listened to all their songs straight through because we all have those few songs that we skip over when they come on. Aside from quantity, some argue that we are sacrificing quality by listening to music digitally. Quality in this argument is not subjective, there are actual sound quality differences between mp3s, CD’s and vinyls dealing with the compression of the musical information in each format. But since musical quality is becoming a non factor for more and more individuals, I guess itā€™s satisfactory.

Digital Media Sept. 11

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In the introduction of Meikle & Young, Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life, the authors observe that there are many ways through which the audience interacts with digital media whether it be technological, social, industrial or textual. Digital media is used as a network for connecting people across industries through texts, images, etc. Discussing media convergence in everyday life can quickly evolve into a discussion of how media is becoming life.

In the Craig Mod article Post-artifact Books and Publishing, Mod discusses how digital has affect the way we produce, distribute and consume content. An interesting point Mod made is that in reality, a book ultimately consists of relationships, whether it be between reader and writer or reader and other readers, etc. In this line of thinking, digitalā€™s affect on content moves beyond the content itself, reaching into the lives of the individuals who interact with it, changing the shared experience.

Becoming a Gatekeeper

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In chapter 1 of Research Strategies: Finding Your Way through the Information Fog, author William Badke introduces us to the information fog which begins with oral tradition and develops straight through to the World Wide Web. Aside from the information and how we access it changing, one of the things that remains a constant is the idea of gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is basically the process through which information is filtered for all forms of communication. For example, Badke wrote of gatekeeping in determining what was published in the early ages of the printing press and even gatekeeping on a daily basis when we do our internet searches. Although gatekeeping is used as a quality check it can be seen as very subjective in nature.

In continuing with the gatekeeping idea, chapter 8 teaches us how to read for research. This not only means getting the research material but it involves reading it, evaluating it for substance and actually engaging with it. Badke helps this process by laying out several note taking tips that assist in researching and avoiding plagiarism.