Where Have All The Humans Gone?
I don’t know about you guys, but I totally, completely agree with Jaron Lanier’s “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism” article. Ok… well maybe not completely, but he had some very valid points that I gave a hearty “Here, here!” to as I read them.
I agree that sometimes collective intelligence is good and helps solve problems/answer questions. The most prominent example that Lanier uses in the article is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is good for some things. For example, if I can’t recall what the population of Guadalajara is, I’m pretty sure that if I looked it up on Wikipedia, it would more than likely give me the correct answer (It’s 1,579,174.). Wikipedia is definitely more convenient and more up to date than a printed copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Having Wikipedia allows the information and knowledge to be more accessible to a greater amount of people, thereby helping more people gain more knowledge (and thereby getting one step closer to world peace?).
The drawback of Wikipedia, however, is that on some pages, there’s a greater deal of volatility in which the information provided could be partially inaccurate (or completely false) or possibly outdated as well (depending on when it was last changed). Another con is that there are only a few people that care enough about the validity of Wikipedia to actually go in and ask for references (which most times don’t get answered), edit, or update pages. And with 3,452,404 articles (just in English), that’s mighty hard to police, especially when certain members of the collective could care less or purposefully change information.
I recently read a book called Paper Towns by John Green (awesome book, highly recommend) that had a character who was a “big-time editor of this online user-created reference source called Omnictionary… [and whose] whole life [was] devoted to the maintenance and well-being of” it. To quote the character: “I’m de-vandalizing the Omnictionary article about a former prime minister of France. Last night someone deleted the entire entry and then replaced it with the sentence ‘Jacques Chirac is a gay,’ which as it happens is incorrect both factually and grammatically.” See the problems? There’s a rare few, like the character, willing to rid the world of incorrect information (and grammar).
But the main point of Lanier’s article that I loved was the following:
The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we’re devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.
Granted he might have been a bit harsh with the idiots comment, but I agree that sites like Wikipedia are devaluing the human voice and personality. In the article, Lanier makes a comment that a Wikipedia page contains “traces of the voices of various anonymous authors and editors,” which in my opinion, only makes it harder to decipher what kind of a bias the article might have despite it’s pretense of unbiased-ness. At least when you read a news article written by one reporter, you know the opinions and personality of that person to know why he would include this detail or leave out that information. With Wikipedia, you get what you get and you can never be too sure if somebody somewhere left something out.
Wikipedia aside, I feel like many people are crying out for more human contact on the internet. Think of how you react to bots on Twitter or how long you have to search through forum threads to find the answer you need. I read a CNN article today about how people are wanting to talk to an actual human when it comes to customer service on Facebook, which uses a crowd-source system of answering user questions. Occasionally these forums are helpful, but sometimes you just want to talk to another human, hear another human voice because it makes it more personal, makes us feel we have been heard, that we are unique individuals as opposed to the faceless collective.
Cause, I don’t know about you, but I do not want to be grouped in with the people that raised the cast of Jersey Shore to such a high status that “The Situation” has published a book (a printed, bound, real-life book!).
© is for Copyright
This week’s reading, Information Feudalism by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite and the video Steal This Film, covered a lot of topics in relation to copyright, intellectual property, patents, knowledge and information, and much more. Because there was so much, I kind of want to focus the discussion on copyright when it comes to remixing either music or video. Thanks to the internet, remixes and mashups are everywhere. Just the other day I heard on the radio what I thought was going to be “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, but it turned out to be “Check It Out” by Nicki Minaj. I’m sure you guys can think of plenty of other examples, but let’s focus on remixing in terms of copyright. The following interview of Lawrence Lessig by Stephen Colbert is where I’d like to start (you’ll have to click the link):
Of course, immediately after this interview, several people remixed it to a “great dance beat” and made Stephen upset, causing him to post his own remix.
In the interview, there were a couple points that I wanted to bring up that our reading and Steal This Film mention as well. The first is the argument that remixing copyrighted material is stealing. In Information Feudalism, Drahos and Braithwaite talk about how copyright “was a leaky system. People could make use of bits of copyright information for free claiming that it was fair dealing, that the information was too insubstantial to merit protection or that what was being used was the idea and not the expression (copyright protects expression and not ideas)” (p.58). In a sense, the claim of fair use is still in place today with people claiming fair use for parodies and educational purposes. But, do remixes count as part of that fair use? Should they be? Does it depend on what they are remixing, and if so how do you regulate that if you think it should be?
I remember when Google employed a new technology (Content I.D.) to YouTube a while back that automatically took down several parodies and spoofs that used the movie Downfall, sending thousands of people into an outrage that their works had been taken down when they clearly fell under the fair use act of parodying. Google has since apologized and put several back up, but it still brings up the issue about how to regulate and identify what is fair use and what isn’t.
Both Steal This Film and Information Feudalism make the point that it is inherent in human nature to share and create. Steal This Film points out that the internet, peer-to-peer file sharing sites, and new technologies create a shift of consumers to creators, having them become masters of their own content. The film included interviews of several artists and remixers that were happy to have others take their work and create something new and to collaborate with them, saying that sharing is like breathing and is at the heart of existence. Drahos and Braithwaite point out that “people to a large extent are naturally disposed to create” (p. 211). Where it gets tricky is in the “supporting and rewarding [of] such work” (p. 211), which Drahos and Braithwaite claim that granting intellectual property ownership is not the most significant way to grant this support or reward.
This is the second point in the Lessig-Colbert interview that is up for debate. Stephen Colbert claims that by his “remixing” of Lessig’s book he profits from it and that’s ok, but that no one can take his work and remix it without his permission. A remix is an act of creating something new (that then gets shared with others), which will happen because it is what we as humans are wont to do. But, it is when the remix benefits someone else that is not the original copyright owner that people or artists get upset because they are not being acknowledged or paid for their original work. This leads me to wonder, is remixing okay if the remixer does not get any benefits or credits the people whose work he used? Is it the sudden shift of the remixer benefiting, like receiving money from downloads of it perhaps, that then makes it unfair?
I think this really depends on what side of the fence you’re on or what part you play in the issue. For example, whenever I’m in my car and I’m driving in a parking lot at a mall or a shopping center of some kind, I always get irritated with the pedestrians that take forever walking to their car, or crossing the street, or that walk down the middle of the lane. However, if I’m not in my car and I’m the pedestrian, my mindset changes, and I take my time because I think in my head, “I have the right of way, and I don’t care about you, stupid car! Deal with it!” The same applies for the remixing. If I’m the person remixing (or perhaps even the consumer of the remix?), I would think that what I was creating was something new that I did so that people will enjoy it (or as a consumer, just to enjoy the creative take on the original). But, if I’m the original artist and had learned that someone took my work and used it in their own, I think I would be upset. I would want some kind of acknowledgment or royalty perhaps or at least permission from that person to be able to use it. Wouldn’t you?
Hopefully, we’ll get into this discussion a little more in class, because I’m curious to hear what your opinions are on remixing, copyright, and the roles of the original artist vs. the remixer. We’ll be watching this remixed video/song in class to help us get the discussion (and our groove) going. (I would like to point out, this remix is available for download for free here.)
Oh, also there will be cookies. (You know “C” is for cookie, too.) So, see you in class!
UPDATE:
To sum up what we discussed in class:
- There is a difference between remixing and sampling (as explained in class). Is remixing stealing? Is sampling?
- Does attribution excuse music sampling/remixing? Is it enough?
- If copyright laws should be changed, how should we change them? Should we have them at all or where do we make the distinction between different forms of media?
- Is it the moment that a remixer receives money from his use of others’ works that suddenly makes it not okay to use them?
- Sadly, it all comes back to money and who gets recognition/credit/royalty when it comes to remixing and the use of original work (and sometimes it’s not even the original artists, it’s the distribution/record company). The legislation will follow the money, and in that case, smaller, lesser known artists will get lost.
- Where you stand on the issue changes what you think is proper: the original artist vs. the remixer.
- Here is the link to the cookie recipe for those that wanted it.
The Social Network (Not The Movie)
Although the movie is good and I recommend everyone go see it, I mean the actual social network, Facebook. In a previous post, I mentioned a Facebook experience that triggered our professor to ask how social networks make us view our friendships differently. I think we all have different tiers of friends, and in that same vein, I’d like to consider for a moment our different networks of friends that all tend to converge in a giant mess on our Facebook page. For those that need a visual, here’s what I mean:
And this is only half of my friends...
We all have different friends and are part of several different groups of friends both in our past and our present, but with Facebook they all tend to be lumped in one boat with very little controls to separate them out and limit who of your friends see what (although there are a few measures that have tried).
As Manual Castells says in his afterword “Why Networks Matter,” our “sociability is transformed in the new historical context, with networked individualism emerging as the synthesis between the affirmation of an individual-centred culture, and the need and desire for sharing and co-experiencing” (p. 223). He continues, saying that “the whole range of social practices, both global and local, communicates in the media space. The media, in the broadcast sense are the public space of our time: the space in which, and by which, societies exist as social forms of shared experience.” This, in my mind, is Facebook. It is our public space in which we share with everyone and co-experience things.
But, there’s only certain things you want to co-experience with certain people. My Facebook friends list is filled with all sorts of “friends”: my real-life close friends (yeah I said it), my coworkers, my high school friends, friends from college, acquaintances of all kinds, church friends, cousins, siblings, my mom, and yes, even my grandfather. Like Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker expound on in The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, I am a node, a vector in which not just one but several different networks intersect.
This isn’t a bad thing, but having all of these networks intersect on my Facebook makes posting status updates, links, photos and the like kind of difficult with my varying tiers of friends. I don’t necessarily want to post a funny video that might be considered crude because that could upset a few of my family members. Perhaps I want to put up a certain status, but thinking about who might see it and interpret it wrong makes me just give up and not post anything. What a dilemma! What do I do?
New Facebook groups to the rescue!
With these new Facebook groups, you can set up personal groups for each of your varying networks of friends and only share things with those people in that specific group. You can also collaborate together on documents (Google Wave Fail, anyone?), chat in the group, and share things without the worry of having your aunt see all of the pictures of that crazy party you went to last weekend. For more information on how this all works and the benefits of it, this article was very enlightening for me.
I’m intrigued by this new groups feature. I wonder how big it will catch on, or if like every Facebook face lift, there will be a big backlash. I think if it works like it’s supposed to, it might be very helpful to many of us whose Facebook friends come from all walks of our life. Like Castells says, “Networks matter because they are the underlying structure of our lives.” Those structures just become more apparent and visible on Facebook.
Which reminds me… I should probably start making those new groups now, if you know what I mean.
Hyperlinks, eBooks, and Us
I loved this week’s readings, but don’t worry I won’t be making you choose between 3 different blog posts. I thought it was interesting how much Lev Manovich in The Language of New Media was similar to Hayles’s article on “Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis” but at the same time conflicting. For the most part they agreed on hyperlinks changing the printed word and how this new media was much like a hybrid, but unlike Manovich, Hayles believes that “hyperlinks” still had a place in the printed word through footnotes and indexes. I tend to agree with Hayles because I can see her point, but I believe that perhaps with our new internet use of hyperlinks, it’s just made it easier.
For example, a friend of mine told me about this game she does when she’s bored. She picks two seemingly random topics (like grilled cheese and Christopher Columbus) and goes on to Wikipedia to see how many hyperlinks it takes her to get from one topic to the next. You could even play this with others and have a race, or see who has the fewest amount of clicks. I’ve done this before with IMDB picking a random actor/movie/TV show and seeing how many clicks it takes me to get to another actor/movie/ TV show (kind of like the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon). Now, without the internet and websites with millions of hyperlinks, I could have played this game with an encyclopedia or a movie guide book, but it would probably take forever to look everything up. Perhaps we’ve always had these “hyperlinks,” but now they are faster, so we’re more likely to use them.
Changing gears, Hayles makes a point in the article that I really liked (and makes me wonder when this was written):
Many critics see the electronic age as heralding the end of books. I think this view is mistaken. Print books are far too hardy, reliable, long-lived, and versatile to be rendered obsolete by digital media. Rather, digital media have given us an opportunity we have not had for the last several hundred years: the change to see print with new eyes, and with it the possibility of understanding how deeply literary theory and criticism have been imbued with assumptions specific to print. As we work toward critical practices and theories appropriate for electronic literature, we may come to renewed appreciation for the specificity of print. In the tangled web of medial ecology, change anywhere in the system stimulates change everywhere in the system. Books are not going the way of the dinosaur but the way of the human, changing as we change, mutating and solving in ways that will continue, as a book lover said long ago, to teach and delight.
Ok, I realize that was a super long quote, but I just loved the entire thing. I’m wondering if you agree with her. With our Kindles, iPads, Nooks, and other eReaders, do we really see this electronic literature as a new way to teach us and gain a better understanding of print? I’ll admit, I’m a huge fan of the printed book and own no eReader of any kind (I don’t even read books on my iPhone or iPod Touch because it annoys me too much), and I will buy printed books until I’m forced to do otherwise. But, there is so much volatility in the publishing world because everything is going online and becoming electronic now. Perhaps Hayles was wrong in stating that the electronic age was not the end of books. But, at the same time, I really want to believe and hope in what she says.
I think the distinguishing factor is how you define books. Yes, hard-copy printed books are wonderful because of their tangible qualities, but just because you can swipe your finger across a screen instead of actually physically turning a page, it doesn’t make it the end of books. Books will still be written and made whether they are printed or made available electronically. They are, like Hayles said, “changing as we change, mutating and solving in ways that will continue… to teach and delight.” Since we have gone to a more electronic and media-based world, so will our literature, but it doesn’t make it less relevant. In fact it will be the opposite, it will make it more relevant since it will be so much more accessible to us, media-centric individuals.
Since I’ve already written a lot, I wanted to leave you with a quote from Manovich that really made me think about me and my connection to the many screens in my life:
Eventually, the VR apparatus may be reduced to a chip implanted in the retina and connected by wireless transmission to the Net. From that moment on, we will carry our prisons with us–not in order to blissfully confuse representations and perceptions (as in cinema), but rather always to “be in touch,” always connected, always “plugged-in.” The retina and the screen will merge (p. 114).
I won’t be able to make it to class tomorrow, so I really hope you guys are live tweeting so I can know what happens and what you discuss. Hopefully you guys will talk about this quote (or if not, save it for next class 🙂 hint hint). Don’t have too much fun without me!
missnesbitpro
Miss Nesbit's Philosophies 
