Participatory Media: February 2006 Archives
But our video is hilarious.
Stumbled on a path of interesting, entertaining, and annoying reads courtesy of Gothamist of all places concerning yea, you guessed it, BLOGS. The first article, Blargon, by William Safire, takes a stab at defining some key blogging terms and concepts—vernacular—for the NYTimes. Wes Felter at Hack the Planet dissagrees with some of Safire's defs, and pointed me to Blogosarry, which I've somehow never come across.
An article in the NYTimes yesterday commented on Blogs' role in media, as opposed to MSM, or Main Stream Media. The article extensively referenced Dave Sifry—in particular referenceing the State of the Blogosphere. The NYTimes article read as pretty defensive, sounding like [not to sensationalize the issue] a stalwart reaffirmation of the need for Big Media [Shit, now I really sound sensationalist]. The author, Dan Mitchel relegated blogs to niche, referential journalism—citing that only a minority provide real and original reporting.
This seems to be a commont trend with the established Entertainment entities establishing their value and seperation from independant authors. I'm curious to see how long this top down system will remain in place, drawing clear parrallels to industrial development.
Currently an issue to note in the blogosphere, elite bloggers are becoming more authoritative. Twilight of the Blogs, an article from Feb 16 at Slate outlines some of these issues.
Would someone let me know when the paradigm shift is coming?
UPDATE: Just read a pro-blog article by journalist Bill Densmore. The article features former NYTimes editor Daniel Okrent. Worth checking out.
Xin, Cat, and I have been working on a video-blogging application that allows people to comment on specific frames of a given video. The app is still under [heavy] development, and we welcome feedback on the functionality.
An post over at Pasta and Vinegar inspired me this morning. Nova talks about objects that blog, referencing the GPS enabled pidgeons project, and webcams, among other things. I am considering starting a project in which embedded objects would be capable of blogging directly—at the object's own discression and about subjects relevant to the object.
The concept of social, networked, non-living fixtures provides for a different perspective on natural phenomena. I expect the objects would function as embedded sensors relying on thresholds of stimulus to pass information in a human-readable position to a blog—a recontextualization of the data. I don't propose this is an innovative concept, just a contextual repositioning.
Cat and I were talking after class today about kids and their naivete in publishing content and information to the Web. There are a huge number of pitfalls along this front, ranging from legal to social and everything in between. We concluded that the youth must be educated on the ramifications inherent in placing one's self on the grid.
The Web provides a great social vehicle for communication and self-expression, but can obviously be dangerous—precisely for that reason. Personal information distribution should be carefully controlled by the given publisher—as subscribers to online activity are indeed publishers. Members of the online youth (the adolescent cyberculture) are especially at risk, as they are not versed in the cautionary lessons of dangerous activity. Think about the risks inherent in driving a motor vehicle— to draw a similar parallel.
We have given thought to starting an organization or collective to educate youth on the ramifications—a sort of web-driver's education. Any input in this area is most welcome. I will create a more organized forum for discussion on this topic at a later date, and post the details to this blog.
Cat and I took some video when we went to Belleayre this past Sunday. Cat did a great job editing, and one of my old tracks provided the audio.
Danny Ayers blogged about the Triple Tag, a good extension of the... Single(?) tag.
The form of such a tag:
[namespace]:[key]=[value]
Which, in terms of geocoding would look a little something like this:
geotagged
geo:lat=53.1234
geo:long=-2.5678
Simple, short, sweet. The examples Danny gave are from a project called MobiLife, which looks pretty interesting.
As everyone and their goldfish knows, the blogosphere has grown (and continues to grow) at an enormous rate. But will it last? B.L. Ochman thinks not. Dave Sifry says maybe. The number of un-maintained blogs will grow, of course, just as did the number of websites that went neglected in the late-90s. I'm not so sure whats going to happen. I feel that the determining factor lies in aggregation and content acquesition. If blogs go unread, untended, and remain obscure, they will corrode. But, if people find value in them—any semblance of a readership—the value will remain and blogs (or whatever the hell you want to call them) will remain.
Dave Sifry's State of the Blogosphere (see link below) examines exactly what the title suggests. He has found a number of interesting facts, suggesting that, you guessed it, there are a hell of a lot of blogs out there, and more are coming. There have been a number of spam issues that have arisen because of the popularity...
Last year I worked on one of DJ Spooky's projects as a motion-designer. I created a couple animations based on digitized sheet music for a video-manipulation app my friend Jay Laird of Metaversal Studios built. Spooky performed the piece at Carnegie Hall in NYC.
For those who don't know, I graduated from NEU with a Multimedia-Studies dual major with a concentration in Music Technology. I created this track for a sound design class in the spring of 2004—around the time I started getting sick of programming drums on my MPC.
The piece lacks the visual context of the ad for which it was designed—but I still like the track. And Jury likes it. So that must mean it's decent.
As an aside, my copy of Fetch has autism with a touch of turrets, and tends to glitch the fuck out of every non-text upload I throw its way. Can't say I don't like it though.
Sound design for some generic Nike commercial
I'll throw up another track later today for your listening pleasure.
Tae and I have created a blog as a vehicle to drive our presentation for today's PPM class. You can find the blog HERE. Please feel free to read and comment to aid discussion and promote the many-to-many approach to the work.
Why are podcasts being hailed as a revolutionary media phenomenon? They aren't interactive. They aren't dynamic. Podcasts are mp3 mixtapes. I get so frustrated when people develop stagnant technology for current limited devices. We have podcasts because dynamic streaming interactive content is just not portable. Mobile phones are getting increasingly sophisticated, personal digital media players are getting more powerful, and computers are becoming more and more portable [read tiny and connectable].
Throw-away culture.
I suppose fetishism has much to do with placement of material value in ownership of intangible things—digital files. The vast majority would rather download a music file than merely have streaming access to it. The thought process must change in order to get away from this mode. Issues of speed and quality were once a factor, but with the improvement of computing technology [microprocessor speeds being what they are] and high-speed networks, there will soon be no need for local personal storage of applications and files. Unless, of course, the net changed. Connectivity is the issue here. Sharing, promoting, publishing. What if everyone's personal computer was a server? As I posted earlier, Nokia is developing a mobile server to run on cellphones.
So what does all this have to do with Podcasting? Its the old, dead news. This should have happened years ago, but now, slap on a trendy name, and remarket it.
Podcasts don't allow for searching, linking... In short, they aren't machine-readable—yet. Speach recognition technology is pretty behind, and not nearly effective enough to intelligently parse the pod-o-sphere. Podcasts are mp3 files—they are static. All hyperlinks and notes must reside outside of the actual file. The audio files are not easily updated. So?
The next trend? SWFcasting?
