The Frontier of New Media (something seems familiar about this...)

Bad titles aside, I think that in ten years, media and our access to it will be more familiar and intuitive than we think. I would really not be surprised at all if in the future, all we had was type into a smart search bar.

People want information from their media, not that all of it is educational by any means, based on the viral popularity of videos like "Charlie Bit My Finger". However, we don't always know what we want exactly.

I think that new media outlets like the internet, mobile devices, and even TV are all on a trend toward increased efficiency in searchability. Obviously, Google is constantly trying to take over the world with its sheer utility. But the most useful innovations really have been all about finding relevant information with the least effort. Don't know what you want to watch on TV? TiVo can make suggestions based on your recorded shows. Don't know where to eat? The GPS on your phone can find restaurants in your area, or you can send out a Tweet and have your friends give suggestions.

The most useful type of search would be a combination of Batelle's Database of Intentions and social networking/collaboration. Eerily enough, I stumbled upon a flash video (how quaint--I know we all love Youtube, so I'll link from there) that actually describes this exactly, and seems plausible.

Well, actually two: Epic 2014, and Epic 2015 (an updated version including podcasts).
Epic 2014

Epic 2015


It was made by Robin Sloan for the Museum of Media History, and though it has a decidedly History Channel/semi-apocalyptic tone, I haven't been able to figure out if that's a real organization or not. Google seems to say no. I think it only exists within the videos, but there is Robin Sloan's homepage, which links to the original flash version of Epic 2014, if you're interested.

No more pencils, no more books...

Just moments ago, I looked up at my printer and saw that this week's reading had printed out without me even hearing it. It was just there. I have to print tons of readings for my classes because I absolutely cannot remember things I read on a screen, so I've become totally immune to the sputtering, whirring noises of my HP Deskjet. I miss the days when teachers would distribute handouts in class already printed out, but I guess as long as someone is saving paper, it's a positive.

Here's a forum of educators discussing the shift toward online learning, in conjunction with the Apple Store: http://isenet.ning.com/forum/topics/the-end-of-the-textbook-as-we

It got me thinking--eventually everything we read will be online, or at least on some kind of electronic device like a Kindle. I already turn in many of my assignments online, and I know that the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, a recently-founded school that a friend of mine attends, has an entirely online library as they are working to acquire more physical buildings for this fledgling university.

Printer sounds will soon be foreign to students.

We were discussing how having the physical, tactile object of a book or packet of papers helps with information retention in class. I think this is definitely true for me, but I also know people who have no problem reading on the computer. It's also true that online textbooks and online assignments would save a lot of money.

I feel sad, though, for the future students who won't be interested in smelling old books.

Tribute to Earth Day

...Earth Day was technically yesterday by now, but here's a neat little tidbit I found that was related:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/22/go-green-use-last-ye.html

I think it's a good idea to go back to the approach of buying things with the intent for them to last. I always think about this when I go home and drive my car after a long time of not driving--I know absolutely nothing about fixing cars if something went wrong, and it means that I'm probably wasting money.
Go sustainability!

Hopefully this smart-sounding post will prove that I am not a product of the internet's mass mediocrity.

In reading excerpts from "Distracted" and "The Dumbest Generation" by Maggie Jackson and Mark Bauerlein respectively, I thought of a topic we've discussed in class--mass mediocrity. It seems as though the influx of media, of entertainment, isn't just making our output mediocre, but it's making us mediocre--things like the whiny, misspelled blogs of preteens and 20-second video clips of drunken frat party antics aren't just products of LiveJournal or Youtube, they are reflections of the people behind them. The equalizing nature of the internet isn't what makes the content dumb--it's the lack of attention span resulting from the ease of distracting ourselves with the vast amount of media available. There's a mass mediocrity of personality.

This brings to mind something I saw on my floormate's blog for her Honors Humanities class:

I wonder if we'll evolve or find a way to function so that our attention spans are used to the best of their ability-- as Bauerlin mentioned, there is such a rich array of information that is underused. Maybe people will find a way to make this information into entertainment in a way that will foster actual understanding, rather than superficial bullets or outlines. I mean, I'll admit that I don't go out and seek news just for the purpose of enriching my knowledge, and I'm not very well-versed in what's going on in the world. I don't like to watch TV or listen to the radio, though, so maybe I'm not quite the same demographic described in these two excerpts--at least, I hope I'm not!

Tasty snippets-Del.icio.us restores my faith in people's intelligence

These were the top tags on del.icio.us as of 10:05 PM, Wednesday, April 15, 2009.

• design
• blog
• video
• software
• tools
• music
• programming
• webdesign
• reference
• tutorial
• art
• web
• howto
• javascript
• free
• linux
• web2.0
• development
• google
• inspiration
• photography
• news
• food
• flash
• css
• blogs
• education
• business
• technology
• travel

I was really surprised by them. I've never really perused del.icio.us seriously before, but I'm impressed. I would have expected further evidence of the mass mediocrity effect of the internet, but it truly does its job as a tool to find the best of the internet. All of the items on this list seem like topics that are really relevant and useful--not inane tagging of things like celebrity gossip or lolcats. From this list, it seems like the majority of people on del.icio.us are actually interested in cerebral or cultural things.

It's interesting how general the top tags are. I guess it makes sense--things that are more specialized aren't going to have the most tags.

I just thought I would share that. Despite the abundance of whiny preteens on Livejournal and the flood of status updates begging you to invite 20 friends to find out what Disney princess you are, there's still hope for our brains!

Who would have thought?

(image from http://www.currentmarketing.com/undercurrent/index.php?s=gel)

Wow.
I actually thought this was a joke when I saw it. But it's real.
An air-powered car.
It's called the AirPod. I can already smell a future collaboration with Apple.

Here's a screencap from the MDI website:

No, it doesn't fly like the Jetsons' car, but who knows? These cute, alien-like little things might be the next great innovation for hybrid cars. They're debuting later this year in Europe, where SmartCars are already a common sight in cities. I'm not sure if even city-dwelling Americans would warm to a car that only goes 40mph, so as of now it might be equivalent to a scooter or moped, but if later versions of this car perhaps combine electric and air power, this might turn into a viable option for commuters.

Personally, I can't wait to see the day when I can buy an eco-friendly dually truck for my future horse trailer that I can fill with air, like the cute little Airpod, instead of getting less than 14 miles to the gallon.

One thing I do wonder, though, is if Americans will ever, as a whole, drive less. I know that when gas prices were really high, it was hard to avoid driving, just because of the distance from my house to school and work, and I think that's true of a lot of Americans. We're much more of a commuter culture, and in general we rely on technology so much more than Europeans, it seems. However, we might want to take a hint from them--they've adopted the Smartcar much more quickly than we probably ever will in cities. It's much more worthwhile to really get behind technologies that are useful and beneficial to something more than yourself, rather than flipping out over the newest iPod every few months.

Netbooks--Not Just a Novelty

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/technology/02netbooks.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Has anyone else seen people carrying around these supertiny laptops in class? They're netbooks--basically laptops that don't have much besides internet capability. I've actually seen them much cheaper at Best Buy, but that might be a model with just the absolute minimum in features.

It seems like a great idea to me--most college students don't use much more than the internet and a word processor anyway, and maybe Powerpoint. Most of them run Windows XP, which the above article suggests is a weakness, but I haven't met a single person who likes Vista, so I'd consider it an advantage over buying a PC and being forced to accept the OS that comes with it.
I found a Youtube video that has a Hello Kitty Netbook actually running the beta Windows 7, so I'd say it will hold up in the future, once this Vista silliness is done with.



Most of the people I've met who have Netbooks already own a traditional laptop, and just use the Netbook to take notes for class. That might have to do with the fact that many UMD students are upper-middle-class and can afford to do things like that. I think there's a lot of potential, though, to use Netbooks to reach out to demographics that normally wouldn't be involved in the whole "New Media" sphere of communication and interaction.

There are no conclusions here.

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a while--I went out to see a concert for bands that I had never heard before. I feel like this recalls back to ye olden days before MP3s and even before CDs--when bands actually had to tour to get their fanbase established. It seems strange to me now that people would go through so much effort to find out when tours were, when today the music scene is just an internet race to see who Panicked at the Disco first.

Indie rock has become much more accessible, which I think is great--but now Indie has become a genre in and of itself--the music all begins to start the same, despite the fact that the term "indie" technically means that it is music produced on an independent label (that most likely would allow more creative rein). So many bands now spring up, knowing that they can eliminate the middleman and build a fanbase online without having to hire someone with the connections to book shows right away, I think it sort of dilutes the pool of talent.

Some would argue that this is the "mass of mediocrity" effect of the internet, but it actually takes a lot more now for a band to become popular and be lucrative. Like anything else on the internet, only things that are particularly noteworthy or interesting (not necessarily for lofty artistic reasons) catch the public eye.



I thought it was interesting that for each of the bands that played, the first search result on Google was their Myspace music page. I kind of forgot it existed

Technology-->hermits

So I noticed myself doing something technology-related today that I realized was very sad, because I'm sure I'm not the only person who does it.

I got a nice, chatty email from one of the leaders at an organization I used to volunteer for, inviting me out to coffee over Spring Break to catch up. I starred it so I could deal with it later, not because I didn't have time then, but because I just didn't feel like having to respond to an email thoughtfully. Most of my emails are strictly informational--things like Facebook notifications, academic and club listserv messages, advertisements--none of which I have to act upon, or even really think about. I can just passively read about what's going on, and it's not as if anyone would feel ignored or offended.

The advent of social networking allows us to see what's happening in the lives of our friends without actually having to talk to them. Email listservs and the CC function allow us to recieve information in a similar way. None of these are new technologies by any means, but I wanted to open it up to you all--does technology make you more or less social?

It depends on personality, of course, but it just really dawned on me today with my response to that email, because I realized that I tend to do that with personal emails, and they often get forgotten as my inbox fills with more and more stuff. It's counterintuitive, but when I go on Gmail, I'm not expecting to interact with people anymore via email. Chat has replaced that for me. I wonder if this trend will continue, and using email for personal notes will seem odd to everyone.

Or it could just be me, and my slow descent into allowing the internet to consume my life.
(I just got Corel Painter over the weekend so I'm trying to learn how to use it...)

Attention Span

As I'm coming out of a four-day stint of studying almost constantly for my midterms this week, I'm feeling a little drained. It's hard to pay attention to any one thing for more than a few minutes. I know it's just because I'm tired, but as I was trying to beat my staticky brain into thinking up a blog post, I wondered: isn't this what has been happening to Americans for years now?

Our attention spans are just shrinking. First it was because of the mind-numbing, formula-bound television that just didn't require us to think. Now, the internet feeds us snippets of information, whatever we want to know. Admittedly, it's a more cerebral activity than eating chips and watching terrible Full House reruns, but our tolerance for waiting for the right information is quickly decreasing.

I remember when I would ride the bus to high school and keep flipping through my iPod's shuffle function--I couldn't just listen to a song in its entirety because I would get bored, or I would think of another song in the middle of the one I was already listening to. Or, think of how the average student does his or her work--homework on WebAssign might be up in one tab of Mozilla, Facebook in another, maybe Gmail or Youtube in the third--we're not really paying attention to any one of those things, and so it takes much longer to accomplish anything.

Whatever is the most entertaining will grip us, at least for a few minutes. Most of what's on Facebook or Youtube really isn't that entertaining, so we've conditioned ourselves to tune out whatever doesn't grab our attention within the first few moments.

This pattern of only paying attention for a few minutes at a time is really damaging the way we work. Reading an entire blog post is stretching it sometimes. It's easier to just get the gist of things from an RSS feed, even if it's truncated. Did you even read this far?

Click Here (in no particular order)

Here are my favorite blogs! I actually am not a very devoted follower of most of them, but these are the most memorable of my many years trawling the net.

I think that these blogs are successful because of their content. Many are funny, like the defunct Marmaduke Explained, but they all keep their audience coming back somehow, with things to engage the viewer, like Ze Frank's dozens of quirky internet games, the writing prompts from VW, or the sarcastic personality quizzes that first brought mewing.net to fame (that one is more of a quasi-blog, since it predates the blog craze and has more elements of the personal website).

It might just be my personality, but I have found that I return to some blogs or websites just to sift through things I remember years after I know they've been discontinued or gone on hiatus, as many blogs are wont to do. For example, Marmaduke Explained hasn't been updated since September 11, 2008. It's sort of the equivalent of Facebook stalking, except that blogs were around much earlier than Facebook and the content is usually of a much better quality. Each post obviously requires some effort, so it's more like a sort of...interactive magazine, in the case of blogs that also have many other features.

It took me quite a while to get all the screenshots uploaded and hyperlinked, so happy clicking!

Online Dating

I can't say I've had personal experience with it, but I've been sort of a passive spectator while people I know have entered into online relationships. It's a bizarre construct--the anonymity of the internet allows people to have the courage to approach someone with a cute photo or similar interests on a dating site, or even, with MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) someone with a high level or rare items.

I can understand when people meet online, find a connection, and decide to go on a date in person. That's basically the equivalent of a classified ad in the newspaper. What I'd like to discuss here is when the physical aspect isn't there at all--when people meet online, and their entire relationship is based on online interactions.

It's easy for that to arise out of MMORPGs. Many players invest so much time into games like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Ragnarok Online that they develop a group of online friends, and just like in real life (though to many, games like that essentially are "real life"...personally, I don't quite get it since I've never experienced it) some relationships become romantic. People can go on online dates--playing games against each other, or watching movies "together" with torrents or on Youtube while chatting with each other. Some MMORPGs even offer the option to get "married" to another player. Come to think of it, Facebook also has that option, and also offers the means for online couples to get to know each other's friends and family.

A lot of the inhibition is gone without face-to-face interaction, so online couples may know more about each other than they would reveal to their real-life friends or family. Really, it only increases the incentive to become more and more immersed in online life.

I can see the appeal, I guess. In some ways an online relationship is just easier than a real-life one. If you have a fight, just X out of the window. But I don't think an online relationship can ever truly offer all of the aspects of real life. Physical interaction--not only sexual, but just everyday interactions like a hug or a hand on the shoulder are very entrenched in our human psyche, so I don't think it's very healthy to completely abandon that and live life completely online.

(I was going to try and find an article on the psychological effects of online dating, but so far all I've found is cheese. I'll keep looking.)

Technological throwback

I thought I'd elaborate more on a topic that was discussed in class, because I feel like I could definitely "post 250-500 word items" on it.

Vinyl.

vinyl, vinyl, everywhere, vinyl, vinyl...um...in my hair? grody.

In case you've been too busy downloading Super Mash Bros. or A.C. Newman from torrents or Limewire and haven't heard--word on the street is that vinyl is cool again, despite the more widespread popularity of CDs and digital music.

Everyone has an opinion on it, whether they love it, hate it, or want to make bowls and ashtrays out of it. I am one of the third group.

I appreciate vinyl for its aesthetic, tangible aspect. Yeah, the sound quality is better, but I'm a person who doesn't really care about HD television or Bose headphones. It's nice, but I'm not enough of an audio- or video-phile to really care--and then again, I never grew up with vinyl. I like the immediacy and portability of digital music. Whether or not the quality is superb, I'm still going to do a little dance (hoping no one notices and thinks I'm a bit loony) when "Guilty Pleasure" from my own guilty pleasure, Cobra Starship, comes on my iPod while I'm walking to class. The main reason I like vinyl is for the art. Call me shallow, but it has that trendy, vintage appeal that's been growing in popularity over the past few years. It connotates a sort of knowledge of what came before, "back in the day" when none of us were actually alive. And that's cool now, I guess.

There is one fact, though, that no one can dispute:
It looks really cool on my wall.

PS (for the discerning viewer)--The Pulp Fiction sleeve above is actually a video laserdisc.

Fausto the Filler Fish

So as I'm writing, my roommate, a mutual friend, and I are all "doing homework". My Facebook Online Friend count is rising, as it is wont to do around 10pm on a weeknight when everyone in the dorm is procrastinating. Hence, my "Working Out" playlist is interrupted only by the "message recieved" pops of Facebook Chat and the occasional buzz of a text message.

I think the only living thing completely unaffected by technology in my room is my fish, Fausto.

We all love Fausto, and his ability to fill up the page.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about New Media Frontiers like Facebook and Twitter, etc. since they control my life, and the lives of many other college students. Seriously. The mutual friend just said that he needs to buy sneakers for the gym, to which I replied, "Let's get some shoes," a la Liam Kyle Sullivan without even thinking about it. It's a little bothersome. But this first post is really just a test run to see if everything works. Apparently pictures do.

My friend just chatted me asking when a good time would be to go to the convenience store together. My reply-- "NOW! ZOOM!"
I'm feeling a little stir-crazy from being plugged into my entertainment all the time, and from staring at calculus homework for what seems like approximately ten years smushed into however long it's been since dinner. And tonight the moon looks like a smile.