Important Takeaways

The following is a break down of the different readings completed so far this semester and the important takeaways I found in each of them.

1.12.12: “What is Web 2.0” by Tim O’Reilly, “Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On” by Tim O’Reilly and John Batelle, and “Ringside at the Web Fight” by Michael Wolff. 

One of the more important things I got from this article was that the web has become a platform.  To me this means that people are now taking advantage of all of the webs potential.  They can reach people across the world, they can post information they really care about and they can interact with others who share their interests and beliefs.  Another important point to recognize is the difference between Web 2.0 and Web Squared.  To me one of the main differences is Web Squared’s connection to the physical world. An interesting example of this is Mac’s iPhoto face recognition tool as well as the Wikitude travel guide application for the Android.

1.17.12: “Introduction: Worship at the Alter of Convergence” by Henry Jenkins and “Sites of Convergence: An Interview for Brazilian Academics” Part 1, 2 and 3 of an interview with Henry Jenkins

Throughout these readings, the primary takeaway I got was what is Convergence?  Many people just assume that convergence is when mulitple types of technologies are merged together to create one device that does everything (i.e. an iPhone).  Jenkins argues that there is more to convergence than just that.  To Jenkins, convergence is primarily a cultural phenomenon that involves new forms of exchange between producers and users of media content.

Another issue brought up within Jenkins’ interviews is the idea of this participatory culture and convergence of cultures and their effects on the digital divide. I found the following quote to be a good explanation of this.

“What excites me about what I am calling participatory culture is that it has the potential to diversify the content of our culture and democratize access to the channels of communication…What worries me the most about participatory culture is that we are seeing such uneven opportunities to participate, that some spaces – the comments section on YouTube for example – are incredibly hostile to real diversity, that our educational institutions are locking out the channels of participatory media rather than integrating them fully into their practices”.

1.19.12: “Chapter 1: It Takes a Village to Find an iPhone” by Clay Shirky and “Should we Trust the Wisdom of Crowds?” by Tom deCastella

I found these particular readings to be very interesting.  The important points I got out of them include the idea that we have become a participatory culture. We decide what causes are important and what information should be out there.  The internet gives us power to rally around issues that are important to us.  With the story about the lost iPhone, it proves that with the use of the internet, someone can get people to rally behind anything, even a lost phone.  However, to me it is important to note that it is not just the internet that makes this possible.  The way we communicate is just as important.  All the technology in world doesn’t do you any good if you don’t know how to sell your idea or reach your target audience.

1.24.12: “Prologue” and Chapter 1 of “Everything is Miscellaneous” by David Weinberger:

I found the different orders of orders from Weinberger’s book to be very interesting.  I think it is a good example of how now a days all information can be considered miscellaneous because different people are now able to categorize information any way they want.  It is not black and white anymore.  Shirky argues that we are living in cognitive surplus and a participatory culture.  I think this ties into Weinberger nicely, because Weinberger is arguing that because so many people are actively participating online, it is almost impossible to organize or categorize every piece of information into a finite place.

One of my favorite quotes from Weinberger’s Chapter 1 comes from the last paragraph.  It states that…

“now we—the customers, the employees, anyone—can route around the second order. We can confront the miscellaneous directly in all its unfulfilled glory. We can do it ourselves and, more significantly, we can do it together, figuring out the arrangements that make sense for us now and the new arrangements that make sense a minute later. Not only can we find what we need faster, but traditional authorities cannot maintain themselves by insisting that we have to go to them. The miscellaneous order is not transforming only business. It is changing how we think the world itself is organized and—perhaps more important—who we think has the authority to tell us so.”

He argues that this new culture we are entering shifts how we search for information and also breaks down the idea of authority, which I think is the most important take away from this reading.

1.26.12: “Wikipedia is Just the Start: An Interview with Jimmy Wales and David Weinberger” 

One of the most important issues I took away from this interview was the idea of the different constraints when it comes to publishing information.  I thought it was interesting to hear about how online you do not have to worry about space.  In printed encyclopedias it would not be physically possible to print an article on every topic Wikipedia offers.  On the internet however, you can have endless amounts of information without having to worry about the space to hold it.  However, as Wales states, “that doesn’t mean that we have no constraints whatsoever. We have social constraints”.  These constraints vary from having articles posted about obscure celebrities that have faded away from the lime light, to articles that contain information that could be considered offensive or unethical.  Finally I think another interesting point made in this interview is the argument of validity.  On wikipedia anyone can post.  Wales argues that just because anyone can post doesn’t make their information necessarily not valid.  He argues that, “There’s no offense intended to people who are really, really, really into some aspect of pop culture, but if you are an expert in some aspect of pop culture because you have been living and breathing it for the last five years, that doesn’t qualify you to write about Shakespeare. So probably you shouldn’t. Probably you should write what you know. And I don’t see any harm in that”.