Video Mash Up

 

 

My video Mash Up tried to achieve one thing, to make the audience aware of the effects general pollution has on the environment as a whole and how government inaction is supplementing that.  I first achieved this by adding various still images and video to support my claim.  For example, I utilized video of a smokestack and still images of polluted water and other miscellaneous shots of pollution at the beginning.  Following that I added a plus sign which preceded an empty shot of congress which was then followed by an equal sign.  The use of symbols were an easy way to move my argument along. I felt this was a clear representation of my argument through purely video and still images which I personally tried to go for as I tried to challenge myself and have no text in my argument at all.

 

After the shot of congress I used a combination of video, sound, and still image to show the audience the possible effects of unchecked pollution.  The video was in place to make a more compelling emotional argument.  For example I found video of a pelican effected by an oil spill was a more effective way to show the horrors of pollution then just placing a still image of one.  In terms of sound, I found a clip of a congressman talking about how the GOP wished to cut back EPA spending.  Considering part of my argument was against government inaction, I felt it to be appropriate.  As for still images, I used various shots of pollution including a polluted river, shots of dead fish, and the Earth on fire as a representation of global warming.  I felt the later still images largely supplemented the video argument as a whole.

 

All in all, I felt I did well presenting a multi-media mash up about pollution.  However, one thing I felt I could have done better with was easing the transition between sounds/video to make my argument flow better.  Other then that, I enjoyed this assignment.

 

Chris

 

 

Mash-Up Argument

Here is my visual Mash-Up argument posted as a video to Youtube.

 

 

Media as the New Language for the 21st Century

After reading Lessig’s article on media I was particularly interested with his section on media in education and the concept of media literacy.  All in all, I believe my mash-up could not really compare with a traditional research paper because of the lack of media literacy in educators today.

 

Lessig wrote that media literacy can make things like remixes and mash-ups be, “great writing without words” or “creativity supported by a new technology.”  This is particularly interesting due to how greater of an audience a piece of work could have due to it being media based and not just long winded sentences scrawled over 15 something pages.  My mash-up on pollution could have a greater impact on a group of  younger people due to the fact they are more literate in media then older people.

 

Mash-up and remixes are no replacement for the traditional paper, however they could do wonders for an argument by supplementing more traditional mediums of argument.  This would require a degree of media literacy in everyone, which is why Lessig promotes that such courses are required in highschool.  Media, mash-ups, and remixes are becoming a new language in academia and it is important that everyone gains a bit of literacy in it.

#BigBrother

I never “gotten” twitter.  I made one about a year or so after it came out and hardly kept up with it.  I felt its niche was already filled by the Facebook status update.  Now after creating a brand new account I find it hard to grasp the level it has achieved.  Twitter, perhaps even more so than Facebook, has successfully allowed one to digitized their daily lives.

“Really funny, was looking for jeans in my briefs n I found a pair and the name of the brand is Naked n Famous, what a start to my Thursday.”  A tweet from Chad Ochocinco, wide receiver for the Bengals.  “Got roughed up by thugs in pro-mubarak crowd..punched and kicked repeatedly. Had to escape. Safe now.”  A tweet from Anderson Cooper, currently reporting from unrest ridden Egypt.  Twitter’s platform is much more informal than Facebook’s.  By strictly limiting users to 140 character tweets, it actively encourages the user to update blurbs about themselves and what they are doing throughout the day, and often.  From this you get slice of life tweets such as those from Chad Ochocinco, and a medium for news unlike anything before like Anderson Cooper’s tweets.  Freishtat and Sandlin believe there is a problem with security in terms of Facebook, but what about Twitter?  I believe there is, but it is a different type of problem.

Twitter can more or less take an informal privacy away from self-proclaimed “tweetaholics.”  Their information is not being used to bombard them with ads a la Facebook, but is more so revealing on a personal level.  It is almost like a self surveillance system.  It seems as if twitter users can not go without tweeting where they are, what they are doing, and what they will be doing after my 24-hour observation of the people I selected to follow.  Becoming a “tweetaholic” is akin to losing your anonymity if you are not careful.  Also, the public needs to be careful and question where this information is going, like the government for example .  Getting used to this type of digital exposure, and being so easily torn away from anonymity can be a slippery slope, especially in the future.

 

#Bigbrother

The Internet Monopoly

Are the wild west days of the internet coming to an end?  During the confusion of the recent Egyptian protests the internet, for the first time in its history, was “turned off” by a governmental organization.  Internet activists are wary of the profound power these kill-switches can give government, but is it legislation that will be the death of the open range era of digital communication or is it big business social media such as Facebook?

Freishtat and Sandlin’s article on Facebook and its conditioning of the new generation of web users gives insight into how the “Brave New World” of internet use could already be upon us.  It is no secret that Facebook is an internet powerhouse.  Along with Google, Facebook has taken the internet to a level of full-blown industry.   An industry that is largely unregulated compared to more established avenues of business.  Facebook and Google’s dominance over their respective internet niches eerily mirror Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel’s monopolies over Oil and Steel at the turn of the 20th century.  The question that stands is how can Zuckerberg keep his empire’s stranglehold over social media stronger and even more profitable.

Upon reading Freishtat and Sandlin’s article and mulling over their concepts of internet Habitus and internet colonization in terms of the Frontier Myth and Web Manifest Destiny I came upon a startling realization.  The realization that Facebook invasion of the internet Habitus is so vast that young people today could not even imagine a world-wide web without it.  The “Friend Request” button, the Facebook logo, and the various symbols associated with the website are as tied into the Internet zeitgeist as the phrase “.com” these days.   While Freishtat and Sandlin argue Facebook is colonizing the internet, pushing the frontier farther and farther, I argue that Facebook is perhaps colonizing us, the individual internet user.  Facebook is consolidating their hold on the internet by becoming so large that they insert themselves into the internet Habitus, they themselves are becoming an internet norm; if you don’t have a Facebook then you don’t “get” the internet, they not colonizing the internet, but our perception of the internet.

While Freishtat and Sandlin’s article tended to stay within the realm of Facebook itself, their investigation into the grooming of young people by the sheer ubiquity of the site, the concept of internet colonization, and the internet superpower that Facebook has evolved into made my mind and thus response wander and think of the grander picture.  I am intrigued by the concept of these possible internet monopolies and may actually look into this topic for my research paper.

Chris

Digging the Internet Zeitgeist: New Mediums of Internet News

Bryan Alexander investigates a wide array of Web 2.0 phenomena in his article spotlighting the possible positive influences they could bring to teaching and learning.  One particular focus of Web 2.0 technology he spotlighted is how they are effecting the way news reaches the average web browser.  Two Web 2.0 web pages he brought attention to are Google Zeitgeist and Digg.com.  Google Zeitgeist functions as a compendium of the most searched news topics searched through Google.  In Google’s own words Zeitgeist is, “based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year, Zeitgeist captures the spirit of 2010.”  The web user is able to get a visualization of the hottest news stories throughout the year, for example the World Cup, BP oil spill, Haiti Earthquake, and Icelandic volcano eruption are widely represented.  In addition to the general news representation, the user has top ten lists according to topics, i.e. sports and entertainment.  The keywords in these lists are ranked according to how may searches they have in Google and when clicked on send the user instantly to the search page itself, allowing easy access to the biggest news stories about whatever sticks out to the web browser.  Google Zeitgeist allows the web user easy access to a depth of information about the worlds hottest news stories with this feature.  Digg’s content is much less automatically updated.  Its content is also divided into various lists based on topic, but the ranking is much more user intensive.  Popular stories rise to the top of the list due to people “digging” them, a sort of a thumbs up feature.  The more “diggs” a story gets, the higher it rises and the more it is read.  This causes smaller stories to be more accessible to a web user on digg and allows a larger degree of news fluctuation/trend to be apparent.  In short, neither site is “better” then the other.  Each serves its own purpose.  Google Zeitgeist gives the reader access to large amounts of information about the hottest news and Digg.com’s system allows a more varied, if not sometimes offbeat, experience.

Google Zeitgeist

 

 

 

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Digg.com

Cool Stuff

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some cool music

 

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