Information Feudalism and Piracy

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Litman and Copyright

Copyright as a phrase by itself is a loaded word that comes with responsibilities and consequences in filing a copyright for ownership of a good or service. Litman has an interesting section about how infringement is made daily by the population of the world, in form of minor changes and alterations to parodies and complete remakes. “An art student completing a class assignment goes to an art museum and meticulously copies a Picasso painting. A high school band rcords its garage-practice rendition of a top 40 hit. These things happen everyday, and are all prima facie infringing.” (Litman 8). It’s interesting to see how something as docile and innocent as a man changing a song and re-writing the words for his wife on their wedding day, can be charged and fined because of copyright infringement simply because he did not attain permission to do this. The world has gone mad with lawsuits and wars over property that people continuously claim are theirs and have no right to be tampered with. To an extent that is true, no one in their right mind would want a song they created “ruined” or a movie they made which has great meaning behind it “redone”. These copyrights do serve a purpose because they protect the very rights that creators have for their finished masterpieces, but at the same time trhey battle the fight against individuals who want to compete in that same market, or feel they can make “it” better in their own vision.
In a sense, some could say that the copyright industry is a monopoly, they are the ones that write the rules on whether or not a product passes (The Washington Copyright Office). Also, the Office turns inventors ideas away if they are too similar causing changes in original planning as well as ideas being dumped and restarted from scratch. It’s hard to say who is right and who is wrong in the copyright industry, that is a reason that Litman enjoys teaching this topic. There seems to be a double standard when it comes to the world of copyrights, such as the, “It’s ok if I do it, but not you.” Type of mentality. I mean, this is the reason we have copyrights correct? So that others cannot come up wit a similar idea and take it as their own work for them to make oodles and oodles of profit and recognition from it.

Copyright

The speaker in this crazy rant brought up some valid points about how individuals in the past could pick and choose different media and content and then put it all together to be called their own. His story about how Walt Disney stole ideas from Steamboat Bill since copyright wasn't existent and claimed it as his own just shows how people get away with and are comfortable stealing from other peoples' work. In Asia it's the same, gaming companies, anime companies as well as other technological aspects do not use copyrights over there, the culture is based off the honor system. A person can upload any of their ideas onto the internet and not be fined since there aren't laws that protect the companies content. That's a social norm over in asia though, in America this is seen as opportunity to get ahead with a great idea.

The copyright wars though have gone beyond what they are intended for, companies make thousands if not millions for giving permissions to others so they may use their content. For the guy that wanted to use the Simpson's picture, $25k would have to be thrown down for the permission to use it. That's highly absurd, since now copyrights are being viewed as a window of making money instead of their original goal which was just to protect concent from being stolen and acredited to others. The speaker does bring up a good point though about how there are grey areas in the technological aspect of our world today, stating that as long as it's tweaked and not the same then someone can copyright that image and not get in trouble with the law aspect behind the technological changes.

AHHH LUNENFIELD

In the reading of Screen Grabs: The Digital Dialect and New Media Theory, by Lunenfield he is explaining the relationship between the digital world and how new media (technology/ideas) have played off of each other over the decades that our civilization has become more advanced. Lunenfield knows here that the digital dialect is written in the ancient form of 0’s and 1’s which we call binary code, the language of technology. New media is the concept that the old technology is now obsolete and new media is created from scratch. Again, we see here that Lunenfield’s support of this argument simply forgets that the code is the same all around new or old since each technology needs to have a common language. He speaks of technology such as the camera and the first telephone (invented by Alexander Graham Bell) and states that the first models are old technology, long forgotten and remade into something more presentable. He breaks down the word down like a fraction and says, “…digital is more than simply a technical term to describes systems and media dependent on electronic computation…” (xv) which means that the digital age of technology goes further than automatic electronic computations that need no human involvement, “…just as the analog, which preceded it, describes more than a proportional system of representation…” (xv continued). He believes that the digital technology used today simply cannot be describes by the word ‘digital’ since more functions are occurring in the background of the operations. Man made such concept of quick, efficient, effortless technology available like the telephone and how it switched from signals being sent through a wire from room to room, to poles being built up and connecting cities, do the new digital phones we have to day that have built in receptors. The technology has changed yes, but the code of telephone signals has stayed the same throughout the ages.
Lunenfield has an obsession with relating how technology was and how technology is different today, that there has been this revolution of advancement and the root inventions have been long forgotten and new ideas and innovations are used to produce the same end result…efficiency. He knows that cultures are dependent technology and wants the world to realize that new media and the digital dialect are two separate entities that work off each other to mesh into the whole “electronic stew”. The stew consists of the mixture of all these things such as accessable information which is also stored, therefor mixing and creating the stew.

Tech-nizzle on the Pho-drizzle

Lunenfeld brings up the argument that digital photography is not something that is viewed as a real photography, since a computer has developed the image and how the picture looks through contemporary technology. He states that, "When all images are created or modified by the computer, the photographic is no longer a privileged realm of visual communication, segregated by its mechanical qualities (60)." So because this new form of photography that humans have invented is used by a computer camera, it isn't viewed as real. One could argue the same thing about film photography, since it's captured through a lense and printed on to film through light it isn't a real photograph since something is creating the image. So by what definition is real photography according to Lunenfield if he's bringing up such a deep, and obtuse topic? If someone were to hold a 35mm picture and a digital CLR camera picture I'm sure that someone who doesn't know film would know the difference. If film is in a person's hand and completes the same objective, in retrospective views and realistic views that form of phography is real no matter how it's created. All forms of photography are switching from the 35mm film to digital since it's easier to doctor and put into literature these days. Lunenfield seems to be delving into a realm that he believes is important and should not change, but it seems that he forgets that the film cameras replaced painting art when they first came out. That's the argument that should be looked back upon before arguing how "things should be" instead of "how things are and were". If looked back upon, 35mm photos were doctored before in many instances which proved that photos could be tampered with and considered false "realms of visual communication". Paintings of the past were mimmiced by other painters also which proved that something as rare as a masterpiece could be re-done in almost the same exact style and format. Take the fake Mona Lisa's for example, there are posters and framed paintings sold in all parts of the world. With the right skill and knowhow of the chemical process used in creating 35mm photos, that could be tampered with as well disproving Lunenfield's arguments about the reality that photography has behind it. Large news corporations depend on their magazines to be completed promptly and professionally, using the old styles of photography became too costly. This new age digital photography is more expensive upfront but cheaper in the end since it's a one time fee start up cost; no film, no chemicals, all that is needed is a printer capable of photo printing.

Games and the Virtual

Johnson in the reading poses two great arguments about how the world views gaming and reading. On one side of the argument there is the fact that reading can promote intelligence, and make a person more active in the community and as a citizen, "People who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who don't to visit museums and attend musical performances..." (Johnson 18). The argument that support this is that kids seclude themselves to playing games that do not teach or advocate learning. The flip side to this argument is that video games promote hand eye coordination, problem-solving skills, judgment, social interaction and norms, relationship help, studying strategies. Here is why exactly, in video games that are on the console, games that involve analyzing a situation and figuring out a problem have children begin thinking outside the box to meet the objective; in games where a person needs to memorize a series of sequences/patterns/events to pass to the next level allow the players to use memorization in the games which help in the future since the brain is being stimulated. Ryan states that this could be an example of the virtual following the two faces, games are apart of the electronic culture of today that have been mixed in with computer-mediated activites as the virtual playground that kids today now play with instead of on. A kids idea of a good time is playing video games with his buddy and they feel they are learning at the time, the social norm believes that these games are rotting their mind and serve no purpose. Is that true though? Is playing a game, and learning new ways of thinking, acting, and perceiving rotting the mind of children today? The society that which a person lives in judges that simply because it would be taboo to go against the grain and do what others do not want. With online gaming, the virtual as a potential totally becomes involved, such as a game called 2nd Life. In this game, people live their virtual lives as they wish to live thim in this real life. Their vision of reality is skewed since people can completely make their life in 2nd Life different than that of their real one and be the person they wish to be. The virtual is a big broad subject that is subject to change as the future moves on, and the world's views change on what is socially acceptable.

Unfinished Technology?

The Mannovich reading is the description of how the media (technology) of today is formed around the 5 principles: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability and transcoding. What is effectively examined is the tangibility of new media in the present day and age, it’s influence on humans and daily activities, and every aspect of the computer world. This new media is described as “…mathematically and can be manipulated via algorithms.” What Mannovich here argues is that old media isn’t exactly so old, it’s still present but formed and shaped under the same viable coding and presented as something new. All data in the computer world is written as 0’s and 1’s, how they are used is entirely up to programmers who invent new ideas and the instruments to fulfill those purposes. Lunenfeld would perceive the coding and the computer itself an “unfinished” instrument, solely because a computer cannot finish a task itself without a user. The user has to first build a computer with a purpose in the coding for it to carry it’s task, but without the human it is nothing but a shell that collects dust. Technology in computers is voted as something that will make the impossible, possible and life easier to live. Computers of the future cannot finish what humans are able to, such as surgeries, novels, portraits, they cannot complete these tasks because they lack creativity and again; the necessary part of having a creator to give it a specific purpose for its creation. Mannovich argues that “human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part" because of the automation in computer programs that allow for templates, colors, algorithms to be involved immediately instead of concentration on the task at hand. Are computers a bad thing to have in life? Some would argue yes because they make us less human, depending on code and variables to make shortcuts in life. Some would argue no, because efficiency and simplicity is what people need to be able to perform their daily tasks comfortably. Mannovich and Lunenfeld share a common view, that computers themselves have a limit, because of their source…the coding in their media. 0’s and 1’s go only so far versus a human mind, the human mind can make business “finish” since it’s capable of constantly thinking of new ways to solve issues. Coding can go only as far as a programmer can, which is the limit to technology in this day and age.

Presentation Reflection

I learned a lot about information ecologies, how they function and how versatile they can be. Going through virtual worlds to tangible gardeners in the real world teaches a lot about how there are many aspects to ecologies in various groups, organizations, cliques, they affect us daily whether we realize it not. The Locality, Diversity, Co-Evolution, and Keystone Species philosophies were really exhausted, and explained in various ways which got the point across about how the ecologies have almost all of these aspects in them. I realize that in my life there are gardeners who always assist me and help when needed, that virtual worlds like Pueblo are in my life in the forms of MySpace and Facebook, we're urged to use new technology like Blogger, HTML programs, and multimedia software. These presentations just realized how ecologies are in all of our lives daily.

When Myths Meant @(*#()

Myths of the past were always looked upon by many, but looked upon by those who had visions. People in the beginning first believed that that the telephone had good and bad influences on the public. The inventors saw it as a way for the future individual to have an easier life, communicating with others from miles away to get tasks done or to simply call a relative. Those who had doubts believed that the telephone was going to available simply to the rich and would become something of status. In part these myths that people perceieved in the beginning were true, the rich used them at first for many day to day tasks but soon after it was mass produced, the middle class and poor persons had it available to them as well. These myths are solely perceived when new technologies or concepts are brought about. Another example is the idea of today's technology; we've become so advanced as a race that we're simply skimming what our civilization could be 1000 years from now. The argument that is being proposed though is, "What if we become too advanced." with robotics and AI? What if this is the end of us?" this is how Mosco how set up the reading, with the statement of how, "...every wave of new technology, including information and communication media, has brought with it a declarations of the end." (Mosco 117)

This is the type of argument that people begin to think of when we begin creating inventions that make life exponentially easier. Even with the television, the idea behind the T.V. was to be used for educational purposes for children and adults, "The president of Colgate University went as far as to suggest that television will question the necessity of formal universities with their brick and mortar classrooms." (Mosco 133). As the years went on the myth about the television revolutionizing entertainment/education became a reality in both negative and positive aspects. Television became an icon for television and news, but declined drastically over the decades when education came into play (until the installments of The Learning Channel, Discovery, History, A&E; networks attempts to teach the public.)

What Mosco is simply trying to explains is that these myths are prevalent simply because the public and society apparently forget the historical information surrounding the history of technology. What this means is that individuals forget how the history of tech. reveals how bad things occur due to the invention and how great things come of them. People are always willing to believe the bad over the good, it's human nature.

Sean, I can't grasp Mitchell, I need help understanding his bull@*#%, it really is way too deep for me.

The "Yes Men" video is a great example of how technology in this world is used in various different ways for various different purposes. This group of individuals sole goal was to poke fun of an organization that the world (in some fashion) respects, since their job is to help under-developed countries. Their method in doing so was using e-mails to contact individuals to represent themselves as the "WTO" at a seminar, presenting their information on a powerpoint, making a video to show their management contraption, and using the Internet for their research methods.

How this all relates is it shows that for a presentation of this caliber and magnitude, the use of technology was heavily weighed upon for their point to get across. Yes, they could have used large amounts of posterboard, or used the over-head projector available, but the truth of the matter is this showed how efficient technology is and how dependent we are on it. The best way to summarize all of this is that technology truly does shape the lives and societies of today. Looking back at the reading, this example goes alongside with the author's thoughts on how inventions such as the Internet, Television, the Radio, affect our lives entirely since we use them constantly to serve our needs efficiently and quickly. Why are we dependent on it? Simply because we invented it to make life easier, rather than revert back to previous technology, we don't need it, but we want it faster, bigger, and more complex to make life easier.

Also this is another example of how the "Yes Men" didn't respect the privacy of our President, George W. Bush. They obtained knowledge and information about his past in the in National Guard as well as his drug use and posted it on a website for the world to read. The question in favor was, "Should they have exploited him or just forgotten all about it." To them they felt that they had to make this satirical website to exploit Bush and let people know that he isn't a Boy Scout, which ever Presidential image is trying to portray. Should people be allowed to get pictures, obtain information, do the ressearch to exploit persons? There are laws about privacy and how it should be respected, but there's a double standard to this. People are angered when their privacy is invaded, but when it come sto the privacy of someone else they see it as an opportunity to stick it to them and make an attempt to lower their image.

That's all I have to say, peace.

I totally blogged her last night

Exploiting and outsourcing, these are the terms that come to mind when big businesses try and stay large. Companies such as Amazon are one of the very many companies that fall into the category of exploiting their employees through low pay with high amounts of responsibility. The author stated that he was required to take on hundreds of calls a month dealing with Amazon's website (one of the largest and stickiest sites on the internet), he mentioned that it was very "bootcamp-ish" with their regimental protocol and their absurd style of accomplishing tasks. For $10 an hour, the company believes that they can find any fresh out of college punk and hire them to do major gruntwork and be micromanaged to deal with the issues the upperclass worker bees don't want to. As the author stated, no one can live off of $10 an hour and expect to pull 40/hr weeks of constant ridicule and keep a happy face through it all. Another example of exploitation was in the article of the WoW gold farmers. These kids to adults range from 16 to players in their 30's who do nothing all day except play a video game for roughly $0.25 an hour. They have the option of working out in the fields with their parents or in the factories around dangerous machinery, but instead are put at health risk by playing from 12-18 hours a day to make a gold company richer through virtual (intellectual) property. They're expected to do this kind of "work" as worker bees do, they just grind grind grind away and help make the company wealthier as they are barely making it by. All of this comes back to the big topic at hand, when an economy is growing or in a recession, there is still a need for people and a need for people to fill in jobs that are available. As is known in this world, no business can function without "worker bees", the ones that do all the grunt work and keep things afloat so the company can continually make money daily. In the Mosco reading, he was stating how the economy was low at the time and that things seemed shakey. Well China's economy at one point was shakey, but there were factories, and businesses that outsourced worked because it was cheaper and gave low wages to those willing to take it so that companies could survive and continue propspering. In the end, companies will always be giving away jobs that take hours and in return give dollars (Hours for Dollars), and by some means work the jobs so they in turn work in a companies favor. (Cost must always be lower than profit in a business)

My Ecology

The ecology I've chosen to write my paper on is the networking of a Firehouse. In the firehouse there are ways that veterans and rookies communicate in and out of the firehouse, be it verbally, through radio frequency, e-mail, bullet board posts, what have you. Though, what is interesting is how these forms of communication and this network lasts after veterans leave and newcomers enter. I'm going to research and find out exactly how this ecology works and write a damn good paper on it.

Technology and it's Effect on Society

The advancement of technology over the past century has been an amazing progress, as an example; the U.S. has gone from the pony express to e-mail in such a short period of time. This is the kind of change that has affected the lives of all people around the world, the change that technology has continue to alter our lives and shape our societies. Mosco’s reading about how television (and technology in general) has shaped our lives brings up a few good points. He believed that television was invented as a, “…result of scientific and technical research.” (Mosco 11) for various reasons, both positive and negative. What he stated was that in the beginning, the use of the television was for scientific and societal advancements in the positive spectrum. As time went on though, people saw the power and potential in such an invention for uses of media, information transferral, reality perceptions, and many other aspects. It’s of no surprise that Mosco is right, television in this day in age is used in a variety of ways not thought of before by its’ inventors. For example, the media does report the news but in a way that was unintended. In this day and age, more than 50% of what is said in the news is negative information about a shooting, scandal, corrupt politician, war, aspects in the world that are dominating the media. Of course there are positive things that happen in this world, but when a shooting occurs someplace in the U.S. or in another part of the world, the good seems to be shoved aside for ratings. What Mosco is saying is that our views as people and a society have been skewed, we are desensitized to all the negative in the world because of how television has been used to portray worldly views. Here’s an example from the reading, “The real norm, in these actual societies, would seem rather to be: ‘unauthorised violence is impermissible.” (Mosco 123). When you watch a movie and see people die, individuals don’t cry and mourn, “…violent behavior is constantly represented and reported on television, its major communication system.” (Mosco 124); when someone is stealing millions of dollar in a movie, people cheer them on. As individuals, we’ve adapted to technology and allowed it to teach us how to ignore and even accept socially taboo things. Hearing on the radio that a freak accident happened and injured X amount of people doesn’t cause panic as it did a hundred years ago. Technology has shaped our lives not only in a negative aspect though, it has made life easier for some. You can sit down in your living room and order a movie, which is a nice luxury to have, and you can even purchase commercial free radio, and on a grand scale communicate with loved ones thousands of miles away. Technology such as a television is a curse and a blessing in it’s own way, there are negative aspects which Mosco was explaining, but on the flip side there are good things that have come from television. In the end we are all dependent on technology as a society since we see how easy it makes our lives. Without it, it wouldn’t take long for the world to find another way to replace it.

Wooo, am I winning?

I like me some video games

METAPHORE

With the year 2007 coming, this not so new concept of the Internet has become the center of attention in everyone’s life. E-mail is the #1 way of communication next to cellphones, and people use the internet for researching, passing time, and communicating with family abroad. Like Vicki said, the Internet is a system. A tool that makes everyone’s life easier in the long scheme of life. It technically is a system, since the internet is run by companies servers sending out the desired connection so that people can surf the web. My own metaphor for the Internet is simply a virtual mall, you can literally buy what you want in this store, use the stores services since they offer everything, and can go to the virtual library located in it. It’s cyberspace, it’s intangible and not physically visible, but it’s right in front of us when we log in immediately to an internet browser. This mall has grown in the past decade from a dainty, underground mall to a fancy one, that has brand new stores popping up with unlimited space to add more for goods and services.

Cyberspace and Myths

Myths and cyberspace, hmm. The big truth about myths is that they exist for a reason, if one has been created over time; that myth must've had some factual base to start with and been warped over time to what the story is now. Even if the myth is not true, what has to be taken into the account is that these stories are warnings, thell tell tales and have lessons behind the deeper meaning behind the myth. When people first talked about how the internet was going to revolutionize everything that we do with; work, school, research, shopping, investing and anything that wenormally do in our daily lives as kids and adults, they believed that nothing in such a short period of time could make a change on that magnitudal of a scale. The internet has been around for decades, but in the publicized viewed it has completely changed and revolutionized life. This fear of change that people have for the internet, or cyberspace, needs to be toppled since this technology is not going anywhere. Things normally don't regress as time goes on, life will only get more advanced and people are going to have to find the means of keeping up with these changes or being left behind in a "simple world" that isn't so simple anymore. Believing that the Internet was going to do what it has done in a little under a decade would have been a myth to people in the 80's, nothing like this has been heard of. Truthfully, we as people, a society, and race need to learn how to pic, choose, and interpret myths so we can begin to embrace them and adapt quickly. Cyberspace is, in my opinion a lame term, will not be going anywhere. People are going to be communicating thousands of miles apart from here on in, kids will be gaming online with people of new cultures and learning how to and how-not to be a person this way, research between two foreign companies will be traded over e-mail and this cyberspace, has made it possible for the world to do something this amazing at this magnitude.

Ideology

The term Ideology is coined that it was used to structure societies to keep maximum control with minimum conflict involved in the society. Reflecting back on this, Ideology is not a form of dominant control, not a dictatorship; nothing of that sort. What Ideology is are the set of beliefs that people follow for positive, right, and fair decisions that are made and true to the individual. They are a set of rules that guide. To me, Ideology can be swayed in perception and idea, but that totally changes ideology. The world knows the difference between right and wrong and when the idea of Ideology is skewed, people believe that they are right and staying true to themselves. Marx believes that once a set of rules are put into place (naturally) they will be less likely to regress since change can be bad in some cases. Also that that ideological decisions are logical in conclusion. These are the fundamentary beliefs of basic Ideolism, but the problem is human nature always changes and beliefs don't always stay the same.

Blog #1

It is known that technology has become a big part in the lives of many since the late 90’s and early years of the year 2000. People now put more information in cell phones and pda’s, than they do with concrete documents at home. People also place their communication lines on technology and even share the more important aspects of their life online. This ties into technophilia since we’ve become so adept to using technology and learned to love it. The first thing a college student probably does when they get into their own dorm is go on the net and check their myspace, g-mail or facebook. We’re so relient on it, imagine not having a cellphone and not being able to connect w/ someone immediately, imagine not having internet access to speak to your loved one overseas or friends from another continent, we’d have to revert back to the old fashion ways of pen, paper and mailing stamps. Technology makes life easier and makes the grasping of information easier since it’s all at our disposal today.