Wrapping It Up

Wrapping It Up

This will be my last post as an assignment. I have gone over many topics on this blog since I started it in January for my Introduction to Digital Culture course. I started out talking about disintermediation. I used self-publishing as a way to discuss how disintermediation affects us. I was glad I chose that because I was able to link the great and geeky, Wil Wheaton .

An Accurate Depiction

In February, I explored prosumerism  by looking at greeting cards. I decided that Google+ is not relevant when the topic was social media. Google+ is still pretty much a wasteland. I still have not posted anything new on there, I think it is a failure because too many people have locked into Facebook. Facebook has put solutions into play for the concerns that may have driven people to Google+ in the past.  After dismissing Google+, I explored trolling. I still believe that there are different levels of trolling. Then I looked at what a lousy job the cookies on my computer were doing. I still get ads in Spanish despite not speaking the language.

Two Gorgeous Doctors

In March I edited a Wikipedia article about Doctor Who . The edit was small and it is still there. Other classmates also made edits in Wikipedia articles. It was interesting to see whose edits stayed and whose edits were struck down almost immediately. I had no idea that it would be so easy to edit Wikipedia.  It was nice to see that Wikipedia is a lot more accurate than most people perceive it to be. I often use Wikipedia as a starting place for research assignments and I think academia and librarians should recognize how useful a tool Wikipedia can be. The other topic that was addressed in March was ontology. I found that tagging my posts was far easier and I think it was much more useful than creating a hierarchial structure for them.

The Digital Divide

In April, I looked at the network effect. I know that the store I work at uses a gas discount program tied to grocery purchases as a way to get our customers to lock-in. I also looked at the digital divide. I disagree with those who look at the divide and compare it to not having a luxury car. Having access to the internet is becoming an essential part of life to many Americans and comparing it to a luxury car is disingenuous. Then I argued that freedom of speech on  the internet is a human right and referenced Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .

So that's all that I've written on this blog for class, but what does it mean, what have I learned, what do I think about everything that we have covered?  We are living in a digital age. We are no longer passive consumers, we are becoming more active in the creation of the products that we buy. We are getting rid of middlemen in some areas because it is simply easier or allows us more control over our finished products. Facebook has become a part of everyday life for a lot of people and they really should pay more attention to their privacy settings and whom they friend. There are good hackers and there are bad and dangerous hackers. We should pay attention to how companies track us on our own computers. Wikipedia is easy to edit but it does guard against misinformation. Tags and keywords make it easier to find information than the traditional hierarchial methods. There exists a huge digital divide due to socio-economic or even geographical reasons. Human rights are changing as we go further into the digital era.  I think that we have made an excellent first foray into digital culture and I have learned a lot from this class. I was not aware of how much of a prosumerism culture we are becoming and until I took this class, I had never even heard of the term digital divide. I was impressed with the blogs of  other students who took this class and how they covered the same topics from different perspectives.

We live in a magical age where you can apply for a job in your pajamas at 3 am right after you check your bank statement and right before you borrow an electronic book from the library through the online catalogue. If we are to pursue careers in the information resources and/or library science fields, we need to recognize that the needs of our patrons or users have changed and so should we. We must adapt, without adaptation, there is no survival.

At least for class assignments

The Arizona legislature is trying to censor speech on any electronic or digital device . Thankfully, it has stalled but it has not been completely killed. I see this bill as not only a violation of the United States constitution but also as a violation of human rights.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  -

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

This means that we have a right to express our opinions in a way that we see fit on the internet. Does this mean that we can bully people and threaten their (or their loved ones') lives? No, there are already laws that prohibit it. Just as free speech in the United States comes with restrictions, so does free speech in the digital arena.

Digital Divide

Part of the discussion for class this week centers on this; "Someone once claimed that saying that there is a "digital divide" is like saying that there is a "Mercedes divide" (i.e., some have Mercedes, and others don't). If we don't think that there needs to be a public policy solution to the second, then we don't need a solution to the first." The idea that not having access to the internet and computers is the same as not having a luxury car is ridiculous.

Are people who do not own Mercedes still able to transport themselves from one place to another (the main purpose of any vehicle)? In most cases, yes. They may have access to a lesser car or public transportation. They may have a bicycle which serves to get them where they need to go, or they may even choose to walk, if preferred or necessary.

Are people without internet or computer access able to do the things one can with a computer or internet access? In most cases, no. More and more companies are putting job applications online. It saves paper and makes the hiring manager's job easier. Can you apply without a internet access? Sometimes. Some companies may have a kiosk when the applicant can access the application. However, even in the companies that do have that option, the machines are not always maintained and it is not uncommon for them to break down and not be fixed for weeks or even months at a time.

Another aspect of the employment factor is job search. Companies are advertising online where their ads are cheaper (sometimes even free), can be more detailed, and can reach a potentially larger audience than traditional newspapers. Can a job seeker find these openings without internet access? Unlikely. There is a chance that the job seeker could cold call a bunch of companies looking for work and stumble onto one that has also advertised their openings online. One way that the state of Arizona helps the unemployed is by letting people use their computers with internet access (at DES offices) to search for work on sites like Monster.com and CraigsList. Unfortunately, there is a limit to the number of computers available and they are only available on weekday from approximately 8am to 5 pm. They can also all be in use by other job seekers when our hypothetical seeker wishes to use them. Of course, there is always the public library, right?

Yes, the Tucson Pima Public Library. The library where you need to reserve the computer for either a 20 minute or 1 hour session. You may reserve these sessions up to twice a day per library, if available. On busy days, you may not be able to get a reservation at all. The hours that the computers are available also depend on the library's hours. The library has a lot people vying for computer time. There are students who need the internet to do their homework. There are homeless people who use it to find resources or as a way to connect with friends or family who may not even be aware of these people's situations. There are people who use the internet simply for fun; they play games, watch videos, post on Facebook. The library can be overwhelmed with the demand for their very limited resource.

These are just a few examples that demonstrate how wrong this "someone" was to compare the digital divide to the Mercedes divide.

Network Effect

Humans, for the most part, seek out networks. We use social networks, not only online, but offline. We connect with other students, coworkers, friends, parents of our children's friends, etc.
It is not odd that we would also create networks in our business lives.

The grocery store I work at has established a gas station network, not only do our gas stations accept our rewards cards, but we have branched out to two other chains of gas stations to create a network of gas stations where our customers can receive a discount on gas if they buy groceries from us. The store itself is also part of a bigger network, it is part of a chain of stores here in Arizona and the chain is owned by a corporation that owns various chains of grocery and other stores throughout the country.

As an employee of this store, I get discounts on various goods and services from not only our corporate owned conglomeration, but also from other providers who are connected to our corporate or local chain by various means. This gives us employees many opportunities to save money on things such as cell phone service, sports events, and theme parks. This network serves as a benefit to employees which helps serve as an incentive to work or continue working for this store.

Ontology

Directly below this paragraph is the hierarchical ontology I created for this week's blog post. I decided to categorize by what visual elements were present in each blog post. It took me a few tries before I decided to categorize things this way and it was not an easy decision. I wanted to create categories that would not have any cross categorization.

Blog posts with photographs


Blog posts with photographs I took

i. Disintermediation

Blog posts with photographs others took

Virus
Wiki-editing


Blog posts with other visuals

Blog posts with videos

Prosumption


Blog posts without videos or photographs

Cookies
Social Networking

I found adding tags to be a much easier task as I only had to think about what was in the post that I was currently tagging and I did not need to think of how it might relate to others posts.

I do think that tags are much more useful than hierarchical ontology as they allow for much more flexibility and more serendipitous discoveries.

Wiki Editing

For the assignment, I chose to edit the entry for the British science fiction series, Doctor Who. I chose to add one word to the description of the TARDIS . The word I chose to add was telepathic because the TARDIS has telepathic circuits . So far, no one has undone the edit despite my conscious decision not include a cititation even though I could. Perhaps people have just not noticed it since it is a minor edit and it is correct.

I was surprised at how easy it was to edit most topics. Some topics had locks, but most are availabe for anyone with computer access to change as they see fit. It is not surprising that people take advantage of this to not only provide differing opinions and update information but also to spread disinformation as a way to amuse theirselves.

C is for Cookie

For the most part, cookies do not bother me. Perhaps they should as they can track my movements and can be used across websites. Still, targeted marketing just does not bug me. Perhaps it is because the cookies currently on my computer do not seem to be doing a very good job. They seem to think that I am a Spanish speaking new mother interested in scuba diving, extensive cosplay, and console gaming. I am not. I do occasionally delete my cookies, but not because I am afraid of what or who might be tracking my internet use.

I wrote a virus. I called it the Elvis virus and it forced your computer to go to a DOS screen and display "ELVIS IS DEAD" over and over again while ignoring all keyboard commands. I never distributed the virus, but I did test it out on a non-networked computer. It worked beautifully. I had to wipe the hard drive as I had programmed it to erase all previous system backups. I then deleted the virus, so I could eliminate any chance of accidental distribution. So why did I go to all the trouble to create a virus, test it, but not distribute it? I simply wanted to see if I could. That was 10 years ago.

I was never into the hacker culture, but yes, ! <4|\| |234|> 1337 (I can read leet , well most dialects of it). I do somewhat understand the lure of hacking and virus making. The testing to see just what you can do, pitting your skills against a formidable opponent like a government website. I simply did not like the possible consequences, not only for me but for other unrelated people. If your virus gets to a doctor's computer, it could potentially wipe out important information about a patient. If it gets onto a government computer like the ones that the Social Security Adminstration uses, you could disrupt the services that many elderly and disabled people desperately need. Hacking a website for profit is a jackass thing to do. Stealing people's credit cards off a server is just as bad as breaking into their homes. Plus there is the whole "you could go to jail" part.

I believe there are also different levels of trolling. I personally think it is okay to engage in harmless "just for lulz" trolling. Things that might make people shake their heads, but not anything that is truly hurtful or mean. I also think the target of the trolling makes a huge difference. If you are on Omegle and you get some one who starts the conversation with, "asl?" it is completely appropriate to respond, "No, but I speak Porteguese" as if he was asking if you can use American Sign Language.

Is Google+ Relevant?

This week I read an article about Google+. It was written in June of last year and describes the then new social network, Google+. During that time, it was in beta, and only available by invitation. I managed to get one of the invitations and joined. A few of my friends joined and we would occasionally post something. That was months ago.

One of Google+'s advantages was supposed to be the ability to limit what you share to specific groups of people. That was supposed to be the reason people would switch to it from Facebook. So you would not do things like this . You would be able to post something that only your friends could see and your coworker would never know that you posted anything at all. Just exactly like you could with groups on Facebook. So the question becomes, why leave a social network when you are comfortable and all of your friends are for a new network with less of the people with whom you connect?

Most people on Google+ never left Facebook and/or Twitter. They simply added it to their social networks. And after a few days or weeks, many of them stopped updating. Why? Because they already connected with the same people on Facebook and Twitter. I personally have not posted anything on Google+ since December 26, 2011. I had not even logged back into it until today. By not logging in for two and a half months, had I really missed anything? No. All of the posts that I found from various people in my circles were "paralel posts," posts that people have automatically go to Facebook and Google+, Twitter and Google+, or even Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. I find Google+ to simply be redundant.

Pick A Card

When I was young and the world was still flat, you had to go to an actual store and look for greeting cards. Most stores had half an aisle to two aisles of cards from which to choose; a fair selection of birthday cards, a handful of seasonally appropriate cards, a dozen or so anniversary cards, a scattering of get well cards, one or two thank you cards, and one encouragement card showing a (probably long dead) cat clinging to a tree telling you to "hang in there, baby!" There was very little choice available to the consumer. This was before the age of the prosumer.

Now you can buy customized greeting cards here , here , here, or a dozen other places. You can also buy software to make your own such as this, this, or these. There are even free versions such as this one or this one . You can even make your own musical greeting card as shown in this video.




Prosumers can completely control the content and form of greeting cards now. They can choose to send a paper card through the mail, without ever touching the card through websites like this one. They can print out a card from their own computer using card stock. They can even choose to forgo paper and send e-greetings. Sites like Evite allows them to send invitations electronically and receive RSVPs electronically. Even with all these choices and the content control they offer, the card aisle is not going away. In fact, I have seen it grow bigger as the greeting companies expand their lines to include things like offbeat humor and less "mainstream" holidays such as Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Bastille Day. It's also a heck of a lot easier to stop at the store and grab a card when you realize that you forgot to pick one up for your third cousin's sixth birthday today.

Disintermediation - Who needs a publisher?

When I decided to write this post about disintermediation, I decided to look it up in the Oxford English Dictonary. It listed an economic definition which was not quite the way we are using it in our class. I then went to the Merriam Webster dictionary . The second definition "the elimination of an intermediary in a transaction between two parties" was broader in scope and seems a better fit for the way we are using it.

There are many varied ways that disintermediation shows up in our increasingly digital world. Many musicians sell their music (both digital and physical formats) directly to their fans on their websites. This eliminates the intermediary of a brick and motar store, an online store (which would earn a percentage from the sales) such as Amazon or iTunes, and sometimes even circumvents the need to find a record label such as Interscope or Sony.

Like musicians, many writers are circumventing traditional means of selling their products. A writer can sell digital or physical copies of his novels on a blog. Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame and self-professed geek has self-published and promoted his books using his blog, his Twitter account, his Google+ account, and his podcast. While he uses intermediaries such as Amazon.com and Lulu to handle the actual sales of his books, he has eliminated the intermediary of a publisher, and to some extent, the need of a book pulicist.

Self publishing is not a new idea, so called vanity press or vanity publishers have been around since at least the nineteenth century. The linked Wikipedia article lists some well-known writers who have paid to print their works as either a means to control the content, to increase their profits, or both.

There are, of course, other reasons to self publish. Some writers cannot find a publisher who is interested in their work because the genre is simply not selling at the moment (they are writing about leprechauns and faeries when vampires are all the rage), they are writing for a niche market (a book about cooking for red haired vegans), or perhaps their writing is simply not very good. These writers can choose to self publish, self publicize, and even self distribute or sell their works. If a writer wants to maximize his profits, he can offer his work in a digital format on his blog, using a Paypal account to collect the revenue generated, and publicize his work using social media.

This is all possible in our current digital culture. I am left with many questions. Will this new approach, which is gaining acceptance in literary circles, threaten the more traditional approach to becoming a published author? Will traditional publishers and book publicists become obsolete as writers take over these roles themselves? Will digital copies of books become the standard and physical books become as passé as 8 track cassettes? These answers will only be evident as time passes and the changes do, or do not, take place. I really do hope that physical books stick around for a long time. I love the feel of a good book in my hands.