Digitization

If we take a look at “new media” or interactive digital mediums like the internet its plain to see that media changes over time. With the invention of hypertext (Ted Nelson, 1960) it became possible to link pages of information together. You could present unstructured texts which could link to other ideas, and elaborate on those ideas on a different page. This was made possible with the internet however it was not a new idea. Jacques Derrida published a book called Glas in 1974 which illustrated this idea of an unstructured text as it is not clear in what order the reader should follow the text.

                With multimedia being so adaptable a new strategy of trying to get systems to evolve into doing similar tasks has become increasingly popular and common. This form of technological convergence strives to get different forms of media to interact with each other. With these tools interacting with each other we can now read books on our smart phones, listen to our music, and check out email. Companies are getting in on the action too. For example non-digital media such as print based advertisement can be remediated into an interactive treasure hunt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNhurUnOWKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpuC7HhCPWA

                Will there always be new media? As technologies converge, become more accessible and easier to use there is no reason why media should not continue to evolve. Who knows maybe one day we will be able to submerge ourselves into alternate realities of our choice…just don’t forget you’ll probably still have to do the dishes in real time.

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Andy Warhol

            Let’s take a quick look at blogging and what it offers. It can be seen as a one-to-many medium which means (hopefully) that one clear point of view can be represented and then discussed. It can be seen as a more efficient way of communication compared with a many-to-many medium. On such a discussion board information can be unreliable, and that’s after spending ages trying to find the relavant information.

            I think that blogging offers a space where private people can come together as a group to discuss anything from societal problems, politics, or even just swap recipes. As a platform for these discussions it can be seen as a new ‘public sphere’. The term was coined by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas who’s work focused on the way people like to come together to peruse ‘rational’ and common interests. Blogging and social networks have a great potential to be a non-discriminatory and non-judgemental way to present ideas and interests. It’s easily accessible, inclusive, and designed in a way that makes it easy for readers to get involved.

However these types of social networks do come with their own problems. They can quite easily become addictive, as some people find it easier to take on an online persona. Some may obsess over it as a new form of entertainment. Through updates you can find out what your peers are doing, and in some instances seems to create a kind of social competition. For example your updates have to be wittier than everyone else’s, or the party you’re throwing has to be bigger and better than anyone else’s. Networked societies can also make some people very selective as to which type of public personas they choose to associate with.

Others take the view that these networks can be an invasion of privacy. A socially engineered way of keeping everyone under surveillance. It is known that the internet its self is a civilian ‘spin off’ of military technology. The military spend large amounts publicly funded money reaching and developing technology, and what works well spills over into the public sector and industry. Some can argue that the funds would be better spent if directly given to the public sector and industry, and cut the military out of the equation directly.

 Are these select few people being paranoid? If you take a look at these links which will show you companies selling software to help you spy on your kids/employees/ spouses via their web cams and smartphones they may have a point

1. http://www.internetsafetysoftware.com/icanseeyou/ 
2. http://www.mobile-spy.com/

Personally I used to think so what if people see my CV or somehow find my phone number online. ‘Rational’ and ‘normal’ people wouldn’t need this information for any purpose and so wouldn’t use it, but perhaps I should be a little paranoid.