The Global Tower of Babel?

Sometimes I can't help but feel like communications studies isn't being taken as seriously as it should around the Ivory Tower. Our ability to communicate with one another is one of the fundamental aspects of being human. No great accomplishment or body of work would be possible without clear communication. Industries like advertising succeed best when boiling down communication to it's essentials. Globalization requires a shift in communication to more visual signifiers in order to transcend language and cultural barriers. The global village might have arrived, but how can we do anything but stand and stare at each other across the fence without proper communication models? 

Off the Grid

As pathetic as it may seem, I told myself that for six full hours I wouldn't use any form of social media. I cut out all of the Internet to reduce my temptation, and I put my Blackberry on silent and stashed it under one of my pillows. 

On instinct alone I must've tried to check either my computer or my phone a dozen times. It was eating away at me, what was I missing that was going on. Some might interpret this level of reliance as "an addiction" or a step in the wrong direction, but is it really that unhealthy to want to be socially connected? After all, on the other side of that technology, it's living breathing human beings with real emotions, that we've forged bonds and friendships with. Social media simply provide the channels and the conduits for us to communicate with one another. People didn't travel more than 7 miles from their birthplace before the invention of the printing press and nobody seems to yearn to go back to those days. Why can't we embrace this new technology for what it is, not "big brother", not "the matrix", just an easier way to reach and communicate with one another. 

My Name is David and I'm a Blackberry-aholic

I confess, I'm addicted... I never understood the allure of the Blackberry until I finally purchased one. I wondered how people could be so rude and oblivious, mindlessly walking and texting, texting while in conversation with an actual human being standing right there in front of them. And then, I finally got one of my very own...

Blackberry Instant Messenger (My Achilles heel). I thought I was a polite person but the Blackberry changed me into a walking Faux Pas. Lending half of my attention (at best) to the person actually in front of me, and the lion share of my attention to the Blackberry. Maybe the grass is always greener, that blinking red light signifies a mysterious present that we can't seem to resist. My only question now is whether or not I should renew my Blackberry plan or try and go "cold turkey". Maybe this is just the new order of things, anyways my phone just buzzed, detox will have to wait. 

Copy Rights & Wrongs

Copyright laws have always been a tricky thing for me to wrap my head around. I recall when I first heard that the song "Happy Birthday" was a copyrighted commodity, and royalties had to be paid whenever it appeared in television shows or films. Surely we need some form of copyright laws to protect those who earn a living off of their intellectual property, but it seems like a difficult (if not impossible task). Current copyright laws seem to function on a number of arbitrary factors (the years that something can be private domain etc...).

Jenkins and Deuze describe the Internet as a place of "remix" and "remix ability". With forms of participatory media, and the rich web of intertextuality found in web 2.0 media, copyright laws seem nearly impossible to enforce. You Tube videos thrive off of building upon the material of others. 

Hip-hop culture seems to be an early adapter to the more lax approach in copyright laws and it seems to have only enhanced the richness of the genre. The system may have to completely dissolve and restructure before copyright laws can function realistically in this changing digital landscape. As tedious as "case by case" rulings will be in determining copyright infringement, the court systems are built on precedent, and if the systems broken, it needs to be rebuilt. 

Fulfilled by the Guild

Before "World of Warcraft" was conceived it was simply "War Craft". It had an online element but for the most part it was a level based game, complete with cinema scenes, the ability to control armies, and of course ambitions of conquest. I grew up playing War Craft, a game that was somewhat popular but still had a relatively small following (at least compared to World of Warcraft). The difference between the two games can be summed up in a single word, community.

This discerning difference, and the lynch pin on which the success of World of Warcraft rests is community. It isn't about the quests, or the battles, (sure it may have started that way). But the sense of belonging and community that people experience within their guilds is every bit as real as the relationships we cultivate in more traditional settings. It stands to reason, the elements that form a lasting and meanigful human relationship aren't our physical features or necessarily contingent on physical interactions, to being able to interact and communicate through a computer and forge friendships that may span the globe is exciting and impactful to say the least. These emerging trends in social interaction may be scoffed by some social scientists but the fact remains that these are the result of technological advancements, and represent the future of human interaction.

Don’t Shoot the “Instant” Messenger

In any given discussion over emergent forms of social media, it seems that people firmly side with one of two opinions. The first opinion in this dichotomy explores the dangerous that may arise due to the anonymous nature of the Internet. This school of thought seems to believe that when human beings aren’t being closely monitored acts of sexual deviance or cyber bullying are an inevitable result. The more optimistic stance on social media seems to believe that the global network allows for an evolved level of communication as a result of constant connectivity.

The notion of social media as a portal that facilitates deviant behavior does have some merit, as does the concept of social media as an expansion of human communication, and an inevitable evolution of personal relationships. The point that we sometimes miss when debating both of these sides, is that social forms of media are really only vessels for human thoughts, feelings, and expressions. While it is true that anonymity might cultivate dormant deviant behavior in those select few that might be prone to it, the media certainly didn’t create it, anymore than it created human communication. These new forms of social media should be thought of not as alternate realities, but extensions of our current societies that allow more flexible communication in regards to time and space.

Every new form of media begins with a learning curve, and there are always those who will take advantage but our innovation and technological progressions are fuelled by the human instinct to socialize and communicate, the Internet is merely tool.

I'll Ask the Audience

One of the major shifts that society has experience as a result of increased reliance on social forms of media, is the notion of what constitutes and “expert” and who is qualified to articulate and transmit information. Web-sites that are a result of social construction (such as wikipedia) may not be peer reviewed and may lack the classical qualifications of what we might traditionally consider to be a valid source of information and yet they seem to be used more and more as sources to gather and distribute information. This active participation that allows citizens to contribute over the Internet is a revolutionary change in social engineering. Having a database with millions of contributor’s results in a global collective of shared information. Accuracy of the information is certainly a major concern with social media outlets such as blogs or Wikipedia, but with so many active users patrolling these highly trafficked web pages, fallacies are often addressed or exposed through sheer volume of participants.

Using the Internet, as a global database of information was a benchmark moment in the “information age”, having such a high level of active participation contributing to this global consciousness is an unparalleled social occurrence. An audience that spent their entire lives as passive receivers of media is not active participants without asking for anything in return. Amazing.

Fairy Tale Face Lifts

The puzzling debate over what really defines intellectual property has been raging for what seems like an eternity. Certainly having access to the Internet and being part of a global society makes everyone much more aware of how difficult (if not impossible it is to be original). The thought that any idea I may come up with has more than likely been conceived of millions of times before is enough to make someone never want to leave their bed in the morning. Obviously we do need certain laws to protect intellectual property when large sums of money are at stake, but where do we draw the line and who gets to draw it?

If Disney is allowed to sue for the unauthorized use of their stories or images, then how come nobody has sued Disney for their appropriations of classic fairy tales such as Snow White, Robin Hood, The Princess and the Frog (just to name a few). Does turning the character of Robin Hood into a fox really constitute a significant enough change to escape laws the guarded intellectual property (if that were the case then I wouldn't be facing a cease and desist charge over the syndication of my character "Marvin Mouse"). 

Presently, copyright laws only protect content for a certain number of years, after a while these timeless classics become public property, but do these laws really provide a conducive environment for fostering creativity, and free expression? Or do these laws only protect the established and wealthy, undermining and stifling any budding artistic endeavors of those with shallow pockets?

Going Hollywood

A decade ago before everyone had cell phones and was constantly "plugged in" it wasn't inconceivable to go an entire afternoon without human interaction, books were read from cover to cover and some gifted young men armed with gameboys and the latest version of Pokemon would "catch em all" in a single sitting.

Thanks in part so smart phones that integrate voice, text, and now instant messaging services, the notion of having unbroken concentration during any task is completely antiquated. The fact that very few people turn off their phones at night is at the very least an small indication of society's active connectivity. 

When "smart phones" started gaining momentum I remember starring in awe at the level of apparent rudeness of people engaged in face to face conversation, with eyes glued to their blackberry screens offering a limited level of attention to the person that was standing right there in front of them. What made the person on the other end of that phone more appealing than the one standing before them? I continued to judge these philistines until the day I purchased my first blackberry and suddenly everything changed. I became the "talk and texter" despised by non smart phone uses, and sympathized by fellow addicts.

It's difficult to say what this shift in attention means in our culture, why we seem to prefer negotiating reality through that 3 inch lens, but the ramifications for societal shifts are apparent. Perhaps the fact that we're able to control the content of our personalities and write our own press releases when conversation isn't conducted face to face, but this new trend certainly sparks controversy over the classic definitions friendship, intimacy, and human contact. 

Weblogs & Watch-dogs...

Is blogging considered to be a form of journalism? Obviously the answer to that question, hinges entirely on what you consider “journalism” to be. Disregarding all blogs as cheap sensationalism, or the misguided, overly emphasized opinion of a zeal few (such as Perez Hilton) would follow a similar pattern of logic that allowed a “newspaper” such as The National Enquirer to represent the standard of journalistic integrity in the mass media.

Of course this doesn’t mean that all blogs have journalistic integrity, but to ignore an entire movement that allows for a two-way discussion would be seriously detrimental to the public sphere. The fact that blogs have become so simple to use, with relatively few entry barriers (aside from owning and being able to operate a computer) represents a tremendous breakthrough in “citizen journalism” and the growing popularity of blogs as sources of information marks a victory for the public sphere.

As the old adage goes “two heads are better than one” the mere existence of blogs to monitor larger news conglomerates can never be a bad thing. Even if blogs were viewed simply in a “watchdog” capacity, the more checks and balances put in place should theoretically result in a higher quality of news from larger conglomerates. 

The Christening.