Convergance Culture!

Henry Jenkins’s introduction chapter of his book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide delves into the development of telecommunication within society, but more importantly, how society is blending new technologies in an effort to make their lives easier. The blending of technologies is an interesting concept that gets covered briefly in the introduction paragraph. Two sentences jumped out at me while I was reading, an it is not because they were underlined but more interesting. “Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies [like the internet, cell phones, etc.] to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other consumers. The promises of this new media environment raise expectations of a freer flow of ideas and content.” I think the idea of consumers using technology to be more informed is pretty cool. After I read that section, I began to think about my grandparents as odd as that sounds. Every time I go to their house, I am helping them with little things on the Internet. Elderly people tend not to use a lot of technology mainly because they didn’t have it for the majority of their lives. Now, as media technology continues more elderly are using the Internet http://www.eurescom.de/message/messageJun2005/The_digital_divide_of_the_elderly.asp. I found a European study about this very subject. A lot of the statistics are very impressive and completely back my argument up. Only 21% of Europeans between the age of 55 and 74 are using the Internet opposed to the 75% of the 15 to 24 year olds. I can only imagine that our numbers are very similar to those of Europe but don’t anticipate that number to stay so low for very much longer.

Flickr Experiment

Flickr is, like said in class, Facebook on steroids. Just instead of posting pictures of your drunken weekend so your friends can see all the fun you’ve been having, Flickr offers you a place to put all of those other pictures. Although it was bitterly cold out today, I still thought that this project was pretty cool. I wish we had been given more time to think of an idea and to actually organize the photos. I feel like with more time to think about it we would have gotten more out of the assignment. Since we only had 10 minutes or so to think of an idea, we decided that Kirkwood would be our best option, but we weren’t sure exactly what yet. So we went online an looked up so pictures of Kirkwood and found this Flickr-like photo gallery of construction on Kirkwood years ago. We noticed that a lot of the places in the picture were no longer there, that Kirkwood Avenue has changed a lot in the past couple of years. So the idea was born, a then-and-now of Kirkwood. It wasn’t hard, once you got the lay of the land on the website. In this case, it is very similar to Facebook, so making an album wasn’t hard at all. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23825962@N08/sets/72157603900636390/)
Flickr can be used in several ways that would make it an effective tool in user-generated content. Like I said earlier, Facebook albums can go only so far to convey a message and that message usually is “look how pretty I look tonight!” Flickr, on the other hand, is more of a “I was just in the right spot at the right time, with my camera,” type of thing. It just so happens that I missed the CPE in France, mainly because I have class and I don’t live anywhere near France. Without Flickr, I would have never been able to see those pictures that the first assigned article is showing. With that said, it is pretty clear that Flickr can and will be used for citizen-based photojournalism. Since almost everyone has a camera with them at all times, whether it be a handheld or in your phone, it seems inevitable that a number of people are going to catch some form of news that the camera crews aren’t going to catch. Flickr now gives these people the medium they have always needed to organize and display these pictures in a way that will get what they saw out there.

Mobile Technology in Past Uprisings

Reading through this chapter really made me think about how different past uprisings would have been. Being in an area like the Philippines, were there isn’t a lot of money and not too many freedoms, mobile technology can be put to great use to organize smart mobs. I did some investigating into past uprisings that could have used mobile technology. During the holocaust, thousands of Jews were sent to the Warsaw ghettos where they were to be massacred. A young man named Mordecai Anielewicz organized a group called the Z.O.B which would build resistance to German fighters. They succeeded in small victories throughout the ghettos, but how much more successful would they have been if they had mobile technology? For starters, it would have been pretty tough to smuggle mobile phones into the ghetto, but if they managed to get a cache of weapons in there I can only imagine that they could get phones there too. Could mobile technology have shortened the length and the destruction that was caused during this time? I know this is off topic and that there is no real answer, but I could not help but think how different the course of history would have been had mobile technology been introduced years before it had.

How to Recognize the Future When It Lands on You

Trying to avoid the cynical image I apparently have earned in this class, I went into this article trying to pull out the positives aspects that mobile devices have to offer. Overall, Rheingold make several compelling arguments about our countries future technology and how it is being utilized in other parts of the world. Rheingold missed his projection that by 2003, “critical mass will emerge sometime after 2003, when more mobile devices than PCs will be connected to the internet.” On this time scale, Toyota will be coming out with the first line of flying cars by 2015. The real point he is trying to make though is that this type of technology is our future. We will have our whole life based around barcodes and blue-tooth wireless devices. It reminds me of the Visa commercials where everyone is moving in one fluid motion, paying by just flashing their visa card. Then, the one customer paying with cash looks foolish when he tries to buy his coffee, holding up the line and messing the stores whole operation up (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xy_PxLw1B_c). Will our mobile devices eventually lead to a world where we just swipe our device and continue on? Will credit cards and wallets become obsolete since its all of it is stored on your cell phone? This is exciting and revolutionary stuff that Rheingold is discussing here, but as cool as it all sounds, I don’t think it will ever happen.
There is one line, towards the end of the chapter that really put all of this into perspective. Mind you, up until this last paragraph I was totally gung-hoe on this technology. I agreed with Rheingold that this is our future. That was until he said, “I believe that our destiny is not (yet) determined by technology, that our freedom and quality of life do not (yet) have to be sacrificed to make us into more efficient components of a global wealth-generating machine. Throughout the chapter, the author hinted that not all was well and good with this technology, but I still bought into it. The one phrase in the quote, “…our freedom and quality of life do not (yet) have to be sacrificed…” makes me believe that mobile devices will never be as efficient as Rheingold hopes. This country is founded off of the freedom that is promised to us as citizens. Although I believe that we as citizens have too much freedom and that the government should have more power, I find myself in a small minority. Most people love their freedom and would go to any length to have it protected. I found an article about unwarranted wiretaps that makes me certain that our mobile devices will never become what the author thinks they will (http://www.alternet.org/story/30350/). Wiretaps are when a government agency listens in on your phone calls for brief intervals attempting to catch terrorist activity. Sounds fine and dandy to me, what is the problem with the government doing all it can to stop another major terrorist attack and what do you care if you’re not doing anything illegal? The point is, if people cause such a fuss over tactics used to combat terror, how do you think they will feel when the government knows where they are, 24 hours a day, 7 days a weeks, and 52 weeks a year? The response would not be good, in fact, it would be terrible. People in this country are so unwilling to give up their extra freedoms that this technology may go to waste or never live up to its full potential.