Media V.S Reality

It's All Around Us

Ok, it's 1.14 pm and i've just come back from a lecture. Walking to my resident's I stumbled across a rock that trigured a train of thought. Got me thinking about the compossition of the rock, the attributes and properties in which that rock could be used for. Surprisingly enough, it's interesting how human's take pleasure in categorising objects according to their structure. After watching the Matrix the night before, I imagined the rock being represented as a finite set of mathemtaical formula's. In actual fact, all media is not fare from that truth. Abstract as it sounds, the same principles controlling the relation between all materilistic objects are similar principles that governs the relations between all intellectual objects.

The Intelectual Realm

Ok, so you have heard my oppinion but not entirely convinced? If you could record the precise actions of a person playing a video game. Then on another day, replicate those exact actions... in theory after a finite number of button presses your character would end of up at the same spot. Straight forward as it sounds, one may alter those these instructions but also give same result. Furthermore, the sum of two numbers may give a different result each time the operands are changes but the addition process is the same each time it's onlt the context that is different. A composer of a piece of media may want to challange the responder to think a certain way. The principle's used in the creation of that partiular piece of media is similar to other piece's of media that fits into that same gonre, e.g. advertisement. The composer may use different techniques to protray their message but the net effect is the same. Just like, the attributes and properties in which that rock could be used for.... :-)

My Pheosophical Understanding

May of mentioned this in a previous post: "I stongly believe that their is a finite amount of information assocated with every instance of intelect just the context that differs". In all my area's of disicipline I like to apply this logic and understanding how it fits into the blueprint of knowledge.

References

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/2968547143/sizes/sq/

sourcing the crowd

Spontanilsly Unpredictable
Crowd souring is an interesting methodology that breaks a task into little pieces and distributes them among general people over the web. Each person contributes their own independent ideas that often result in spontaneous and unpredictable media. For example Swarmsketch all web user's to contribute a line of 100 pixals to compose an image of a given topic with in a allocated time frame.

The Collaboration Effect
So fare we discussed how crowd sourcing can be used liven up the day of a depressing individual, but what else is it useful? A wiki is a platform for collaborative information where individuals share information of their own area in their own area of discipline. Great things about wiki's is that their online communities are always growing and as individuals contribute their own slice of information the diversity of the content also grows.

References

http://www.flickr.com/photos/menteblu61/2057136966/sizes/t/ flickr

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&ei=PCcySsmSJZe-tAPGjZXqBg&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=crowdsourcing&spell=1

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crowdsourcing_million_heads.php

Information is Data

Whithout data what is media?
The answers is OBLIVION! If the capitalization didn't catch your attention, then let me explain... Media as the name suggests is the means of expressing information. How we interpret that information depends on how the data composing the representation is structured. Ok, that was a mouth full... so we have established that the structuring of data is in fact information and by extension media. According to the pionere of apple, Steve Jobs, "Data can't be analysed unless it is organised". The rules that govern how observers interpret information is much like a multi-level rule based system. First there is the syntax, unit sentences, expressions and finally the resulting information. One common application that involves knowing how to use this rule based system is advertisemnt. Composers recognise that different structures of data can effect how information percieved.

Data Structures

As stated, composers recognise that different structures of data can effect how information is percieved. This statement is only a conjecture, that is until it is proven...

PROOF:

Suppose you were to ask to look at the folloing symbols and identify one distinguishing feature?

0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

0 F 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

The magority of people would undoutably identify 'F' as the distinguishing feature. Reason being is that it stands out, *pun intended* :p. Othere techniques such as scaling, color, shape, position and movement are also effective for visually distinguishing features. Composer's commonly use these teckniques ro present information rather then just sequenial text. If you look to your right, you will see a word clowd that counts the frequency of each word in this post and present them accordingly. I will let you choose wich words you think have the greatest frequency :-)

References

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/01/winning_lotto_numbers.html flickr image

Lecture Notes

Media Royals

I Have To Say

I strongly believe that closed source proprietary media is bottle necking the potential for our economy to grow. Proprietary media prevents the collaboration of thought and ideas between composer's of media. In general, media is derived from intellectual work, however proprietary media prevents this knowledge from being distributed. It is quite possible composer's are reinventing the wheel instead of expanding on already established ideas that could potentially revolutionise different areas of discipline.

The Solution

Royals are one of the driving factors for proprietary media. The welfare of society heavily relies on this system. Although this is only a sugared coated excuse that composer's take pride in hiding behind. The majority of composer's disprove this notion of cause and effect, which contradicts the idea of less effort is equivalent to a greater income. My solution would be to look for alternatives where composer's can benefit off others work and also make an honest income. One suggestion, is that all source code should be freely available and royals should only be made through technical support. Like all different types media the context may change but essentially this approach could be easily adopted to different areas of discipline.

Relevent Links...

I invite you to look at a college's blog that covers a personal view on creative common licencing, this is the post where I originally got my idea... perma link

also, feel free to check out ~ covers some interesting material!!!

http//www.radioopensource.org/

Reference

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcuthrell/2380757581/

http://machinimamadness.blogspot.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU

The Power Of Blogging

Blogging is the only form or media where you can target a global audience from the comfort of your chair. They give power to those who have a voice. On of the reasons why I think blogging is so successful is because it's uniqueness. People are able to express commentary, individual ideas without prejudice. The content is always changing, from an observers point of view the information is always fresh that presents alternative ways of thinking.

Secondly, their is an artistic side to blogging. Bloggers enjoy the challenge of how to present their content in an effective manner. From trail and error, I have learnt that great blog posts make use of white spaces, formatting, graphics, the list is too extensive to cover here. But the basic idea is to get viewers interested in reading your posts, and this is the challenge that the vast majority of bloggers look for. Try it for your self...

References

Lecture Notes

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/14/blogging-for-beginners-2/

http://www.problogger.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Critique Rational

The critique can be downloaded by this link

Before choosing a website to critique there were a number of requirements that needed to be evaluated. I wanted to choose a growing medium with an obvious user base. One of the major specifications was to critique the websites internal information flow with particular attention given to user management. A website with a large user base would need to facilitate its members and by extension how they interact with the website. Amongst the spectrum of popular websites MySpace nicely fits this scaffold. Being already familiar with MySpace, the critique didn't require me to learn how MySpace functioned from ground up and also allowed me to write a more in depth critique within the given time frame.

Prior to writing the critique a little bit of preparation needed to be done. I had to familiarize myself with the art of analyzing content. The challenge here, is MySpace offers such a wide selection of content it would be impractical to cover all of it. I initially devised a diagram to assist with the main points I would cover. This helped throughout the writing cycle as I had a visual to refer to. Originally the critique focused on specialized areas of MySpace; however this approach didn't allow me to compare MySpace with other similar social networking websites. Another change I needed to perform, where my targeted audience. I didn't take into account the general reader, and having a strong software development background it was easy to diverge to information that wasn't relevant. As a consequence my initial draft was scraped and only the essential points were expended.

When writing the critique, I initially developed a blue print of how it would be structured. The blue print had set the basis for expending on the key points; ultimately it ensured I didn’t miss out on any relevant information and kept the information integral. With each main point in mind, I devised a set of manageable sub points. This helped with time management and allowed me to systematically expend on each point with in a set time frame. One pitfall I ran into is that I needed compare MySpace with another social networking website. Having only ever used MySpac the learning curve was steep. The process involved me setting up an account with another social networking website called Tagged. Originally I was going to choose FaceBook as the comparison website. However, with the reader in mind I thought it would be more interesting to expend on an on line social community that is less mainstream.

The cultural context of this critique was unique in the sense that MySpace didn't have a distinct start and finish such as a book or a featured film. Unlike other forms of sequential media that doesn't require user interaction, MySpace proposed interesting implications. The ability to manipulate and govern information flow dramatically changes the context of how a user interacts with a medium. Furthermore it was difficult to find concrete material that offered opinions on these of mediums of this status. With limited resources to work with, a different means of gathering information was needed. As a result, the critique was entirely based on my knowledge of networked media. My work he differed to others in the field, in the sense that there is no sequential structure in which content comprising of MySpace could be ordered as depicted in the diagram.

PRESENTATION

It's interesting how idea's can be expressed in one or more forms. It's a well noted fact that different people may have different interpretation of a given concept. That is, it could have a different message to that person. In the world of presentation, both in the software and web design realm, there are precautions that are taken in respect to different cultural implications. This could vary to content that resemble a religious form to information that wrongly accuses one's welfare. Although, strictly saying every person interprets a given content
different is not entirely true according. Psychologist strongly believe that there are “some color effects that have universal meaning “... ·

• Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.
  
• Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.
  
• Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels.
  
• Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain.
• Indigo shades were thought to alleviate skin problems.

reading this kind of poked a hole in my logic, however the site goes onto to describe this idea is not necessarily true either. if you also find this interesting, I encourage you to look into it... until next time :-)

References

http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/colorpsych.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldflints/2381496523/sizes/t/