digital cultures . english 6560

danah boyd, in her piece “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” reports that during her research, no matter how many teens she spoke to and regardless of whether they used MySpace or not:

“I have yet to find one who does not have something to say about the sites, albeit typically something negative. In essence, MySpace is the civil society of teenage culture: whether one is for it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it.” (p. 121)

this, in combination with this Wired article I came across last week, prompts me add to boyd’s list of what makes mediated, networked publics so unique. along with their persistent, searchable, and replicable qualities, they are also practically unavoidable. they are pervasive and ubiquitous. even Jenkins bemoans the fact that he cannot buy a “dumb” phone anymore. you can get one of these https://www.thelightphone.com/, but it still won’t work without a smartphone behind it.

even the most set-in-their-ways anti-social-media individual probably has friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. who engage with networked publics in some way. I’m reminded of an instance several years ago when my younger brother posted something on facebook, which a family friend went on to ask my father about later in the day. this sparked a bout of mild outrage when dad, puzzled about how the friend knew to ask, learned what my brother had shared. since then, my dad has given in and adopted a smart phone, but he is meticulous and vocal about his efforts to keep his personal identity off the internet as much as possible. he may have had more success than the parents in the Wired article linked above.

another theme I noticed among boyd, Jenkins, and the Silberman piece was the importance of the embodied aspects of digital technologies. Jenkins especially, in his efforts to document perspectives on digital convergences, often focuses on how the digital bleeds into the physical and changes our material realities, influences our physical habits as well as our intellectual ones. after all, media is not only an abstract “out there” element of our communicative landscape. the definition Jenkins cites from Lisa Gitelman is useful and key here– media is both:
1. A technology to enable communication.
2. Protocols and practices that grow around the technology itself (p. 13-14).

since 2004, 2006, and 2009 when our authors were researching and writing these pieces, many things have changed. I hope we’ve become more cognizant of how digital media practices can have massive impact on society–not just for teens, not just for those who participate directly in networked publics, but for pretty much everyone (and our planet, as a recent twitter-thread points out).

a few of us pointed to Jenkins’s concluding warnings when we met last week. he writes:

“There are no guarantees that we will use our new power any more responsibly than nation-states or corporations have exercised theirs. We are trying to hammer out the ethical codes and social contracts that will determine how we will relate to one another just as we are trying to determine how this power will insert itself into the entertainment system or into the political process.” (p 256)

such a warning is still very relevant. much of how we want the world to be is (and maybe always has been) under debate, still in progress. digital cultures aren’t immune from all of that.

two small postscripts:
yet another interesting twitter thread that seems relevant to our discussion of echo chambers, filter bubbles, media bias, etc.

I’ve also discovered that danah boyd keeps a blog.

“Instead, convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content.” — Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture

This is good stuff.

The dot-com bubble, as he later discusses, was water flowing against blockage. That way simply didn’t flow. So water does what it always does — it finds a path without resistance. It wasn’t the death of digital media, it was a way that didn’t work. It was companies trying to use the methods of traditional media to make a living the only way they knew how up to that point. They hit the rock. Consumers kept going around the rock and moved on to blogging and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Companies adapted by embracing influencers and new methods of supplying content that now people seemed okay paying to receive. The subscription service became ubiquitous (for better or worse). The dot-com-blockage was simply an old route that didn’t work anymore. But new routes work better for those who adapt.

How many times have we read the phrase “survival of the fittest?” It’s not true. That’s not how evolution works. I read an article stating that it’s not even an accurate quote. The author of that article claims Darwin never said as much but rather implicated that the creatures who adapted remained. Because the adaptable were the majority of the gene pool, the next generation inherited those characteristics. A handful of creatures didn’t adapt because they weren’t required to do so. Sharks. Alligators. They could stay largely the same. But that’s a small percentage of the whole population of creatures.

Adaptation is key and it’s happening all around us. Just this week, a stream of articles underscored what Microsoft has slowly admitted to for a while now … that Internet Explorer is a dead (or at least dying) software. Reporters dug up release notes about how Microsoft wasn’t supporting the platform any longer. They weren’t even updating it or planning to do so in the future. It’s still around because there is a generation of people who haven’t adapted to new browsers such as Chrome or Microsoft’s struggling Edge. The newer browsers embrace HTML5 more completely and run faster because they’ve left legacy code (and security holes) behind. But still, many people aren’t adapting. However, because the main browsers in the “gene pool” are the ones who run on more updated code, most applications have abandoned IE altogether. Consequently, those who haven’t adapted to new browsers are being left out. They’re complaining … like reptiles in the La Brea Tar Pits.

It’s good news and bad news but it’s really old news we’ve read again and again. Talk about the good old days is a myth. There are no easier times, just different times. We are beings in constant search of simple answers to complex questions and, as tough as that may sound to achieve, every invention we create achieves exactly that.

But there is an interesting thing humans do … we counter. We rebel. And we make that countering and rebellious nature into a magnetic culture. We smoke cigarettes despite the warnings (especially in Europe). We buy dumb phones (although this isn’t totally a cultural icon … yet). Check out clips and photos from the Grammy’s and count the types of watches. Most of them were mechanical (mechanical watch sales are up) and, the ones that weren’t mechanical were the old-school Casio single-function watches. (I didn’t spot a single Apple Watch.) I wonder if Casio ever expected to see a resurgence in sales for such a simple timepiece that was all the rage when digital watches first became available decades ago? I wonder, too, how much counter-culture will impact the evolution of new culture?

If past is prologue, I’m guessing there’s a way to theorize what might happen. I’m just excited to watch (pardon the pun).

“Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites” was a great article from a historic standpoint that still addresses the needs of the ramifications of its emerging impact. I recall the early days of MySpace, and I guess by the time I joined the conversation it was already losing steam in the youthful circles. I was a bit confused by the articles dates because it seemed to me that by 2007 Facebook was already gaining ground over MySpace. Even recently, there was a Facebook meme initiative of eliciting profile pics from today and ten years ago.

Nonetheless, there is a lot going on in the article where the ramifications are still unknown; yet, we are gaining insights to social media’s strengths and weaknesses. Danah Boyd, early on, mentions that youthful engagement in social networks affect “identity formation, status negotiation, and peer-to-peer sociality” (119), and we decidedly see this today in developing identity importance to the youth, as well as adults. Having a lot of friends is still a status gauge, and we develop our online presence through peer-to-peer feedback and engagement, good or bad.

I found it interesting to learn that these sites were developed out of the dating services industry. As I read on, it was clear why some of the information fields are what they are. Boyd’s discussion about mediated and unmediated worlds was eye-opening as thoughts about privacy in a public forum should be intuitive, yet, we don’t often think about that under the guise of “privacy settings”. More importantly, is the fact that things saved in the site databases are permanent even if it’s not available to
“all” others. Considering that anything put on the site may not stay only on there, it’s searchable and sharable because “a mediated public …  consist[s] of all people across all space and all time” (126).

One term I personally related to was “social voyeurism”, as I periodically enjoy perusing my “wall” on Facebook, but don’t actually post very much, and it is a voyeuristic form of participating, but not really entering the conversation. Similarly, when Boyd discusses our parental drive to keep tabs on our teenagers, and our mixed hold and release relationship that we have with our children, is voyeuristic in nature. We, adults, have a need to “see” what our kids are doing, but don’t often know what to do with that information, as exhibited in the misunderstanding of Allen and his daughter Sabrina. Allen who had a good relationship with his daughter, was confused about her post that her personality was like cocaine; he knew that this information could be misconstrued by others. Yet, how do we monitor what we think is right in a world that is generationally more open to this type of sharing.

Some of the things we share, all while knowing it is public, can be helpful or harmful. It can help us understand the world, and build social skills, or it can be hurtful and cause strong emotions, such as, anger, extreme sadness, or a detrimental self-image. Common discourse around the value of social media interactions are currently grappling with when the hurt kills. These things are happening. A question that came to my mind is how can we circumvent these negative consequences to a remote free speech venue as these networks have changed our social priorities from real world exchanges (and the politeness, and restraint that accompany them) to a fictional, or idealized reality, because although Boyd claims, “Our role as adults is not to be [teenagers’] policemen, but to be their guide” (137), and this is often not happening, or not accepted in the face of peer priority.

Who Doesn’t Love a Metamorphosis Reference? Seriously!

Silberman’s “We’re Teen, We’re Queer, and We’ve Got E-mail” was my first read and I enjoyed it initially from the play on words in the title and the Metamorphosis references. Silberman’s goal was not only to entertain but to garner understanding and sympathy for those teenagers who lived years projecting a perfect heterosexual lifestyle for their families while seeking to explore their true sexual identities and validate themselves online.

However, while the internet brought so many opportunities for youth to find acceptance, this was somewhat like the opening of Pandora’s Box. You could not “unsee” the possible dangers that awaited unsuspecting teenagers who fell into the trappings of predators. This makes me think of my experience teaching high schoolers and college freshmen. I have had students share that they have met people on line and have traveled across the country to meet random soul mates, sometimes ending in situations reminiscent of a Catfish episode. They are far braver than I was in high school.

The same song to a different tunewas my initial thought upon reading Boyd’s qualitative study “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Eons ago I imagine most adults, at some point during those awkward teenage years dreamed of attracting that popular boy or girl. We would infiltrate that it crowd by doing this amazingly cool thing or telling this hilariously funnyjoke and the legacy of our high school deeds and iconic love affairs would live on in the minds of our peers forever. Unfortunately for anyone who had to endure their teenage years during the social media age, their high school memories will not replay like an episode of The WonderYears or evoke a sense of nostalgia.

Instead, as Boyd reminds us, social media sites like Myspace and Facebook became playgrounds and parks at a rapidly growing rate in the 2000s and this number increased steadily. There were some interesting facts about social media and teenage usage and I appreciate the objectivity of the study; however, as someone who taught teenagers for 13 years through years of social media, I found some of the qualitative responses to be somewhat controlled, generic, or unlikely.

Or perhaps I am reading this study with more knowledge of their social media behaviors now that it is 2019 and this study is from 2007.

Silberman, Steve. 1994. “We’re Teen, We’re Queer, and We’ve Got E-mail.” Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/1994/11/gay-teen/

Boyd, Danah. 2007. “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. MIT Press. 119–142. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1518924

 

Although my teen years are far behind me (thank goodness for that) I was still able to relate to many of the ideas presented.  The first two ideas that relate to the types of teens that did not participate in MySpace was one that I can relate to as both as a parent and nonparticipant. The first is that of the disenfranchised teen. When my daughter was a young teen (13) I did not allow her to have a MySpace account, because I was afraid of the potential for her to be exposed to something that she was not equipped to handle unknown. My feelings were kind of akin to Dr. Chelsey’s in regards to the chatrooms that she entered as a kid. She did eventually get a Facebook account in high school.  We recently discussed MySpace, and she shared with me that she is glad that she didn’t have an account, because she remembers how “lame” she was when she set up her Facebook account.  She went on to explain that as she sought to establish her identity in high school, she realized that a MySpace account would have simply been a duplication of the culture and identity of her peers.  While she admits that her identity and the culture that she associates with in high school, and today is influenced by her peers, her identity in middle school was completely based upon emulating others. I can also identify with the teens that are conscientious objectors.  This identity also shares some of the characteristics of another point made in the article.  I somewhat identify with the conscientious objectors for some of the same experiences of Stokely Carmichael had with his radio and television audiences in the 1960s (pg 133).  I don’t have a Facebook profile, because there is too much room for my ideas to be taken out of context.  As of late, I’ve been reading lots of texts pertaining to the South both pre and post-Jim Crow era.  In reading these texts I have been examining the hardships that my ancestors were forced to endure, the causes, and repercussions of these hardships. Many things that are a part of the culture that I’ve been enculturated into are being given context and meaning.  I am fully aware that posting or commenting on such things would be taken out of context and some would even express misplaced offense; therefore, I refrain from using any form of media besides my graduate courses to engage in any discussion on this topic.  Last week Naderia mentioned how blocking certain people from seeing items, and I thought of this as an option; however, it would be very difficult for me to ascertain people’s level of offense. It is for these reasons that, I am a conscientious objector.

 

“WE’RE TEEN, WE’RE QUEER, AND WE’VE GOT EMAIL”

 

This article was steeped in information regarding, how gay teens (GTs) have used and are still using the internet as a means of establishing their identities and .  Silberman makes the claim that GTs undergo a complete change in establishing their identities, “…the saga of gay teens online is one of metamorphosis, of “little mini” nerds becoming warriors in a hidden Stronghold of Power.  For young queers, the Magic Ring is the bond of the community.” I think that the culture that media provides for GTs is essential in determining how they want to identify themselves to society. The subject of the article is described as being a voice for those that are not able or willing to speak for themselves. The anonymity of the internet allows many of them to engage with others that share in their beliefs and preferences without having to deal with the politics of justifying being a GT. The internet is their safe place where they can interact and just be themselves Silberman says, “ Online interaction gives teens a chance to unmask themselves in a safe place, in a venue where individuals make themselves known by the acuity of their thought and expression, rather than by their physical appearance.”  The most important thing that I took from this article is that prior to the internet it was far more difficult for GTs to meet and congregate with other GTs. Silberman stated that prior to the internet GTs had to wait until they were of age to enter bars that were gay-friendly in order to engage in gay culture

I’m not sure if you noticed it, but there’s a latency to “live” online conversations. No doubt you’ve experience this. You connect to an online conversation service (WebEx, FaceTime, etc.), you see the faces of the people you want to speak with and there’s a sense of joy … until you begin to speak. Then, because of the slight delay between when you speak and when they hear your voice, you step over each other’s words a bit. Before you know it, you feel like two people standing at an exit door, awkwardly insisting that the other one go first.

Few stories bring to life the real-world experience of latency than Damon Krukowski’ first installment of the “Ways of Hearing” podcast. It was beautifully produced and the sounds provide excellent illustrations of his point. The slight delay from digital processing that Krukowski describes by contrasting digital broadcast television and analog radio can also be found, perhaps more noticeably, when comparing video calls and analog phone calls. To be fair, there’s a whole lot more data to crunch in a video call. On top of an analog signal, the system has to present the users images moving in sync with the audio. Because it would look awkward to have our voices precede our images, the sound (which is a smaller data set and could be sent more quickly) is set to “wait” for the images to be collected, processed and sent together.

This whole process is remarkably fast but networks, despite fiber optic connectivity, still bottleneck with traffic overload and processing limitations. Thus the delay. Thus, also, the awkward opening moments of a video conversation.

Phone conversations, to be honest, aren’t analog anymore. We can’t tell the difference, though, because the network capacity and processing speeds have far outpaced the minimum requirements for transmitting the relatively small amounts of data that is the digital transmission of the human voice. But it only seems small now, in the age of streaming rich-content media.

Remember when downloading a Triscuit-sized video on the Internet took several minutes? Today we begin to stream an entire feature film with no delay. One day — and that day is pretty much here with platforms like Zoom and FaceTime — we’ll watch and listen to each other in full HD video with … no … latency.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Will we miss the latency? Is there some nostalgia to this phenomena? Will we look at movies with aged actors pretending to be kids in 2019, talking on the “video phone” of the day, and the studio will make sure that the phone call has a delay when the actors communicate? After all, no one in the 1940’s thought of radio static as nostalgic and engineers worked feverishly to remove it, only to have it become an essential part of any movie featuring an actor “tuning in” a radio. The static and squeal of the radio dial is nostalgic. It’s part of the experience.

The same is true for vinyl records (I honestly didn’t expect their return). I grew up on these things and, sure, I thought the music was great, but I was that kid who was also happy to move beyond cassette tapes to marvel at the amazing clarity of the first publicly-available compact disc. I’ll never forget the first CD I played on my Sony Discman (Chicago’s Greatest Hits, if you were wondering). It was static free. We did it! I thought to myself … we finally created pure, crystal-clear music!

Then what happens? We start to miss the hiss. That crackle when the needle scratched the grooves on a record might have sounded kind of cool after all. And, beyond the noise, the overall warm and fuzzy tone of the music played from vinyl somehow couldn’t be repeated in a digital format. And we actually got a little lonesome for it. Today there’s a whole generation of hipsters who have no recollection of what it was like to grow up listening to vinyl and that crowd gets the warm fuzzies listening to music on a turntable! It’s universal.

This also happened to film, and you’ll probably know it when I point it out.  I learned it when I landed one of my first jobs out of college as a writer-producer. It was the 90’s and the cool video guys in the video sector wanted to recreate the nostalgic, gritty, off-kilter value of film. HD wasn’t a thing yet. We all had standard definition TVs. Local broadcast affiliated stations still dominated airtime. That’s when my boss taught me about something I’d never noticed … film judder.

To make it overly simple: Film stock plays at 24 frames per second (fps). Video plays at 30 frames per second. To make the timing work, a few frames (the fourth or fifth, I think) of the film need to be repeated when converting 24 fps film to play in the 30 fps video world (your TV).

Want to see it for yourself? Play a feature film (an old one like Gone with the Wind that you know was shot on film) then pause and move the film forward one frame at a time (VHS remotes used to always have this feature for some reason). Count as each frame moves to the next. Around the fourth or fifth frame, the repeated frame becomes obvious.

Here’s the funny part: We got used to it to the point that we liked it. When films were converted to VHS and we were watching at home, that film judder was happening all the time. Audiences couldn’t tell you what was going on precisely, but they associated the film judder with feature films and knew it was somehow different than the 30-frame video format they watched each day on the evening newscast. The strange artifact that by all means was a glitch became the cool, je ne sais quoi of film-to-video conversion.

So the video guys used a technique to replicate the artifact called judder. That’s right. They made fake film judder. I remember when we used the effect for a jewelry store commercial. It was completely fake. We could have shot the commercial at 30-frames-per-second … we just didn’t. We made the video camera record at 24 frames per second so that, when it was converted, it looked more film-like … more cinematic, if you will. And it worked.

So let’s add this all up. Technology worked around the static of radio and we wanted it back. Computers were able to remove the fuzzy sound of a vinyl record only to see that audiences wanted that back, too. Then video could be recorded in perfect sync with our televisions, but videographers replicated an artifact of film because that was nostalgic. So this begs the question: Is video-call latency the static-vinyl-record-film-judder of our time?

And the bigger question: Do artifacts like static, judder and latency make us feel more connected to the content? More analog? More human?

Thoughts on the connected timelines presented in The Modern History of Computing, Web at 25: Revisiting Tim Berners Lee’s Amazing Proposal, and What is Web 2.0.

To study evolution is to discuss the interactions of countless elemental building blocks coming together to form the most basic of living things — the cell. It has a limited purpose and, simultaneously, it is a recognized miracle of connected, symbiotic reactions and systems. It’s so miraculous, scientists only need to find one living cell on another planet to stake fundamental claims that could alter our understandings about who we are in this universe.

Just one cell is the singular representation of an infinite potential for life. But to accomplish complex life, the cell has to follow a few rules. It needs a code, of sorts, to live by. The code has to be flexible, allowing the cell to adapt to different environments. The code has to promote connectivity and cooperation with other cells. The code has to be able to be passed on and, with the help of other cells, be modified or rewritten over time to adjust to changes in the surrounding. Those are some of the key aspects required for a cell to collect with other cells and become a tissue, that might work in conjunction with other tissue to create an organ, that might work with other organs to create a system, that may function in a collective of systems to create, for lack of a better word, a being.

Through the course of three collective histories, we see the evolution of computers as not only the creation of machines meant to help humans perform computations but, ultimately, systems now working together to create their own intelligence. The loom and other rudimentary technologies provide the building blocks and, ultimately, inspiration for the mechanical functions of a slightly more complex apparatus. Babbage theorizes what’s possible and his successors begin building with the mechanical technologies of the day. Turing, well ahead of his time, recognizes the need for computers to rewrite their own instructions in order to “think” progressively better. By the 50’s, advancements in chemistry and electronics realize a century of computational work into the form of a computer. The miracle cell was now real.

But it wasn’t connected.

Tim Berners Lee, collector of observations and available tools, not only saw the communication value of computer connectivity, he envisioned a shared data set and eventually imagined (and named) a collective identity we now know as the World Wide Web. Every computer, connected to every computer, would be more valuable than any single computer ever could be. With a few common concepts, Berners Lee connected the cells into a simple (at the time) system.

It comes as no surprise that the first efforts of Web entrepreneurs to profit from the network mimicked the marketing efforts of the other prevailing economic sectors. It’s what they knew. Working on the proven economic principals of the time, the Web 1.0 philosophy began building capital systems based on proprietary code, copyrighted sales models, and strategies designed to own the specific environment of a maximum number of users. Applying 90’s-era economics to a more advanced, organically organized system didn’t work and the dot-com failures proved that this was an altogether new economy and ecosystem.

From the ashes of the dot-com bust rose something well beyond a new technology. In fact, the newly-prevailing technologies such as RSS feeds and blogs were truly simplified examples of available technology. What changed was how they were introduced (not applied). A top-down, we-provide-value-to-clients model was turned inside out, allowing instead for the clients (users) to act as symbiotic cells in a system where they provide and increase value to each other.

The basic building blocks became the cell. The cell, once connected, became the system. The system, with user-driven input, is now writing, rewriting, and refining its own collective intelligence. Today we stand at the edge of the next curve. Whether it’s called AI or bots or some other trending term, Turing’s “computer brain” — the collection of parts and systems and symbiotic code that thinks and adapts and thinks better the next time — is a reality in its early stages. It’s at this point we begin to ask …

Is what began as a cell, about to become a being?

     Gleick’s, “The Information” brings to light a point that was made by McCracken in his “Web at 25: Tim Berners-Lee’s Amazing Proposal Document.”  Two of the greatest forms of technology were conceived without regard for the true impact that they would have on future generations. In both articles, relatively simple concepts have evolved into complex, yet commonplace items of mainstream technology.

     While a member of the Bell Labs Mathematical research group, according to Gleick, Claude Shannon began making connections by, “…seeking a framework to connect his many threads, Shannon began assembling a theory for information”. (Gleick)   Shannon eventually commenced incorporating the term information into his theory. Gleick credits Shannon with connecting information to entropy, chaos, and alleviating uncertainty. This theory is thought of as the stimulus for information processing. In order for information to be properly decoded and processed it needs to possess some qualities belonging to clarity.

     Loewenstein gave me a clearer understanding of the theory of information in what he refers to as the “information circle”.  According to Loewenstein, “It connotes a cosmic principle of organization and order, and it provides an exact measure of that.” (qtd in Gleick) Each piece of information is added to create a layer for the organization, that keeps the circle going.  The addition of information is never ending as referenced by the circle analogy.

     In my interpretation of  Loewenstein’s theory, I imagine the information circle as a layered cake.  Each piece of information is a layer of the cake, and it serves a different, but crucial purpose. Obviously, the layers of the cake are also required in order for the cake to meet the requirements of a layered cake. The organization and placement of each layer is determined by the level of importance that each layer possesses.  Because layers are added to the top of the cake there aren’t layers (information) that are no longer useful. Gleick claims that “Hardly any information technology becomes obsolete. Each new one throws its predecessors into relief.” (Gleick) In fact, each layer is required in order to continue building.

Works Cited

     McCracken, Harry. “Web at 25: Tim Berners-Lee’s Amazing Proposal Document.” Time, Time, 12 Mar. 2014, time.com/21039/tim-berners-lee-web-proposal-at-25/.

     Gleick, James. “The Information” New York Times, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/books/review/excerpt-the-information-by-james-gleick.html