CCT 300:Critical Analysis

of Media

Class 10: Information Overload/Web 2.0

Administrivia

• Feedback on culture jamming/social influence proposals sent to one member either by email or internal Wikispaces email – find it and share it

Elitist Return? Net Neutrality

• Is some information more important? Should it get priority access to “the tubes?”

• Tiered access - who controls it? To what good purpose? How?

Tiered access

• Internet 2, Can*net 4, private internal networks• Sheridan’s iChat server and other university

bandwidth issues (e.g., YouTube filtering!)• Commercial censorship - Telus vs. union, Shaw vs.

VoIP, AOL vs. anti-AOL consumer sites, US Military vs. progressive blogs, Google and Yahoo! in China, RIAA/file trading - others?

A Critical Take

• Winner and mythinformation - technology adherents take to near mythical descriptions of how technology will change the world

• See also Noble - Religion of Technology - designers themselves speak in terms of highly spiritual terms (creation, transcendence, inevitable utopia)

Four Myths

• People are lacking information• Information is knowledge• Knowledge is power• Information access = equitable and

democratic social power

Do we really lack information?

• Many argue opposite - we’re drowning, and we are losing the ability to make relevant associations and connections as a result

• Ex: 500-channel universe, academic journal explosion - little common ground, little opportunity for full analysis

Information = Knowledge?

• Sheer quantity of information may lead to information overload and destruction of knowledge

• Perceived knowledge vs. actionable and understood knowledge

• 9/11 example - information regarding terror cells existed but was scattered, uncoordinated - it didn’t make sense

Knowledge = Power?

• Knowledge available at the right time and context to people with the power and resources to act upon it might equal power

• Knowledge itself might leave you powerless - and frustratingly so - e.g., blogosphere and politics (e.g., Deaniacs and Paultards) – but can be successful if tethered right (e.g., my.barackobama.com)

Information = Democracy?

• Capacity for self-governance isn’t just information-based

• Most people are simply not interested in all the relevant information

• Direct democracy can be dangerous, even asinine - e.g., Stockwell “Doris” Day example from 22 Minutes)

Web 2.0

• What does this even mean?• http://www.go2web20.net/ - how many of

these services can we really use?• A new bubble for a new age?

Web 1.0

• Web pages as simple publication - “brochureware”

• Static content, little to no community participation or input

1.0 -> 2.0

• Introduction of community and data management systems• Leveraging power of social networks• Data-driven content - dynamic page creation• Data manipulation and creation by users• Democratic, open-source generally

SLATES (McAfee)

• Search• Linking• Authorship• Tagging• Extensions• Signals

McAfee, A.P (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Sloan Management Review, 47(3), 21-6. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/

Another take (Carr)

Carr, A. (2007). Designing for Sustainable Conversations. InteractionCamp 2007.http://www.slideshare.net/acarr/designing-sustainable-conversations-with-social-media-59204

Web-based Forums

• A resuscitation of BBS and Usenet• Communities of interest built around

particular topics, areas of interest• Example: Craigslist: “don’t be evil” approach,

similar to Google - community of trust, simple functional interface, paid ads in major markets (mostly for quality control, and at user’s request)

Wikis

• Collaborative writing and editing of material• Wikipedia as gold standard, but also effective

for more localized communities of practice (e.g., TorCamp conferences)

• Other examples?

Blogs

• Webpage driven by content management system for ease of use/updating

• Cheap platform for personal and group expression• Blogs withiin blogs develop and contribute new

talent - e.g., DailyKos user journals• Communities of interest build through link

exchanges, trackbacks• Examples?

Microblogging

• Short, informal info bursts - similar to texting• Twitter - what are you doing right now (140

characters or less) - hence use of TinyURLs.• Facebook status updates

Social Networking

• Building communities of friends by school, community, interests, etc.

• Builds FOAF networks• Shared profiles with some privacy restrictions (e.g.,

keeping phone, IM to friend networks)• Examples?

http://www.xkcd.com/256

Examples: Orkut and Facebook• Orkut (Google experiment) - FOAF spam and a strange

Brazilian takeover - now kind of useless if you don’t speak Portuguese.

• Facebook - Ivy league roots, now broader audience• Facebook news feed - all actions of friends relayed - privacy

concerns?• Facebook API - acceleration of services (and junk)• Google OpenSocial - Orkut and others to share common API• Has Facebook peaked?

RSS Feeds

• Information feeds to create push vs. pull relationshiop to media

• Feed aggregators (browser, online or application) collect new information feeds in one location

• Increasingly mashed up with other services (e.g., Yahoo! Pipes)

Folksonomies

• Collaborative tagging and categorization of materials

• Tags and categories develop organically through community input

• Opposite direction from taxonomy – top-down, enforced control (e.g., Library of Congress)

• Use in TorCamp conferences

Collaborative Favourites/Bookmarks

• Shared items/pages of interest• Services such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Fark,

(too) many others become ways of tracking commonly bookmarked items

• Del.icio.us tagging and its benefits

Collaborative Calendaring

• E.g., upcoming.org and Facebook’s event calendar – events both you and your friends are interested in

• Shared calendaring services (mostly based on iCal standards…)

Photo sharing

• Sharing of photo albums, often with annotations, notes

• Control of publication - publication to friends only or wide publication

• Flickr, Picassa, (too?) many others• Local example: BubbleShare

Video Sharing

• User-driven shared video services like YouTube, Google Video (others?)

• (Increasingly) amateur content - some with surprisingly sizeable audiences

• Exposure driven by user rankings• Easily leveraged by blogs/wikis as embedded media,

easily shared

File Sharing

• Peer-to-peer networks to trade files (all legal ones, I’m sure…)

• Distributed bandwidth allows for transfer without vulnerable central nodes (e.g., torrents)

• Community effect - learning about files shared by others

Podcasting

• Downloadable audio or video broadcasts, related (but not necessarily tied) to popularlity of iPod

• Itunes integration - a central repository for podcast feeds, but there are others

(Some) Games

• Which games?• Multiplayer games - building of community

around game actions, especially games that require group interaction to succeed

• Examples?

IM?

• Is instant messaging really 2.0?• To some extent, it adheres to SLATES, but the

community is generally very insular – email isn’t really 2.0 for the same reason

Next week…

• Last formal lecture – remaining notes on Web 2.0 and notes on creativity, its economic value, and why you should be concerned about being creative.