Final Project

Here is our group's video for the final project. Enjoy!

Final Project Passage

This passage is taken from the bottom of 109 of Lessig:

Until the Internet Archive, there was no way to go back. The internet was the quintessentially transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and reforming society, it becomes more and more important to maintain in some historical form. It's just bizarre to think we have scads of archives of newspapers from tiny towns around the world, yet there is but one copy of the Internet--the one kept by the Internet Archive.

All Day Samples

Saw this on a music site I regularly check. Someone out on the interweb decided to post a guide to the samples used on Girl Talk's "All Day". It displays each track and the artist/song sampled as it comes up in the audio. Pretty interesting to see all the different type of genres used to create this album.

Check it out.

Assignment #2 Video

Here it is...

Second Writing Assignment

The Last (.FM) of Convergence Culture

Since the emergence of the second version of the Internet, the world of online interaction has primarily revolved around participatory culture. People online now have the ability to create content, share, and be praised—or relentlessly haggled—by their discovery. This has lead to an entirely new means of expressing and sharing information since there is constantly an outlet to do so. Many websites, like Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace, have a well-established community of users who constantly share, create, and express various aspects of social culture with one another. For die-hard music fans, the same can be said.

Last.FM can be described as a Facebook account for people who cannot step outdoors in public without an iPod in hand. The website, which actually dates back to 2002, has more than 40 million active users around the world. Primarily, the concept of the website is to keep track of what each individual user is listening to. Each person’s Last.FM homepage consists of the top tracks played, loved tracks, and a scroll of what the user’s friends are listening to.

In addition to the previously mentioned features, Last.FM has expanded its purpose to other aspects of the music industry. In a recent addition to the website, users can display what concerts they plan on attending. Now, there is a direct forum between concertgoers to share information about a particular show.

Many of Last.FM’s attributes exemplify Henry Jenkins’ concepts of participatory culture and collective intelligence. Last.FM allows users to view the week’s overall ten most played tracks within the website’s entire community. It also displays and recommends songs users may be interested in based on personal preference and the preferences of the user’s friends. The site also allows friends to personally recommend songs to one another.

The willingness of Last.FM’s community to keep tally of what songs they listen to is at the heart of Jenkin’s notion of participatory culture. By each person sharing such information with one another, it only furthers the example. Last.FM is meant to be a fun way for music enthusiasts to share fun things with one another. When this information circulates throughout Last.FM’s community, it creates collective intelligence and the website becomes an alternative source of media power.

Along with this willingness to participate, users have the capability to share music with each other. Last.FM’s message feature allows users to share songs with each other, allowing each individual who receives this message to preview and respond to a song. Again, this demonstrates a participatory culture aimed towards to the analyzing of music within an online forum.

Last.FM shares one particular feature with YouTube: it creates a cultural identity with its users. According to Burgess & Green, any website that encourages user participation and provides a text for its “social tapestry” demonstrates the capacity to have its users identify themselves in terms of the web page. Each individual’s homepage reflects directly on who they are.

To demonstrate this sense of cultural identity, I will use my very own Last.FM page. So, who exactly am I on Last.FM? Based on my homepage, my last song listened to is “Brainville” by The Flaming Lips; the band I have listened to the most is Radiohead; and my most listened to song is “Lowdown” by My Morning Jacket. Although it’s hard to reflect on what my cultural identity means to others on the website, I know that many of my friends would consider my taste in music compatible and relevant to their own.

From the perspective of a non-Last.FM user, my taste in music may seem weird and absurd. Looking at the list of bands I just mentioned—Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, and My Morning Jacket—some might say the bands I listen to are quite obscure. Yet, to anyone within the Last.FM community, these artists are highly regarded. For instance, if we were to take a look at Last.FM’s statistics we would find Radiohead sitting right below The Beatles at the number two spot on most listeners and most plays.

Alas, the opposite may also be demonstrated. Both of the songs I mentioned by The Flaming Lips and My Morning Jacket do not come close to cracking the site’s 100 most listened to tracks. Yet, if we were to jump over to a friend’s homepage, one of those tracks would sit in their top twenty lists and all three artists rest before spot fifteen on most listened to artists.

Last.FM is a very unique part of the concept of online media convergence. Reflecting on both individual and communal trends in music, the website displays how a particular hobby can be turned into a cultural phenomenon. Through empowering its participants to keep track of their listening habits and share information with others, the website has created a one-of-a-kind community reflecting the trends of the music industry.

The Social Network

Last night, I attended a screening of the new film "The Social Network". The movie, which details how Mark Zuckerberg came up with Facebook, was quite fascinating. Aaron Sorkin did an amazing job writing a compelling script examining the relationships between the many parties involved in the process--or plagiarizing--of the concept of social networking.

In relation to Internet Studies, I found it interesting how much coding was involved when creating Facebook. Zuckerberg and his crew become "wired" in coding where they are not to be distracted by anyone or anything. At one point, Zuckerberg is "wired" in Facebook for 36 hours straight. I've personally had to write articles in HTML coding and found it to be a real pain in the ass. The amount of dedication it took to create Facebook's basic coding seems ridiculously tedious.

Another aspect of the film which was really compelling was how much of an asshole Zuckerberg seems to be. For someone who created a site to connect people to one another, he seems extremely disconnected to his relationships in real life. Most of the time, he seems discontent with others thoughts and feelings and frequently zones out during conversation. Although he may have gained 500 million friends through Facebook, he is a character who has no interest in keeping his friends in real life.

First Internet Experience Website

Here it is!