Keen Reading | Response

The internet has become a stomping ground for the average person and in return, the quality of what's out there has decreased. While I appreciate the ability for anyone to post anything (video or written word), it is sad to sometimes see how free time of American's is often spent.

I see blogging and internet news in two ways. Good and bad.
#1 - Less waste (paper, trees, etc)
#2 - Less jobs (newspapers firing people)

I don't know which is better or worse. Regardless of what I think (or anyone else, really) it will go the way the people want it to go. Whichever people choose to pursue. I don't think paper magazines will ever go away. There is something special about having a physical copy of something. I don't know what else to say...the rest is up to history.

Laws of the Jungle | Response

Immediately, this article made me think of delicious. The internet has become the best classification system in the world because of the ability to tag items. I personally liked the quote "Things have their places, not a single place." No longer do we need to physically separate things into different categories. Now we can have things/topics/ideas/thoughts overlapping and in a variety of places all at once. I immediately think of books, cook books, emails and other paper goods that have now become electronic and organized. With the click of a button we can have a search done or something alphabetized. It's simple and economical.

My First Project

For my first project, I plan on doing a video blog of myself, weekly, talking about the latest and greatest songs and albums that drop each week. I would like to expose artists that I see each week and talk a little bit about them in a more interesting way than by just writing about them. This way the viewer can feel as if we're having a conversation and they know me.

I would have liner notes display as I talk, something that has become a thing of the past. In the digital age, these are something that have been lost to illegal downloads. Perhaps by posting images, people can get back that connection to owning the physical CD.

THE INTERNET

There is no "Internet Inc." There are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders.

The Internet belongs to everyone and no one.

Both of these quotes are taken from A Short History of the Internet by Bruce Sterling. (Found here) The appeal of the internet is so strong becasue of the lack of rules, lack of guidelines, lack of ownership and the immense freedom that comes with it. You can use it as little or as much as you would like (some people only use email, some use a large amount of email, websites, blogs, file sharing, etc). The internet isn't a place, so it's not as if someone else has an advantage over you, everyone is pretty much equal in internet-land. You make the most out of it. Of course some people have faster internet than others, but more importantly, the majority of the people have the potential to have exactly what others have when it comes to the internet. It has changed how humans think (dependancy on spell check), tools to educated oneself (dictionarys, news, video, movies, etc) as well as taking away the effort that people used to put in to learn (click-click-type-click replaced driving to the library).

-Emelie

A Response to Henry Jenkins

This post is a response to:
"Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?:
Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture"
By Henry Jenkins

First off, let me just say that I've never seen Star Wars or Pulp Fiction or 98% of the other movies mentioned in this article. However, I do understand a lot of the references to fan culture and media. There were many many references that were way over my head as well. The main idea that I got from reading this piece was how fan culture has evolved so much that in todays society, ANYBODY can get their work out there. So now people can use such resources as youtube.com or fan websites, forums, blogs, etc to post their ideas, stories, movies, artwork, etc and be recognized for it.

Anybody can take a cheap camera and make a film. Anybody who has a computer and a camera, even if they are doing in-camera edits. While the quality may be horrific, their point and idea is getting across to their audience and that's all that matters. If their concept or idea was good enough, they could be picked up by someone with enough money to further their project.

Fan culture is interesting in that it is FOR the people, BY the people and there is something very appealing about that. Taking out the 'business' of movie making and story telling, you get people who are passionate about this stuff and that really speaks for itself.

My favorite part of this article was the quote by Francis Ford Coppola in the very beginning. He states "For me the great hope is now that 8mm video recorders are coming out, people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them. And that one day a little fat girl in Ohio is going be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camcorder. For once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed and it will really become an art form." That quote really embodied the entire article into a few lines for me.

-Emelie

FEED

RSS Feed to my del.icio.us account.

Number One

It's just me, Emelie.