Reading/Reflection on Joshua Meyrowitz and Michael Wesch's writings on new media/mediums

Reading Chapter 2 of Joshua Meyrowitz book "No Sense of Place," was intriguing, but relatively mind numbing. Meyrowitz drums up the constant media ecologists stance of media content is not necessarily the most important aspect to focus on. Meyrowitz asks scholars to focus more on the medium as McLuhan has noted with the catch phrase of "the medium is the message." Meyrowitz presents medium theory as "historical and cross-cultural study of different cultural environments created by different media of communication," (Meyrowitz, p.16). Then also presents the situationism theory and describes it as "the exploration of the ways in which social behavior is shaped by and in "social situations." (Meyrowitz, p.16). Meyrowitz says these theories need to be expanded and explored through new ways of conducting research.

Meyrowitz recognizes that the medium can structure cultural development and the media that's put into that medium. Along with recognizing the medium as important, Meyrowitz notes, so to are people and their keen awareness of unwritten rules that permeate all social interactions of humans (Meyrowitz, 1986). The sizing up the situation that people do everyday that changes their interactions and presentation of self are just as important as the medium, since the medium dictates what, who, and how things can be said or presented. Its not just the medium that dictates, but also those that control social environments, whether it be preists, governments, or individuals. Meyrowitz continues to reiterate multi-faceted approaches to investigating new mediums/media and how human behavior develops in new/old ways from the new technology.


This is where Dr. Wesch's yet to be published article "YouTube and You" becomes interestingly intertwined with all the other readings we have been doing. Wesch is one that is actually taking up the 'call,' I guess you can say, of actually trying to come up with new research techniques. Same with Neil Whiteheads approach of participant observation, observant participation. They are exploring new ways of methodology in order to understand the new mediums and those that interact in various mediums that we created and are slowly being realized the monumental impacts they are starting to have on our behavior.

Wesch is specifically looking at the internet and the new medium's that allow human interaction's that create new culturally rich communities. A place of virtual communities that are de-structuring(?!), sometimes can even reiterating old assumptions traditional ideas of place, space, and time. These old ideas confine ones idea of the world around them and the idea of self. Wesch points out the impact of showing the people in the village of Sio a Polaroids of themselves. "Recognition gradually came into the subjects face. And fear." (Wesch, Carpenter 1973). At first the villager's couldn't 'read' the pictures because they were, "flat, static, and lifeless - meaningless," (Wesch, p.2). This is a great similar reaction that some people have when they first access the internet.

The first time I used the internet I failed to realize just what it meant. One of the first things I did was to try and log onto chat rooms. I had an urge to connect to other real people through a new communications tool. People seem to want to connect in new ways, otherwise why would we 'invent' language, writing, telephone, television, and the internet if not to help build, strengthen, and explore the complexities of social relations? Yet I still have yet to explore the full extent of interactions the various mediums of the internet allow. Maybe I dont want to explore myself. Yet I'm blogging right and that's exploring without putting my 'face' out there. People seem scared of that fear that the Sio villagers had when they became 'self-aware.'

Wesch identifies this hyper self-awareness is similar to the feeling people that vlog on YouTube confront. They are keenly aware of their identity and how they construct that identity in all varying social situations. Along with being aware of their identity they struggle with what Wesch identifies as context collapse, "an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording," (Wesch, p.6). Context collapse seems to produce self-reflection on a new level. Self-reflection then turns to a deep connection's with other people that vlog who feel similar. People connect in deep ways, but can still be disconnected due to the structure of YouTube and the community that is forming.

Another example is the Post Secret Effect that is being researched by another member of this collaborative project. This is again where the medium becomes important. The medium dictates the types of emotional reaction and connection that can be achieved. Going back to Meyrowitz and knowing the unwritten rules of social interactions that vary person to person and situation to situation. The internet complicates these ideas of right and wrong.

4chan is against what most people consider normal behavior and questions the notions of normality frequently. If you stumbled across 4chan you might be frightened by the internet community that is forming in a veil of anonymity. When you look at 4chan and understand the medium and the complexities of 'correct social behavior' on the boards you may come to see it as a beautiful area of a real reflection of humanity. Where through satirical anonymous messages, a person can explore identity in a new relatively safe environment. The medium of 4chan and its structure that allows unrestrained conversation can be considered an area of humanity that all, one time or another, flirt with the idea of really examining the morbid side of ones perceived identity. Through examination of the darkest areas of oneself sometimes the most profound realizations could be made.

Anonymous and the 'moralfags' that are a part of Anonymous, seem to be similar to the vloggers that realize through extreme self-examination that there is common ideas that people share all over the world. This is exemplified by Wesch's example of MadV and the "One World" and "The Message" vlogs that MadV created. Wesch points out that when you have context collapse it creates a 'medium' where one can reflect on the "generalized generalized other," (Wesch, p.17).

Wesch points out at the end of the article that there is a need to examine the "impact of new media on self and identity," (Wesch, p.21). This is what our research is exploring the idea of self and the impact that the mediums created on the internet help people construct a sense of identity and self. Specifically my project is history of virtual communities (computer mediated communication). It seems to me that it connects to almost all the other projects in some way. I just haven't figured out how i can make this anything but a fairly boring description of the creation of the medium and the ways in which we have adapted to the varying limitations of the the technology.

I know as much as you want me to know, yet I know more than you allow me to know

Finished reading an article that was published in the International Herald Tribune titled "Web Ushers in Age of Ambient Intimacy," by Clive Thompson. In the article Thompson goes to describe impacts that internet social networking sites such as facebook and twitter are impacting peoples lives. It starts off with telling the story of facebooks 'news feed' that was started in 2006. The news feed takes all the updates that your friends have made to their page and organizes them into chronological order on the main page of your facebook account. This new feature has started to change the way people are seeing themselves and others. The news feed is like twitter, which is another social networking site that limits the number of words per update.

Even though the two operate in similar fashion's facebook allows way more in depth knowledge of others in terms of how they construct their identity through their info page in facebook, but allows more privacy since you have to approve who can see most of your information by becoming friends. While twitter really only lets you 'micro blog' about yourself as Thompson describes in the article. Micro blogging is small excerpts of text, while blogging usually entails longer written entries. Micro blogging from twitter and news feed from facebook are making social interactions much different than ever before. People have an 'ambient awareness' of those who are connected by social networking sites. Ambient awareness is described as where people overtime get a deeper sense of each other through these 'micro blogs' about themselves. This awareness has an impact on levels of intimacy that we can have with people.

Thompson notes that people feel that they are becoming more and sometimes less connected due to the usage of the sites. People are able to connect on much deeper levels and have access to way more knowledge about their close friends through social networking sites, but are people making more friends on that deeper level?. Thompson mentions the Dunbar number, which is the number of friends that people naturally constrain themselves to. For most people its around 150 people that you can keep in a relative tight loop. He shows that while people may be able to expand their Dunbar number exponentially, most people are still not connecting in deep emotional ways to these 'weak tie' friends.

Ambient intimacy can profoundly strengthen 'weak ties' or friends that you met but really wouldn't stay in touch with on a normal basis. Twitter and facebook allow people to stay in touch instantly. It also allows for a way to stay in touch without actually having to meet or speak necessarily to each other personally. This knowledge that almost anyone anywhere can lurk around our lives is changing people. This is directly related to our research into identity on the internet.

People are hyper aware of each other as the Thompson's article pointed out. This hyper awareness makes people extremely conscience of how we project ourselves on the internet. You make the identity that, can emphasize or down play different aspects of ourselves. Yet its neat to see that with twitter one can cross check the various constructed identities we make using sites like facebook. Twitter gives lets you see what people really are doing on a day to day bases and this can give a better reflection of someones life than what has been possible before when the individual constructed what they wanted to project about their 'real world' identity. Depending on how much information is posted on facebook and how often they use twitter. It will be interesting to watch as more social networking sites come about and how the structuring of these sites will allow different creative ways of interacting with more and more people across the globe.

Reaction to "Notes Toward an Intellectual History of Media Ecology" by Casey M.K. Lum.

I read a small part of Lum's article, pages 28-38, over "Studying Media as Environments," otherwise known as media ecology and defined by Postman in the late 1960's early 1970's. Media ecology focuses on explaining how media as an environment impacts humans on varying levels. Lum writes that people live in various media environments and that these environments interact in different ways. These interactions impact the way people construct the world around them. In the field of media ecology Lum notes that there are three theoretical propositions that dominate the field.

The first being that the structure of a given medium defines the nature of the information. The second notes that, "the different physical and symbolic forms inherent in different communications media presupposes correspondingly different biases," (Lum, 2006). The last one builds on the second, "communication media facilitate various psychic or perceptual, social, economic, political, and cultural consequences that are relative to the media's intrinsic biases," (Lum, 2006). All theses theories realize that different communication technologies impact humans in a profound way. Lum then goes on to make a historiography of media. Lum categorizes them in four main communication epochs. The first being orality, the second literacy, the third typography and the last being he electronic media epoch.

The electronic media epoch is the epoch that we now live. This is where the article really makes me think we live in a fun time. A time where my generation is one of the first generations to grow up in the computer age. That puts us at a great position in reflecting on how our lives have revolved around new technology compared to people of different times with other 'new' technologies. The internet is currently changing the world around us in many ways and I get a first hand seat to these global changes. Makes you wonder where we will go with this new medium and where exactly have we already been?

A reading of "Post-Human Anthropology," by Neil L. Whitehead

Neil Whitehead's article "Post-Human Anthropology," was an exhilarating read. The title alone makes one wonder post-human, what? Whitehead describes post-human anthropology as, "..an anthropology in which, paradoxically, the human subject is no longer the exclusive center of attention...an issue that has particular relevance for a discipline committed to the research of "all things human," (Whitehead, 2009). He specifically is looking into the internet since we have brought humanity to the internet through human interaction, especially in the creation of virtual communities that includes anything and everything people take an interest to.

In the article Whitehead questions the approach of European Enlightenment Anthropology, where there is a definitive place, space, and people to study. The reason he questions the old ways of ethnographic research relates to the crisis in anthropology that's been hanging over research for the past 40 or so years. The internet and the new medium of human interaction that the net allows brings the field to a strange place where there is no 'real' place to go and the 'people' you study can sometimes be near impossible to find in the non-virtual world. Whitehead's approach to his research is fascinating because it challenges the bread and butter of ethnographic field work where one is a participant observer. Relating to our research this becomes extremely apparent since we are investigating anonymity on the internet. The cyberculture that we study will be a mass of 'individuals' formed into a collective body where the individual becomes irrelevant. The only aspects that matter to 'Anonymous' are the core beliefs of a diasporic virtual community. A community that interacts not exclusively in the medium of cyberspace, but one that blends the virtual into the real in order to call attention to ideas, beliefs, etc. that they see as harmful to humanity. What becomes interesting is that this fragmented ideological virtual community is considered by the overarching society as villainous.

Whitehead's research becomes extremely important in this context of taboo's in regards to sexuality and violence. Whitehead chose to look into the ideas of sexuality and violence after doing field work in Guyana and Brazil. His interaction with the "kanaima" showed him, "...that violence is always more than its material appearance," (Whitehead, 2009). He realized that on the internet people explore sexuality and violence in relatively safe and anonymous environment. He decided to investigate digital subjects through his co-created Goth/Industrial music band "Blood Jewel." Whitehead quotes Freud, "the "uncanny" occurs where the accepted structure of a world is violated, "when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred" (Freud 2003: 150). The genre of Goth/Industrial music where Whitehead explores sexuality and violence in an artistic expression of music and visual displays continually violates the norms of many cultures.

more to come when I finish classes today.

Reflecting on David Silver's "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000"

A quick recap of the reading to get me thinking...
I just finished reading David Silver's "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000," (http://www.scribd.com/doc/9525177/Silver?secret_password=2kj8wcye7gt62iokofhh). His essay is a look at many major scholarly writings examining cyberculture from 1990 to 2000. In the essay David Silver categorizes the literature into three generations of writings popular cyberculture, cyberculture studies, and critical cyberculture studies. Silver calls them generations due to the way the writings evolved throughout the ten year time span.

Starting with popular cyberculture stage consisted mainly of journalists writing, who in a sense can be considered the first writers of history. They described the new medium in terms of the idealistic American Pioneer. Who had to struggle their way through the vastness of the new frontier. Silver notes that these early writings were mainly descriptive in nature and slowly started to appear in major magazine publications such as Time magazine and Newsweek. Silver notes that many of the writers in the, "early popular cyberculture often took the form of dystopian rants or utopian raves," (Silver, 2000). These two types of descriptions of the internet remain consistent even into today, as scholars continue to debate cyberculture and what it means to people.

Silver refers to his next stage as the cyberculture studies. This stage again retains its descriptive nature and its dualism of ideologies of where the internet will ultimately lead us to. Silver notes that in this stage of writing people began to write about the complexities of interactions of humans on the internet. Where the idea of community formation is changing the definition of a community as being bound by interaction in terms of local geographical space and where there may never be real face to face interaction. Silver notes Howard Rheingold's book, "The Virtual Community," as one of the pinnacle texts in describing a brief history of virtual community formation.

Silver then introduces the reader to Sherry Turkle's work, "Life on the Screen:Identity in the Age of the Internet." Turkle takes on a more utopian view of the internet. Highlighting that people create online identities to more often than not to highlight their offline selves. The online identity allows people more freedom than their 'real' life and in turn this allows a greater introspection of ones concept of personal identity.

The later years of they 90's is where Silver points out that the study of cyberculture really takes off scholarly and this is where the third stage of critical cyberculture studies begins. Silver notes that in this generation scholars start to go move away from the pioneer studies and into a more traditional relation of understanding how we are interacting in a new communications medium. Silver breaks this generation into 4 main areas,
* Critical cyberculture studies explores the social, cultural, and economic interactions which take place online;
* Critical cyberculture studies unfolds and examines the stories we tell about such interactions;
* Critical cyberculture studies analyzes a range of social, cultural, political, and economic considerations which encourage, make possible, and/or thwart individual and group access to such interactions;
* Critical cyberculture assesses the deliberate, accidental, and alternative technological decision- and design-processes which, when implemented, form the interface between the network and its users.
(Silver, 2000).
Silver explains these four areas and shows they are all interconnected. In the first area labeled
'contextualizing online interactions' Silver notes that there isn't a very good history of the development of cybercultures and that scholars looking into this domain have just started. This was where I got excited since my research will be the history of virtual communities. Silver also brings up that the internet is a place where new discussion has started to be generated in regards to the internet being a frontier and it being a place of boystown (Silver, 2000).

Silver mentions that the net as a new frontier metaphor emphasizes the internet as a place for 'men' and unfit for young children or women. Showing that old myths have a foothold in stereotyping the new medium. Silver highlights the boystown discourse as the internet being a place of, "material desire for young men" (Borsook).

The next area of 'online access and barriers', Silver goes on to show that the typical user of the internet is a younger white male from the middle class. Silver shows research from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In their work they investigated the divides of who is information have nots and have lots. The NTIA points out that the divide between the lower and middle classes in relation to access to the internet is increasing. Their reports also note that the racial divide is increasing as well when it comes to who has more access to the internet. Yet in these ever growing divides Silver quotes some of Mitra's work, "... using these technologies to re-create a sense of virtual community through a rediscovery of their commonality" (58). Basically as the divide between access grows those marginal groups that are on line are connecting and forming virtual communities due to their similarities.

Overall David Silver's essay is a great overview of some of the best examinations into cyberculture in its early years. Silver points out the need for continuing extensive multi-dimensional research into cyberculture. This is exactly where our research fits in as a part to complex whole of new ways of approaching the study of cyberculture. Studying cyberculture demands a combination of old and new methodologies. The field of digital ethnography puts at the forefront the notion that the old ways won't work in respects to the new medium where traditional research is done in clear geographical space and time. My research will fit in nicely when describing anonymity and the formation of community, because you can't begin to understand if you don't know the how, when, and why virtual communities started to form using the new technology.

Reflection on "Virtual Ethnography" by Christine Hine:

This article was wonderful to get me started to think more of how I will go about doing my part of the research in our collaboration. As I consider that I am a newbie in the area of actually participating in an ethnographic research project, this was a good start to introducing me to the emerging field of virtual/digital ethnography, which is relatively as new as I am in respect to the field of Anthropology. Hines describes a lot of older ways of more traditional ethnographic research. Such as the idea of Anthropologists as 'story tellers,' travelers, and their unique outsider/insider views of ones own and other peoples culture's. Hines notes that these old methods can be adapted to the new medium of cultural interactions, the internet. Also Hines notes that there is a bigger need to think of new ways of doing research beyond traditional settings where one has to go to a new space, rather than traveling to a foreign place, find informants, participate and etc. Hines really hit at a lot of what Ive been thinking in terms of the idea that the internet makes space and time irrelevant in terms of where and when one can conduct research, considering that as long as you have a means to use the new technology then one can become an active member of an ever evolving new social space. 'Space' is no longer defined explicitly by geography, but rather the accessibility and ability to 'connect' to the internet via an electronic device. As I think about my own abilities of connecting Ive realized no longer is connecting bound by a massive computer from the 60's or the desktop of the 90's. Connecting has increasingly become more mobile with newer smaller computers. Just think I have access to the internet, at any time and almost any place, in the palm of my hand with the new smart phones. One can connect to the internet almost anywhere, this benefits people doing virtual ethnography since they have the ability to be a participant in internet cultures 24/7, just like one would be involved 24/7 in a more tradtional ethnography.
As I start to think about my research into the history of computer mediated communications I think its going to have to incorporate more than just a general description of how virtual communities have been formed using cmc's. There is in ever increasing desire of mine to look into more than just the history of cmc's alone, speaking in terms of the software that enables our interactions and limits the types of interaction that can be achieved. Its crazy to think that our interactions and abilities to show culture via the internet is bound by those that write code and invent new technologies. A few people have made a major impact in the way we organize and construct culture on the web. Come to think of it there is an anonymous aspect to the ones that have coded the software that enables our interactions, especially with the ever growing open source software. No longer do we as consumer's have to rely on corporations who demand a high premium for their software. You can get the same thing products now a days that have been coded by a multitude of people collaborating all across the globe. Anyways, I will have to look also into the history of the hardware that has given rise to a new medium of cultural interactions. This article has really made me think that there's a lot more history than I previously thought in regards to cmc's and that limiting myself to only the history of the software would limit my understanding of how we have used the technology and how the technology is using us, as Dr. Wesch has implied.

Now on to Yochai Benkler's article "The Wealth of Networks"

Benkler's article focuses on the new medium and how we have been using this new medium in our social lives. The article goes to explain how we use cmc's to strengthen/thicken, our already close family and friends (strong ties). Also goes into how we are using the internet to strengthen ties with less close friends, neighbors, and even general acquaintances. Even though these weak ties appear to make us know more of those around us our actual deep connections with these people stay fairly non-existent. Benkler points out the different views of the internet one side being more utopian and the other more dystopian. The article points out that both are never fully correct but continue to change their ideas as the technology changes and allows for different forms of interaction from email, im, blogs, vlogs, second life, etc. Benkler goes more into the positive view more or less winning in terms of followers/believers. Yet our inspection of anonymity fits in the bad side of the internet. As I reflect more on my research I need to look at how anonymity has taken a foothold in the new medium starting from the beginning of the internet to now. Also I need to look into the aspects of early scholars writing about how anonymity would destroy the new medium and how it actually has allowed the new medium to create a more stable platform to communicate ideas. It allows what earlier poets, anarchists, intellectuals, etc could only dream of especially in the realm of potential readers of their work and in the ways of expression that are limited to written words alone. The potential of the internet and how we/it will shape our lives is intimidating.
Benkler writes about the internet in regards to face to face interactions and their importance to us. The internet allows one to hide our face yet also allows one to show their face to a much larger audience than ever before. This idea that at anytime, anywhere, and anyone can be anonymous or be anything but anonymous is baffling, especially thinking that you can do so at the same time. I can have a face to face talk to a friend by meeting up with them in a traditional interaction, while having a faceless interaction going on through IM by using my phone in the middle of my face to face interaction. I can have simultaneous conversations going and I can pick and choose my identity in each of these interactions, the way I show/hide my identity is based on the medium that my interaction is taking place.
Enough of my ramblings for the time being I would conclude by saying that I have a lot to think about and a lot more to learn as this project progresses.

A community has traditionally been viewed as a group of people that interact and live relatively close in terms of geographical space. With the invention of the internet a new form of community has been created, a virtual community. The internet allows a community to form in a new medium, where geographical space and even time become irrelevant. As long as you have a computer and can connect to the internet, you can participate in a virtual community. These virtual communities allow people to project their identity so that others can see using computer-mediated communication (cmc), such as facebook, instant messaging, blogs, vlogs, forums, second life, etc. This virtual world allows members to be completely anonymous to other members in that community. Anonymity has been achieved in other mediums through the usage of masks and pen names. Yet the internet has given rise to a new medium that is evolving rapidly and allows new levels of anonymity. A digital medium that has the potential of allowing one to interact with one to billions of people instantly. Allowing the creation of communities that can be created and then materialized visually on a computer screen.

My project will focus on the history of virtual communities. I want to see how we have adapted the technology to fulfill the need to form community, anywhere and everywhere. How have these new forms of interaction changed the way we interact outside of the internet? How has the interaction from simple text communication, video interaction, and the creation of virtual realities (second life) changed the dynamics of virtual communities? Why do people connect on such deep levels emotionally and yet they may never meet or know the other persons name? In order to know where these new realities might take us, one must start from the beginning...

Here's my final trailer.

trailer2

here's my second trailer.