link

As we talked about in class Im going to produce a rap video to the song Livin in Dub Town by the Infant Stompers and try to make it go viral. So heres the link to The Infant Stompers myspace page for those interested.

http://www.myspace.com/theinfantstompersmusic

small towns are so mundane

So for my first video project Im going to do a fun project with my brother who wrote a song called livin in dub town. Its a satirical rap that him and his friends made about how boring wamego is. I did do some contextual shots of driving from I70 into town. Ill use it at the beginning of the video by speeding up the speed with some over laid audio of either me or a clip of an interview describing a small town and how people always explain their small town as boring with nothing to do.

Heres the song:
Livin in Dub Town performed by The Infant Stompers

Livin in dub town
its a place where shit goes down
rollin down the yellow brick road
go to the columbian and watch the show ho
you know peter pan is played by charlie gann
livin in dub town
white trash all around
speakin about white trash you can by some smack city park is where its at
play some tennis with a guy named dennis
you can fish in the pond with some bitch named don from the library
i swear to god that bitch is scary
want to see how bread is made go to the dutch mill
check it out and get your fill

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

want to get fat i know a place, its called mcd's bitch please get on your knees
pizza places dont get me started you cant find one in wamego you fuckin retarded
if you want some real home cookin i know the place to be
the friendly cooker good food for a small fee
the newest place in town is totos tacos they were crowned for the best food around

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

oh shit here we go again we talkin about the 320 my friend
wc and the rest of the world is hot as fuck especially our test scores
when we have snow he says hell no we havin school because im a fuckin tool
dont give a fuck about sports unless its played on basketball courts

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

livin in dub town the place we was born and raised
the place we spent most of our days
i love it here hardly nothin to do but drink beers
tell your pictures crystal clear
but never fear cause graduations almost here
dub town for life

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

hahaha dub town for life beotch

its not all correct but Trent hasnt sent me the actual lyrics yet

video script

For right now I think I'm going to stick to a more traditional documentary style video. The only other idea Ive been pondering recently is a parody on The Twilight Zone. Hard for me to describe the idea just watch the intro and think of it in the context of the internet.

music: I really have no idea, something ambient starts slow, continuously builds in layers until the end, when it just drops you down to a somber reflecting mood.

Intro. going off of my teaser video, get more voice overs, try to reduce the amount of text
-humans are social creatures
-social because we are able to communicate
-formed community
(during this flash images or video of people showing various traditional ideas of community)

when we make new forms of communication our communities and ideas of community change.
-trying to find something along the lines of time lapse of a community using yearly pictures of a community (from a distant to overhead pics) while this time lapse is going on layer with people using different communication techniques from oral, writing, telegraph, radio, telephone, television, and up to the internet.
-community changes from physical places to virtual representations

transition into McLuhan

Use a McLuhan clip/s to emphasize "the medium is the message" there's a lot of good clips on youtube that I can use, don't know which will work until I actually splice them in.

transition into the importance of studying the medium, have to take into account a historical perspective of the medium.

Go over questions:
why did we create the internet?
what was its original purpose?
how have we adapted to the new medium?
how have we tried to change the medium?

This part of the film will go into the creation of the internet
Voice over these ideas:
- brief history of ARPANet to now, how community is a core value of the internet
-people behind arpanet started the internet culture's core values
-sharing, community, interaction, ideas not people
-the entire point was to form research communities to advance knowledge
-time sharing and packet switching
-conforming protocol so that all can connect no matter what computer
-email established early on (try to find early email pics)
-email started mailing communities
-then message boards such as usenets for research collaboration (communities)
-still large computers and no real usage by general population
-creation of personal computer
-creation of world wide web
-personal computer and world wide web (www) made the general population able to connect
-community flourishes now because of more access to technology and the medium
(through each part of the voice over show images of the creators, old hardware, also visual representations of the internet, screen shots of early communities)

types of community, emphasize difference's in identity creation/exploration and how they are limited because of the medium.
-text base (usenet, irc, bbs, muds, blogs, etc.)
- can be whoever you want but handles important
- social capital gained through your 'name' identity created through posting,
- limited to text because most people dont know much about coding
- text and written word pinnacle in many communites outside of cyberspace (thinking of using religious communites to illustrate the point, which flourish even with lack of 'physical' evidence)

(use talking heads who researched early virtual communities, maybe howard rheingold? use screen shots of different text based communities like the WELL)

web 2.0 starts new communities because allows the average user to create beyond text.
-this is when visual communities pop up
-youtube community as an example
-show clips of youtubers talking about community.
-emphasis on authentic representation of self, show clips of people talking about authenticity

for those who want to escape or explore reality there are places/communities for this

creative community
-secondlife as an example
- able to be anything and represent your self through avatars show screen shots and video
-endless possibility, still limited but allows people to manipulate environment in ways they can only imagine

people put an emphasis on identity in these various community types
what happens when you take identity out of the creation, what happens?

introduce Anonymous community focused on creation of 4chan and how its a unique community built around anonymity
-screen shots of 4chan,
-trip codes allow anonymity on the forum (show what they are and how they work)
-what type of community is 4chan?

future of virtual community?
- where we might go with virtual communities depends on the medium and the changing of the medium will change all virtual communities. Will 4chan exist if the government took 'control' and made everyone log on and able to be traced?

video outline

heres the start of my video outline
1. brief history of ARPANet to now, how community is a core value of the internet
-people behind arpanet started the internet culture's core values
-sharing, community, interaction, ideas not people
-the entire point was to form research communities to advance knowledge
-time sharing and packet switching
-conforming protocol so that all can connect no matter what computer
-email established early on
-email started mailing communities
-then message boards such as usenets for research collaboration next communities
-still large computers and no real usage by general population
-creation of personal computer
-creation of world wide web
-personal computer and www made the general population able to connect
-community flourishes

2. types of community
-text base (usenet, irc, bbs, muds etc.) can be whoever you want but handles important, social capital
-web 2.0 starts new communities (visual youtube authenticity important, real self)
-creative community (secondlife, able to be anything and represent your self through avatars)

3. introduce 4chan and how its a unique community built around anonymity

4. future of virtual community?
-what happens with cybernetics (blend of computer and human's could happen, connect in profound ways)

History of Computer's and Computer-mediated Communication's

One of the key aspects of human existence is our creations of community. We are social beings that desire interaction with other humans. Think about it, why do we consider one of the worst punishments in our correctional institutions to be solitary confinement? We have long known that the feeling and perception of being alone can have devastating impacts on people. It can lead to depression, feeling as an outsider, and even at the most extreme cases suicide. Along with the psychological impacts of being alone humans really can barely survive as individuals. We have created community throughout time, going back to prehistoric man in small kin based groups and evolving into complex cities with many ‘communities.’ Yet what is community? The ideas about community have long been debated and a general definition would be a group of people that interact and live relatively close in terms of geographical space and time. In the digital age where the internet is starting to become a dominant medium of interaction, especially with younger generations, the idea of community is again changing. The internet allows a community to form in a new medium, where geographical space and time become almost irrelevant. As long as you have a computer you can connect to internet, you can participate in a virtual community.
In order to understand virtual communities you have to look at the creation of computers and computer-mediated communication technologies. For computers were never originally designed to communicate with each other, instead they were seen as information processors. The first ‘computers’ were people, as the definition stems from the 17th century for one that computes, mainly in the realm of mathematical problems. The idea and definition of computers as a machine and not a person started to develop later in the 18th and 19th centuries as people began to work on complex mechanical machines that aided people in doing complex math problems.
The abacus, a simple counting aid, which is thought to have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century B.C is considered one of the first computer’s in the sense that it aided a person in computing (add link to pic). These counting machines developed over time into complex mechanical machines. A key figure(s) in the history/evolution of computers is Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Lovelace (Bryon). Babbage’s big idea was the Analytical Engine.
This mechanical computer concept would have been operated using punch-cards similar to that of the Jacquard loom (link to an explanation/pic) (also worked using punch-cards). Lovelace and Babbage thought the machine could perform simple conditional operations. (insert pic link) His idea was important because of the punch-card concept that can be considered a read only computer due to the punch-cards. These punch-cards can be seen as some of the first ideas of the ‘computer program’ that are essential in running computers. Ada Lovelace worked with Babbage and saw the potential of the analytical engine beyond mathematical problem solving. She is often accredited with being one of the first great idea creators of the computer program and seeing the vast potential that the machine’s output of numbers could represent more than numbers themselves, such as musical notes.
As with almost all great technological achievements and ideas, the creation of computer’s was happening in several locations at about the same time in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s . Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completed the first general purpose programmable calculator in 1941. (insert pic link). It wasn’t until late 1930’s and early 1940’s that computers made the switch from mechanical machines to electrical machines.
During the war the allie relied on mainly women as computers.
Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.

It wasn’t until the electric age that the term ‘computer’ as we know it started to develop. The first computers were room sized machines that were essentially a calculator. These early computers were completely dependent on having a person present to feed it information to process. These early computers didn’t have screens
In the
Beep, beep, beep, the eerie sound that was broadcasted all over the world on October 4, 1957. The sound was created by a small 2 foot satellite that was launched by the Soviet Union. The satellite may have been small the psychological and political impact it made changed not only the United States but the world. The US government and the people got a big slap in the face. We realized that if the Soviets could launch a satellite into space then they could put a nuclear weapon on the tip of that rocket instead of a satellite and strike any target anywhere in the world. Many in the military and the government realized how vulnerable we were. This is why they created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in February 1958.
The goals of ARPA were to create military technology that would keep us ahead of the Soviets. One of the greatest achievements of this research was that of ARPANet. The reason for the need of ARPANet was that our older telecommunications were all centralized and could be knocked out of commission if a nuclear bomb was set off in the United States would cripple the United States ability to govern and counter-attack. The idea of ARPANet pulls from the realization that researchers working for ARPA were spread all over the country and they wanted to access and use the

Quick update

Here are some of the ideas that I will be presenting in class:

-what are virtual communities? when and why did they start?

-brief overview of the internet and the different communities that formed in the early years of the internet? Getting at the notion of why did we form 'virtual communities?'

-the idea of the virtual is not a new concept just the medium in which it is represented has changed.

-examining McLuhan's medium theory and the idea that 'medium is the message' in correlation to the digital age/internet.

Proposed Research Methods

Since I am doing the history of computer mediated communications, my research methods will be fairly traditional in the descriptive history. I will be reading a lot of journal articles and finding many books to pick information from. Im going to really focus on media Ecology and medium theory to help explain the past of virtual communities. The reason for this being that the medium that allows human interaction is vital in how people are allowed to interact and really structures the communities, especially early on in the internet. The hardware's (computer's) technological advancement really helped the development of the medium of the internet. My research will involve a lot of deep readings and trying to organize my research with new technology.

Another aspect of my research will be looking at anyone that has written about the history of the internet, virtual communities, case studies of specific virtual communities, or really anything relating to history of 'cyberspace'. I want to trace the idea of the 'virtual' through the past and see if our version of 'virtual reality' is similar to people of the past that only had cave paintings, minds eye, plays, etc. While going through these readings I really want to try and utilize tools such as evernote, diigo, and anything else I find in cyberspace that may be helpful. To help pick apart the readings and write my thoughts, highlight quotes, etc. I want to use as much computer technology as I can to conduct my research so I can explore how to adapt old ideas into new technology, while also trying to figure out my own method of organizing my research notes. I need to also pay attention to the other students in the class to keep myself in check in how my research will fit in with everyone else's research, it is a collaborative project, my fellow students can be a great source of information that I may have never been able to find on my own.

Along with the different tools that are out there to help people organize research, I want to dive into cyberspace and become a more active member of the virtual. To do this I plan on blogging, vlogging, and even joining one or more virtual communties, such as second life. I feel this would be beneficial when I conduct my research so that I have a better personal understanding and better insight into the virtual world. I can have real experience that would help me analyze the writings that I will be reading. Saturating myself in the virtual world will help get me in a mindset that will help me conduct research or bring new ideas that I should investigate.

To sum up, I will be doing a lot of traditional deep readings, but I want to utilize computer's to develop a method of digital research utilizing computer tools that are made to aid people doing research. While reading through peoples work I may find that I want talk to the author so I may have to do some interviews either face-to-face or through the medium of the internet in a skype interview. I also want to dive head first in becoming an active participant in a virtual community.