Curating: Google Alerts

When I first started using Google Alerts to curate and manage content, I was focusing on ideas such as the DIY movement and self-learning. I wasn't really sure why I wanted to research these, but there was something drawing me to them. After a couple days of receiving the alerts for content related to these topics, I honestly was overwhelmed by how much is out there relating to these. I'm not exactly sure how this overwhelming feeling led me to the following realization, but they just connected somehow for me. Or I guess you could just say that I decided to focus on a completely different idea. Either way. But anyway, I found that in all of the content that I found, I was drawn to the ones that had to do with defining our humanity. Learning, creating, improving, etc. on our own accord is something that is innately human, but we also need a way to express our newly found experiences. That's where technology comes in. Without the use of the internet, self-directed learning would take a lot more discipline, and the DIY movement would be practically non-existent. So I added a new alert for "humans and technology" and the results are fascinating! I thought I was going to be overwhelmed again by all of the content, but the results are actually quite narrowed. Here are some examples of what I found:

Robot car that drives itself
Robots that can collaborate with humans
Scientists are actually creating a bionic man--completely from technology!
The desire to extend human life through technology
Looking at how dependent on technology humans are
Technology that can be part of our wardrobe (Which actually fits right in with the book I'm reading!)
I think this one is my favorite: Allowing prosthetic limbs to be incorporated into the actual nervous system
and creating a computer that functions like a human brain.

This relationship between humans and technology is fascinating to me! It is remixing our culture, creating something completely new for us to study, as I talked about in my "Changes in the Humanities" post at the beginning of the semester. We want to be human, but we use technology to expand, share, and get new ideas. In this way, technology is just one of the facets of humanity, but I also think that sometimes it goes too far when it seems like it is overtaking humanity. One such example is this video of androids built in Japan (and I actually was legitimately scared a little bit by this!)  But what do you think? Is technology and science going to far? Not far enough?

SoundCloud problems

Melody brought up a good question when she asked me whether I have been able to find some of the smaller provo bands on soundcloud. The answer is that it has been hard. The problem with actively trying to find a smaller band, as opposed to being led to it by recommendation algorithms, is that you are going to be shown a lot of bands and songs with similar names (even the same name). And often times you won't be able to tell that this is the band you are looking for unless you know the names of there specific songs. And finally, some local bands opt out of uploading there music to soundcloud (such as Joshua James). So what are my alternatives to finding these bands?

Well the best one is to go to smaller scale local music venues, where you can see local bands play and talk to people who can give you that information. You can also do a social network search...though i'm not entirely sure how many of these bands continually tag themselves as a provo band. So basically ask friends or other people, whether on Facebook or in person. As Melody pointed out, sharing music on sites like spotify or soundcloud with a small group of friends can be a great way to discover new music. So my answer is that no, I have not been able to find many smaller Provo bands. I will need to pursue other avenues besides SoundCloud searches.

For example Professor Burton told me his son played in a local band called "Eli Whitney" and I remember him saying they had a soundcloud, yet I couldn't find them on there. Now this may be because I misspelled the name of the band. But I tried entering some variation on the name and still couldn't find anything. It seems hard to find a band unless it already has sizable views on soundcloud, though not as hard as youtube. But it is still chaotic and hard to navigate at times. I wish they had a better system of organization and tagging.

Remixing Humanity

I am fascinated by remix culture on multiple levels. The first level is the most well-known level among the majority of people: the remix music industry. The idea of remixing music really expanded in the 90's when DJ's became more and more popular, and then that evolved into things like song mashups. I love song mashups! My roommates and I will make mashups on our own, and we love finding more ideas like this:

Remixing then started to expand into other forms of media, as mentioned in this article. However, remixing also expands into mediums that are outside of digital media. For example, in class, Dr. Burton gave us the example that Milton's "Paradise Lost" was a remix of the Bible and a Homeric Epic, and in this case we see the remixing of different genres. Remixing can also happen across different mediums, as seen in things like audiobooks and the like.

But I want to take the idea of remixing a little bit further. Can remixes happen between people? Cultures? Ideas? Of course it can! It happens all around us, we just need to look for the different combinations that are being mixed together. One of the first things that I thought of was this blog post that I did a while back. At the time, I was talking about how to make a mark on, and influence the digital world. But I realized that the example I used of the virtual choir is also a remix. The people involved are all of different backgrounds, cultures, religions, you name it, but they were all combined to create something new. I also found this interesting video/article about how strangers can be mixed together to create a familiar feeling.

Just in the past week, I have found another layer of remixing that I find fascinating. I realized through my book preview that the topic of the human/technology relationship is in itself an aspect of remix culture. The novel that I am reading is all about how technology is influencing humanity, and it is actually becoming an actual part of humanity. Humans are being remixed. Is this a good thing? How are we supposed to react to this remixing of humanity? Do you even think it is a remix at all? What are your thoughts?

Curating with Diigo

When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to use for this curation project, I decided that I wanted to use a tool that I had never tried out or heard of before, so I chose diigo. I started out by making a profile and wandering around the website a little to try and get a feel for what I was jumping into, but there isn't really that much on the actual diigo.com webpage. So, I next decided to watch the video tutorials. I figure that it would probably be way easier to use this site to its full benefit if I knew what I was doing rather then spending hours trying to figure it out on my own. 

As I've been searching around trying to find articles and websites that talk about my subject (which is still a little all over right now ranging from media, to editing, to web identity), diigo has been really interesting to work with. My favorite feature is being able to highlight and annotate articles and to archive articles. I read tons of stuff online everday and I feel like I am always telling someone, "I read this awesome article today, but I don't remember what it told me only the basic subject, and I don't remember where I found it." Useless, huh? With diigo, I can save articles to my online archive so that I can go back to them later, and with the highlighting feature, I don't even have to read the whole article again to remember what it was all about. Instead, I have some notes and some highlights that I can use to get the gist real fast (cause I already did the work to read it once, it's great that I don't have to read it again!). I really appreciate that all of this carries over to my iPad too since I mostly use my laptop at home and my iPad on campus, so I am swaping between the two a lot throughout the day. 

The next step that I need to take in using diigo is to start finding other people that are using this site that are interested in the same thing as me so that I can start piggybacking off of their research. It would be really useful to see what others are archiving and see how was others have already found can help me figure out what I need to be looking for an how to make my research more refined. 

Curation: SoundCloud

I am currently working on curating a playlist on my SoundCloud composed entirely of Provo bands. So far I have the bigger names on there, but I want to get a bigger sampling of what Provo is producing. Going forward I will expand this list.

But what is SoundCloud?

SoundCloud is a site where anyone can go and listen to the music (or even interviews, etc.) posted there. You can explore music under many different genres, such as rock, electronic, Hip-hop, and Jazz. You can also listen to things under the categories of Story Telling, Technology, Sports, and News. If you want to comment on songs, or like them (done by pushing on a little heart symbol below the song, for the purpose of being able to browse through your "likes" at a later time period for repeat listens) you need to create an account. This is free. Also, bands are not payed to put there music up on SoundCloud, so this is one of those abundance economies. The artist has an option to allow the song to be downloaded for free, to make it unavailable for download, or to make it available for download but for a price. In this way it is more progressive than itunes, in that you can listen to the entire song before deciding whether or not to buy it. In SoundCloud you can create playlists on your account, you can repost songs you like, which will show up on the feeds of the people that are following you (and likewise if you like what someone is posting you can follow them). All this is intended to help people share and discover music. Indeed, not every band out there chooses to post to SoundCloud, but many have done so. Including a lot of Provo Bands. 

So essentially, i will tag my playlist with things such as "Provo Bands, Provo Music, Indie, Alt-rock", and so on. This will allow people who are looking for that type of music to stumble upon my playlist. I have already gotten one follower based off this playlist. 

Curation: Trying out Goodreads

First, just throwing this out there, someone should write something called "curation myths." Internet lists are all over that kind of thing, and that's a catchy title.

Okay now that that's out of the way, let's talk about curation tools. I'm going to be trying out Goodreads as a way of collecting useful books and useful writers for the topic I am going to be studying in depth this semester. I've never used Goodreads for that purpose before. When I have used it, it has been to catalogue my own personal collection of books, and to read reviews from friends. I am excited to use it as a way of looking outwardly instead of inwardly now.

I chose Goodreads over Amazon lists because I just like that Goodreads is not trying to get me spend money. I suppose Goodreads has monetary interests just like everybody else, but on the corporate corruption scale of Whole Foods to Goldman Sachs, they seem to me closer to first end of things, similar to Google maybe, or at least what Google aspires to be. (And apparently Amazon is buying Goodreads anyway?? I guess it's time to bow down to the Man regardless.)

A more relevant feature of this tool is the ability to make separate lists for subtopics, and make shelves. I also like the community of book readers on the site. One time, I even connected with the author of a book I reviewed on Goodreads on Twitter after he found my review.

Some limitations I am keeping in mind: I am worried that Goodreads does not have every book (of course, neither would Amazon or any other source, but the possibility to sell is certainly a motivation to have a robust catalogue). And I am also concerned about the limitation that it only has books, where it may be just as useful for me to find articles and essays, published in magazines instead of on their own.

One final thought about Goodreads: when I first learned about it, it was in another class with Dr. Burton, and I was surprised that nothing equivalent existed for film, which is the medium I prefer the most (hopefully that does not make me lose English major cred to prefer films to books). I wrote a post about that, and was happy that someone who was developing a site for that found my post and commented. His site has since launched, Seen That, as well as another, Letterboxd. I have used and been impressed by both of those, though I prefer Letterboxd so far.

Reclaiming Fair Use -- A Book Preview

I picked up Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright from the library this week, to boost my literacy of copyright laws and practices. As someone with some experience and lots of aspiration to create content and share it using digital tools, I want to have a firmer grasp of the stickiness of the issue, and I liked that Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's book seems to come at the issue from the perspective of "reclaiming" something rather than digging heels into tradition.

Preview

After spending a few minutes browsing the book, I see that the book's scope is usefully narrow. It does not appear to be a history of copyright law in general, but rather a focused look at the fair use clause of copyright law (clause? is that how to think about it? I'll find out!).

In addition, I seem to have been right about the forward-thinking tone and approach of the book. Some of the most interesting-looking chapters have titles like "Why Fair Use Is So Important," "How to Fair Use," "Pioneering Best Practices," and "The Culture of Fear and Doubt, and How to Leave It."

Early Social Proof

I let my social network know that I'm thinking about these things, and was happy to get a response from a friend who is a freelance writer, and who also works at a content and marketing company. She writes:

I have to research copyright every day for my job. We have to be careful in how we use different companies' logos and taglines, and when we write a new one, we have to make sure it's not already copyrighted or trademarked. It's an interesting world. Not many people know that the "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted song, which is why restaurants can't sing it and come up with their own ditties, and it's why it is rarely used in films-- because it's very expensive to use... I could geek out about copyrights all day.

I especially loved her last line. Geeking out about copyrights sounds even more fun than it did when I started!

Similar Books
I put the book through an Amazon search to see what other books it might hang out with on the shelf, and I found books with titles like Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars; How to Fix Copyright; The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind; and Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back. 

That last one, especially, seems like a provocative "other side of the story" to loud faction who support totally open information and media. I'll make a note to check that one out.

I also found the most common "shelves" that Goodreads users put Reclaiming Fair Use in. I found that to be a helpful way to not only finding other similar books but also understanding how people think about and classify this one.

Formal Reviews
I found several reviews of the book using the university library's database. These reviews come from journalism journals, which is understandable although I was expecting more from law journals, which I also found.

David King, a media librarian, describes the book as "a pep talk and how-to manual on exercising fair-use rights" and points out that the book is more interested in empowering people to use the freedoms the law already allows rather than needing to storm the castle of copyright entirely and rewrite everything.

Scholar Judith Fathallah writes:

Not intended for ‘‘bomb-throwers’’ (in effect, those who seriously question the legitimacy of intellectual private property), nor for ‘‘big copyright holders’’ (Introduction, p. ix), this is a book for citizen users who largely accept the legitimacy of media ownership, or at least believe with the authors that immediate efforts to change the system are unrealistic, seeking rather to exercise and strengthen their rights within it.

Fathallah comes from the UK, which must inform her valuable critiqe of the book, that it swings nationalistic in its perspective. After all, Fair Use is an American law, and does not exist in exactly the same way in other countries.

Informal Reviews
Wow, there is a site called FairUseTube.org: Promoting Fair Use in Online Video -- it is no surprise that theirs was the first review of this book! The review was positive and praised the book's history of copyright and (especially) its emphasis that much can be done within the realm of what laws already exist:

The authors argue that copyright reform advocates were far too quick to concede that fair use is too vague and nebulous a concept to be of any real use to those wishing to put copyrighted content to new and transformative uses. Instead, scholars like Lawrence Lessig and others began advocating either for radical changes to the copyright system that are unlikely to ever happen, or for alternatives to traditional copyright such as Creative Commons.

The user reviews on Goodreads also seem very positive. This appears to be a readable, interesting book to a wide variety of people interested in copyright issues.

Other Sources
Classrooms have used this book -- what a useful thing to know, in case I want to reach out to some of the people who have thought the book through. Occidental College teaches a course with the book (And that course also uses clips from 30 Rock, so they have my affection!). As does American University and the University of Pennsylvania. All these courses seem to be focused about new media, copyright, and history.

I also found videos of interviews with the author, one short one (which has been embed-disabled, but can be found here) and this longer one:

First Impressions
By the time I actually sat down to seriously begin reading the book, I already had a sense of what I might find, which helped me read much more effectively.

I am especially taken by the authors' critical examination of the "culture of fear and doubt" surrounding copyrighted material. There is an inspiring story about a parent posting a video of her child dancing to a popular song. Universal, who owned the music, issued a takedown notice, but the parent went to court and won. Fair use advocates want owners like Universal to stop abusing their hedge around the law that keeps content creators from living within the law, out of fear.

I also thought it was nicely put that we are "becoming a nation of makers and sharers" (though that may have traces of the nationalistic critique). As someone who grew up as that really became possible, I didn't really consider the shift inherent in that reality.

I am relieved and eager to learn from this book so far that one does not need to keep a copyright lawyer in your pocket to understand and use the copyright laws effectively. Here's to empowerment and creative fair use!

Exploring the Changes in Media Through Dan Gillmor's "We the Media"

I am an English major and editing minor, and I am graduating in April. When I tell people I want to be an editor, most people first ask, "like for a news paper?" It always surprises me that people think this is the only place I could edit is a newspaper. But, really how many of us are even getting our news from sources like this anymore?? So, I want to figure out where we are getting our information instead, and possibly start to figure out what this will mean for me as an editor. I am starting Dan Gillmor's We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People for the People, and it will hopefully be able to answer some of these questions. 

Preview

After looking over Gillmor's book, examining the table to contents and skimming through a few pages, it seems as though it will focus on how media has transformed, what effects this has had on people (specifically journalists), and how this will continue to effect people (specifically journalists). 

Early Social Proof

Nobody responded to my google+ post about this and I just figured I wouldn't even bother posting on twitter because I don't expect I would get feedback from there either. I tried talking to a couple people about this, but they seemed relatively uninterested.  Thanks everyone. I wish I had thought about this a little earlier so I could have chatted with some of my editing friends to see what they think about it. But, alas, procrastination is kinda my thing. 

Similar Books

The Elements  of Journalism: What Newspeople should Know and the Public Should Expect

Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel 

     An overview of media history, practice, ethics.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization

Clay Shirky

    How the spread of technology is changing social interations and the way that people form groups and 

    interact with them

Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing

Mark Briggs

Mediactive

Dan Gillmor

    What is the future of journalism, and how should people get around in today's flood of information online?

Who Cares?

First of all, I wanted to see if the author of the book had a media presence (which I was assuming he did). I found him on google+ and added him to one of my circles and also found him on twitter and started following him. I thought this would be good to find out what the author is thinking now with all the changes in digital media since the book was written a few years ago and a lot has changed. I then did a twitter search looking for both the author and the title of the book. It would seem that a lot of people like bloggers, journalists, social media supports, etc. are reading the book and are interested in what he has to say about the state and progress of journalism in the digital age. 

Formal Review

I found a review posted on The Guardian in 2004 when the book came out. One thing that I thought was really interesting was that the review claimed that the thesis of the book was in no way new, but really had been a thought for many years now. But, with the advancement of digital culture and the developments leading up to this book, it can finally be proven how the internet and technology is changing how we produce and consume the news. What is remarkable is that he is the first one to gather all of this evidence together to prove that the media is moving into the digital age. 

Informal Review

I found a blog review of We the Media on a blog called Masters of Media. They seemed impressed by the book and the way that Gillmor not only looks at what is happening now, but why it is happening now. He uses specific examples that illuminate what is happening with the media in the digital age and how it has reshaped media over time. The blogger also applauded Gillmor for making his book free to the public using Creative Commons Licensing. 

Educational Courses

I'm not entirely sure that I did this search right, but I did not see any search results for courses using this book. I did however see a review of the book from a Harvard Law website and Ohio website. 

Multimedia

I found a video of Dan Gillmor giving a lecture on his book We The Media at UNC Chapel Hill. It's mostly him talking about the ideas from his book and the thought process behind everything. I didn't watch the whole thing because it is an hour long, and well that's really long. 

First Impressions of the Book

This will be updates by tonight. I promise. 

Copyright: through the eyes of Keith Aoki in his book "Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain"

I have heard this book talks about creativity and copyright while at the same time doing so in a creative way. I heard it is sort of like a comic book or graphic novel in layout. I am excited to see how that works out, if it is effective and not distracting. Also, I think copyright is a very important issue in the film and music industry.

Preview:
The first thing I noticed by way of the cover was that yes, this book is indeed formatted to be like some type of comic book. Flipping through the rest (which had no chapters) confirmed that. I also noticed there were two more authors: James Boyle (the same author that did Professor Burton's book) and Jennifer Jenkins. The next thing that stood out was that the book was free, and under a creative commons license. So I am technically free to share this book with others so long as I don't try to make money off of it and I give correct attribution to the authors.

Early Social Proof:
Nobody posted on my google+ comment so looks like i'll have to ask my roommate his opinion... cretins! Well my roommate thought copyright sounds like an important issue because it has such important implications in many fields, especially in computer, a field he may be going into. This was good to see someone these laws effect. Now I am even more interested in copyright law.

Similar Books:
I am searching Amazon and Google books for similar books--
 I saw a book about getting patents on genetically modified seeds by the same author. I kept seeing books by other authors talking about remix culture, DIY, and maker culture, and issues with how copyright laws are limiting creativity. In particular I saw on amazon some interesting books talking about copyright in the music world, about sampling, and about how creativity is being limited because of labyrinthine copyright laws. I will definitely be looking at how copyrights are stifling creativity.

Who Cares?:
A search on google+ under the heading Public Domain brought up a number of people, many griping about the limitations of getting things into public domain. Somebody was griping about her facebook pictures being used in the public domain. And I saw a post by Professor Burton on The Great Gatsby. On twitter I searched under "bound by law, public domain" and it turned up a lot of people either recommending the book, giving a few tidbits on it (such as it being from duke, or written by law professors) and talking about it. #fairuse turned up as well.

Formal Reviews:
Found some good reviews. Most helpful of which was probably the one my google search turned up by Timothy B. McCormack. He talked about how the book is pretty much a very in depth look at certain things such as copyright laws, fair use, and creating an "environmental culture" where people come together to get fair use and copyright law updated for the modern digital world. Also the book is mentioned as being very effective at getting the messages across because of its medium of image heavy content. Images are how we think, and if you can't draw something you don't really understand it is what McCormack points out.

Informal Reviews:
I found a good review on a blog called "the hooded utilitarian: A pundit in every panopticon" that esentially points out. They point out that in the book fair use is seen as vital for artistic creation: artists need the ability to respond to, and be influenced by, one another. This is because it limits artists from completely cutting there work off from the world.

Syllabus:
Found that this is used by a lot of universities, USC was using it in a media law survey course.

Multimedia:
Saw this cool remix video on youtube, which essentially gives some of the big ideas of the book in a remixed style with music in the background, images, etc. Seems to build upon the creativity put forward by the book insofar as medium goes.

First Impressions of The Book:
I like the parts that talk about fair use because I don't understand it. But it is helping me see that fair use was made to encourage more creativity, but because of bad copyright laws it is actually harder to implement fair use than it should be. Thus creative commons is becoming an alternative to that. I liked the images and layout of the whole thing a lot. Even the introduction, with the creepy old guy making things seem scary was good. And showing all these images of superheroes, etc. just made the entire thing interesting to look at. The way I skimmed this, in fact, was to find a neat image and then read what it said there.

My thinking so far:
I really enjoyed the portion where we had to find similar topics or books. This has shown me how much music has to do with this topic (the book touches on music but is mainly about film). Copyright laws are definitely something that the remix, sampling, and branding/logos/band names has to do with.

What do you thing? Should we have more lax copyright laws or should they stay the same. Is creative commons a good thing or is that a way for artists to never make any money?

Exploring the Human/Technology Relationship in "Rainbow's End"

I think the relationship between humans and technology is very interesting, but everyone has their own opinion about how that relationship works. I want to read “Rainbow’s End” by Vernor Vinge to look at a fictionalized account of one such relationship to see the possibilities that arise from it. I hope that it will give me something to hang on to in my research, because I tend to get lost in technology/the internet when doing research. By reading this novel, I hope to get the aspects of a human mindset in a technological world.

Preview

This novel looks so interesting in light of the relationship between humans and technology. The list of chapters in the table of contents shows a mix between chapters that look to be about humans interacting with each other, and other chapters that have technological references in the title, such as “No User-Serviceable Parts Within” and “How-to-Survive-the-Next-Thirty-Minutes.pdf”. Vinge also looks like a man that is reputable in this field of thought because the About the Author section talks about how he has spoken in conferences about the subject, and he is thought highly of among scientists, journalists, etc. He was also a mathematician and computer-science professor along with being a writer. Quite the mix!

Early Social Proof

This is an idea that has been in my mind for longer than just what we have done in this semester. I talked about it with one of my friends, who also happens to be a high school English teacher. During her science fiction unit of her class, she focused on ideas like this and came up with the tagline, “What makes us human?” for her class. As we discussed this idea, we realized the idea of being human spreads across all aspects of life, as does technology, so it is important to differentiate between the two. She also said that she is interested in the idea that in order to truly have control over the technology in our lives, we must be educated in it. I’m excited that this idea is one that everyone can relate to and have insights to!

Similar Books

Books similar to “Rainbow’s End” are mostly the other novels by Vernor Vinge. He sticks with the theme of technology and humans throughout his stories, but there were also many other types of science fiction stories that explored the same idea. One that struck me is the connection to Isaac Asimov’s stories. His stories, especially “I, Robot” focus a lot on how humans can relate to or interact with technology, and how the lines between the two can be blurred. I think the idea of the blurring of lines is a string of thought that would be interesting to explore a little bit more in my research.

Who Cares?

I did my main search on Twitter because I feel like that is the tool that connects people the most across all tools of the internet, and I found some great stuff! I didn’t find anyone reading this novel at first so I tried “#vernorvinge” and found people who were reading his other work. I even found people who were excited to meet him and have him sign their copies of his books. But I also saw another common hashtag among these posts for “#singularityu” which led me to a community of people who are finding ways of using technology for educating themselves! That ties right back in to my original topic! The ideas of Singularity University tie right in to the ideas that I am exploring, so I am following that hashtag to see what other people are saying about it. It also led me to interesting articles such as this and this that I plan to keep in mind as part of my research. This community is full of people that are excited about learning about technology, through technology! Leaning is such a human trait, and technology can enhance that.

Formal Reviews

Through using Google (to keep the theme of my Google Alerts going) I found a review by Chris Meadows of this novel. An interesting aspect that he explores in the review is the idea of interactive fiction. He quotes Vinge to say that hypertext will allow for a new art form in writing, but there hasn’t been really any full success on that front, but it allows for further creativity on the parts of both the author and reader. He also talks about how the real world overlaps the digital world in the novel and the conflicts that arise through that overlay. Meadows acknowledges that the ideas discussed in the novel are possible, but he doubts that they will happen because there is no way to really predict the future.

Informal Reviews

When I searched through the reviews for this novel on Goodreads, I found that people were really intrigued with the ideas presented in it. One review from “Kris” mentioned that “the book is largely about people trying to discover the significance of their own actions. Another way to put this is, they're trying to discover the meaning of their own life.” I think this goes along with the idea that technology can help us to discover ourselves as long as we don’t let it overtake our lives and drive our actions. We need to keep the human aspect of decision-making. Many reviewers mentioned how the dialogue is not as strong as Vinge’s other works, and it can be a bit dry, but the ideas represented are what drive the novel. I thought that was really interesting. Is that Vinge’s critique on humanity? Is our ability to speak and community giving way to technology and its layers over humanity?

Multimedia

When searching for other media sources that reference “Rainbow’s End”, I actually didn’t find very much. I did find this picture of the book with a caption talking about how much they loved the novel. However, I did find this awesome article about Google X. Google X is taking on some of the ideas brought up from the novel, making some of Vinge’s ideas come true. This reminded me of the book “Fahrenheit 451” because that novel written years ago had elements that are now happening in the world of technology today, and both novels are built around ideas of where the line is between humans and technology.

First Impressions of the Book

As I have been reading this novel so far, I have noticed many small references to a life without technology. These references are easy to pass over, but there have been enough that I think that Vinge is trying to hint at the simplicity of a world without technology, and I am excited to see if he develops that idea more. In particular, there is one passage where he mentions that a character is going out of the city to sight-see in the mountains and he uses language that gives the impression that the city is touristy, noisy, and never-ending, but then the mountains and oceans are peaceful and remind the character of a simpler time. We'll see where these ideas take us!

My Thinking so Far

In combining all of these elements of research, I am excited to see a couple of my scattered ideas revolving around a certain theme. I am fascinated by the idea of what makes us human and what differentiates us from technology, as well as how humans and technology can work together. As I continue my reading of this novel, I am going to be looking more at Vinge's tone about technology to see if he agrees with the mixing of humanity and technology, or if maybe he is using this novel as a way to hint that there needs to be a greater separation. I'm excite to see where it takes me!

Teach Yourself with Google Alerts

When we first got the assignment to pick a curating tool, I was immediately drawn to Google Alerts. However, my over-analytical brain told me this wasn't sophisticated enough and I should try something I haven't ever used before, like Diigo, Listopia, or Stumbleupon. I'm not really sure why I thought that made sense. Fortunately, I had an epiphany as I was exploring these sits. These tools are very useful, but I realized that for what I was trying to focus on in my curating, Google Alerts was actually the perfect tool. Here is why:

My topic of research/curation: I am very interested in the idea of the relationship between humans and machines/the internet. I have started to explore the idea of Web 2.0 and how humans can make an impact on the internet through what we can contribute. But then I also started to get interested in the idea of DIY projects and how prevalent they are in human society. So, when we wants to learn how to do something on our own, or look for people/communities who have done the same thing, what is the first thing we do on the internet? Google it. Then, after we have created that something on our own or come up with a new idea, we can share it on the internet, making our mark and perhaps helping others to do the same.

I set up a few Google alerts that are emailed to me each day for queries such as "DIY", "self-directed learning", and "self education" to keep up with what the majority of people are finding when they search for similar things. Some of the things I have found are really interesting, like this blog post about the philosophy of self directed learning, or this one about a specific person's personal experience with self education. Some DIY projects are made to save you money, like this idea that, if it works for your needs, helps you with something practical. There are also smaller DIY ideas such as life hacks, which may or may not work, but we use the internet to get the idea out there and let people decide for themselves.

When we complete projects like these, we are filled with a sense of pride and satisfaction (assuming it worked out for you--if not, find another project!) and we want to share that feeling with someone. This is the same type of mindset for when we want to teach ourselves something new. When we find something that we really want to learn about, we will find a way to do it, and then share our product/project as well as the way we did it with others who may want to learn about the same thing, thus leaving our mark on Web 2.0.

So these ideas are all still floating around in my head, and I'm still organizing the idea as a whole, but what are your thoughts on Google Alerts? Do you know of any other curating tools that would work well with this idea?

Focusing On Something

As I have been exploring digital culture in this class, one thing I keep returning too is music. I am a music nerd. I have especially enjoyed looking at how the digital world has revolutionized music.

So this is where I am going to go. I want to focus on music, and how it exists in our digital world.

More specifically, I want to focus on the music being created in our very own Provo. Some spectacular things have happened/are happening in our back yard at BYU. I think we should pay attention. So I am going to be analyzing the way Provo bands are using the digital to make and share there music with the world. I hope to interview some people. To curate some lists on Youtube and/or Soundcloud. I want to look at articles, blogs, and anything and anyone that is talking about Provo music. I might occasionally look at bands outside of Provo too as examples of using the digital in exciting ways, but my focus will be on the local scene.

Cool.

Ishmael the Curator

Maybe you thought you were done thinking about Moby Dick and now here I am bringing him up again. But actually, I wanted to talk about Ishmael. Dr. Burton suggested that I do a quick little post about my paper and link to it on Team Queequeg, so here it is.

The question that I based my paper around was this: Who is Ishmael really, and what does his created image in Moby Dick say about how users are creating their images online today? When I started this paper I was thinking about this website that re-imagines episodes of Downton Abbey as Facebook feeds. It's pretty funny. I started to think about what Moby Dick would look like if you did the same thing for Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg are not friends. "Your friend Ishmael just shared the page four articles 'The Fountain' 'The Tail' 'The Grand Armada' 'Schools and School Masters'" "Ishmael is--feeling bored" "Ishamel just created the page 'RIP Pequod.'"  So, as I was thinking about this I realized that the was Ishmael presents himself is a lot like the way that we present ourselves online. He really is just curating a bunch of content and it is all wrapped up together in the book Moby Dick, so really I see Moby Dick less as a hunt for a whale, and more a study of who Ishmael really is and how the way that he curates content reveals his true identity, the same way that how we curate content online reveals our true identity. This includes what we share, what we don't share, how we share it, who we share it with, etc. All of this reveals our "true identity" the same way Ishmael reveals his in Moby Dick.

This is possibly what I am going to look into for my research, how we curate identity. This is something that is very interesting to me as someone who has a very strong online presence. How is what I am choosing to share and curate reveling my identity?

If you are interested, here is a link to my full paper. 

Mind-Wandering

Disclaimer: The start of this post may seem totally random--that's the point. Stick with it, or if not, you can skip to the main point of it at the end. But what's the fun in that?

Brittany Hansen cut her husband's hair. Her blog post is of her conversion to DIY. What else can be DIY? Share your ideas. Ask for others. Everybody's got their own DIY ideas. If you DIY, you can be awesome. You can make light shows, costumes, and masks. I can do what I want! Should I do random things? For myself? As a gift? Should I make it a project? That's what Julie Powell did. "Julie and Julia" was a good movie. Julia Child studied at Le Cordon Bleu. They have campuses all over the world, but, more importantly, I can get a degree in cake-baking. That is more important because cake is a "sweet baked dessert". Cake is the most important. I mean, just look at it. Cake. That's all I can think about. Like the blog post on Hyperbole and  Half. I don't know that I'm the "god of cake", but I'm pretty close.

I'll stop there because cake is always a good note to end on. I could easily keep going (in fact, I kind of did for a while) but this is sufficient. If you followed all of the links, congratulations! Go eat a cake or something! But if you just read straight through, well, you kind of missed the point. And what exactly is that point? It is that this is EXACTLY what my mind does. Always. One idea leads to another, and somehow I go from reading Brittany's post about cutting hair, to being a god of cake. It is good to go exploring like this, but when does it become too much? At what point have we lost the academic aspect of it?

Today in class, we were discussing curating and curating tools. My next post will be as Dr. Burton said, about how we can specifically use those tools, but I wanted to use this as a sort of precursor. My idea of what curating does for us is that it prevents this, or it gives us an anchor as our minds go exploring. And even if you end up wandering way off track, maybe you will accidentally find something golden, add it to your curating tool of choice, and come back to it when your mind as wandered sufficiently. What are your thoughts on mind-wandering and/or its relationship to curating?

Going Deep in Digital Culture

Creative Commons image by Citron

One obstacle that bloggers who wish to engage in focused, serious work must confront is the perception that blogging is less substantial, more superficial, than other types of writing and study. That stereotype is possibly fueled both by how readers consume blogs and how writers create them – readers may read many posts at a glance, with accusations of having a short attention span, and writers may work without an editor, with less gatekeeping than traditional publication. But blogging need not be for the dabbler alone: scholars and professionals too may use new media to do concentrated work in their field, finding in Web 2.0 the tools for complexity and depth.

To this end, Melville’s Moby Dick is illustrative. The novel has perplexed decades of readers – it wasn’t popular until after Melville’s death, and it doesn’t easily fit into any genre. It’s a heavy book – heavy with symbolism and with pages. But on an important level, Moby Dick is not as unwieldy as that would suggest. While it is true that much of the novel’s power can derive from symbolism, and readers may set sail off the novel’s shores on a tireless quest to harpoon for themselves The Meaning, the book’s straightforward meaning merits serious examination as well. When we take it at its face value, we see a novel that is “about” whaling, to an encyclopedic degree, and a narrative that is informed by actual events. When we consider the significance of the literal components of the novel, it becomes an example of, rather than a symbol for, the type of profound commitment and thoroughness to a subject that twenty-first-century bloggers may employ.

Those who read Moby Dick for its adventure narrative may struggle impatiently with the many diversions the text makes into some new facet of whaling. Chapter 9, “The Sermon,” although a continuation of Ishmael’s narrative, takes the time to record a lengthy discourse on the Biblical story of Jonah, allowing readers to consider what scripture has to say about whales, (and it includes, for good measure, the singing of a hymn that has the phrase “the ribs and terrors in the whale, arched over me in a dismal gloom”) (36). Such a lengthy record of the sermon stands out when we read other chapters that begin, “Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket” (55). Here we get an idea what Melville thinks is more important: bald explorations of whaling, even more than narrative.

Chapter 14, “Nantucket” describes the people who seem have whaling in their bones. Chapter 25 is a “postscript” to point out that kingly coronation uses holy oil from sperm whales. Chapter 85, “The Fountain,” describes the anatomy of a sperm whale at great length. The Etymology and Extracts at the beginning of the text are exhaustive compilations of what must have been pain-staking research to find dozens of quotations about whales throughout literature, which Melville of course created without the assistance of a search algorithm, making highly doubtful that their inclusion amounts merely to gimmick. But no chapter is more demonstrative of Melville’s “book about whaling” than chapter 32, “Cetology,” or, the study of whales. “It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you,” Ishmael says. “Yet it is no easy task” (116). For the narrative-thirsty reader, who, after all, just finally met the character of Ahab after a much drawn-out buildup, such an encyclopedic pit stop may seem almost cruel. But reading the novel as a highly descriptive series of standalone images – not only as symbolic – allows readers to appreciate Melville's accomplishment in becoming deeply invested, rather than superficially interested, in a particular subject.

Bloggers, too, might be interested in tackling a single subject, their posts much like Melville’s chapters: generally short, frequent, and covering a wide array of aspects of the subject. In fact, digital platforms provide their own tools for depth. Connections between interested parties across the gamut from amateur to other scholars can be invaluable for focused considerations of thoughts. A comments section of a blog can fuel the efficacy of the marketplace of ideas, holding writers accountable for what they write. If a blogger treats a subject carelessly or without considering all sides, his or her reputation may take a hit when commenters fact check, the wisdom of the collective serving as its own kind of peer review. Because it is harder for bad ideas to survive in an environment where many people will see something wrong and correct it, bloggers have an incentive to be thorough. Of course, smart bloggers will welcome thoughtful feedback and criticism – an open approach is a highly valued ethic of the medium.

In blogging terms, going deep in a particular subject may be described as niche blogging. Countless blogs exist on the subject of knitting, poetry, parenting, politics, and every specific component of those that one can imagine. Social media allow for like-minded people to find each other, and for bloggers to find their unique audience of people as passionate as they are about their particular niche. People sometimes ask me, because I created a news podcast about Pixar Animation Studios, “is there really that much to talk about Pixar?” I am not offended by their question, because most people would probably wonder the same thing – but for my niche, the reality is there are always more subjects than I can ever cover in a single week.

Of course, in thinking about how blogs can provide a platform for in-depth study of subjects, I do not mean to disregard the valuable side of dabbling that blogging can facilitate. In the digital ocean, it’s okay to try it all – boogie boarding, surfing, fishing, water skiing – before picking a single whale to chase. And many successful blogs are built with different goals altogether – TED, for example, is not devoted to a single topic, but is a searchable database of hundreds of speeches from experts on a variety of topics. That is valuable in a different way, too. But just as Moby Dick stands as a testament to the human ability to commit to a single subject for more than a few minutes, blogs can, if one so chooses, be a great way to dive deep – as long as community-minded creators can budget their attention in the vast sea of widgets and embeds at their fingertips.

Midterm 1: Part 2 Questions

I did the bulk of my connecting between Moby Dick and Digital Culture on this post, but for this section I want to throw out some more ideas and questions, and refine some existing ones from the last post. Which ones sound most interesting to you?

--Moby Dick can be read as a novel that is about never ending advancement. Ahab and the crew he drags along with him are seeking after the white whale, which is always metaphorically just out of reach. This is similar to the video game industry in the sense that progress and "the new" is the golden ideal, the white wale is the attainment of the best graphics, the most complex game, the best way to integrate the player into the experience. But at what loss? I know the "classic games" on NES and Super Nintendo had a certain charm for some people (including me) that newer games cannot replicate. What is the loss for those in the novel Moby dick? They are losing out on a relatively simpler life composed of chasing whales that are not so dangerous or exotic as Moby Dick. Yes this might be more boring in some ways but it would also be more comfortable, quainter. Is this good or bad. That is, ultimately in Moby Dick when they confront the white whale (the equivalent in the gaming industry would perhaps be achieving total immersion within a game...what is that called? I know there is a name for it, virtual reality?) they are destroyed. Perhaps that is what awaits the gaming industry if they do not go back to the simpler, quainter times of Yo!Noid, Battle Toads, Bubsy, and Earthworm Jim.
                                                  ---OR, this same idea in Moby Dick could be applied to film. The way film is in a race to become more and more technologically advanced, which is perhaps sacrificing more traditional elements such as the quality of the story and character performances for flashy digital effects and animation. That is, they are trying to get viewers in a different way. Just as the pursuit for Moby Dick is a shift in how the crew go about there lives and how Ahab is going to interact with his crew.

--Finally, I might go off of one of my blog posts, where I talked about a certain chapter in Moby dick as representing an important struggle in the Digital World--the need to continually learn new things (and I could even tie in the creation of new things, bringing the previous film and video game ideas to play under this banner) and how it is never ending...there will always be something new, just as in the chapter there will always be another whale that needs catching.

All these ideas have to do with "the new" but in slightly different ways. The question is 1). Which idea or ideas are most interesting, and 2). which Moby Dick theme or scenerio goes best with it/them?

Midterm 1: Part 1

The posts:

--Call me Samuel
--Proper Etiquette: Spoilers
--The (never ending) Moby Dick Metaphor
--irobot
--Hashtags

As I look through my notes and classmates blogs I have begun to see all the concepts being thrown around right now. And there are a lot of them. I think this mirrors our class in a way. Digital culture is a hugely diverse subject. We are living in the midst of the digital revolution. There is a lot of positive developments going on. For example, crowdsourcing is revolutionizing the way businesses, artists, and science does things. In business you can have a lot more help in refining a product, in testing it on target audiences. In the arts you can bring people together and do things you never thought possible, such as creating a virtual choir. You can show your movie or song to different groups of people to see what works and what doesn't. Indeed, crowdsourcing has allowed access to "the wisdom of the masses". This is also seen in Moby Dick, where Ahab easily gets the crew on his side when he first addresses them, and riles them up, over chasing down the white whale. Ahab did not neglect the importance of the masses. Look at Kompoz, the collaboration site for making music. This is a genius idea, allowing people from all over the world--specifically amateurs--the ability to collaborate and create music. I am very interested to see if this pushes the music industry allowing for even more of a Long Tail effect than already exists in the music industry...which leads me to...

The Long Tail. Or, Diverse markets, the rise of niche and subculture. This Long Tail effect is allowing more people to discover the wonderful world of Indie Music. Something that would never have been possible if not for the explosion of accessibility to music via various places such as Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud, Amazon, Itunes, etc. There recommendations are creating a long tail effect by leading the buyer down certain paths, gradually finding more obscure music.This explosion of possibility is what is creating modern, fast-paced novels and movies that have all sorts of different genre and elements and even worlds mixed into the same movie (going bovine, wreck it ralph, scott pilgrim vs. the world). Moby Dick is this in a way, it is a mixture of so many different things that it fits into the Long Tail mentality. You have your overarching themes in the novel, such as the white whale and all it represents, and you have other themes that gradually move away from that main theme (the head of the tail). Eventually you can get to quite obscure themes such as Ishmael's Hypochondria.

Identity has been another big theme in this class. Identity is becoming increasingly important due to the fact that having an online presence demands that you put forward some type of identity. That identity you put forward is in your control. You have more control over what pictures you put on facebook, the amount of time you spend writing and editing the content you will put up. In essence, all very different than real time. I am intrigued by the concept of identity creation--finding out who you are, who you want to be.

Finally, Video games have been another item of interest for me. I wonder, with so many advances in the technological aspect of video games, are we losing out on some of the simplicity of the older games? And does this in turn reflect what we might be losing out on with all the advancements (bigger,faster, better) in the digital realm as a whole? Are things so concerned with being newer, flashier, and better that the "good ol' simple life" is being abandoned? And is that a bad thing or a good thing?

 

Call me Samuel

Disclaimer: This is my autobiographical piece, because I just realized we did one of these....

Two experiences:

When I was little my grandpa pulled out one of my (not loose) baby teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. I'm not sure how I ever agreed to that, or if I agreed. I was probably tricked. The tooth snapped in half--so one half came out, then he had to get the other half out.

When I was a little bit older I decided to do the 5k ("Funrun" they called it) at my elementary school. This experience was much more painful. It was also much more my decision. I wanted to win. I was in complete control of wether I stopped or kept running hard. It was sheer willpower that drove me forward, through the pain and towards my own white whale--victory.

Both experiences involved intense pain, though that pain differed. I had no control over one, the other I had all of the control. In that sense I have been at various times in my life both an Ishmael and an Ahab. Ishmael is at the mercy of an old madman (my grandpa? but it could also be the attitude "victim of fate"), cajoled onto his ship unaware of all that was to come--tricked by fate you might say. Ahab is in control, he knows what he wants--Moby Dick (my desire for victory? but it could also be pretty much anything that is craved). He pursues it at all costs, through all pain.

So that is a little of who I am. This class has been very interesting thus far and I am excited to see where it leads in terms of both Moby Dick and Digital Culture.

(I am in the middle...I won)

Midterm 1.2: Prewriting for paper: "Going Deep"

My initial approach to reading Moby Dick was to set my eye on symbols. The primary value, I thought, that the text had to offer was in how the whale could represent relevant concepts and situations that I was interested in. And certainly, the metaphorical possibilities abound in the novel -- it is rich with meaning, both intentional and not.

But surprisingly to me, what interests me most about Moby Dick is not how universal or widely applicable to a variety of concepts it is, but how particular it is, how specifically about one thing it is: whaling. Without by any means undermining the symbols people draw out of the novel, I admire, and want to process in my paper, Melville's ability to create meaningful descriptions as they are, without having to be slave to any symbolic aim. Reading the novel as a highly descriptive series of standalone images -- not as a symbol -- allows me to appreciate Melville's accomplishment in becoming deeply invested, rather than superficially interested, in a particular subject.

Melville's novel confounds genre. Encyclopedia, high-adventure narrative, epic. More than being about any of its chapters, as a whole, the novel is about, simply and completely, whaling, and the function that each of those chapters plays is to describe more and more aspects of that subject as possible.

Blogging has also confounded genre. Journalism, journal-writing, creative nonfiction, personal essay, even person-to-person conversation -- have all gone into what makes blogging blogging. A place like Buzzfeed has a reputation of creating casual silliness, but even they have a long-form editor, and are using their unique approach for documenting the news. When applied to a single subject, all of the various tools afforded by digital platforms can allow a creator -- like Melville did -- to go deep in a field.

In addition to years of personal experience to go off, evidence of tremendous research is obvious all throughout the novel, especially the chapters that may strike the narrative-thirsty and the symbol-thirsty as boring or "not the point." In particular, the many quotes about whales in literature and the bible must have taken tremendous effort to produce.

Moby Dick the novel stands as a testament to the human ablity to commit to a single subject for more than a few minutes. Blogs can extend that same commitment to go deep, too, if creators can budget their attention in the vast sea of widgets and embeds at their fingertips.

Does this make sense as an area to explore?

Proper Etiquette: Spoilers

I ran a search on Google looking for information on proper etiquette in dealing with spoilers. I know when I have seen this issue come up on Facebook, and on many other sites where movies or books are talked about. I believe if the content being discussed is recent you should give a spoiler warning before you comment. That seems like a given to me. Of course it all depends on the audience, are you in a more public place like Facebook or Twitter? If so it would be good to warn people. It you are in a more private sphere like a blog or forum, you might not need to give such warnings.

I found a good article here, that talks about this very issue, but in a way that i didn't see come up very often on my Google search. I saw a lot of articles or people talking about how they hate it when people give spoilers, but this article looked at the opposite side of the issue--people who want to talk about things and feel limited by those people who haven't seen the movie or television show yet. The article made some good points. You should be able to talk openly about something on any digital realm once that thing is old enough that most people should have seen it by now. Of course, there are some things you just don't talk about. Like the ending of The Sixth Sense or Lost. Or who did it in The Mouse Trap (the longest running play in London). The article blew that rule in order to prove its point, starting out by telling the reader "Rosebud is a sled." It is a good thing I have already seen that movie.

But when something is current, like breaking bad, it would be proper etiquette to warn before you spill the secrets all over Facebook and the Internet.

Midterm 1.1: Getting ready to connect

So far on this blog I have made the following posts:

• Storytelling, Podcasting, Film, Radio -- I love them all
• Niche dividends
• Inseparably Inseparable
• Reflecting on My Internet Persona: A Caution
• What do you want to know about podcasting?
• Unplugging for a weekend
• Kicking the 'Last Minute' Habit
• The Tool is Not the Thing (The Tool is Really Important Though)
• Hacked

One theme that I can see here, and that I wish to continue to develop, is my interest in using digital tools to talk about non-digital things -- in the past: religion, Pixar, or whatever, and in the future: areas of professional interest. I came to a point of clarity with my recent post "The Tool is Not the Thing," and I have been mulling over for the past few days how I can apply these tools to creative nonfiction writing.

My goal for further work is to apply what Dr. Burton wrote in his recent post about academic blogging: "By using a social medium in an appropriate way, in the end, academic blogging really becomes less about content or even publication; it really ends up being a form of entry into various communities who value serious thought about serious subjects." I want to enter into this particular conversation. Or as Dr. Burton has said elsewhere, one of the primary functions of digital literacy, "Connect."

I have some experience doing this with animation and religious studies, topics that are inherently important to me because of who I am and what I am interested in, but as I look ahead to my life after graduation, I can apply these same tools to a topic I know less about than those two, and about which I hope to gain skills and experience. This is my attempt to break into meaningful conversations about a topic that I feel less knowledgeable about. I will be coming in more of a novice, and I have a lot to gain from making connections with people interested in this field.

So on my immediate horizon: who are the people who are talking seriously about creative nonfiction writing, both practitioners and those who analyze it? What is involved in making excellent work, and how can I use my blog and social media to both find people and share with others what I am finding?

Hacked

Creative Commons image by Santiago Zavala.

Last week my life was put on a hold for much longer than I would have liked when I discovered that one of my websites, The Pixar Podcast, was hacked. Instead of pointing to my content, it was pointing to some advertisement site for an energy drink.

In a word: yikes.

Hacking is something that can come up when you're not careful with you content. I use wordpress.org, which allows me to host my site on my own server (I use iPage), but it is also vulnerable to compromises if you don't update things as they become available.

I couldn't even log into the wp-admin panel to make a copy of my content, and I faced losing everything. Luckily, I was not in danger of losing my episodes -- which really matter much more than anything on my website -- because I host them on a separate server (I use Media Temple). But I was rather bummed about starting from scratch on my website.

I chatted with someone at iPage to try to figure out what happened, and they pointed me to SiteLock, a service I pay for to protect my website. However, when I got on the phone with SiteLock, I found out that they don't actually fix anything unless I pay them more, and that the service I already was paying for was simply an alert service (which apparently is not really that great).

The very nice lady talked with me for several minutes about my options, starting with paying about $400 right then and there for them to fix my site. She was able to get it down to $50/month, which would of course end up being much more over time.

I decided to use some crowdsourcing to investigate the problem. I emailed smart people I know (including Dr. Burton!) but I also reached out to listeners of the podcast via facebook and twitter. Since resolving the problem I took down my plea, but it was essentially, HELP! Anyone know of any alternatives to paying a million dollars?

I got a few emails that clarified some things for me, and ended up chatting at length with a friend of mine who knows a lot about technology. He thought it sounded unnecessarily steep, so I continued to investigate. Eventually, I realized that the backup I had previously made on my computer was enough, and I was able to wipe my server clean, and re-upload the old version of the site. It took a long time to figure out how to do that, but in the end I was $400 richer (or, less poor).

One area I explored was to switch over to microblogging, like tumblr. This is an option that had some plusses (less to worry about), but also some negatives (less easy to make it look professional, less control). If I can find the right theme, though, this still is an area I may explore in the future.

The point is, kids, wear your seatbelts on the Internet. There are folks who want to get you. Backup your stuff, update your stuff, and keep afloat of the dangers that lurk.

Midterm 1, Part 2: Moby Dick Paper Ideas

So this kind of goes along with part 1 of my midterm posts, but I think it is a fascinating idea. On the first day that we were discussing "Moby Dick," Dr. Wickman talked about how a novel is the connection between human and nature because a novel deals with characters who change, grow, and develop over time. In "Moby Dick" we see Ishmael's growth as he is directly in nature. We see his growth in knowledge of whaling through chapters like Cetology, and we see his growth as a person through his interactions with Queequeg. This narrative of a whale hunt shows that Ahab and the shipmates of the Pequod are trying to master the grandest of all things of nature. In this sense, Digital Culture and digital literacy are sort of like the "white whale" of our time. There are people everywhere who are like Ahab in a way: constantly on the up and up of digital literacy, and there are people like Ishmael (and me) who are simply trying to learn as much as possible along the way. But will we be able to overcome this digital literacy machine? In the end of the novel, Moby Dick wins and their entire voyage was for nothing but a story. Will our digital literacy be nothing but a story in the end? Or will we be able to overcome it?

Sorry that this is kind of scattered! It just helps me to spill everything that is in my mind, and then I try to make sense out of it. So basically, I want to write about how by becoming more like Ishmael, and learning as we go, we will survive in the end. But if we become obsessed like Ahab and let the digital world completely encompass the real world, we will lose in the end. What do you think? Do you have any suggestions for how to narrow/deepen this idea?

Midterm 1: Reflective Post

Alright, so here is my little index of posts so far this semester:

Hello Everybody!
Changes in the Humanities
Who is Really in Control?
The Moby Dick Metaphor
Greatness
Learning
Why Hashtag?
Choose Up, Not Down

In my "Learning" post, Dr. Burton left a comment that said this is the "age of the self-learners". I think that we can achieve greatness as we learn, which kind of ties together the "Greatness" and "Learning" posts, and by submersing ourselves into learning about Digital Culture, we find new ways of greatness and how to help others along their own paths. Also, in my "Choose Up, Not Down" post, I discuss how climbing up a spiral is how we continue to learn, but it is also easy to fall back down into old habits, etc. I think that we master ourselves and our spirals by continued learning. Looking back through these posts, I saw my old ideas, and I am thinking about how I can improve them or push them further, and I feel like I have been having little moments of mastery in the digital world. In my "Who is Really in Control?" post, I discuss how we need to fight to stay in control of the machine, or else it will control us. However, can we ever actually master the machine in the digital world (like the Michael Wesch video we watched)? Or is the fact that we need to be forever learning proof that the machine has mastered us? We can achieve greatness along the way, but only through usage of the machine and our dependence on it. So how can we truly master the Machine?

Midterm 1: Part 2

Here are my notes for my Moby Dick/Digital Culture essay. I am a very visual person, plus I am a doodler, so here are some notes that I created while I was coming up with ideas.

I know that this is probably very difficult to read, but on this sheet I have created a web of potential ideas for essay topics and quotes that I could use from the novel. As I was brainstorming, I started to think about how in a way Ishmael, being the narrator of the novel, and the sole survivor to tell the tale, he has the opportunity to craft the story however he wants, and can shape his persona however he wants. (This is probably sounding like I don't know that Ishmael is fictional....) But, would it make sense to write an essay about how the way that Ishmael presents himself is similar to how people create their persons in through digital culture. Is this way off base?? What do you think?

Midterm 1: Part 1

To start with, here is an archive of all of my posts up until now:

• Still Figuring Out Academic Blogging
• Thoughts on Finishing Moby Dick
• In Defense of the #Hashtag
• BYU and Technology
• BYU Tech Expo
• Connecting or Disconnecting?
• XML and HTML: What Does That Even Mean?
• The Digital Age as an Illumination of the Humanities
• Hi!

So, really looking at my various blog posts, I am struggling to find a common thread. But, something that I am seeing a bit of is how institutions like Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is implementing and taking advantage of available technologies. In my post about BYU and Technology, discussing some ways that BYU is moving forward, Prof. Burton commented, "Too often institutions simply buy a lot of tech and think they are on the cutting edge. But you can have technology and yet not be enfranchised in the digital civilization."

In class and in blog posts, I have seen and heard a lot of discussion about how a person creates a digital presence and how we create our internet personas, like one of my teammates Derrick discussed in his post Reflecting on My Internet Persona: A Caution. As I have been working as the senior editor on BYUs blog Stance and with a publishing company in Salt Lake starting their blog, I have been thinking about how a company or group creates an internet presence for themselves rather than just an individual.

My question that I am thinking of is, How can organizations utilize the technology that is available to them in a productive way, rather than creating an online presence for the purposes of having one? And how can these online personas of large groups like the Church be positively and in some ways negatively effected by this? How does this involve people with a "product" and what importance does this online presence have for an organization/company?

I think I just asked too many questions. 

Still Figuring Out Academic Blogging

I wanted to respond, or really build off of, Derrick's two posts "The Tool is Not the Thing (The Tool is Really Important Though" and "Kicking the 'Last Minute' Habit" (which is slightly ironic because I am posting this a little bit last minute). But, he brought up some really interesting things that I hadn't thought about. Yes, sometimes I feel totally inspired by class, or the readings, or something that I read that week and I know exactly what I am going to post about. But, sometimes I feel lost and like I need to get something up just to get something up. Though the awesome thing about academic blogging is that no matter what, it forces you to start getting rolling, churning out ideas, and hopefully eventually making it to steps two and three of the academic blogging process where you have some actual thought out ideas that are actually worth something. Though, as I was reading Derrick's posts, I was really comparing this to how it has worked out in my personal blog. Even though I have been updating it regularly for almost three years now it still isn't perfect, but I have been able to see how I have slowly found direction through just getting myself to post something which has started to shape my blog into what I classify as a "personal adventure blog/journal." I really had no idea what I was doing at first, but as I have kept blogging, I have started to find direction and discover what I really wanted to talk about. I have also discovered that the more directed my blog becomes the more readers I am getting who are interested in my adventures and ideas.

Realizing that I have already in a small way gone through this process has made the idea of finding direction in this academic blog seem less daunting. Really when I first read Prof. Burton's post I could not have been more terrified thinking that there is no way that I could eventually get from just posting, to posting something that people care about. But, I am already trying to come up with ideas, and hopefully I will come up with something good.