Brave New Internet of Things

We have not yet established the rules of engagement for an Internet of things, and the ethics of mass connectivity are still being moulded. How then can it be a good idea to live in a world of 7 trillion objects that are all communicating with each other? Call me old fashioned, but I just can’t identify the void that says we should implant RFID chips in inanimate objects, rendering them not so inanimate. There are a number of problems and benefits that have been identified, however when it is being argued that an Internet of Thing will increase efficiency I cannot be blamed for being skeptical.

Over the last 50 years nearly every piece of technology that has been invented has been done so in the name of efficiency. And yet, 6 million children die every year from starvation, media moguls get exponentially richer while the other 99% live day to day, corruption, greed and selfishness have not ceased to be part of human nature, dictators still rule, racism thrives, women are still mistreated in many countries… this list goes on. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that efficiency is not the answer. It won’t solve the fundamental problems that we’re already struggling with. If anything, it sounds putting in place this kind of network will intensify the already present rift between dfferent socio-economic groups of people. Gerald Santucci explains that power relations will be change and the Internet of things “enables growing groups of media and sensor literate individuals to organise themselves through the Internet and through new data gained from smart objects endowed with sensing and actuating capabilities.” In other words, those with the resources to can exploit the power of the information gleaned from this network.

Ted asked the question in the lecture about what all this means to being human? I think if we got to the stage that ‘David’ is at in video, our experience of being human would be profoundly altered, our reliance on so technology so intrinsic that our connection to nature would be severed. I don’t know about you, but it sounds too much like a Brave New World.

The Apple-Android debate

At the heart of the rivalry between Apple and Google, the forerunners in the Silicon Valley competition for the digital empire, lies their fundamentally opposing business models: open source vs. total control.

The underlying philosophy that drives the open source software model, and the reason Google chose this platform for their Android phones in an attempt to compete with Apple, is the possibility for constant innovation. The success Apple has enjoyed from the development of its iPhone is unarguable, so when Roth states in his article that “Apple's device was an end in itself”, I don’t think he is speaking in strictly economic terms. It therefore seems that Google’s decision for adopting the open source business model speaks less to the their drive for profit (though this shouldn’t be overlooked) and more to an ideological motivation: the desire to emulate the network effect of the Internet and the free flow of information, a source of ultimate inspiration.

But who cares about qualms and competition of two near superpowers, they can look after themselves right? What matters from the users perspective is of course user experience. Jason Hiner dissects the weaknesses of both operating systems. For Apple these include software inflexibility, productivity limitations in terms of content production by the user and few hardware choices. From an Adroidian’s perspective ecosystem chaos, inconsistent experiences with different hardware leading to confusion and a leadership vacuum are the main downfalls. It seems you can’t separate philosophy from experience. The business models that have made each company successful also lend to those products their inherent weaknesses. From the shortcomings of each one can begin to predict how Apple and Google will strive to outdo themselves and each other in the future. It is also interesting to consider that no matter who is winning the rat race, our drive for Smartphone’s is insatiable, and so I begin to hear the not-so-dulcet tones of the ‘Liquid Life’ anthem playing somewhere not-so-far-off.

Worldwide Revolution

Frankly, I find the criticisms that deem social media an ‘organising tool at best’ rather ironic. When it comes to mobilising the masses for a large-scale protest, what one function would serve you better than the capacity to organise millions of people quickly and cheaply? No one can deny that the socio-political landscape in many countries across the Arab Spring was ripe for revolution, but every uprising needs a catalyst.  In Tunisia and Egypt, the catalysts for the uprisings were localised events that spread like wildfire through the social media networks of the region, subsequently drawing attention from neighbouring countries and the rest of the world.  Media convergence, particularly the ability to upload videos and pictures from a mobile phone has been sited as “vital tool” used by citizens during the Arab Spring.

Journalist Deborah Amos says that in the Arab social media gave people a collective conscience, a group mentality that helped them feel responsible and prompted them to share information. Technology enabled what she calls “social imagination”, and the desire to spread activism with other citizens using the tools of social media.

What was the role of technology in the Arab uprisings?

While these demonstrations are happening on a smaller scale, it is pertinent to also analyse social media’s role in the current ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, which has relied on Twitter and Facebook to spread its message.  Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, says that social change is about how people use the tools available to them, and that social media should be “supporting, not supplanting, existing strategies”. People in different cities were able to share the progress of their separate movements in real-time,  

Our Revolution

Be subversive!

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Week 9 - Ultimate transparency

The questions of whether Wikileaks is ‘the press’, and whether its goal of ultimate transparency is a positive thing is one of the most critical debates of our time. Benkler (2011, p. 2) addresses hypocrisy of the U.S government’s claims that Wikileaks is a major threat to “a peaceful world under U.S leadership”, highlighting numerous politicians’ comments that Assange needs to be “neutralised”. Since Wikileaks released Collateral Damage, the government has been systematically trying to discredit and delegitimize the work of Julian Assange using a compliant mass media base. I believe this compliance speaks to the need of an independent body like Wikileaks to break the tough stories that many press institutions wouldn’t report on.

Jason Pontin, editor of Technology Review, speculates that the positives of Wikileaks are as an innovator. He says that the secure drop box, “a platform from which leaks cannot be traced and cannot be censored”, is a technology that would benefit traditional media institutions as well as less politically threatening sites. 

The hacker’s creed is that all information should be free. I guess the question that that must be asked is whether our government requires secrecy to operate effectively? As individuals we demand certain levels of privacy. Should our institutions be granted these same rights?  In my opinion, no. I think it conflicts with the principles of a true democracy.   

To finish off, here are a couple of interesting sites:

Oslo Freedom Forum shows videos from a three day conference. The speakers, including Julian Assange, were comprised of advocates for human rights, innovators, public intellectuals, and survivors of tyranny and oppression.

openDemocracy is dedicated to facilitating a global culture of views, and Crabtree is an associate editor.

Working for, not against

As discussed by Alex Bruns, the development of new technologies have made possible the rise of citizen journalism, however its sheer popularity speaks more to the broader misgivings the public have about mainstream journalism. The one-to-many communication structure of old media forms put the gatekeepers in a dangerously powerful position, a sentiment echoed by many authors.  Additionally, the commercialisation of mass media means that news has become commoditised, so how can journalists represent the interests of the public when “media is directed at consumers rather than citizens” (Street 2011, p. 14). Citizen journalism gives power back to the people.

Some of the problems of citizen journalism is that ordinary people often won’t have the resources behind them to engage in comprehensive fact checking or conduct interviews with experts, and they have no institutional guidelines that bind them to balanced reporting. While everyone can agree that many media conglomerates have an agenda around which they report the news (ahem, News Corp), there are also trustworthy sources like the BBC.  I don’t think citizen journalism should replace traditional news sources, however I think the threat it currently poses to the mainstream media has encouraged an evaluation of the industry. The government has called for an inquiry to assess the benefits of a independent body to regulate the media beyond our current and failing system.

If trust in mainstream media can be restored, I think the benefits of citizen journalism will be maximised if the two communication systems can work together, filling the gaps where the other is lacking.

Top down, bottoms up

I currently doing a lot of research for another subject into the failures of the traditional media system and what social media has meant for increasing political participation. I was really happy to discover that many of the ideas we've been exploring in DIGC202 has helped inform my discussion, in particular Jenkins' theories on participatory culture and a shift toward many-to-many communication structures. Here's a run down of some of my research:

Politics and the media are intricately linked, and it follows that declining levels in voter turnout reflect a failure in the current system.  The one-to-many communication structure of old media – television, newspapers and magazines – proscribe the viewer with a spectator role. Moreover, extreme commercialization and commoditization of mass media has resulted in a disillusioned and distrustful public. The Internet, and social media in particular, now offer many-to-many communication on a global scale, which is a fundamental shift from the old media model.  People are now able to access information from the 'bottom up' and the success of social media to promote engaged politics arises out of an environment where audiences seek alternative media sources because traditional ones have failed them, and the citizen-citizen structure of digital networks are a welcome change from the centralised journalism of media conglomerates.

While different sources have informed my discussion, a very influential text that is referenced by many authors is Castell's The Information Age, which is the last book in a trilogy that dissects the network society, globalization, technology dominance.  Extremely relevant to all the topics in this course!

Tryrannosaurus - Week 7

Chris Anderson paints a great picture of the limitations of the big-hit model of distribution with his metaphor the “tyranny of physical space” - and let’s face it, the online market place has to be one of the best things to happen to the distribution of entertainment media.  Its still quite amazing to see though that even with the unlimited possibilities for choice, the mainstream media industry – the Biebers, Transformers, Gaga… in other words the worst type of music and movies (in my opinion) – still remain just that: big hits.

While I use Amazon all the time, I’ve never stopped to think about how truly revolutionary it is, and how they manage to offer a personalised service – without having to do any of the leg work.  Another interesting fact about the new digital model that Anderson mentions in an interview with Folio Magazine is that the freshness of media content matters less these days – people will continue linking to the story even after its “old news” if the story strikes a chord with people.  Anderson says:

“A study recently showed that half the traffic to Web sites is after 36 hours. The old model of newspapers was that 100 percent of their readership is within first 36 hours and zero after that. The extraordinary interest in things we previously discounted, like archives, is the real lesson of the search and blog traffic era.”

I guess for budding entrepreneurs the key priority is a great search functionality. In the attention economy whether your product is or isn’t used often comes down to its accessibility. I know when I’m doing my uni work, if Summon directs me to a broken link on a journal article, I’m not going to pursue it, rather I move on because I know there’s more out there. Another tip, for those in the market for success, is to consider this very surprising statistic from researchers Bernardo and Huberman:

“…an analysis of the production histories and success dynamics of 10 million videos from

YouTube revealed that the more frequently an individual uploads con-tent the less likely it is that it will reach a success threshold. This paradoxical result is further compounded by the fact that the average quality of submissions does increase with the number of uploads, with

the likelihood of success less than that of playing a lottery.”

Convergence Culture

While I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about the direction our media generation is heading, I have to admit that what Jenkin’s terms our ‘participatory culture’ is a much more natural manifestation of how I believe people like to share knowledge.  Old media forces us into an information hierarchy, closed to debate and commentary, praise or criticism. As media is now able to flow across many different platforms and freely into our lives, technology has thus influenced the way we perceive other people, cultures, places, work, leisure and ourselves.  Convergence has many positive effects, however I hate to think of instances where economic imperatives have been the dominant cause for ‘old media’ being phased out.  My main gripe is with the introduction of Kindle – a sad day for literature. How any one can possible read a novel on their iPhone is beyond me…

Anyway, the topic of convergence culture has interesting implications for my report - which looks at the ways social media alters socio-political space - so I thought I’d do a little more research into convergence culture and politics.  While the ‘everything at your finger tips’ notion makes it sound like information is only one click away, there is a disturbing trend for what Professor Harsin terms the ‘rumour bomb’. This refers to an instance when someone accidentally (but more often than not deliberately) posts misinformation on the Internet, which generates enough traffic that it ultimately influences the production of content in other media forms such as TV or radio.   The thing that makes the Internet great is also its greatest weakness – and people’s incomprehensible ability to believe almost anything poses many challenges, especially when people are now being hired to start these kind of rumours… it’s a new age for public relations.   

Rip, mix and burn.

The copyright topic raises a lot of grey-area questions… and while there is still much head scratching to be done, this week’s readings leave little doubt in my mind that our current copyright and patent laws are outdated, and as such are what Lessig might call ‘culture strangling’.  It’s a rather romantic notion to say that these laws exist exclusively for the benefit of artists, musicians, programmers, etc. when you consider that the bulk of creative folk are managed by a handful much larger companies.  These “agents” – what some might call copyright hoarders - are still cashing in on royalties 70 years after the artist who was signed to them passes away.

John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, comments poignantly that “kid’s down own their own culture”. This statement is given a tangible quality in the face of Lessig’s Walt Disney example.  Lessig says in his own blog that Walt’s style was “rip, mix and burn”, but if Walt was around today, none of that would have been possible. In fact Lessig guesses ironically at the consequences of applying the same rip, mix and burn ideology to one of Disney Inc.’s current releases.  

While unfettered file sharing practices – my own included – can’t be heralded as great bringers of culture (and does cost an already struggling Australian arts economy greatly), it’s the use of these files by artists like GirlTalk that should be allowed to continue freely. The mashups, spinoffs, and interpretations of other people’s work enrich the artistic landscape, so I can’t help feel that our copyright laws speak more to the economic profit of large corporations than to the protection of “the fruits of invention and creativity”. The Free Culture Movement has the right idea....

Politics, Power and Social Media

Since I missed my blog for week one, I thought I'd use this catch up blog to explore some issues around social media. These concepts will be relevant to my research project that I’m doing with Ben Anderson, but may also be of interest to other groups as well.

Firstly, here is blog by Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, a book that Teodor said might be useful to our topic.  Morozov explores the effect new technologies and the internet have on democratisation and politics in general.  Within this framework he discusses things like the impact of Wikileaks and the role the internet plays in social and civil revolutions, however he also says that the internet can also be used as a tool for control.

Another writer worth looking at is Clay Shirky, a professor of New Media at New York University that studies the effects of the internet on society. Shirky argues that social media enables people to challenge their governments by giving them tools mobilise themselves and organise large-scale protests, as discussed in this article.

Malcolm Gladwell provides a contrasting and controversial view in this article.  He critiques many people’s view that Twitter and Facebook are tools for activism, for example that they played a critical role in the revolutions in Moldova or Iran. His arguments emerge from broader theoretical considerations about the nature of activism and revolution, the structure of which he claims are antithetical to the relationships created by social media.

The ideas from these articles and blogs have given me a good starting point for our research project, however they are also worthwhile reading as they provide a good deal of insight into issues surrounding digital networks in general.

Everything to everything.

“In a poetic sense the prime goal of the new economy is to undo – company by company, industry by industry – the industrial economy..” K. Kelly

The goal of the Internet may very well have been a cyberutopia, but the relatively recent development of our information economy is having profound changes on our social and cultural organisation.  In his article, New Rules for the New Economy, Kelly speaks reverently about our currently trajectory toward universal connection, where even inanimate objects will be able to communication with each other.  I, on the other hand, am more inclined to consider both the positive and negative effects of unfettered digital network growth.   Looking further into Kelly’s work, I discovered that other authors have also critiqued his ideas about the merging of the realms of nature and human construction. Kelly’s future world encompasses open, decentralized systems and cooperation among all elements.

While I agree that the information economy exists in a very big way, I find Kelly’s ideas very Western-centric.  Statistics taken from this website reveal that even today only 30% of people worldwide have access to the internet, the highest proportion of these people are in (surprise, surprise) Europe, North America and Oceania. If the network economy is founded on technology, how can we even begin to fathom a universal connection when almost a quarter of the population still live below the poverty line? The term ‘digital divide’ is often used to describe this phenomenon, however it is a simplistic expression and doesn’t adequately capture the complexity of the situation.       

“Pippa Norris's The Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty & the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001) suggests that there are at least three major divides:

• a global divide between the developed and undeveloped worlds
• a social divide between the information rich and the information poor
• a democratic divide between those who do and those who do not use the new technologies to further political participation”

More information about this can be found here

Back to Kelly’s theories, he discusses the positive effects of a decentralised system.  The Internet is the most pervasive example of this. The lack of control and authority means that certain technologies are being utilised beyond their originally intended purposes. In many cases, changes to the way these networks are used are a productive and meaningful growth.  A compelling example is the way Facebook and Twitter have been used in North Africa during the pro-democracy uprisings. Amnesty says “social media sites are increasingly challenging state authorities in the Middle East and North Africa who have sought to maintain control over the flow of information in their countries.”  I find the effect the Internet is having on political process very interesting and hope to explore it further in the research project.

Week 2

Having missed the first lecture I was anxious to find out what Digital Networks was all about, and why I had to create a Twitter account (which I vowed never to do). As Teo stressed in the lecture, the development of the communication networks we have access to now, and the ones that have become obsolete, didn’t develop in a planned, successive way, but exploded randomly onto the technological playing field. Today, while we use all these technologies concurrently, they all seem to be available in the one place: on our computers, transmitting data via the Internet. We can stream radio, television and music online, use Skype like a telephone, write emails, follow people on twitter etc…  It’s easy to forget how many networks we are connected to, and how many people are connected to us.

As a web designer that uses Wordpress, I was particularly interested in Stalder’s examination of Open Source networks. The Internet serves to facilitate a form of collectivist action that isn’t commonly found in Western, capitalist societies. Open Source developers provide any individual with the Internet free access to valuable, quality software and information. Rather than commercial gain, the developers are motivated by the network that they themselves have cultivated.  Stalder directs his discussion into an area that I had never considered before. He talks about the way our “commodity culture” and corporations’ unfettered drive for profits have choked the creative element of culture and steered it toward conservatism because there is a formulaic recipe for success and no room to take big risks.  When you consider this phenomenon within the context of the Open Source network, the non-for-profit, collectivist mentality of the community fosters an environment of experimentation and innovation.  I also find there are parallels between the nature of Open Source networks and Peer-to-peer sharing networks in that the energy or workload of the operation is broken down into smaller tasks and distributed amongst a wide range of people.

There are quite a number of people out there discussing the nature of Open Source networks. Some go into even more detail about the implication of this phenomenon has on society on a larger scale. One author “believes that they way in which masses of people who own the means of production work voluntarily, without compensation, to reach a common goal and share their products in common is not far from the concept of socialism” (wired.com, link below), and has the potential to influence the political sphere and advance socialism... an example of networks contributing to the growth of other networks. 

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all