Category: Greg Green

• Based on further reading and the development of some ideas internally, I can say that I have more faith in Wikis becoming a major force in the RW revolution.  I previously wondered if they would bring RW culture to the same level of respect as traditional media and some of the info I acquired elaborates.  When thinking previously, I only considered the informational aspect of wikis — the idea that multiple people could provide the knowledge that they had to make up an article that meets a certain standard.  What I didn’t know was how much traffic on Wikipedia is used just for editing.  In Remix, it was reported that only 10 percent of the edits done on Wikipedia resulted in a substantive addition of information.  It is no wonder that most of the articles have a standard of writing and non-bias that is better than my local newspaper.  They also provided some examples of how successful Wikipedia had been as a news source.  The case they used was the VT shootings a few years ago — 2,074 people helped to make the article and it received 750,000 views within the first two days.  I doubt there are many newspapers that received that kind of readership on this incident within two days.
• The Long Tail principle states “that as the cost of inventory falls, the efficient range of inventory rises,” and that “as transaction costs generally fall to zero, the efficient inventory rises to infinity.”  On first reading, I didn’t quite understand this concept.  All I could think about was inventory that wouldn’t spin.  We’ve all been in a store and accidentally found that one item that has sat there for years and has a thick layer of dust.  I used to work at a plumbing and HVAC wholesaler and we had a lot of product like that — stuff that someone might look for once every five years and when they are looking for it, it’s impossible to find.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around getting over the money that is lost by something sitting on the shelf.  The LTP really isn’t about that.  Although inventory that won’t spin will drive up the cost of the inventory, keeping costs down elsewhere will allow those rarely bought items to be held.  Other stuff will pick up the slack.  It makes a lot more sense to me now.  I do still wonder if its worth it to try and keep all those strange items that someone like Amazon keeps.  Surely, it would be tough for an upstart to have money to waste on items it won’t sell by the time they go bankrupt.  And how much more money would Amazon make if they didn’t have all that stuff?  Is it really the Long Tail products that keep us coming back or is it the low (and sometimes tax free) prices, fast shipping, and great customer service?

1. At one point Lanier writes about the issues that the music industry is having as we move from a world where the LP is the end product with a high-margin to a digital world where an mp3 with a low-margin is the main product.  He proceeds to give a few examples of how people can still make money at this point in time but he doesn’t think will continue to succeed.  Are there other ways that artists can make money in the digital world?  How will social networking affect this?

After thinking for a bit about this question and seeing Good Copy, Bad Copy, I really think that there will still be a way for musical artists to make money still.  The Tecno Brega artists that were featured in Good Copy, Bad Copy were making their money mostly through live shows of their music.  They would make a new song and either play it at their own party or have it played at another DJ’s party (I’m assuming they would get a cut of any proceeds).  DJs were also selling copies of the live show on the way out the door.  This is kind of similar to where the hip-hop music scene is going in America.  A lot of artists are putting most of their effort into mixtapes that are provided free of charge on the internet or from a nominal fee as a hard copy.  They are using these mixtapes as promotional items to promote their live shows and also retail albums that are sold in stores.  In addition, a lot of these artists are trying to bring the fan more into the creative process of their work by providing information about what they are doing, when they are in the studio, asking if anyone has any good ideas that would go over well, etc.  The major labels may be hurting from the change to this business model but I think the artists may be able to survive.

2. The Turing test is something that basically determines how close to representing humanity a machine is.  There are a lot of connotations that are associated with achieving this level of sentience.  Can a machine ever truly achieve sentience since it would have to be designed and programmed by man?

I don’t think Lanier believes that computers can ever be truly sentient and human-like.  He states that “computer scientists built a very fast machine and figured out a better way to represent the problem of how to choose the next move in a chess game,” and I tend to agree with him.  Although computers will always be better at math than the vast majority of us, our thought processes are usually non-reproducable in a device that is based so much on logic.  The Turing test may tell us that a computer is human-like, but that would be a function of a programmer having enough time and patience to program something that is able to fool us.  It would be human genius that would topple our ability to determine between human and non-human — a topic that Lanier also touched on when he stated that Kasparov may have defeated himself as opposed to Deep Blue really beating him.

3. Lanier writes that strangeness and individuality are being removed from the internet as new structures and organizations are introduced.  Is it possible that we are not removing these things so much as creating entirely new outlets that don’t require strangeness and individuality to work correctly?  It is still possible to find places that are entirely unique on the internet just as easily as it is to find a news source that is almost completely without bias.  How is this different from the non digital realm where art is often something that is entirely individual yet articles from a newspaper, although written by different authors, often come from one, singular voice?

When skimming this, I didn’t get the point he was actually trying to make.  What I said about the voice mimicking old media may still be true but Lanier was referring more to how things like Facebook truly affect us.  He specifically wrote about how Facebook will provide us with a feed of the relationships of our Facebook friends.  He made a very good point that really without this information presented to me, I wouldn’t care about who is starting to date who unless it was someone I was close to, but because it is so readily available, it is interesting to me.  I need to know this information.  The website is telling us what is important and we are listening to it — that is how we are losing our individuality online.

I was thrilled to read in this book about Encyclopedia Dramatica.  This is a site I have frequented before because I find the articles, although crass, to be hilarious.  I immediately went to the page because I am often easily distracted. On the front page there was an article entitled Burn a Koran Day.  This article is written about the recent controversy with the Florida church that wanted to burn Korans on 9/11 and their pastor Terry Jones.  The writer on ED called Jones a troll and it really was appropriate.  I’ve always thought of a troll being something that only existed in fairy tales and online, but why can’t they exist in the real world?  The description Lanier gives of online trolls have many corollaries with someone like Jones or any leader that rules by mob rule.  Something to think about more later I guess.

At one point Lanier writes about the issues that the music industry is having as we move from a world where the LP is the end product with a high-margin to a digital world where an mp3 with a low-margin is the main product.  He proceeds to give a few examples of how people can still make money at this point in time but he doesn’t think will continue to succeed.  Are there other ways that artists can make money in the digital world?  How will social networking affect this?

The Turing test is something that basically determines how close to representing humanity a machine is.  There are a lot of connotations that are associated with achieving this level of sentience.  Can a machine ever truly achieve sentience since it would have to be designed and programmed by man?

Lanier writes that strangeness and individuality are being removed from the internet as new structures and organizations are introduced.  Is it possible that we are not removing these things so much as creating entirely new outlets that don’t require strangeness and individuality to work correctly?  It is still possible to find places that are entirely unique on the internet just as easily as it is to find a news source that is almost completely without bias.  How is this different from the non digital realm where art is often something that is entirely individual yet articles from a newspaper, although written by different authors, often come from one, singular voice?

Schiller’s ideas of the commodification of culture really struck a nerve with me.  This is something that I’ve noticed on my own and have often been disgusted with.  We’ve all heard the complaint that television has been going downhill for years.  This is largely because of how television is now a commodity.  Every year there are shows that are incredibly written and performed but they are cancelled too soon because there aren’t enough viewers or because advertisers don’t want to be associated with the content.  It’s a shame because talented actors get sent to the soup line and consumers miss out on something that is entertaining.  A similar effect has happened in music.  How often have we heard a band and thought, “they should make it big,”?  I’m sure its more times than you have ever wanted to buy a Hannah Montana cd.  The emergence of the internet might be making over the music industry at the moment but what happens when that stops?

In a similar vien, I could also relate very well to Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model.  So often as consumers of media, we forget that the companies that produce this media are out to make a profit.  So much of what could be in the media isn’t because of the five filters Herman and Chomsky wrote about.  One example that really sticks out to me because of when it occurred was the recent Dr. Laura incident.  Although she technically resigned, Dr. Laura wasn’t being taking off the air because of the specific words she said but because the networks were worried about the economics behind it.  They feared that no advertiser would want to take the risk of being associated with her — such an association could cause profits to drop from certain segments of the population.

Introduction

In recent years there has been a lot of academic inquiry into social capital.  Researchers have looked into its effects on everything from educational attainment to health benefits.  One specific branch of research in this field is social capital’s effect on socioeconomic status.  In Florian Pichler and Claire Wallace’s recent article, Social Capital and Social Class in Europe:  The Role of Social Networks in Social Stratification (2009), it was determined that members of the upper classes had social networks that were more broad, yet the same in intensity as members of lower classes.  Keeping this in mind, can this be applied to the online arena?

There is some previous theoretical work that would assert that it would not apply to an online world.  When taking into account portions of Joseph Walther’s work in 1992 with the social information processing theory, it could be asserted that online social capital would not be as worthwhile.  Social information processing theory suggests that online relationships are more difficult to develop and take more time – something that might not be available in our “now” online culture.  The flip side of his work was the realization that the Internet could facilitate relationships that might be impossible to form in regular circumstances due to cultural differences or geographical distances.

In this study, I assert that online social capital can be just as important as the non-online form to establishing one’s socioeconomic status.  I will specifically be looking at the recent Internet phenomenon, Facebook.  Facebook is the largest social networking site and has the most diverse user base.  Another benefit of using Facebook is its place in the mainstream.  Many other Internet applications that would have social networks are much more of a niche.  Internet Relay Chat or the World of Warcraft are going to draw a much different selection of users that are less representative of the rest of the world.  This would be a great topic for a more in-depth

Research Question

1. Does online social capital have the same effects as traditional social capital on socioeconomic status?

Significance

This information would be especially useful for the further development of online communities.  As we chip away at the dynamics of online relationships, the information can be applied to making job hunting sites more effective.  In addition, the results could be used on sites such as LinkedIn, which cater to developing and maintaining professional relationships.

Methodology

To study this matter in a quantitative nature, I plan to run a correlation analysis.  As of now, I hope to use data collected by the Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet and American Life Project.  I will specifically be running a correlation between the number of Facebook friends a user has and their current income.  To adjust for students that don’t have their own income, I will only use data belonging to non-students.  In addition, I hope to determine a way to measure the intensity of the reported relationships.  This would add an interesting aspect to the research and follow Pichler and Wallace’s research that determined there was no reported difference on social class from the intensity of a subject’s relationships.

1. Does all media in nations without a free press fall under propaganda when looking at it from a theoretical perspective?  What changes are made to the direct transmission model in this circumstance?
2. How do Bandura’s thoughts on inhibition fit in with observation and disinhibition?  On a quick glance over the reading, it seems that observation and disinhibition work in a way entirely opposite of inhibition.
3. Donahue, Tichenor and Olien posited that the knowledge gap is likely to be smaller in small towns where there are limited sources for the dissemination of information.  How does the internet affect that?  Does it totally erase that effect?
4. How is the spiral of silence still a relevant theory?  Everything I have learned about the process of socialization and social influences would go against that theory.