Satiracally Sustainable

 This video seems to match up nicley with last week's comments!  These guys are so talented!

Tiny Virtual Bubbles

WOW!  Oh, where to begin! Trolls, digital muckraking, reputation economy, scary half-clothed racists, incredibly talented sardonic musicians, "Crowd Accelerated Innovation", "Filter Bubbles" (I think that would make a good song title - I should email Jimmy!), dialectic algorithms, knowledge compression, and "complex yet simple".....Pheww, did I leave anything out?!

Seriously...my head is spinning!

Let me see if I can make some linear (or circuitous, not sure yet...) attempt at piecing this information together.  There seemed to be a thread ebbing throughout these pieces for me in that our world is truly digital, increasingly smaller, yet eerily primitive in some ways.  Chris Anderson's TED Talk conveyed this message loud and clear.  He spoke about how reading and writing are relatively new phenomena but storytelling is age-old or primal.  There have been a couple of posts and discussion threads in this class asking if digital media is nothing more than advanced cave pictographs and Anderson's point seems to echo that sentiment.  Are we really only getting back to our "roots?"  I also liked the way in which David McCandless ties this thought together with his graphic that depicts our senses and how much we perceive visually versus how much awareness we have.  He claims that visually, we have the bandwidth of a computer network but only .7 percent of awareness...breathtaking!  It is no wonder that two people can look at a piece of art and come to such different conclusions as to its interpretation. 

And what about perception?  Why do some people decide that the "mask of anonymity" is enough for them to ditch societal norms, morals and values and engage in "virtual rage and fantasized violence?" (Adams, 2011).  Are some people predisposed to being assholes in "real life" and ramp up the venom in their online personas or is the guise of anonymity simple enough to bring out the worst in otherwise morally conscious people?  Which beings me to Alexandra Wallace...was she serious?  I can't decide if she was attempting some satirical improv or just downright ignorant and racist.  Regardless of her intention, I think this brings up another point; the girl got run out of town!  Apparently the backlash was so overwhelming that she felt she needed to quit school and leave UCLA.  Our lives are SO public these days (albeit, if we CHOOSE them to be) and moments that may have been embarrassing and regretful are now reasons to quit school and possibly even fear for our safety. 

Which brings me to another point.  I LOVE the idea of the "Reputation Economy"  as posed by the Thompson piece on wired.com.   The fact that truth (or some semblance of truth) and transparency in business and economics has somehow become profitable and expected is remarkable!  Don't get me wrong; I think we are far from knowing every trade secret or backroom deal but it seems that CEOs are realizing and embracing the idea that "CEOs who can write and blog have a competitive advantage" (Thompson, 2007) and we, the consumer are watching.  However, a statement made by one of the contributors of the piece concerns me somewhat when he says, "...I've always felt that political campaigns ought to be totally transparent. There ought to be embedded cameras and journalists who have 100 percent access to all meetings, with all content being posted on the Web. That would distill legitimate dialogue from the spin very quickly" (Thompson, 2007).   Hmmmm...

Would our world really be a better place if cameras where everywhere and every conversation were public?  I realize that this commentator is wanting more transparency in elections and government with which I agree, but I question the loss of privacy and intimacy that could be gone if our lives were that public.  Maybe I really don't want to know and maybe its none of my business!  

Hyper-Visual

Reading visually.  These two words seem at odds with one another, however, it is quite apparent that of course we "read" images, pictures, motion, etc.  McCloud's chapters were sort of an eye opener for me.  I actually really don't care for comics.  I have never seen the point and I really don't like the little boxes - they always seem so confining.  But McCloud made me think "outside the box" in a way that I had never considered.  I don't think I am going to go pick up a comic book anytime soon, but I can definitely say I will give the boxes more thought the next time I have a chance encounter.  I was particularly drawn to his discussion about the accessibility of the cartoon image.  As an image becomes more cartoonish, we are more likely to assign our own meaning and identify with the character - there is a certain "universality of cartoon imagery" (p. 31).   He made a really profound point about our self-centeredness when he states, "We see ourselves in everything.  We assign identities and emotions where none exist.  And we make the world over in our image" (p. 33).  Even as I quote these sentences - these words that he has strung together to convey a message - part of the message and profundity is lost without the imagery. 

 This idea was brought home after viewing the class A/V projects.  If part of the structure is missing, say no music or blurry text, the message is altered to either mean something else or have no meaning at all.  If I can't see "myself" in something, I am unlikely to identify or become emotionally involved with that something.  In particular, Matt's piece A Video About Sidewalks, is a terrific example of bringing alphabet, image, video and sound to convey a simple, yet seemingly complicated subject.  Why is a sidewalk something I should care about?  Matt provides a soundtrack and images that make me want to care.  His use of carefully chosen alphabetic text further provide his audience with the facts that he wants us to understand and use to come to a conclusion.  As he states in his post, "sidewalks aren't very sexy" but they are integral to a healthy community in the form of increased health, lower crime rates, and maybe a few less abandoned couches on the curb.  All of these observations and information were contained in a 2.5 minute short that makes me want to care that his neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks.  His rhetoric indeed has persuaded me to consider an issue that I had no idea I cared about.  If he had left out the alphabetic text and maybe just provided his audience with video of missing sidewalk, I don't think his message would have been as convincing. 

Which brings me to Sosnoski's piece Hyper-readers & Their Reading Engines.  Sosnoski says, "...reading is a highly selective process, one in which the majority of details are forgotten..." (p 165).  He also states that "graphics often play a more meaningful role than words" (p. 169).  Matt's graphic presentation summarizes a complex issue that in my mind is more meaningful than a carefully prepared oped in the Comicle.  He obviously had much more information that could have been included, yet the simplicity and directness of the video conveys the message in a way that will not be forgotten.  Matt has created a conceptual framework with his choice of music, video and alphabetic text in which I can understand his message and come to a conclusion about the importance of something as ubiquitous as a sidewalk. 

McCloud provides us with a very helpful triangular analytical tool for dissecting the "pictorial vocabulary."  The vertices are reality, language and the picture plane.  He points out that in comics, there seems to be a divide between received information (pictorial content) and perceived information writing/language content) and asks if the two sides can be reconciled.  I think Sosnoski believes that these two sides inevitably will be reconciled.  As many of us have blogged about throughout the course, today's techie generation demands digital communication and the ability to "filter, skim and peck."  He says, "...hyper-readers feel liberated from the constraints of such textual guidelines and feel that they are now free to organize textual features in patterns relevant to their own concerns..." (p. 172).  To me, Matt's video emphasizes Sosnoski's point.  Through multimedia, Matt is able to convey a message in a pictorial vocabulary in which I, the hyper-reader, am able to organize the information in a pattern that is relevant to my concerns.  I am able to empathize and respond more deeply because his message is acceptable on my terms. 

Rocket Men