Week 2: 1.2 The Medium is the Message?: When the media converge.

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Reading Material: Lessig, L.(2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L.Lessig Code Version 2.0 (pp9-30). New York: Basic Books.

Summary:
  • The Internet is that medium
  • Real space
    • the place where you are now
    • defined by both laws that are man-made and others that are not
    • our lives are subject to both sort of law, though in principle we could change one sort
  • MMOG space
    • massively multiple online games
    • virtual world
    • cyberspace
    • enables you to control the characters on the screen in real time
    • the interaction is in virtual medium
    • example: Second Life
  • There is real life in MMOG space, constituted by how people interact
  • The virtual has real effect
  • The space enables more of the acceptable and unacceptable virtual dual-life
This reach ( of massive audience ) was made possible by the power in the network: Anyone anywhere could publish to everyone everywhere.  The network allowed publication without filtering , editing , or, perhaps most importantly,  responsibility.













  • Four theme: 
    • ''Regulability'' - the capacity of a government to regulate behavior within its proper reach
    • Regulation by code - the regulation of behavior is imposed through code, code governs the space
    • Latent Ambiguity - the worm's invasion as inconsistent with dignity that the amendment was written to protect OR the worm is unobtrusive as to be reasonable?
    • Competing Sovereigns - we can occupy both sorts of space at the same time, which sovereign should govern?
Watch
Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture:



Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2008 from niko on Vimeo.












Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.




Class Discussion - Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game
  • People confused between real and virtual world
  • Reality creates fantasy or fantasy creates reality?
  • Fantasy itself become the center of power
  • Is the fantasy an extension of the reality or contrary?
  • How to differentiate Reality and Fantasy?
    • when we start to distinguish, will lose the reality itself
  • If want to change the reality, then have to change the fantasy
  • Being online is the extension of real life (offline life)
  • Online is not completely online
  • How do we live online?
  • Everyone has the specification to online
I would like to share a poem by the an influential Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu
The Butterfly Dream
   Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awake, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called metempsychosis.
In the poem, the author was confused by his dream. He cannot differ the reality and the dream. Mostly all the time we hope that we are living in the fantasy world. In the same time, many of us are trying to neglect or escape from the reality. As people said, reality is cruel. When we neglect the reality and addicted in the fantasy world (cyberspace), we might lose our control and forgot the real world. For example, the Korean parents in the news article neglect their real baby and raised up the virtual child in cyberspace. There are more and more internet user 'lose control'. Many teenagers or even adult spend most of their time in online world meanwhile they forgot their own responsibility in the real world. Mothers being killed when nagging children playing computer actually happened in our society. If there is no media accessed in this world, what will it be? People might find other way to escape or release stress from the reality. Does it make sense to control the availability to access internet? Yes and no. The government might control the duration of time in usage of internet but education is more important. Besides, crime always happens. It's just the different in terms of causes of crime.

What is Participatory Culture?
  • contributors
  • producers
  • private persons to create and publish through internet
  • enables people to work collaboratively
  • generate and disseminate news, ideas, and creative works
  • connect with people who share similar goals and interests 
  • Henry Jenkins and other co-authors describe it as one
    • With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
    • With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
    • With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most  experienced is passed along to novices
    • Where members believe that their contributions matter
    • Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).
One of My Favorite Media Text
Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.
This is a short film that was directed by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won a 2010 academy award under the category of animated short. 



In this film there are two pieces of licensed music, in the beginning and in the end. All the other music and sound design are original. The opening track (Dean Martin "Good Morning Life") and closing track (The Ink Spots "I don't want to send the world on fire") songs are licensed pre-existing tracks. All original music and sound design is by, human (www.humanworldwide.com)
'logorama presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks that are destroyed by a series of natural disasters (beginning with a hurricane, cyclone, tidal wave...). logotypes are used to describe an alarming universe (similar to the one that we are living in) with all the graphic signs that accompany us everyday in our lives. this over-organized universe is violently transformed by the cataclysm becoming fantastic and absurd. it shows the victory of the creative against the rational, where nature and human fantasy triumph.' (design boom.com, 2009)
Information of Logorama (imdb)
Directed by
François Alaux
Hervé de Crécy
Ludovic Houplain



Writing credits
François Alaux
screenplay
Hervé de Crécy
screenplay
Ludovic Houplain
screenplay













Academy Awards, USA
2010 Won Oscar Best Short Film, Animated
 Nicolas Schmerkin 

Production Companies

Autour de Minuit Productions
Distributors
Autour de Minuit Productions (2009) (worldwide) (all media)
·   Shorts International (2010) (worldwide) (all media)
Special Effects
Mikros Image




References
Mark Tran 2010. Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game. Guardian.co.uk, March 5. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/korean-girl-starved-online-game (retrieved on April 1)
Logarama 2009. http://www.imdb.com (accessed on March 10)
Jenkins, Henry, Puroshotma, Ravi, Clinton, Katherine, Weigel, Margaret, & Robison, Alice J. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/10/confronting_the_challenges_of.html (retrieved on April 10)