part of the problem

Today’s reading:
The Tales They Tell in Cyber-Space by John Katz

First, let me say I hate the prefix “cyber” and I hate how it got attached to everything in the 90s (cyberspace, cybernews, cybersex) like a lower-case “i” got attached to everything in the 2000s (iWork, iLife, iPod). Since, though, this was written in 1994, for The New York Times, I’ll allow it. In 1994, prefixing stuff with “cyber” was undeniably hip. Isn’t it strange how even the trendy nomenclature changes? Cyber and virtual became Web 2.0, the current trendy way to say “interactive Internet features.” I digress.

Katz’s essay is about how creativity and communication have been affected by the Web. Instead of the power-communicators (TV networks, movie companies, etc.) choosing what gets communicated, the masses can discuss things directly with the masses. And though what they’re discussing lacks the polish of an editor’s hand or a newscaster’s inflection, it has something going for it: honesty. Katz excerpts posts from bulletin boards about emergency roadside births, homophobia and AIDS. These are sad stories, and funny stories, none of which are of the magnitude required to be a Movie of the Week or a novel, but they’re still true stories of real life, without the gatekeepers.

In journalism school, back in 1999-2002, we barely used e-mail or the Internet. It’s strange, really, to think about. I’m sure other departments on campus were using e-mail (computer science, definitely, and other sciences I bet, probably the business school too). I don’t know if journalists as a whole didn’t realize the possibility that we’d be obsolete someday. So much effort is put in now for “convergence” newsgathering. It’s not enough to get an interview and write a story, you have to have photos, video, interactive graphics on the Web and a thousand other bells and whistles to make your story reach as many people as possible.

That’s harder too. Since people get their news from the Web, it’s easier to pick and choose. You can read the New York Times art pages without reading the front page. You can watch a clip on CNN.com and not have to watch the actual cable channel. You can watch clips on NBC.com and never see an entire Nightly News with Brian Williams newscast. Now, this doesn't seem so bad when you think about excising stories about celebrities or pop culture from your news diet, but what if you’re excising something “important?” What if you stopped reading any news about the war? Or any news about global warming? And is that really any worse than cutting out stories about Paris Hilton?

A well-balanced news-diet is a thing of the past. Gone are the days where people read a morning paper, an evening paper and watch the local and national news every night. The only people I know that do this anymore are over 65-years-old or journalism students. I don’t even do that anymore. I might watch an hour of CNN, read the New York Times RSS feed for the front-page headlines and read a magazine every day though. But these are choices I make, not necessarily to shield myself from certain stories, but to read what I like to read.

This is bad. I’m part of the people making myself obsolete. How terrifying.

Social Networking and class issues

So, I'm starting to research my commentary essay on social networking, and apparently, a new study released recently shows class distinctions between different types of social networking sites.
According to this article Facebook is for rich kids that are going to college and MySpace is for kids that aren't, all according to this paper.

This is huge.

She basically says there's a class war going on with these sites, and that the aesthetics (another writer compared Facebook to the look and feel of an Ikea store and MySpace to the look and feel of Las Vegas) are going to become part of it. Sure, your typical MySpace page does often look like a giant war of pixels and sound, and your typical Facebook page is cleaner, but these are reflecting class distinctions? Like Ikea and Wal-Mart?

I just started reading the actual paper, but so far, it's very interesting. This woman knows her stuff. I can tell already this article will directly influence my commentary essay!

She also cites this: The Lost Children of Rockdale County, a PBS Frontline special about a 1996 syphillis outbreak in Rockdale County, Ga. I remember seeing this on PBS about a hundred times when I was in high school (in the next county over). It shows how bored, middle-and-upper-middle-class white teenagers can really get into trouble. (Consequently, when this was on PBS for pretty much five years straight, my friends and I would joke that when you turned on PBS, you either got kids with syphillis or Wishbone, a children's television program about a dog that wore hats and was commonly mistaken for historical figures. Our joke was "Is that a kid with syphillis? Nope, just a dog in a hat.")

Course project proposals

Aside from this lovely reading response blog, I'm also writing four projects for this course. I've outlined them all here. I've also submitted them to my guiding professor, and if she has feedback on how I can change them to make them better, or different, I'll post revised proposals. You'll get to see the whole process!

Exciting!

Project 1
Commentary essay on the new media social networking phenomenon
Draft due: July 5
Notes back by: July 12
Final due: July 19
Description: 750-word personal commentary essay on the effects of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook on real social networking and personal relationships in college
Suitable for publication in: trade magazines like Wired or Rolling Stone
Target audience: 20s-30s professionals with Internet/social networking familiarity


Project 2
Interactive television article
Draft due: July 12
Notes back by: July 19
Final due: July 26
Description:
Suitable for publication in: Entertainment Weekly
Target audience: 25-45-year-olds with interest in how interactive television providers work and features of them


Project 3
Conference paper on innovation in college student media reflecting professional media practices
Draft due: August 2
Notes back by: August 9
Final due: August 16
Description: 1,250-1,500-word article on different ways student media organizations have adopted new media into their daily operations, with accompanying PowerPoint presentation
Suitable for publication in: College Media Review
Target audience: College media advisers


Project 4
WordPress Web-based self-publishing software get started guide
Draft due: August 9
Notes back by: August 16
Final due: August 23
Description: 10-step guide to get started with a WordPress content manager
Suitable for publication in: the WordPress Web site or somewhere like Wired
Target audience: Novice bloggers that want to use something a little more sophisticated than Blogger’s setup on their own domain

Heavy things on ideas and humanity

This essay (Mythinformation by Langdon Winner, in The New Media Reader) hooked me in the second paragraph. Winner calls the cover stories of Time and Newsweek that declare the computer age a “revolution” garish. Garish. In the next paragraph, he explains that marketing has forced many “revolutions” on society. Revolutions in laundry detergent or floor wax. It’s a metaphor, Winner says. He extrapolates the metaphor to examine it. Will there be a real revolution socially or politically brought on by computers? Winner says not really, and after reading his essay, I agree.

Winner explains the “utopian fantasy” initiated by computer companies and perpetuated by journalists. Computers will be the great equalizer, the fantasy declares. But Winner explains, sure, as more computers do the jobs of unskilled workers, unskilled workers will be free to pursue careers as janitors and fast-food waiters. He explains that the social power and controls and class systems won’t change as fast as the technology does. He makes a clear distinction here about what is superficially plausible and what will really happen.

Some people will find this hard to stomach. After being inundated for years about how “knowledge is power” and “computers will truly democratize society,” it’s tough to believe that yes, computers will change how we do things, but they wont change really what we do or who we are. We may monitor our banking on the computer, but we still bank. We may shop on the computer, but we still shop. Only the tools are changing. Winner postulates that since humans have known existence within spatial and temporal limits, transitioning in one generation to a virtual system of space and time is not possible. Maybe it isn’t even possible over many generations.

I find this so interesting. A few months ago, I was researching an article about eating organic food. A nutritionist I interviewed explained to me that by eating a variety of foods and even shopping for them at different places, I was nurturing my hunter-gatherer instincts. I had forgotten I even had them, but once I realized that it was really much deeper, hard-wired, human-animal behavior to shop around, I was satiated. If I have that much-unknown desire to hunt for variety in something as simple as my diet, and that that is essentially hard-wired into my basic animalistic instincts, then instincts to exist in defined space and time must be even deeper. And the consequences for ignoring them are probably even direr than just bad nutrition.

Everyone knows smart kids that can’t hold their own in a conversation. Everyone knows people with IQs off the charts that couldn’t ride a city bus. Computers and the Internet may be providing alternate social forums for these people, but they’re enabling these people to deprive themselves of something vital to the human experience: face-to-face real-time real interaction with other real human beings. I fall victim to it every day. I email or call or IM when I could just walk across campus and talk to someone in his or her office. I buy things on Amazon.com instead of driving to the mall, discussing the pros and cons of products with salespeople and physically handing them money. When I use these technological so-called “advancements,” am I really just cheating myself out of my own right to human existence?

Winner seems to think so, at least a little. He closes his essay by saying that so far, the computer “revolution,” is being guided by something all too familiar: “the absent mind.”

This is getting heavy. I think in researching theory and the deep meaning of humanity, one should take a break after doing deep thinking such as this. So, I’m going to go do that. And maybe also get a sandwich. Thinking this hard makes me hungry.