Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Last week I found myself in the middle of one of those conversations that keeps you thinking into the wee hours of the night. By no means did we reach a resolution; however, I’ll do my best to recount some of the main positions and posits of the conversation. Hopefully you can provide some insights of your own.

Like most brain busters it began simply enough. My friend told a story of how she had been in the car with her dad watching him manoeuvre between his cellphone, blackberry, MP3 player, and the steering wheel. “He was like a zombie”, she said, “doing a million virtual things at once”, barely even conscious of the conversation he was supposedly having with her. In that instant, almost all of her dad’s faculties were fulfilling virtual obligations over a variety of virtual networks.

Envision a matrix, each technology filling a virtual space around us, connecting slowly but surely with other virtual spaces until we are in fact living most of our conscious lives in a virtual realm. Kinda scary, but not that far-fetched.

This brings in the discussion of augmented reality, the real-time intrusion of technology into our physical environment. However, I am not talking about overlaying our environment with technical or digital information. I’m speaking more about disconnecting from our physical environment altogether.

Forget the notions of Second Life, where users are still quite present in the physical realm. The reality of our current situation mirrors science fiction, whereby our physical selves are not necessarily needed for much of our day-to-day lives. The matrix of different networks is definitely starting to fill out, taking more and more of our consciousness with it.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We put so many hours of energy into virtual worlds and networks every day—tuned to our laptops, iPhones, and Blackberries so as not to miss a single nanosecond of social networking, emails, video games, online shopping, or music. If the law above holds true (and it does), where does this energy go? Does it flow out the other side in the form of new creations, products, events, and innovations? Or does it get trapped behind the screens in a virtual space awaiting our next visit? If we are engaging in three or four or five different mediums at a time, giving small pieces of ourselves to each one, how much of our conscious minds are “here”, and how much is already residing in virtual space? And more importantly, what end are we all working towards?

We need to ground ourselves and remember that at least for the time being we are existing in the physical realm. It is important to turn yourself off of social networks, cellphones, and other virtual devices every day. Spend some time and energy with your feet rooted in the soil.

What do you think? Have you found yourself having this same conversation? Did you get any further in your discussion than we did?

When I was writing about the iPad and technicity, I noticed that the notion of technicity can also be applied to the scourge of the game world: Fanboys, and their hatred of other people’s choices.

To recapitulate what technicity means: it is an “aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g., rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters” (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006).

Technicity comes to stand for identities that are formed around and through technological differentiation. This is even more true for the confusing 21st century where these new allegiances—based on attitudes towards or adoption of technology—seem to offer more critical purchase in representations of technoculture than the old more fixed sureties of class, ethnic or gender identities (ibid.).

Gamers in different countries might have more in common with each other than with other groups in their own country. This is because being a gamer is associated with certain skills and styles:

“The significant aspect of the term of ‘technicity’ is to encapsulate, in conceptual terms, the connections between an identity based on certain types of attitude, practices, preferences and so on and the importance of technology as a critical aspect of the construction of that identity. To be subjects within the privileged twenty-first-century first world is to be increasingly caught up in a network of technically and mechanically mediated relationships with others who share, to varying degrees, the same attitudes/ tastes, pleasures and preferences” (ibid.).

To make this notion a bit more palpable, the aforementioned mods and rockers make a very good example. Mods rode scooters; rockers motorbikes; and they were dead serious about it. To the outsider, both seem like a mode of transportation that will get you from A to B; just like to the outsider there is not much of a difference between an Xbox and a PlayStation. However, as everyone who has seen Quadrophenia can testify to, scooters and motorbikes were serious business. They were an extension of one’s personality.

Within a dominant frame—e.g., youth culture, digital culture—different forms of technicity clash. This clash is not about which mode of transportation is better or which graphics are prettier. It’s something personal, it’s about one’s identity expressed by one’s gadget choices.

Additionally, and this is something that makes the arguments surrounding game platforms even more intense, games force you to invest much more of your personality. You need skills, you need to decode a game’s structure or system—of levels, architectural organization, scoring systems, timing of events, non-player characters’ actions and interactions, etc. Without you, there is no game.

Accordingly, by questioning the purchase of a console you question someone’s self in two ways: not only is the person’s choice an expression of a “wrong” technicity, and therefore a “wrong” personality, but also the person’s investment his or her self in the games is a waste of time. Their practices, their preferences, their skills, their decoding abilities, they themselves are doubted. And they don’t take too kindly to it.

This also explains the clashes over platform exclusivity, and the accompanying notions of superiority and disappointment when a title is made available on other platforms. It also accounts for the tendency to compare titles which have been released on several platforms to the very last details. “Yes, it may be the same game, but my technicity is still superior to yours!”—Uh, I mean, “Yo gaylord this game iz much better on PS3, faggotbox cant do shit cuz its de gheyz!”

Kinda makes you long for some good old bank holiday clashes, doesn’t it?

-Jens

I’m not quite sure where I stand on the phenomenon of location-aware applications. (I’m sure you’ve noticed that Foursquare is the hot one at the moment.) I find geo-tagging interesting; it’s the sort of thing that I want to use to build pre- and post-apocalyptic fantasies. But marking a spot with useful or neat info, and letting others know you were there, is different from letting people know exactly where you are now. Well, I think so anyway.

I see the value of letting friends or acquaintances know where you are at a given time: you can increase the likelihood of “chance” rendez-vous, and it adds an element of hyper-modern fun or adventure to our hyper-tech lives. It tries to put the social back in social networking.

I think of location-awareness as a sort of antidote to the separation that social networking brings on, whether it actually works or not. I’ve mentioned before that I now spend far more time at my computer than ever before, which, besides its other effects, makes me feel like I’m missing out on being social, even when I’m engaging in conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other forum. By letting others on my networks know where I am when I do get away from the new boob tube, I can at least feel like I’m being a bit more “real” social. Well, I don’t precisely do this. At least not via a specific location-aware application. Occasionally I’ll mention on Twitter where I am or where I’m going (usually obliquely), and I guess I’m not sure exactly why I do that.

Anyway, at the moment, I hardly go anywhere except for home and work, so my location posts would be excessively dull!

There’s a dark side to all of this sharing though. Just as identity thieves can mine social networking sites and the world wide web in general for personal information to recreate private identities and do all kinds of bad stuff, enterprising thieves might use personal location information to determine when a person is and is not at home and when she is likely to return: the perfect opportunity—practically an invitation—to steal. That’s kind of the premise of Please Rob Me, a website that uses Foursquare data from Twitter to inform the world when people are away from their homes, and thus supposedly when those homes are ripe for a’robbin’. (Really, their goal is “to raise some awareness on this issue [of privacy] and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because everybody can get this information.”)

I’m not an alarmist when it comes to this sort of thing, but I do believe that identity thieves are out there, and I’m sure that somewhere someone is in fact nefariously collecting information on social networkers’ whereabouts. I don’t think those are necessarily reasons to stop using Twitter or foursquare; just think smart and be safe, okay?

On the other hand, I think Blippy is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard of. The site updates your status, like Twitter, with every purchase you make on your credit card. And sane people volunteer to share this information with the world. This seems to me to a shockingly shallow intentional expression of private information. (And I’m not going to provide a hyperlink, because I don’t think you should bother visiting the site.) People used to say that Twitter was narcissistic, but Blippy has no other purpose than to gloat over one’s consumption. There’s little more narcissistic than that. Barbara Kiviat writes in Time Magazine that the idea of posting every credit card purchase might shame people into spending less, but one of the website’s co-founders, Philip Kaplan, points to an opposite trend: spending more so that the world knows all the cool stuff you’re buying and doing. Kiviat herself finds the urge to spend more rising within her after using Blippy for a while. Ugh!

When we look at social networking tools in isolation, it’s difficult to see the harm that they might cause, but these tools don’t exist in isolation, especially not now. I think it should be clear enough that releasing important private information can lead to bad things without the many warnings about doing it, but the warnings are there, and the problems will only get deeper the more information we choose to share.

Where will all of this private disclosure lead? What are the advantages? Do they outweigh the potential pitfalls? I could pretty much talk about this for hours, but I’ll let you chime in for a minute…

—Adam

As regular readers of BlogCampaigning might know, I also write a music blog. That means aspiring artists, their labels and their PR people always email me new music. Some of it is good. Most of it isn’t.

Nearly all of the pitches I get are amateurish at best, and nearly all of them are poorly targeted.

However, one name has consistently stood out over the past few months for sending me music that I usually like wrapped in well written emails: Alastair Sloan from Spread The Noise. Curious to find out more about what he’s doing, I wrote him an email and he was nice enough to answer some of my questions.

Describing his company as a “music marketing agency specializing in digital relations”, Alastair explained to me via email that he got his start because his own music blog, Noise Porn, received so many poorly written pitches that he recognized a need in the market.

Alastair also mentioned that he doesn’t have any formal marketing or communications training, but rather draws on his experience as a music blogger and from time spent working for newspapers and the PR department of a major organization. I think we’ll see a lot more of this in the future, as PR education programs start to focus on production and internships rather than teaching the theory, while many more self-taught online communicators will have the skill and self-confidence to start their own companies or enter the working world.

Since I’ve always got an interest in how artists feel about giving away their music for free, I asked Alastair for his thoughts on it.

“It tends to be larger labels with an established position within the industry who are less keen to give away music”, he wrote. “Sometimes I convince them; sometimes I don’t. The important issue to point out here is that the business model of the record industry can have a ‘free’ aspect to it. Building your profile online can lead to more gigs, and more money. And building that profile is a lot easier if you’re prepared to give away something to the bloggers.” He goes on to mention that in a lot of cases, the artists he represents are actually paying him to see that their music is given away to the blogs, quite the reverse of the traditional model.

His parting advice for others wanting to reach out to bloggers and the online community is to be personable and not too formal. “Follow up your emails, and show you care”, he says. He also adds that if you are a large PR agency, you shouldn’t be sending the same formal news release to blogs that you would send to more traditional publications.

From what I can tell, this British bloke seems to be doing pretty well for himself, so go check out SpreadTheNoise.com to see for yourself.

For some more posts on music blogging from BlogCampaigning, check out A Round Table of Music Blogging Knights and Music Blogging: Posting, Pitching and PR

-Parker

Apple introduced its iPad to mixed reactions: It’s not capable of multi-tasking, lacks Flash support, and has no camera. It was derided as a blown-up iPod touch. The enthusiasm that has surrounded other Apple launches was lacking.

I believe one of the main reasons for this is the iPad’s break with the dominant technicity of computers.

Technicity is that “aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g., rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters” (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006).

Technicities associated with the consumption and manipulation of digital technologies have become key characteristics of the preferred subject of the twenty-first century, which in turn means the marginalization of other kinds of technicity.

Particular kinds of skill with particular kinds of technology are privileged in the developed world. They were mainly born in a male environment, laboratories, the MIT Model Railroad Club, etc., and influenced by such popular myths as that of the “hacker”.

Accordingly, for a long time we associated computers with white males. Sure we moved on, but there’s still a particular skill set attached to it. It’s the ideal of being able to control the technology, to browse the net while uploading photos and chatting on an instant messenger.

“The ‘idealized modern subject’ has always been marked by an enthusiastic acceptance of their connection with machines—for instance, as a … gadget consumer. The contemporary version of this ideal subject is the digitally competent producer/consumer whose ‘technicity’ plays a key role in formations of taste and lifestyle” (Dovey & Kennedy).

The iPad, however, breaks with this form of “technicity”. It is not the site for the production of a culturally valued technicity. Instead, it is the kind of device you would buy your grandma or your elderly parents.

It is very easy and intuitively to handle, photos can be flicked by your fingers—something 2-year-olds as well as 80-year-olds understand. There is no distracting multi-tasking, no parallel processes which burden the user. You do not have to hook it up to the ‘net through a modem, but can get online with 3G. It does not get any easier than that.

Here a form of dominant technicity is challenged. The result of this threat of cultural capital is a lack of enthusiasm, ridicule or simply disinterest. The reactions would definitely be harsher if Apple and its other “cool” products did not simultaneously embody the pinnacle of preferred technicity. The Macbook and iPhones—these are what the modern person just have to have.

The thing is: all this happened before—with Nintendo’s Wii. The Wii likewise broke with certain notions of technicity. Games have been produced by very particular kinds of people who have developed very particular cultures and tastes which command a disproportionate amount of “cultural space”. This resulted in contents and marketing strategies which did not appeal to large demographics such as women or ethnic minorities.

Instead, the ideal gamer was white and male. Along came the Wii. Its Wiimote made gaming much more accessible. Suddenly your mum was playing tennis or a work out game. Nursing homes had Wii bowling competitions.

However, the hardcore crowd hated it. There were too many casual titles and seemingly unfulfilled promises. This was not the kind of gaming traditional gamers were used to, now their hobby was shared by a much larger demographic. But it was not shared on their terms.

It is doubtful that the iPad will ever be as successful as the Wii. However, if there is one thing to learn from Nintendo, it is that it pays to break with dominant technicities. By making it easier to access technology you will offend people, but you will win enough fans to make more than up for it.

-Jens

Last week, I realized that there was an error with BlogCampaigning’s RSS feed. Although some feedreaders were still able to grab the content, others were getting XML Parsing Errors.

As I often do when I get a warning message I don’t quite understand, I Google it. Chances are, someone else has had the same problem as me and figured it out.

Quick Online Tips helped me fix the problem. The error was caused by some blank spaces in one of my .php files. Since I often muck around in the theme, this could easily have been caused by me or one of the plugins I added.

Going through thousands of lines of code didn’t seem like a good way to spend my afternoon, so I installed the Fix RSS Plugin. It scanned all my code, and quickly fixed the error. While the appeal for a $4.99 donation to the creator of the plugin is the first time I’ve seen something like that in Wordpress, I think it is worth the money.

The lesson to learn here is that even if you think your site is working perfectly, other people might be having problems with it. After making any major changes, you need to thoroughly check to make sure everything works (or have a good team of writers that occasionally check things for you).

Thanks for reading BlogCampaigning—and if you notice any other errors, let me know!

Cheers,

-Parker

Talking with my friend Mike Kennedy recently, I realized that social media have invaded my job. My personal and professional lives are colliding!

Blogging and reading blogs have become part of my job description, and there are small Twitter and Facebook communities among my co-workers (including me) and higher-ups. I talk to my boss on Twitter—weird. These things used to be solely personal pursuits—stuff for friends and family. Now I do them at work? Yuck!?

I’m sure this is nothing new to many of BlogCampaigning’s readers, but it was a bit of a shock to me, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’m happy that my company has started a blog and that I get to write for it. I think it’s great that we’re actively, if tentatively, pursuing a social media strategy. I’ve even written some posts on how social media affects the workplace (we’re in human resources publishing, so you know).

I think my surprise arises from an artificial barrier that I had built dividing The Internet and its Many Diversions and Modes of Communication including Social Media, from E-Mail and Proprietary Closed Systems and their Singular Purpose of Doing My Job. What I mean is that I previously thought The Internet was for leisure, and one only used it occasionally for work. But in an instant, I recognized that this was far from the truth, and I was thus in some sort of work-leisure limbo. (It’s clear now that this realization was building for some time.)

So what now!?

I don’t really have a problem with social media entering my job. In hindsight, that was clearly inevitable. This episode has just made me realize that I will now have to deal with all of the mixed-up things that come next: delineating work time from leisure; maintaining a professional web presence; managing the time I am working…

I guess the question is: does this situation even really change anything?

Sure, that barrier has fallen down, but does that mean my behaviour or life will change? I don’t know the answer to that yet.

— Update —

I think I might have figured it out. The thing is, I already spend a lot time at the computer; I don’t like that it has intruded into so many daily functions. If I want to read the news, I go to my computer. If I want to see what my friends are up to or talk to them, I go to my computer. If I want to listen to music or look at photos—computer. If I want to write—computer. Recipes, directions, phone calls, videos, communication… You can probably guess that I don’t have a Blackberry or iPhone or some other piece of fancy portable gear. Maybe that’s my trouble but I’m not sure.

I have two problems with spending so much time at my computer: guilt and headaches. On the one hand, it just doesn’t feel right staring at a digital screen for as long as I do each day; on the other, I feel unhealthy doing it. You could say, “Get a Wii Fit!” But I’m pretty sure that’s missing the point. I want to do all of those leisure activities, but I don’t want to sit in one spot all day, staring into the bright light, to do them. I want to leave my house!

So I wonder, what is the solution? Am I just waiting for the right technology to come along to allow me to do all of the things I want to without feeling like I’m attached to a machine? Do I want to give up technology altogether? Let me tell you when summer comes around.

Least I Could Do is a web comic by Lar Desouza and Ryan Sohmer that I really enjoy reading. They post very regularly—at least a couple of times a week—and they make their income from selling print books of the comics and through ads on the site. From what I can tell, Least I Could Do seems to have a pretty big following and has let the duo live comfortably.

Earlier this week, Sohmer wrote a blog post called “Thanks for Stealing” in which he expresses his displeasure for the fact that someone has created an iPhone application that allows people to easily view the comics that Sohmer writes. The maker of this app earns money from the sale of the app ($0.99) and from ads within the app. Sohmer’s displeasure stems from the fact that he isn’t seeing any of this money, and that someone is essentially profiting off of his hard work.

At first, I completely agreed with him. Then I read the rebuttal posted in the comments section by AsmodeusLore (clearly a student of the Masnickian school of economics) in which he constructs and airtight argument as to why Sohmer should not be concerned about this iPhone app.

The essence of his comment is that the comics haven’t been “stolen” but rather “copied” (something quite different), and even though this app isn’t driving any traffic back to Sohmer’s website, it is still serving as a promotional tool for the comic. Existing fans are able to enjoy it in another way, and at least some of the new fans will want to know more and will eventually end up at Sohmer’s site or buy one his books.

Read the post from Sohmer, then read at least one of AsmodeusLore’s comments below it and see how you feel.

I think there is a huge opportunity for Sohmer to partner with the creator of this app. For example, offering to promote the app on his site if the developer changes the app so it links back to the site, or share revenue with him. Not everything needs to end up with a lawsuit or take-down notice.

So what do you think? Is it still stealing? What does this make you think about the “piracy problem” facing the entertainment industries?

-Parker

Recently I wrote a post for BlogCampaigning on my experience transitioning from a vinyl DJ to a laptop DJ, which, from personal comments, appears to have been generally well received. But the only comment anyone actually posted on the blog was quite negative and passively critical. Initially, I wanted to tell the semi-anonymous commenter where to go, but I decided to take the high road, thanking the fellow for his post and offering a very brief apologetic response.

I was wrong. I’ve thought about it, and I now recognize that that person’s comment was uninformed and thoughtless, and I had no reason to apologize. I don’t want to insult him, and I hope this response doesn’t simply come off as petty. I have a far more appropriate response in mind, and it is basically a brief description of the nature of entertainment media today.

In his passive-aggressive note, the commenter appears to make three points:

1. DJs who use iTunes (or similar software) don’t deserve to entertain club or bar crowds.
2. Whatever happened to DJs who can match beats by simply listening to songs (as opposed to using software to digitally and automatically beat-match)?
3. DJs today suck.

Where to begin?

First, the nature of DJing has changed completely in recent years, and “disc jockeying” is basically an anachronism in the same way as “film processing” or “going to print”. With digital music collections advancing far faster than physical collections, and the ease of collecting and transporting digital music, it should be no surprise that DJs are turning to software solutions. And now, there are hardware solutions, as well, to replace bulky turntables and CD players. Everyone who wants to be a DJ has already got a laptop. A DJ starting out now would almost be a fool to choose physical media over virtual. As for iTunes, well, as I said in my original post, it’s not good for DJing, and it’s not appropriate for DJing, but in a pinch, which is where I found myself on that night, it will perform the required function.

What software or hardware one chooses to use, however, is basically irrelevant—a simple matter of pleasure or circumstance. I started DJing on a kit hobbled together from whatever bits of stereo equipment my friends, Josh and James, and I had at home—and later some rented gear. Even when MP3s came around, I only used them to create mixes that I could play on CD decks. But if the software existed at the time, I almost certainly would have chosen to use a laptop over CDs. (Vinyl is always a special case.) The only relevant question is: how well does the DJ entertain the crowd?

So, complain all you want, but this mode of DJing is just the way it is and will be. Frankly, these days I’d be more surprised to see a DJ using turntables at a club than using a laptop—with or without some extra hardware.

(I’m not saying I fully approve of the rise of the laptop DJ. As with photography, and journalism, and any other medium that has found itself in a similar situation, not everyone who performs as a DJ deserves to call themselves a DJ. There is a core skill set that one must develop, and no software or hardware can allow a person to bypass that process. No doubt many DJs today never bother to acquire those skills; but this has ever been the case.)

The other thing is that the digital revolution has caused a tsunami of DJs, just as it has turned everyone into a photographer, and a web designer, and an illustrator, and a journalist, and a media expert, and so on. There’s more to this: I don’t want to get into the details, but the expanding middle class has somehow achieved a sort of critical nexus of leisure time and disposable income that practically compels their young to go to bars and clubs and dance. In Toronto, at least, new bars, clubs, and restaurants open all the time and everywhere. Each one of them needs to entertain their clientele—ideally at a low cost—and more than ever now the common factor is the DJ.

More venues + more leisure time and money = more DJs

Unfortunately, as I touched on above—and in this I agree with the commenter—more DJs doesn’t mean more quality. In fact, it almost definitely means lower quality overall; but it doesn’t simply mean that all laptop DJs are awful or that the club owner has hired his inexperienced cousin who just downloaded some trial software and wants to give it a go. There are certainly many experienced and skilled DJs who use (and choose) computers over traditional DJ gear.

You know what, I’m not even ashamed to say that I have played a song here and there from YouTube when I haven’t found it in my collection. I would never do this in a club or bar with a high-quality sound system, but for a private party or a standard bar night, why not? If you can mix it and make it fit, and it sounds good, that is really the only issue.

You’ll probably be better off paying attention to what music the DJ is playing and how well she does it, rather than the gear she is using. If you find it still doesn’t live up to your standards, you can always try your hand at DJing yourself.

Thanks for your comment.

Can you guess what this is?

Give up? It’s a computer’s hard disk drive (HDD) with a measly 5 MB of storage.

I came across this picture a few days ago and it made me stop to thank the rapid advancements of technology and geekery.

In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with an HDD.  It weighed over a ton and only stored 5 MB of data.  My appreciation for my 8 GB memory stick, which holds the equivalent of 1,600 of the units you see in this picture and fits on my key chain, has definitely increased.