Task 14 - New Interactive Environments

What is it you are going to take with you from this course, be it negative or positive experience, content-related or organisational aspects and so on? Write down your experiences, observations, reflections on your Weblog.

What I did gain from this course were some good articles to use for other courses, the concept of activity theory, I got to know about PLENK course and MOOCs in general and Flashmeeting application. So actually some interactive environments.

In general I was not satisfied with the organization of the course. It seemed like there were a lot of demands from the lecturers side but not so much effort spent. It felt like we were just given tasks just because something had to be given. The whole concept was vague and to admit it, did not motivate to give a 100% from my side either.

I would make some recommendations for the next year:

• The concept of the course should be really thought through and argumented
• The timeframe and expected results should be specified
• If it is not possible to give all the tasks at once, there should be a certain time when the students can expect the new tasks
• If the course starts in the middle of the semester and most of the students are from IMKE, it is not a very good idea to spend so much time on defining the term "interactivity" as it has been done in almost all the courses so far.
• It is useful to provide some new interesting knowledge regarding the topics of the course, even if they are not part of the tasks, they may be interesting to investigate by the students
• Maybe there could be some interactive environments tested and reviewed by the students, which would make the tasks more practical

Things that I liked:

• The assessment process was clear and easily followable
• The reflections of the tasks by Terje
• The task of comparing Plenk10 and NIE course
• The different tools used in the process of the course as some of them were new to me

Task 13 - New Interactive Environments

Describe your activity and explain how would you redesign it, re-instrumentalise it and re-organised it to be more efficient, enjoyable, etc.

The activity that I am analyzing is workout. Working out has become an activity of itself, not a necessity for getting things done, but rather a thing we have to do to stay healthy and fit. Computers have helped in a sense that it is now possible to monitor the efficiency of our workout, to calculate calories, distance heart rate etc. It is a kind of motivator. In the other hand, computers are the reasons people are not moving naturally as much as they had to before these technological developments.

But how can digital technology help people be fit and at the same time make up for its guilt of turning people into office-slaves? One thing that I thought about was how technology can help to gain more from people, who are spending their time and energy working out. For example, people are going to gyms, spending hours in a week on exercise machines, spending energy and letting it all go to waste. But all this work could actually do something more than just burn fat or build muscle. The energy which is created on the exercise machine could be collected and used for example for the gym's lighting. Fortunately there are more and more gyms, which are starting to use the energy from exercise machines and therefore saving up from their electricity bills. This is one example but there should be much much more.

Because if to think about it, the gyms are not a necessity for people. It is possible to jog or lift weights or dance in a group everywhere. Instead, people spend money to go to one room with many people to sweat and suffer together. At least in the earlier days, this meant that something would come out of the sweating and suffering, such as a building for example :) Physical work was done for some purpose.

Digital technology together with science could take more advantage of people just jogging around or going to group exercises, dancing or boxing. There should be some kind of energy collectors used on the hands and feet of the people in action. Every movement could be transformed into energy and from there to electricity. Then why not go together to the gym and do good for the Earth. This is something to think about to the scientists and technology developers. It should not be very difficult I guess.

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 11

Analyse both free software and open source approach in your blog. If you prefer one, provide your arguments.

Free software is a kind of software, which can be used, copied, modified and shared for non-commercial purposes by anyone with no fees or purchases. Examples of free software that I have used are for example GIMP image editor and Openoffice text editor. These are quite quality software freely downloadable from the web. Both of them are also open source softwares.

Open source software is a software, which has an open source code for everyone to see. It enables to study the code and find out, how does the coding work in the specific software. But for that you have to be a pretty good programmer I guess. But still if you can see the code, copy and alter it as you wish, it is kind of similar to free software, with some limitations - you are not able to modify the original.

The difference between the two software versions still remains a little confusing to me. Probably it is more of a question of ethics. Free software is a kind of way of thinking while open source is waiting for some income. I would not know which software to choose, as I don't know programming and can't read code very well, therefore I could not modify the code anyway.

Introduction and Foundation of New Media - Essay reviews

In this post, I am going to review and comment three essays, written by Mehrnoosh, Kersti and Valeria.

Mehrnoosh wrote an interesting essay about image tagging and retrieval, comparing folksonomy and controlled vocabulary. She described different researches about how people retrieve images from the Internet. There was some interesting food for thought for me in that essay. For example that unlike for texts, while retrieving images, people do not focus much on the authority of the image but rather on the fact, that the image represents what they want. Another interesting thought was that often the searchers have a well-defined mental image of a potentially satisfying picture already in their mind. I found some recognition in those thoughts.

She went on by describing folksonomy, or in this context image tagging by the users opposed to controlled vocabularies. Mehrnoosh brought out the advantages and disadvantages of folksonomy in the image retrieval process. I liked that she had found quite a lot studies about the topic to back up the arguments of the both sides. The last paragraph brought out an example of the National Archive of UK and their plan to add their digital collection to Flickr. I liked that example in the end and maybe I would suggest to use more examples like it in the rest of the text as well, just to illustrate the essay.

Kersti's essay was about digital ecosystem and whether it is a fertile metaphor or the new type of ecosystem that uses ecological principles. She focused on the notions associated with the terms of "digital", "ecosystem", "new media" and "metaphor". She brought out a lot of interesting tangible examples to illustrate the essay. The way Kersti went through all the related terms and devoted a paragraph for each matter gave an overview of the thoughts in her mind about the topic. Although some of the arguments remained a bit confusing. For example equalling the term "digital" with "online" - this should maybe have been explained a little more.

Kersti's writing style for this essay was kind of philosophical and at the same time had a personal touch, which made it easy to read. In order to back up her arguments a little better, she should have used more references and citations in the text.

Valeria wrote her essay about online memes. I like the way Valeria can connect the topics of her every post to a lot of other examples from different fields. If to look at the first part of her essay, she starts with examples of Mona Lisa and some from Japanese culture. But all the examples work in the context of her essay.

Valeria's essay is very well structured and each chapter of the essay describes content relevant to the explanation of online memes and their phenomenon. There are many references made from different researchers and web sites, which gives her arguments a good backup. There aren't many suggestions to make for Valeria as I found the essay good, comprehensive and summarizing.

Generative Content Creation - Post 2

This post concentrates on the topic of generative art. The term generative art was confusing to me at first, but after reading Galanter's (2003) article I got a more clear idea of generative art

Galanter gives a definition to the term of generative art:

"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." (Galanter, 2003).

Five years later Galanter improved his definition a little but basically the core meaning remains:

"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist cedes control to a system that operates with a degree of relative autonomy, and contributes to or results in a completed work of art. Systems may include natural language instructions, biological or chemical processes, computer programs, machines, self-organizing materials, mathematical operations, and other procedural inventions." (Galanter, 2008).

In Galanter's article "What is generative art" he describes the activities, which are a part of todays contemporary generative art. These are for example electronic music, computer graphics and animation, industrial design and architecture. All of these activities use computer systems to create a complete work of art. Galanter believes the systems to be the most important part of generative art. "The key element in generative art is then the system to which the artist cedes partial or total subsequent control," he says (2003).

The systems which can not be easily or not at all comprehended by the scientists, but which seem to have an order are called complex systems. Galanter describes complex systems like this:

"Complex systems typically have a large number of small parts or components that interact with similar nearby parts and components. These local interactions often lead to the system organizing itself without any master control or external agent being "in charge". Such systems are often referred to as being self-organizing."(Galanter, 2003).

Another systems Galanter analyzes are chaotic and random systems. He believes chaotic systems to be a part of complex systems. Galanter brings out examples such as weather, which is a complex system that is not very easily comprehendible, yet it is a system where each small particle is dependent on others and vice versa. Galanter strictly says that chaotic systems are not the same as random systems. The weather example proves it well.

Corcuff (2008) describes generative art a little differently and also brings the subjects of chance and unpredictability into the picture. So if to compare Galanter's and Corcuff's articles it gets kind of mixed up. If Galanter strictly demands the usage of systems in the generative art and Corcuff describes chance then they do not match completely. Galanter does not think that Jackson Pollock's works should be considered as generative, at the same time Corcuff mentions Pollock in her article. Therefore it can be assumed that she takes Pollock as a generative artist.

But if to look at Corcuff's article, what is chance in the concept of generative art. Is it actually a system or is it not? In one hand for example if the dice are used, it is still a system, the predictability can be calculated and possible results even if there are millions can be predicted. Or is the chance just so unpredictable and complex that it could be called chaotic?

In his article "What is Complexism?" Galanter (2008) describes the complexity theory which he believes to be the core component of generative art. Complexism in his words is a highly disordered system which seems chaotic. He suggests that complexism is the next step from modernism and postmodernism. He compared the three, explained their characteristics and differences.

It could be seen that complexism is a part of art evolution, which follows modernism and postmodernism. When the modernism involved a concrete system, the fixed way of doing things, authority and hierarchy, then postmodernism resented modernism and did completely the opposite. Complexism in the other hand is again another wave of difference. But it seems to have grown up a bit. Instead of total collapse, no truth and randomness, complexism in taking more into account the feedback, generative networks and co-evolution. Although the generation of art is seemingly chaotic, it still leaves an impression of higher meaning and goals.

As always, art represents the thoughts, dreams, desires and resistance of the creative elite of the particular era. In general, generative art could be considered as obscure or chaotic, meaningless even. But as I could understand, in this case, it is not only about the art piece itself but also the system, which was developed for making the art piece.

Corcuff, Marie-Pascale. 2008. Chance and generativity. In GA2008, 11th Generative Art Conference, 189-199. http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2008/16.pdf.

Galanter, Philip. 2003. What is generative art? Complexity theory as a context for art theory. In In GA2003–6th Generative Art Conference http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2003/a22.pdf.

Galanter, Philip. 2008. What is Complexism? Generative Art and the Cultures of Science and the Humanities. In GA2008, 11th Generative Art Conference, 151-167 http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2008/13.pdf.

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 10

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015? Write a short (blogged) predictive analysis

In five years I believe is not going to be much change in the landscape of software licensing. There are always going to be people who want to earn money and others who are in favor of free sharing. I can not imagine that there will be a program, license system or some other way of controlling the software sharing, which would satisfy everyone.

Probably the software selling companies are trying to think of new more effective ways of protecting their software or maybe more strict rules are put on the sharing of software. At the same time, the network of people using, downloading and sharing software online is growing in a pace which is very hard to follow. And of course there are still those companies or people who intentionally and collectively develop freeware for free use for everyone.

Maybe there will be more strict online rules and laws made, which establish the rights and wrongs in the Internet, Then there should be some more efficient control systems made, which have more control over what is going on in the internet. In this case the pirating is made harder and the punishments made stricter so that no one wanted to brake the laws. Then there will be companies who sell their software, maybe use vendor lock-in strategy or some perks perhaps to keep their loyal customers. There will probably still be companies which produce freeware for non-commercial purposes. The whole system would be more under control.

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

If I think about copying restrictions and whether they are useful and for whom, I try to think from two different point of views. I am a little hypocritical about this thing.

If I think of myself as a creator or maybe an investor of a great new software, to which I have spent a lot of time or money to develop, I would like to earn something from it. It would certainly not feel good if the product I made would be used, copied and shared without me getting nothing of it. I would like there to be copying restrictions on my software.

In the other hand I am never very keen on paying for any software. I always try to get them somewhere for free or use an alternative freeware. Therefore I understand the users who are against the copying restrictions and would rather get the software for free from the internet as they are used to get everything else free from there.

Exeptions of copying restrictions should be made for educational purposes. Software which would help children to read or students to do their homework or people to get through their financial difficulties for example should be more easily retrievable. Sometimes companies should do so called 'pro bono' work in order to do good to people who are in a more vulnerable situation. Of course in this case there should be a system of control over the purposes the software is used for in order to prevent commercial use of the product.

Introduction and Foundation of New Media - Essay

New media – a technology or culture?

The computer revolution we are experiencing today is nothing ever seen before. If the emergence of printing machines influenced the distribution of texts and the invention of photography influenced the production of books and still images, then computers affects all types of media - texts, still images, moving images, sounds, etc. Today, all of our culture is being shifted into computer-mediated form. Everything from books, movies, and photos can be produced, distributed and communicated through computers. It is interesting how new media is affecting almost every part of out life today.

How did new media become new?

Manovich said that new media became new when the two paths of convergence of computing sciences and media technologies met. At first there were computing machines, which helped to calculate. Then people developed new technologies, which made the calculation processes faster and able to do more difficult tasks. At the same time media technologies were developed. Film and photo cameras, printing presses, television, radio – they all were a prerequisite for the creation of computers. According to Manovich new media was finally created, when people learned how to translate all existing media into numerical data, which was understood by computers. The computing machines could now solve much more difficult equasions, which as a result appeared as an image, film or music to the user. Therefore it could be said that new media is a merge of technology and culture.

In order to analyze the relations between new media, technology and culture, there should be an explanation of all these three terms.

Technology

The National Academy of Engineering defines the term “technology” like this:

“Technology is the process by which humans modify nature to meet their needs and wants. Most people, however, think of technology in terms of its artifacts: computers and software, aircraft, pesticides, water-treatment plants, birth-control pills, and microwave ovens, to name a few. But technology is more than these tangible products. Technology includes all of the infrastructure necessary for the design, manufacture, operation, and repair of technological artifacts, from corporate headquarters and engineering schools to manufacturing plants and maintenance facilities.”

Murphie and Potts (2003) cite McLuhan who also stated that all technologies are the extensions of human capacities: “Tools and implements are the extensions of manual skills and computer is an extension of brain.”

If to talk about new media simply as a technology using the previous statements, it could be concluded that new media is an extension of human capacities. In a sense it is true. If to think of technological artifacts of new media for example video camera, mp3-player, smartphone – each one of them helps to overcome some human shortage. Video camera records every detail of the environment it is filming and allows to review, copy and alter it, which humans are not able to do with their memories for example. They tend to forget. Mp3-players can remember and replay music, audio books, voice recordings etc just from one device, not to talk about any other new applications meant for mp3-players today. Smartphone is basically a small computer, which allows a person to communicate to anyone or anything in basically any place of the world without having to physically be there. And as Manovich stated it is an extension of the brain.

If only by looking at the new media as a technology, the picture is quite narrow-minded. There is something more there than only machines put together by humans. New media has broadened the possibilities of a Man further than ever before. It has changed the ways of communication, commerce, marketing, personal life, privacy and much more. Therefore it could be said that it has influenced people’s habits, sense of privacy, relationships and work organization. Almost every part of our lives has been influenced by the emergence of new media. Therefore can it be said that new media is a culture changing phenomenon or is it a culture in itself?

Culture

Culture is a term, which can again not be easily defined. Murphie and Potts cite Ray Williams, who is basically the founder of the discipline ‘culture sciences’ said that ‘culture’ is among the two or three most complicated words in English. As they bring out, the term could be easily defined as the signs, beliefs and practices of a group of society, but they say it to be too vague in generality. The other definition they bring out is one by Brian Eno: “(Culture is) everything we do not have to do”, in a sense that it is not our basic need for survival but it is something that people do or have. This could be argued, as people are social beings and need the feeling of unity and belonging, therefore it kind of is a need for security and insurance of being accepted and safe, which is actually a part of Maslow’s hirarchy of needs. Therefore I would stay with the first definition of the signs, beliefs and practices of a group of society.

Wikipedia offers three mainly used definitions for culture:

· Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture;

· An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning;

· The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

All these definitions explain the essence of humans, culture is something from which a person comes from, how he perceives the world and everything in it. It influences his behavior, values, goals and ways of communication. Therefore it could also be said that culture influences the way a person uses the computer. The purposes, goals, ways of communication may vary depending on from which culture a person is from. Also from which social group is he from. For example younger people take computers as a natural part of their lives, chatting, playing, communicating and sharing with other people via the Internet, but older generations may only use the computer for checking mail and reading news.

It could be said that new media has created its own culture or even cultures. For example if to look at hackers – a group of people with their own rules, ways of behavior, beliefs, folklore, almost everything which could define them as a culture. Hacker culture has been born through new media. Blogs, computer games, forums, social networks – they all can have a potential to be a separate culture. Facebook has been even called the 3^rd biggest country of the world, with the population of 500 million. Therefore maybe new media could be considered at least as an expression of culture, if not the culture itself.

How do new media, technology and culture merge?

Manovich says that new media can be seen as consisting of two layers - cultural layer and computer layer. It means that in one way the content of new media can be seen by humans as a collection of images, which could be interpreted as some kind of a narrative or comprehensive content related to the persons culture. In the other hand the computer "sees" the same content as numbers and programs it as it is used to. It is again interesting to see how computers and numerical representation can form the media into something that could be easily understandable for humans.

Potts and Murphie claim that people have always used technology as in part of their culture. They have used it for fighting for their lands, in the forms of tools and weapons. Civilizations are born with the technologies of building and writing, also cooking and music making is dependent on technology today, as well as contemporary mass culture, communication and production.

If to add all these statements together, it can be seen that while describing new media, nor technology or culture could be left aside. The technology gives the frames and tangible products to the new media and culture defines the content.

Conclusion

It is interesting to realize that every piece of information seen on computers today are actually numbers, which are created as visual symbols by the computer. At the same time, each of these symbols has some kind of meaning to the user and creates an association or a narrative for him.

New media can not be clearly defined as a technology or as a culture, because it involves both of these aspects. Technology is something, which gives the tools to new media, through which the media is produced, distributed and exhibited. At the same time culture gives the content to the new media.

References

TechXav – World Premier Tech Magazine. If Facebook Were A Country, It Would Be The 3rd Most Populated. http://www.techxav.com/2010/03/19/if-facebook-were-a-country/.

The National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Engineering. http://www.members.nae.edu/nae/techlithome.nsf/weblinks/KGRG-55A3ER?OpenDocument.

Wikipedia. Culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture.

Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Massassuchets: MIT Press. http://www.manovich.net/LNM/Manovich.pdf.

Murphie, A. Potts, J. Culture and Technology. 2003. Palgrave McMillan. http://books.google.com/books?id=EXkpIWWLV_IC&lpg=PP1&ots=IQjwxUxUMP&dq=culture%20and%20technology&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Task 10 - New Interactive Environments

Activity theory in practice

Task 10 of the NIE course involves analyzing two online courses according to the activity theory. Activity theory involves activities which are divided into actions which are again divided into operations.

PLENK2010 - Public Learning Environments, Network and Knowledge course is a massive open online course, where anyone from around the world can take part. The course examines the learning that occurs as a result of interaction and participation in the distributed community. The students are not given a certain body of content of the course, that they should remember, instead they are provided many reading, listening or playing materials. From these they choose the materials interesting to them and give feedback on the materials on their personal blogs, Twitter, Moodle discussion or anywhere else in a shared online environment.

The materials for the course are given in The Daily's. The Daily keeps the course together and helps to keep the focus on certain topics. There are also online live discussions on Fridays and Wednesdays. The course is very intensive and demands a lot of time if the participants are taking it seriously and daily going through the materials.

When describing PLENK2010 course in the concept of activity theory, I would use Kari Kuuti's example of activities, actions and operations.

Kari Kuuti's figure of activity theory:

PLENK2010

• Activity - Participating and learning from PLENK2010 course
• Actions - Going through the materials, participating in live course discussions and forum discussions, writing blog posts, reading other's blog posts, posting course related posts in Twitter and other environments.
• Operations - Choosing the blogging environment, choosing the materials of interest, registering to the course related environments, setting up personal profiles in different online environments etc.

New Interactive Environments is an online course which takes place in the fall semester in Tallinn University. NIE does not have a certain schedule of assignments nor body of content. The tasks and live online meetings are scheduled quite unpredictably, but are working kind of as a cumulative assignments, which should gradually bring the participants to the understanding of the course. The main goal of the course is to give a general overview of the interactivity, interactive environments and the theories of human actions and activities in these environments. The course involves keeping up with the course blog and doing the tasks and occasional live online meetings.

New Interactive Environments

• Activity - Learning about New Interactive Environments
• Actions - Keeping up with the course blog, doing the tasks, reading the feedback posts, getting familiar with the course related new environments
• Operations - Setting up an RSS feed to follow the new blog posts, providing personal blog address for the lecturers, visiting the suggested and tasks related web sites

If to compare the PLENK2010 and NIE courses, both have their pros and cons. Both of the courses have a broad field to cover and both are kind of experimental. While browsing through some of the blog posts of the participants of the PLENK2010 course I understood that they realized that the value of the course does not come immediately but through time. I guess it is the same for NIE course. Right now, being in the course, it seems general and has bites from here and there but the tasks to have some kind of cumulating value. I liked the organization of the PLENK2010 course better, since I work better intensively and when I am in full control of my time. But PLENK2010 has a very intensive schedule and it would be very time consuming to concentrate fully on completing the course. NIE does not have a comprehensive schedule and systemized tasks, which makes it difficult to see the big picture of what exactly are we trying to achieve.

Task 9 - New Interactive Environments

Put out a post summarising your understanding of activity theory and its potential for describing activity systems.

The concept of activity theory is in my opinion very wide and complicated. As one of my fellow students put it, explaining activity theory is like explaining nature. Activity theory, rooted from the work of a Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, who studied cultural-historical psychology, then developed by his colleague Alexei Nikolaevich Leont'ev has been developed in many fields of studies.

Leont'ev pointed out that people engage in "actions" that do not in themselves satisfy a need, but contribute towards the eventual satisfaction of a need. Often, these actions only make sense in a social context of a shared work activity. This lead him to a distinction between activities, which satisfy a need, and the actions that constitute the activities.(Wikipedia)

Activity theory has made a great impact on the studies of human-computer interaction as well as in the field of interactive design. I guess these are the fields which would fit in the concept of this course - New Interactive Environments.

Kari Kuuti illustrated the process of activity theory like this:

There is an activity, which leads to the primary goal. In the first case it is building a house. The primary goal is then to have a house. But in order to do the activity, there are different actions involved. In this case fixing the roofing, transport of bricks etc. In order to do the actions, one needs to operate in a ceratin way - hammering etc. The same goes for every activity. Therefore Leont'evs suggestion fits here - people do certain actions which do not achieve a goal, but

contribute towards the actual satisfaction of the need or goal.

Uden, Valderas and Pastor concluded their article by saying "Activity Theory constitutes a valuable tool for analysing software requirements. Furthermore, the use of a task-based Activity Theory model provides Web application developers with a model that allows them to properly specify navigational and organizational requirements." Activity theory helps to understand the human behaviour and therefore helps the software developers, designers and HCI specialists to understand, which operations and actions do people do in order to reach their goal. Activity can be broken down into actions, which are further subdivided into operations. In a design context, using these categories can provide the designer with an understanding of the steps necessary for a user to carry out a task (Nardi, Bonnie A. (1996)).

There have also been some criticism towards this theory. According to Engeström, Aaro Toomela (2000) brought out five main faults in activity theory:

1. It relies on unidirectional instead of a dialectical view of cultureindividual
relationships.
2. It focuses on analyses of activities without taking into account the
individual involved in the activity at the same time.
3. It underestimates the role of signs and the importance of focusing on
sign meaning.
4. It approaches mind fragmentally, without understanding the holistic
nature of mind.
5. It is fundamentally adevelopmental and therefore not appropriate
for understanding emerging phenomena, including mind.

Relying on these faults Toomela also said that activity theory is a dead end for cultural-historical psychology. Engeström overruled his statement and proved him to be wrong, as since the year 2000, the researchers interest in cultural-historical activity theory has risen. Ten years later we are also studying the concept of activity theory, therefore Engeström should be right about that.

New Interactive Environments - Task 8

Lüders, M. (2008). Concpeptualising personal media. New Media and Society, 10(5), 683-702.

In her article Conceptualizing personal media, Lüders tries to find distinct differences between mass media and personal media. As she studies previous theories which define mass media, she discovers that there are many similarities between personal and mass media. For example while personal blogs are an example of personal media, they could be read by a large audience - does that make it mass media?

The thoughts which came into my mind were that there are not only personal media and mass media, but also collective media as such. In the chapter Users as Producers, Lüders states that the mass media is being more and more created by the audience. Therefore she categorizes collectively generated media as mass media. In a sense it can be generalized as mass media, but in the other hand, it is a part which is constantly growing to maybe some day be one of the largest of media forms.

While to read from Lüders's image of axes, personal media is more symmetrical and de-centralized and not controlled, mass media is more one way communication and centralized, then where do for example Wikipedia or YouTube or any other collective sharing environment fit?

Collective media is generally co-controlled and not one- or two- way, but multi-way communicated. It does not have a centrum so to say other than the specific environment created online. Users can share their personal thoughts, ideas and works as well as promote businesses, products or even do politics. Popular sharing environments can not be categorized specifically as mass or personal media.

Media today is being constantly collectively created and changed. Mass media can no longer be a one-way great-leader-and-teacher, because people have ability to choose the content of media. There is not only mass media and personal media in my opinion, therefore it is difficult to find the differences between the two. This was also concluded by Lüders, when she said that

"Whereas the point of departure for this article has been a crude distinction between personal media and mass media, the reality is certainly more complex, especially considering the emergence of social and collaborative media situated between

these endpoints."

Generative Content Creation - Post 1

POST_1 - Students must read the articles (Weeks 44 and 45), posting a critical review (750 words) of one or several of these essays in this online forum. This post will be later used in the first part of the final essay.

Critical review of "The Language of New Media" Chapter I - "What is New Media?" by Lev Manovich

Manovich says that the popular definition of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition, rather than with production. He thinks that it is too limiting to consider texts and photographs distributed with the use of computer as new media, and the same texts and pictures distributed in books as not. He thinks that computer either used for distribution or production, influences (or does not influence) the culture the same way.

The computer revolution we are experiencing today is nothing ever seen before. If the emergence of printing machines influenced the distribution of texts and the invention of photography influenced the production of still images, then computers affects all types of media - texts, still images, moving images, sounds, etc.

Manovich brings out an interesting idea that today, all of our culture is being shifted into computer mediated form. Everything from books, movies, photos can be produced, distributed and communicated through computers. He looks at the two parallel paths which both lead to the development of a computer as we know it today. The first path is the convergence of computing and development of calculators, the other is the convergence of media technologies. It is interesting to realize, that everything we experience while using computers are actually numbers and mathematics. Every piece of information has its numerical representation which could be understood by the computers in order for them to create content.

In the chapter of "How Media Became New" he goes through the historical inventions and developments which are all a prerequisites to developing computers. Here he describes the trajectories of computing and media technologies. He said that For a long time the two trajectories ran in parallel without ever crossing paths. When finally in just less than 70 years ago the two paths meet, Manovich says that the media becomes new media. Basically it can be said that new media was born by merging computing technologies with media technologies. Calculators with cameras or printing machines.

Manovich describes the principles of new media, which can not be used for characterizing old media. These are:

1. Numerical representation
2. Modularity
3. Automation
4. Variability
5. Transcoding

Numerical representation means that all new media objects, whether they are created from scratch on computers or converted from analog media sources, are composed of digital code; they are numerical representations.

Modularity suggests that every media element consists of smaller parts like pixels, polygons, voxels, characters or scripts. The small particles form together a media element such as a still image, music, text etc. These media elements could be used together to make a film clip for example, which is again another media form. While modulating all these media elements and changing their purposes, the all the elements still stay the same and their identity remains.

The principles of numerical representation and modularity together allow another principle to emerge - automation. Many operations of media creation, manipulation and access could be done without human help. The texts and pictures could be automatically corrected by the software. Automation is used in creating 3D effects in movies and computer games, also in creating new virtual objects from scratch. All this knowledge is programmed into computers by numerical representation and modularity. Computers logically assume how every element fits into the larger picture.

Variability of new media is also derived from principles 1 and 2, but is also closely connected to principle 3 - Automation. While old media involved the industrial development of identical copies of books for example, then new media can be characterized by variability and have many different versions.

Manovich says that new media can be seen as consisting of two layers - cultural layer and computer layer. It means that in one way the content of new media can be seen by humans as a collection of images, which could be interpreted as some kind of a narrative or comprehensive content, in the other hand the computer "sees" the same content as numbers. It is again interesting to see how computers and numerical representation can form the media into something which could be easily understandable for humans.

Manovich's views on new media and its principles give a logical and intriguing overview of the essence of computerization and new media. His theories although from almost ten years ago still illustrate the ways media and computer technologies are developing to this day. As he stated, the principles 1 and 2 are the prerequisites for principles 3-5. Therefore it could be that ten years from now, some more principles will emerge to characterize new media or even produce a newer media.

Ethics and Law in New Media - Week 8

Study the Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP. Write a short comparative analysis to your blog (if you have clear preference for one over another, explain that, too).

While going through different studies and materials about Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP, I found one research which caught my attention. It was a paper written by Andrew F. Christie who studied the paradox of civil and common law approaches on private copying.

Continental Europe juristiction is called civil law, which means that laws are written in collection and not determined by judges (Wikipedia). These jurisdictions put great emphasis on moral rights and allow judges to interpret laws according to the specific case. Anglo-American jurisdiction is common law, which is strictly legislated and allow no room for interpretations of the laws.

Christie finds the paradox in these two jurisdictions in the approach to handling intellectual property and private copying. He says that statutory licence and levy schemes for private copying have been readily accepted in continental European countries for many decades. By contrast, such schemes have only recently begun to emerge in common law countries. Christie says that this situation is paradoxical - the statutory licence and levy scheme is common in those jurisdictions which place significant emphasis on author's moral rights and yet is rare in those countries that give primacy to the utilitarian rationale for copyright.

As a conclusion he finds that common law countries are beginning to develop their statutory licences and levy schemes of their own and it is becoming more and more common. He thinks that these are the only ways to protect intellectual property.

In my opinion it seems like the continental European approach is more controllable and clear in a sense that it allows more protection for the authors and their rights. Therefore I would probably prefer this school for IP.

Task 7 - New Interactive Environments

What is interactivity?

Jensen (1998) describes interactivity as a buzzword or media studies blind spot, that does not have a certain definition. Many media scientists have tried to define the meaning of the term but none have actually found the most accurate definition. Therefore I can not say that I will provide my own definition for the term but I will try to describe interactivity as I perceive it based on my short period of IMKE studies.

One reason why interactivity can not be very easily defined can be that the technology is developing so rapidly and the characteristics that once could describe interactivity change daily. With the development of user interfaces and innovations in the ways users interact with the technology, there is no possibility to come up with a solid definition of interactivity, which would be feasible through time. Therefore I would agree with Jensen that interactivity is a continuum which changes and develops through time.

As I said in one of my earlier posts I am fascinated by the statement that face-to-face communication is the ideal way of interaction (Jensen, 1998). This type of communication demands full attention and usage of all the senses from both participants. The communication is natural and at the same time a big part of communication goes on through body language, tone of voice or usage of words. This kind of natural interactivity and user interface is in my opinion what every technology, software and users are reaching for.

While trying to reach for the ideal interactivity, the path getting there is quite interesting. Technology and software developers try to think of new ways of human-computer interactions to make the communication between humans and machines more natural and easy. At the same time the ways and for what people use computers are different. The ways of communication are affected by the cultural and social environments of the users. People perceive things differently, therefore it is hard to develop a coherent user interface for everyone.

This again proves that interactivity can not be solidly defined, but rather is a continuum, developing, improving and changing every day.

Ethics and Law in New Media - Week 7

Task:
Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book. Write a blog review (especially, comment on his strategies for change).

In his article "Against Intellectual Property" Brian Martin discusses the arguments against the laws, which are meant to protect intellectual property. He criticizes the concepts of patents and copyrights and finds them retarding innovation. Martin brought out an example, that companies tend to collect or buy patents on ideas connected to their fields to prevent competitors from applying their ideas. Therefore it means that when they don't develop the idea no one can. In Estonian there is a saying "Ise ei taha, teistele ka ei anna" (Doesn't want it and don't want others to have it either). Ok, maybe they do want it but are actually not as competent to get the best out of the idea or maybe it could be done better collectively.

Martin brings out some means to fight against the intellectual property. He suggests the next strategies for change:

Change thinking - intellectual property becomes undermined
Expose the costs - show how much do the companies dealing with intellectual property really own compared to the original authors
Reproduce protected works - piracy, actually similar to stealing therefore not so recommended
Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property - boycotting using of protected intellectual property, which in conclusion loses its value
Promote non-owned information - use and promote freeware
Develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work - find a way to give credit to the authors of intellectual work.

I believe that there is a human characteristic, which is one of the reasons why people tend to keep their intellectual property to themselves so that only they can get credit for it. That is envy. They are not willing to let someone else take credit from their ideas and are generally suspicious. The copyright or patent gives them a kind of security, that it is something that they have come up with and if someone tries t steal it, they get punished or have to pay. Martin's last strategy of change would improve this situation. People want to be granted credit for their ideas.

Reproducing protected works and exposing costs is a kind of blind revenge, which is probably not a good solution. Boycotting protected works to some extent could be a solution but in general it seems kind of childish. I believe in motivation and positive feedback rather than punishment.

Therefore I would say that the most influential solutions are motivating authors with credit and promoting non-protected works. If people feel that they are socially more accepted if they share their ideas with others and create collectively new value for their ideas, they do not feel the need to protect their works so much. This is of course an ideal world which assumes that everyone is good, honest and smart enough not to let take an advantage of themselves.

Introduction and Theoretical Foundations of New Media homework - Final Concept Map

This is a complete overview of the topics covered in the course Introduction and Theoretical Foundations of New Media. The connections are made relying on my own priorities, interests and understandings about the topics.

Task 6 - New Interactive Environments

Kiousis, S. (2002) Interactivity: a concept explication. New Media & Society, SAGE Publications, Vol 4(3):355–383. Available at:http://rcirib.ir/articles/pdfs/cd1%5CIngenta_Sage_Articles_on_194_225_11_89/Ingenta866.pdf

Summary

In his article, Kiousis tried to define again the meaning of interactivity. He suggested that definition of interactivity could be a hybrid of conceptual definition and operational definition. In his research, he analyzed previous studies, which tried to define interactivity.

He used a two-dimensional analysis of literature, which compared object emphasized theories with intellectual perception theories. Object emphasized theories concerned technology, communication setting and perceiver. Intellectual perception theories considered the fields of communication and non-communication. Non-communication fields, where the term interactivity is used are for example sociology, psychology, computer sciences, etc.

The author brings out several definitions given by academics through time. He also brings out the problems with these definitions, as why they are not sufficient for explaining the concept of interactivity. He also states that the definitions do not have consensus and are often described from a point of view of different fields, which also changes the meaning of interactivity. The author does not want to alter the efforts of other researchers, but rather eliminates the not essential components and merges the essential ones.

Finally he concludes that interactivity consists of structure of technology, communication context and user perception.

Kiousis suggests that interactivity is in one hand media and in the other hand a psychological variable. Interactivity is media in a sense that it needs some kind of technology, which makes the communication possible and mediates the communication. Interactivity as a psychological variable means that interactivity reveals, when the users perceive the interaction. Thus it can be concluded that interactivity depends on both - the technology as well as human perception.

Projektijuhtimine - kodutöö 2

Magistritöö WBS

Task 5 - New Interactive Environments

Task:

Jensen, J.F. (1998). Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication studies. Nordicom Review, 19(1), 185-204. Available at: http:// http://%20www.nordicom.gu.se/%20reviewcontents/%20ncomreview/%20ncomreview198/%20jensen.pdfreviewcontents/ ncomreview/ ncomreview198/ jensen.pdf

Have a look at the article, think about the concept of “interactivity” and put out a Weblog post summarizing its main message (300-500 words).


Interactivity – summary of “Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication studies” by J.F. Jensen (1998).

In his article “Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication studies” J.F. Jensen discusses the concept of the term Interactivity. He claims it to be a kind of a buzzword, like words which, within a certain topic, appear to refer to something very important and which – for a given time – are heard constantly, but are often difficult to understand since in reality nobody seems to know what they mean.

As he goes further with trying to find a background for the definition of the term, he describes the concept of the term in three academic fields: sociology, communication studies and informatics. After the discussion and analysis of the term ‘interactivity’ in the concepts of all these academic fields, he states: ‘Obviously, as far as the concept of interaction is concerned, there is already considerable confusion’.

Then he describes the term ‘interactivity’ as a prototype, criteria or continuum. Prototype example only describes the certain services or devices, which are considered to be interactive and finally leads to the understanding that the one truly interactive activity is face-to-face communication. Interactivity as criteria says that it is a kind of feature which needs to be fulfilled. He stays longer on the subject of interactivity being a continuum with different dimensions. First dimension being the most elementary mediums and their one-way communication from the sender to receiver. Then moving on to other levels of dimensions where the technology develops and communication part is getting more interactive. In the end of this research he states that it is difficult to find a certain concept of the term ‘interactivity’ when there are so many different dimensions.

Finally Jensen suggests a definition of his own. He suggests that interactivity is a measure of a media’s potential ability to let the user exert an influence on the content and/or form of the mediated communication. He divides the concept of interactivity into four dimensions: transmissional interactivity, consultational interactivity, conversational interactivity and registrational interactivity, which are presented in 3-dimensional graphic model.

As a conclusion Jensen states that he did not find a solution for defining the term ‘interactivity’, but he hopes that his efforts have made the understanding and concept of the term ‘interactivity’ a little more clear.

The article is a good overview of the different values given to the term ‘interactivity’ over the years. Although there are probably many more definitions suggested since 1998, when this article was published. I personally liked the idea that the closest example of total interactivity is face-to-face communication – using direct two-way verbal communication as well as physical reactions and mental perception of the person about the other person. Maybe interactivity is a constant try to reach the same level of communication as in face-to-face communication by developing technology and user interface. The purpose is to create such media, which makes the communication natural and totally interactive as in face-to-face communication. Just a thought.

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 6

Find and blog about an illustrative case of hacktivism

I remembered some cases of hacktivism in Estonia in April 2007. It was a critical time in Estonia, because of the cultural clash between estonian and russian speaking people. In May 2007 Estonian Prime Minister had ordered a statue called Bronze Soldier to be removed from its original location. The statue played an important role in the culture of russian-speaking people in Estonia and therefore they were not satisfied with the Prime Minister's actions. The situation concluded with a public rage in the streets of Tallinn, during which many buildings were damaged, shops were robbed and people were arrested.

Soon after these events in April 2007 someone hacked in the Web site of the political party Reformierakond, which was the party the Prime Minister belonged to. The main page of the site consisted of an apology in russian by the Prime Minister. The government press department disproved the content and announced that the site had been hacked.

During the same time period several attacks were also made to other governmental Web sites, which made the IT-specialists and the public understand the vulnerability of government Web sites. The attacks continued for a few months and brought people's attention to the fact that Internet is not private and the security issues should be considered more important.

Blog about a case of social engineering

One of the most vicious cases of social engineering involve the "request for help" e-mails, which use the human factor and rely on human empathy. The scammers send e-mails or write to forums about some sad situation they or their loved ones are in and request financial help.

There are several cases about deceitful people taking advantage of others by relying on their empathy. One case I found about this kind of fraud was about a woman called Dina Leone who lied about having cancer for 3,5 years and it is believed that she got thousands of dollars from donations through Facebook. Firstly she looked up her old classmates and aquaintances from Facebook and soon told them that she was dying from stomach cancer. She posted pictures of herself with bald head, wrote emails about her treatments and suffering after surgeries and asked for financial help from her friends.

People started to question, how come she doesnt know much about her treatments and how did she go all bald overnight, rahter than loosing hair gradually, etc. Police investigation showed that she had not received any treatment.

These kind of people make the public suspicious of every person asking for help and make them seem as scammers and liers. But it is one of the most effective ways of manipulating, becaus most people emphatize for others.

Formulate some measures which can reduce the effectiveness of social engineering attempts

1. Background research - Use Google, Facebook or any other search engine and find out about the person sending the message. Especially in Estonia, as the country is so small everyone knows someone who knows that person, etc.
2. Inform the public - Each time you receive a suspicious email, let your friends and family know that they should be careful. It doesn't hurt to repeat the same message again over a period of time as people tend to forget.
3. Use junk mail filters and do not open suspicious email attatchments.

Introduction and Theoretical Foundations of New Media homework - Topics 4 and 6

Concept map of Interactive Media and Interaction Styles

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 5

Browse the Jargon File. Write a small blog entry about a term/definition which was the most intriguing for you.

Portrait of a hacker

Education
Nearly all hackers past their teens are either college-degreed or self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious computer science and electrical engineering) physics, mathematics, linguistics, and philosophy.

The thing I found interesting while browsing the Jargon File was the way hackers parceive education. The self-learners are more motivated and respected than the educated hackers, who have been shaped by the school system. This kind of attitude could actually be overtaken by many employers from other fields as well. Who says that a degree defines persons skills if today so much information and learning materials are freely available. The person educates himself and forms his own opinions rather than studies the opinions of someone else. The degree should not be a prerequisite of its own to get a job as it is almost everywhere today. Therefore I find the hackers opinion about education fair. Important is to "walk the walk not only talk the talk". :)


Write a short blogged analysis about the hacker ethic found in today's world (is it there of not, how much of it etc).

The research by Steven Mizrach showed that the hackers in the 90s had not forgotten about the original Hacker Ethics conducted in the 60s. But the old ethics were combined with new ones. He also described the new ethics in his research. I believe a form of Hacker Ethics exists to this day, because if it didn't, it would create a chaos and be a great risk for the computerized world. New ethics are probably also just modified old ethics which take into consideration the changes taken place in todays IT world.


Choose a minority group and describe how they can make use of Internet to reduce alienation and prejudice.

Today I found an ad from my mailbox, which included an invitation to the South-Korean culture days. As I clicked on the event's web site I was pleasantly surprised by the site's design and content. I could say that it influenced my opinion of South-Korea in a positive way. Which leads me to the idea that every minority nation in another country can create a positive image of itself by offering quality content in the Internet. Basically it doesn't matter if it is a web site, a social network account, videos, photos or even adequate comments under a news piece, everything creates an image. If the minority representatives represent their country in the right places and in a right way, the image of these specific people will carry on to their entire nation.