Turkle

Digital connection and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other even as we are thetered to each other. (1) Essentially, using social media to mediate our lives allows us (or perhaps even causes us?) to distance ourselves from each other. A cyclical problem is created, we are busy so we need social media to give us time, yet we have no time because we are always using social media.

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100336140

(the urge to self disclose) In a world of hyper-connected-ness is it possible that people feel that they cannot communicate with one another? Is this where robots come in? Where people feel compelled to self-disclose and the only thing that will “sit still” long enough to have a conversation is a robot.

The issue of how accepting we are of this.

we are inherently wired to find patterns in things. Computers are increasingly able to respond to what we say in “life-like” ways. While the robots do not “know” they seem pretty good at being able to “figure out”

Turkle asks what causes an object to be alive? Is it movement? Is it the fact that we can project our feelings onto the robot. Nexi, is blindfolded, why is she blindfolded, can “she” “see”? I tend to lean towards the perspective that people can attribute their values to most anything, especially things with life-like forms.

The separation between machine and living being is best muddled in the statement “It’s a mechanism but alive enough to die” (43). With this it seems clear that there are some ethical considerations to keep in mind given that the baby can “die”. Turkle brings this around in describing a graduate students test to see how long people could stand to hang animals upside down.

As the first several chapters progress we move from devices that are more simple and somewhat abstract in shape to more life like (Cog and Kismet). Appropriately, it seems that these devices stop being toys, but begin to “have” toys. I’m intrigued that the difference in use by young people isn’t greater between the furby and kismet. I suppose I shouldnt be terribly shocked because they are both things that are easily anthropomorphized.

Later in the chapters Turkle begins discussing the interchange between devices as perceived by young people, to the reception of the same devices (paro) by elderly people. I was intrigued that young people put so much of themselves into the robots that they felt that they would be jealous if the robots were given to their grand parents.

The nature of a robots ability to care intrigues me. Turkle mentions that some young people are thrilled with the idea of a robot babysitter who will, perhaps unlike their teenage human equivalents, will pay more attention to the child. As we begin to discuss with the notions of using robots for eldercare, I am somehow more concerned about the use of robots. Perhaps, to me it seems right that children should have an imagination and to anthropomorphize things. But, it is somewhat disconcerting to me that older people would need to revert to that kind of care. It would put me into great thought to consider my parents being cared for by robots.

The case study of the elderly man Jonathon, who seeks to dismantle a My Real Baby at the very begining is interesting to me. It seems that perhaps the elderly are more interested in how and why rather than just accepting that it just is? She goes on to describe how Jonathon describes the childs programming, but several months later he does not mention the programming. This is not so different than the body of text near the begining where the meeting of young people and Furbies are described. The young people ask if it is real or a robot over and over again, but they quickly decide that it is “life like enough” to be cared for.

I’m also intrigued by why people cover for the machines when they dont function properly. The children often ascribe problems to illness whereas Rich who interacts with Kismet actively seeks to portray Kismet in “its” best light. The Eliza effect, whereby people cover for the robot when it acts in a why that is not perhaps desired is very interesting. I’m intrigued by how this could be used in an educational settting (question).

Otherwise, I really enjoyed these readings. I cannot in my brain separate these from the writings of Jenkins. It seems that Jenkins so perfectly set up this book. Whereas I read a fierce optomism in his work (which is justified), I see an equal caution in Turkle’s work. I think I prefer Turkle’s work because of the critical and foundational questions that are asked.

What is Life?

Most of these are questions that perhaps have no right or wrong answer, but it is very interesting to ask the questions.


Questions: What causes a mechanism to be alive?

What are possible implications of the ELIZA effect?

Wrapping up Convergence

To be somewhat critical of the photoshop chapter would be very simple, it felt all over the place to me, and a bit of a stretch. But, I’ll buy his argument that Photoshop encourages convergence culture, but perhaps not as clearly as some of the earlier examples such as survivor or what not.

Politics need to come up when discussing culture if for no other reason than the first ammendment affords political speech a high level of protection. Given this freedom, it is imperative that one understand the various ways that culture and speech come together with politics.

To this end Photoshop has allowed a tremendous amount of freedom with regards to editing and manipulating photographs often in ethically challenging ways. Photoshop in particular raises a lot of questions of truth and ethics. Is it ethical to alter a photograph? Does intent change the ethical nature of the photograph? Or for that matter is photography itself ethical. In my opinion a lot of this comes down to how you use it. As Jenkin’s pointed out earlier in the book the line between satire and fan fiction is often hard to say. In the conclusion Jenkins points out that it is important to strive against the conglomerates but that we should not burn ourselves out too much. His point then becomes that we also need to strive to preserve our intellectual properties and things such as that. Photoshop (like every other manipulation tool) raises a lot of questions about intellectual property and what is satire.

Agenda setting theory discusses the idea of whether the media tells us what to think or how to think it. While each of these sides are infinitely debatable it is equally important to understand how the public responds to media. In an age of convergence the space between the consumer and the corporation or between the producer and the grass roots movement gets smaller and smaller. Above all things, especially updated in the 2008 presidential campaign the grassroots movement was a really big deal. Obama was tearing up the social media world. Twitter, Facebook, Text messaging, Obama had his fingers on the social pulse. Ultimately, he won.

This is precisely where convergence gets complicated for me. Before he was elected which side of the fence was Obama on? I submit that he was the grass roots effort. Or rather, perhaps more likely that he started the grass roots movements (...his staff...). At any rate, he reaped the benefits of these systems.

Several years later he is equally under attack by similar groups who are displeased with his policy and who would like to see a different presidential contender from the Democratic party. I await anxiously to see how he mobilizes his fan base in the upcoming election cycle.

I’ve been wondering throughout the book when, if ever, he was going to discuss whether or not all of this convergence is a “good” thing. I’m hesitant; I do not always want to have a hand in creating that which I consume. Sometimes I just want to watch TV. I feel that I generally interact with enough books and Internet things that (especially in TV”s case) I just want to sit down and be entertained some time.

Also, is it a good thing to put so much power into the hands (though we can’t really take the power away) of those who might have selfish intentions with regards to how they manipulate media? If that question is going to be asked it could be wondered if we should trust the “media” to create media. Though there do not seem to be any clear cut answers I still find myself hesitant to buy “all the way” into the fact that a converging culture is some Utopian wonderland.

I do not see an end of the formation of digital communities. Particularly with the rise of Google+ and the continued dominance of Facebook digital relationships are not likely to go away soon. And as a result of these relationships people need goals. Many of these goals have been explained in this book, survivor, the Harry Potter writers and what not. People that share common interests (or even those who do not initially know one another, but come to have common interests) will steadily be pushing forward with the notion of convergence, because ultimately thats the way its working right now.

At the moment and to conclude, I suppose I will mention that I am looking forward to consciously being able to observe convergence culture, particularly participatory culture. I expect that with the continued rise of social media and mobile devices that these things will very soon be even more ingrained into our very beings. In many ways this seems the perfect segue into Turkle who will ask us why we are not relying on each other more but instead looking to technology. I expect that the difference will somehow do with the notion that Jenkin’;s is not advocating ending relationships. On the contrary, he seems to be for fostering them. But, I think Convergence should be viewed with some caution.

Converging on Harry Potter.

Jenkin’s likes fan culture. I got it. Whether it be the Matrix, Survivor, Harry Potter, or Starwars, Jenkin’s feels that fans are the most important (or at least very important) consumers. While this may be very true in an aging franchise such as Starwars, I’m not sure that Fans are always the most important consumers. I think I’m more inclined to split fans into super fans and casual consumers, a point that Jenkin’s would probably contend (I’d like to ask about this).

Jenkins lays out two kinds of production companies, the prohibitionists and collaborationist's (can we tell which one he thinks is best based on the naming of these two groups?) Or, those who tend to take a strict view of prohibiting the works of those in the fan culture or a more collaborative view of consumer and producer. Given the book is about convergence, it is safe to assume that the media company who is trying to save their intellectual property is not the “good” guy.

My views come down to it at this: corporations want to make money. If they can do this most effiiciently by suing everyone around them: they will. Or, if they have to play nice and encourage a fan base at the bottom; they will do that. As in the case with Lucas Films, the same company might even change positions several times just in order to meet the needs of the times. I realize that my rhetoric sounds kind of violent in these paragraphs, but- I view it is as pragmatic business workings.

The notion of Grass Roots and Folk culture was very interesting to me. The notion of the media outlets making fans (Grass Roots) or of economy coming from itself (Folk Culture). I think that both of these ideas are very powerful. One need look farther than Etsy to see Folk Culture come to the forefront, and it is arguable in my head where Minecraft would fit on a continuum between Grass Roots and Folk Culture, but they are certainly examples of convergence.

The real fun begins when we start to try to decide what a remix is, what a parody is what is protected by the first ammendment and what is copyright infringement. This is where benvolence on the part of the manufacturer gets interesting. Lucas Film's opened a web space where people could remix and create StarWars works with the caveat that all of the works were owned by Lucas. In short, they gave with one hand, while taking away control with the other. It comes down to Money. One gains money by being in control, and the best way to control people is to have them *want to be with/under/a part of whatever is going on.

As in the case in the section on Harry Potter, the film company threatened small websites with law suits that might or might not have been viable. However, the big corporations have the money, and the power to fight. Who is going to fight Time Warner? The book suggests that a Grass Roots movement of young people and librarians and such have been somewhat successful in protecting things. And while I think these things are ultimately excellent and very important to the preservation of free speech- I think they are only effective in so far as they have the ability to cause the corporation to seek to save face.
Should the film company that owned the video rights to Harry Potter continued to go after small websites, it is most likely that the core fans of Potter would have become disenfranchised. But, to me that does not seem overly likely. I will grant you that there is always the next big thing- But Harry Potter has blown them out of the water. I digress, I’m not sure that the Super Fans are all important. Potter has made its money from the box office, from book sales, and to a certain extent video games. I’d best most of the money came from one time visits to the book store and movie tickets and home video. Do super fans contribute to all of these monetary avenues- sure, but so do millions of more casual fans. To that end, I don’t think Jenkin’s distinguishes much between serious fandom and casual fandom as I do.

That being said, in this chapter Jenkin’s does a nice job of painting everything in terms of the big guy and the little guy and neatly demonstrating where (and how) they converge. One of the most poignant quotes in the book thus far says “None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence...” (170). This quote rings true for me, and I, for one, am excitedly wondering about where culture will take us next.

1. In Jenkin’s eyes, Is there a difference between the super fan and the casual consumer?

2. How does intellectual property effect fan communities?

Converging on American Idol

Last year for the first time- I watched American Idol. I watched from the beginning to the end missing only a few episodes. I was what Jenkins would call a “loyal”; I stuck it out to the very beginning. Based on my experience as an American Idol “loyal” I will tackle some of this weeks topics.

Viewership:
Television viewers are not stationary- they are mobile and dynamic. So, one of the big questions is how to market to these various people. Is advertising useful to the brand if people that watch the show are “zappers”? Jenkins points out that Nielsen does not have sufficient technology to measuring those who flip between channels, but that they focus on the whole block of time.

I tend not to watch media all at once on a television because I do not like television commercials. On the other hand, in large part because I do not have cable television, I watch some of my regular programing (Suits on USA Network) on the Internet. This lends me to be able to look more into things that go on during the show and to engage more. For some reason, I do not mind engaging with a show when it is on the computer- it just seems “natural” to me. Largely because the computer is an interactive device not a passive device like the television.

Viewer Interaction:
Jenkins describes a family with various members who watch American Idol with different levels of intensity. I would not have stuck through American Idol (or voted for that matter) had my wife not had the bug a bit worse than I. She would occasionally fill me in on something that I missed becase I seldom care to sit in front of the television for an hour (or often more). Throught the course of the show, because we had watched it together it became a common talking point and a weekly meeting ground. I also talked about it at school. In this respect I was a very valuable viewer to AI. I’m not sure if anyone viewer is better than another, but those viewers who engage with the product and other viewers have more capital in my vote.

Product Placement:
From wondering if the cereal companies sponsored Jerry Seinfeld to knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Coca-Cola controls the world through their advertisement, the notion of product placement has always fascinated me. Jenkins points out that too much or overly overt product placement can be a “double-edged sword”. I’ve long been put off my product placements (MasterChef’s comments about the quality of the cookware) that seem forced or worse, overly didactic.


Interaction:
Prior to American Idol (to the best of my recollection) I had never explicitly voted for anything or participated in the television participatory media. Jenkin’s mentions that American Idol was (possibly) instrumental in assisting Americans to start text messaging. I dislike texting- very much. I voted via AmericanIdol.com (which was new to the last season).

Product Branding:
Did American Idol make me want a Ford or drink coke? Possibly? I have long appreciated Coke’s advertising dominance. One need look no further than “The Pepsi Challenge” to understand that Pepsi tastes great, but Coke KILLS (shouting intended) in advertising. One can hardly look at American Idol without being inundated with coke messages. Are these advertisements effective--I think so. Coke does a great job selling their image.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/Coke%20V%20Pepsi%20brand%20breadth.png

I expect that few people are aware of how much advertisements they take in on the average day. Morgan Spurlock recently put out a documentary called POM Wonderful: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold which is a movie about funding a movie with product placement.

This is convergence.

Though Spurlock is releasing movies on the big screen, he is still small fish compared to other film makers. The interesting thing about PWTGMES is that Spurlock acts as a consumer and a producer. He is producing content about consuming content. This movie allows the viewer the ability to see into how marketers view marketing- specifically product placement. Spurlock wears a suit with the brand of each sponsor on it, in addition to wearing and using the sponsoring products throughout the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jXReCaZ5Ts

In closing, last night I was watching a film on Hulu and it gave me the option of taking a quiz and not having any commercials or to watch the film with regular commercial breaks (which are still much more brief than television, but becoming less and less so). This was a media asking me what I wanted- do I want to watch the show without commercial breaks after playing a game (which was rife with ads) or do I just want to sit through the regular commercial breaks. This is media getting down and tailoring the pitch to each individual. This seems to me that it will either be very frustrating to marketing gurus or else it will be the future. Time will tell.
Does it matter if reality TV or things that (we think) allow us to converge are “rigged” so long as the we (the masses) are entertained?

How hard can product placing push before it becomes annoying?

Is anyone type of media consumer more important than the rest assuming that all get the gist of the advertising?

Converging on Jenkins.

Jenkins articulately describes convergence as the process “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media, intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (Jenkins 2). In a few words, where those who create the media and those who consume the media connect. in a very real sense focus groups have always tried to understand the relationship between consumer and product.

From the dot com burst and forward (to the time of this book) Jenkins describes media users as wary of the next technological paradigm. And, he goes on to discuss how gradual the notion of convergence is. When we spoke of the “digital revolution” in the past, it seems that Jenkins took that to mean a very quick process. If thats true, then the dot com bubble popped and people were unsure of how monetize media.

Jenkin’s says that panels were held at a conference to discuss how the music industry could close the door on a barn that most of the animals have already stampeded out of. Much of the discussion that Jenkins mentions at this conference has to do with how the producer can continue to produce the all might dollars. Producers can make all of the content they want, but, if the consumers do not support the product, or if the producers cannot find an alternative way to support the product then the process is not sustainable.

Of particular interest to me was the notion that many producers of media are part of the same corporate conglomerate, but that they were ultimately unwilling (in some cases) to share with one another.

Jenkin’s credits Ithiel de Sola Pool with first describing convergence. Pool argues in his 1983 book that convergence blurs the lines between media, and even between other kinds of mass communication. While others argued that the time was ripe for the “digital revolution”, Pool argued for a slower transition.

Jenkins argues that the notion of one device where all of our media outlets converge is a fallacy. While Jenkins mentions many devices on his home television, a few years into the future I am observing a large number of devices around my television. But, the interesting part is that some of the devices do “old” things and “new” things. Hulu, Netflix, all of these things can be streamed through the gaming console. Convergence at work.

Convergence has to do with the way that media is produced and the way that it is consumed. I love the idea that the consumer ultimately dictates what happens to media. In the end, the dollar rules. Whatever brings in the money keeps coming. I suppose that the coroporations try to produce technology and hope that the consumers will latch onto it and incorporate it into their lives.

Who serves as a gatekeeper for media? Ultimately the media serves as a gatekeeper, but, the media is out to serve the consumer so whatever they feel that the consumer is likely to consume will be produced.

The case study about survivor highlights an interesting occurence which begs the question when does participation become interferance and when do producers exert too much power over the entertainment experience. The purpose of entertainment is to be...entertained. However, many new marketing trends circle around getting people to actively engage in marketing.

To that end, Burnett’s “game playing” with the “brain trusts” on the Survivor spoilers website was brilliant marketing. The people that are “spoiling” this show are also telling their friends and getting more people to watch. The book also asks the question of the spoilers winning by “spoiling” the show actually ruins the game of spoiling. From the producers view the answer seems alluring and dangerous. Will the spoilers ruin the show for the general population? Or, will they encourage consumption.

Being a part of a community aids those who are not “experts” but those who have emerging competencies begin to do things without the added difficulty of working in a hierarchically classed, highly structuralized environment.

Walsh’s notion of the “Expert paradigm” argues that there are those who know things and those who do not. This means that those who “know” things are in power and those who do not lack power. However, if you assume that the Spoilers “ruin” the game by “winning” then in a sense the experts or those who “know”--Lose.

Collective intelligence assumes that each person has something. It is a social process more about acquiring the knowledge and less about who “has” the knowledge. It seems like a bookshelf, if information is needed, or requested, the information comes off of the shelf from one who knows the information. In this sense there is no need to have an “expert”.

Questions:

Is the black box truly impossible?

Is the expert paradigm rendered obsolete by the notion of collective knowledge?