just as a piece of video - this is pretty poor. Half the time I can't read what the person is writing. It really is an animated article - or to go back to one of its earlier refererence, in this case, the medium is NOT the message.
“The Market, the Web, the Collective morphs to subsume all deviations. The Bohemian becomes bourgeois; the heretical becomes the orthodox; dissent is consumed. Welcome to the Machine.”
Look up Augmented Reality. I think that may be the answer. It allows for the combining of the internet with the real world, digital information becomes more locational, with all the advantages of instant global communications. Digital information starts to interact with real objects around us, telling us all we need to know. Knowledge from human memory becomes less important, replaced by contextual information given to you where ever you are whenever you need it.
That depends on what your idea of a limit is. To some people, not being able to escape the global telecommunications network would be seen as a limitation.
Do you happen to know if anyone has written academically on this debate? I'm interested in extending it to the use of language IRL - if one is bilingual, for instance, when does one choose a monolingual form to communicate with another bilingual who has a different mother tongue, and when does one choose to change the form of communication - Say i grew up Czech and learned English in school, and you grew up speaking Spanish - do we go for English or Spanish-interpreter-Czech?
Hi Cory - intriguing. I think your critique is constructive, especially: "..technology is moving towards increasingly sophisticated imitations of reality. We're not rethinking humanity, we're rethinking technology." (from a comment of yours "2 years ago")
I think it is possible for you and Wesch to both be right, you each highlight coexisting implications. How did he respond and do you have anything written in traditional academic form?
Awesome video! You truly are a leader. The content you provide, are the same great techniques that have caused me to achieve massive success, all through free marketing. Keep up the good work, and look forward to future videos...
I think this is the perfect answer for the original video and people did not get the presenter's idea. Why? Simply because he is *writing* (words, of course) with pen and paper and could perfectly show his point of view.
After all, what is the original but only a bunch of words?
good point. that means one of two things: a) I am personally just more susceptible to boredom or b) Watching a guy write on pages for 3 minutes is not boring
Watching a guy write for 3 minutes may be boring, but is watching a computer write for 4 and a half THAT much more interesting? As twoevileyes notes, both of our videos were just batches of words. Does the flashy delivery fundamentally change that? Does it constitute the new paradigm shift that Wesch was writing about?
Yep, really boring. Where's the boobs?!? Geez, the poster could have AT LEAST included some poor soul getting kicked in the pills, or some idiot eating a dozen habaneros and washing it down with a gallon of hot sauce!
Perhaps you could present a reply exhibiting what YOU think is a better idea in response to the original?
It's all about the bandwidth. If we can make more of it and sprinkle it everywhere, all sorts of really cool virtual reality stuff will happen.
If you think that you waste lots of time on the internet NOW, just wait until Web 2.0 -- we are all in for a major lifestyle change. No more time for TV or sleeping; just internet all day every day until it PERMANENTLY crashes your computer. Web 3.0 will be the backlash--just wait until you see THAT one!! (I got a sneek peek and it is amazing)
interesting, but a couple of thoughts. I see Cory's counter point to Wesch, not much has changed (aren't we conversing in text?) But Wesch, to me, is about organization - and there in lies the paradigm change. and to Cory's point about interaction: Wii we're only scratching the surface
I really hate to say this, but I think I'm missing the point. I agree that Web 2.0 is nothing more than a re-organizing of written word and motion picture media (ok, recorded sound too), and that they can never replace other, more conventional forms. If Wesch's argument is that a paradigm shift is happening in identity and community construction because it is making those forms of media obsolete, I would say he is wrong... but I think such a paradigm shift is happening all the same... (cont'd)
not because it replaces those forms, but because it is more useful-- my written words have never had the power to reach as broad or large an audience as they do right now. Not only that, I can write all this, and carry a conversation with a friend on AIM at the same time. Consider students-- Typical college students spend as much as half of their relational experience each year through an impersonal medium. If this trend continues, shouldn't we evaluate how we identify ourselves?
I can't answer that. But to start, substituting half of someone's personal experiences for impersonal ones is bound to be depressing and lonely, right? That definitely affects their identity construction.
Isn't this what we're really talking about? :) COMMUNICATION
There are so many variables to the formula that we have to slap a 2.0 on it to comprehend the vastness of bringing all these things together in one place...not to mention the human factor.
That's the one were we all have different experiences viewing the exact same subject matter...
Brilliant! All this virtual communication is merely training wheels until we have the skills that enable us with the courage to face each other in the flesh. It's a start, and Thank God for that! Yeee Hooooo!
Hi, We had woops for the press and all the forms of communication that followed. What scares me is what we are really trying to unconsciously create. You mentioned the ultimate goal, Virtual Reality. Everything that has been designed, has been designed to enable us NOT to have the need to touch. This coupled with the rise of more deadly bacteria will leave us with only one option. For us to survive we can not touch. V.R. will be our only true ecsape from the threat of extinction by disease.
I kinda got most of it. I'm only a youngen in my teens, and i got most of it, but i didn't get the whole picture of it. Is is that your saying the internet is changing lives much because we still read books and watch TV or Movies? Help. Please.
He is saying that the internet is only simulating reality. In other words, the fact that we can now all edit the internet and upload content (well, with a computer, connection, and information, at least) does not change the fact that it is virtual. We are not communicating in a physical sense, it just feels like it. The standard nuances of communication are missing. Regardless of speed and content, the internet is not reality.
:) I loved the cat at the end. Exactly - you can play some immersion reality game like the Sims or Second Life, which lets you simulate lots of amazing things you could never do in real life. But you can't fully interact with it - not even something as simple as reaching out and stroking a cat.
The Web 2.0 video speaks of rethinking some 'exchange' between peoples now that most of the world are connected. Laws of each places are different according to various media and many information is censored in a country or another, but Web 2.0 is universal, this bring lots of laws and copyrights problems and the internet does not have fixed rules since each websites are hosted in various servers across the world which does not respond to the same laws.
Pretty cool, although I admit I am not a follower of McLuhan. In other words, I believe the diverse media do not each have an essential nature that then defines the forms of consciousness of the members of that society. Instead, the form of each medium is defined by, and entangled in, other social forces (the economic organization, political, cultural).
brilliant work. even if the government doesn't remotely serve the common man, it still tries to avoid pissing us off to the point of revolution. we need to become more sensitive.
Basically, the media-saturated society tries to simulate participation. Since we live in capitalist-fascism, very few people have the POWER can alter REALITY, but everyone from Amy Goodman to Rush Limbaugh wants to convince you that you'll "participate" by listening, and you'll "really participate" by podcasting and emailing.
Yes, only a small minority of people edit content on the web, but the USPS comparison is just so dated. The web is no chain letter. Maybe the more basic functions on the web are like postal mail, but Flickr maps? Wikipedia?
Instant remote participation doesn't have too many real world analogs, much less things we experience every day. I don't think the aspects of Web 2.0 are consciousness changing on a world-scale, but maybe something better will come out of the One Laptop per Child project?
I would argue that Web 2.0 is actually making more things individualistic. Encyclopedias, films... those always were collaborative efforts. The internet has made them otherwise, and Web 2.0 might be a step on reversing that.
By the nearest Monday, you shall wake up in the anime you are currently watching. However, this wonderful gift will not happen until you post this comment in 5 anime videos or amvs within the next twenty four hours. Once this happens, you deepest anime wishes shall come true. ^_^
Interesting thesis worthy of thought and very cleverly presented. And a nice looking cat too. Thanks for posting this. You've given me more to think about with respect to the web, community, reality, and human interaction.
I teach multimedia and web design. I recently told one of my colleagues to read "The Medium is the Message" by McLuhan. They never heard of him. Your video was one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. We may have gotten so caught up in the simulation of reality, that we are forgetting that it's a simulation. Some kids play outside, some won't. Read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander - informative book.
Web 2.0? Everytime we type our username and pwd to login somewere we are interacting with the web and this interaction's been called Web 2.0. Also when I type 2+3 and push = on my calculator? Yes, we are interacting. But it was since the computer starts! But that is not the problem... that is just a definition. The privacy is the problem! Are you sure that someone else is not realy reading your email? As a computer programmer, I am not.
You make good points. Of course the Internet has its limits. But why stress the importance of "sensory"? Without those chatrooms and emails, even with their limits, there would be NO COMMUNICATION between many, many people. SOME communication with limited sensory experience is better than none at all, and I don't see the purpose in criticising it's limits.
I was only pointing out the limitations relative to the original Web 2.0 vdeo, which proclaimed that because of it we would have to rethink family, love and ourselves. The internet is a brilliant communications tool, but it isn't THAT awesome.
You're right, we don't have to rethink it in terms of reinventing it. But I think we need to rethink it in terms of extending our former ideas about it. Internet gives us a means to construct our identity, for one thing, which is a way to rethink ourselves. Love, family... again, different forms of communication give way to different forms of understanding. If love and family are to be counted as things on a face-to-face playing field, that's not entirely accurate anymore.
Don´t agree. Everything has to be redefined because of this web phenomenon. No one has foreseen this. It might become some kind of external conscience. Face it.
Face what? The arguement has yet to be reasonably made that the internet is more than people shooting letters, movies and catalogue shopping orders back and forth. If you argue that the internet is an external consciousness, then you might as well argue the same of the Postal Service.
No, I'm afraid I don't see. But that may be because you're using catchphrases rather than making an argument. Are you trying to say that the internet will change humanity because it's libertarian?
I see your point and it's very well presented, but you seem to be criticizing something that is essentially good. Digital communication and simulated participation are forms of media. The fact that they are media and not real life does not diminish their importance or value.
Your point is true. The internet is and always will be inferior to real experiences, but that doesn't detract from it's vital role in our society.
That's a great response to the Web 2.0 thing, and so true. I'm very much "jacked in" to the Internet and have been since pre-Web days (whoa). I'm not sure what Web 2.0 offers in added value other than people being able to tweak their virtual realities more easily.
The other things people don't talk about is the re-creation of personality. Look for "The Second Self" by Sherry Turkle.
That is a good question, but without being a prophet, I wouldn't be able to answer on behalf of the future. Looking on the past, I would volunteer things like the development of the written word. Another, though not exactly media-based, is the transition between eras, like that from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Looking at it in that scale, I'm interested to see what will happen after we recover from the Dark Ages following the fall of the USA and the chicken flu plagues.
But... MANY more people are apt to comment because it takes virtually less time. Stimulates more interaction than ordinary "snail mail" would. I'm more apt to respond to emails and put out this response, than I ever would with postal mail and I was alive before Gore invented the internet. :)
However, truth be told, I haven't enough experience to definitively put forth an opinion regarding whether it deserves being called a paradigm shift. Just like globalization youtube and blogging are the shrinking of space and time, and if we were to agree with Wolf, not a new phenomenon. How would you fit youtube and facebook into imaginary community and globalscapes?
Even a spoken conversation is mostly passive reception of information, right? You are quiet, then you speak, you take turns.
Exchanges via the internet are the same in that way. There are differences in the quality of the information conveyed (text, audio, visual). But to say that an instant messenger chat is no more participatory than an exchange of letters, or even watching a movie or reading a book, seems a bit reductive.
Cuddling with my girlfriend on the couch with the cats, in front of the fire, eating peppermint ice cream and listening to her talk is ANYTHING but a passive reception of information. Having spent the last few months away from her at school, I guarantee you even more now than I did in the video that MSN isn't even in the same ballpark.
But another important contribution of this video is the fact that remarks that not everybody has access to internet. It's really an elite that has access. Most of the people in the world even don't have clear water to drink or medicines to survive a cold!
Finally, is a virtual reality that we are simulating participation (wwhat?).
I don't think that CoryTheRaven is pesimist just to say something that is clear: the language is the characteristic that "make us" (Wittgenstein). That language is still made by words and images, that represent (Kant) the reality (if such kind of thing exists). The internet is just another tool (for us) and another business (for "them"). Guttenberg made the first tool and the second is the internet. But still words and images...
Who cares, the internet does not have to become a multi-participatory brain to make us useful.
We are useful by living our distinct live, the internet only brings us a past-time distracting us of our real spiritual quest to happiness.
It is taking away the bliss that ignorance brings us by the information it transmits. Hopefully morals can be thought, and we might bring others to sense.
To Cory (and any other person who can do it) what FEELS more real. Reading this "*scratches his girlfriend's cat's head, feeling it soft dark gray fur between his fingers*"? Or actually scratching the cat's head at the end of the video?
What Cory is saying is that Web 2.0 has made exchange of intangible items (written word, video, sound)easier. But to the point we have to rethink who we are? Definitely not.
I've been backtracking the comments on this page and almost everyone here is accusing CoryTheRaven of being a pessimist for giving a rebuttal to the last few seconds of the Web 2.0 video.
In my opinion the Web 2.0 video is right in all the statements it makes about the technical and practical advantages Web 2.0 has brought to the way information is spread/exchanged.
The internet is as alive as the television or cinema, a magazine or a novel. That we're exchanging ideas or life stories through it isn't new, nor does it make it any more alive than other written or visual media. THat was my point: no matter how you cut it or how much undefined jargon you use about "emergence" or "higher levels" or "necessary abstractions", we're still communicating via the written word and the motion picture, which has as many limitations as it has uses.
but how many of us want to pet your girlfriends cat? or walk through a forest? or take your girlfriends cat out to the middle of a forest and leave it? you are right you do get more sensory influx but we are not saying that the web will replace life, that was not the message, the message is that it is bringing us closer together. its about sharing an experience, creating opportunities for experience, and creating truth. nothing ever said is ever said the same way twice.
Actually, the video did state that we were going to have to rethink everythng we experience of life because of Web 2.0. The effect of it in bridging cultural gaps is fundamentally limited by the fact that it is still the written word: it's still not the same as experiencing someone else's culture or life as a participant. My point is that while the internet is useful, it does not force us to rethink daily experience. Rather, we're trying to make the net more like daily experience.
So I'm meeting some friends today. We have an event set up on Facebook. I look on Google maps, to make sure I know the way. I check the local weather forecast and look at the bus timetable online. After I get back I post some pictures of me and my friends for other people to look at.
This is rethinking daily experience, isn't it?? None of this was possible 10-15 years ago.
i dont so much see that as rethinking anything, i see it as your having just done all the corporate medias work for them (how easy is it for them to advertise AT you all the time when they know where you go and for what), and youre being desensitized, being prepared for a day when all your movements will have to be government pre-approved via web 2.0 by cataloging your entire day, logging into websites to set things up, even reporting it to the authorities if you wander off course..
I don't see the rethinking... I consult the computer rather than the TV, paper maps and schedules, and the telephone. Accessing all this online is more efficient, but it's not a paradigm shift.
how is the act of reading an unintentional experience. you are very well spoken, perhaps far more so than i could ever hope to be. however my writings draw out emotions that run a larger range than some of the best speakers i have ever seen. the imagery i can re-create with words can bring out memories. perhaps the exchange we seek is not that of something new but of something that "connects" us with each other. our similarities, our experiences our thoughts and ideas. just my opinion.
Oh, there certainly is power in writing... but no amount of writing is the same as taking a walk through a forest. Not a single one of you petted my girlfriend's cat, though you all watched me do it in the video.
Okay Kurt... But what does that actually mean? How is looking at the world strictly in terms of information exchange complete, what things are to be considered "higher level", how are they to be seen, what sort of emergence, and what gaps?
I love walking in a forest. Even that can be be seen trough exchange of information. The sensory data of smells, colours and sounds witlls ones mind with a feeling of reverence and peace.
It might not be a good idea to see that as information exchange, but it can surely be done.
Oh, there is certainly beauty in it, but reducing everything to an exchange of information declares that it's only your own aesthetic tastes that should be of any importance. Saying that beauty is only found in scribalism necessarily devalues beauty in other perspectives, especially when what those perspectives see doesn't fall under scribalist information exchange (eg: petting a cat, eating a dinner, making love to a partner, walking in a forest).
I wasn't in Manhattan on Nine Eleven, but the emotions i experienced because the virtual media and their motion pictures, was as real as the sensation you got petting your girlfriends cat, if not more so. And, if you don't think we have to rethink copyright, identity, family, rhetoric & privacy.. Try to get the Law to listen to you once your identity is stolen, now that is non-participatory.
Ever have to moderate a 3 day flame war @ a Catholic vs. Protestant board? Or ran to check eMail 4 times a day, 'cuz your spouse is deployed overseas? .. To imply emotions aren't being experienced while exchanging these virtual words, is simply a lie.
Actually I have had to moderate religious flame wars and I did watch 9/11 on TV. I never said EMOTIONS weren't felt. I said that it's the same kind of EXPERIENCE.
No matter how many feeds you watched of 9/11, no matter how many hours you sat there, it simply is not the same as being at Ground Zero with buildings falling around you. Not the least bit.
Ahhh,. ..but the argument is that this medium is non-participatory. And that, in my heart and in my feelings even as i communicate with you now, is simply an untrue statement.
I think you were missing my point. I never said that emotions weren't poured into the medium of the motion picture and the writen word. I said that they're not experiential in the same way as the "real world".
I was moved by the journal entry "The internet still follows the fundamental form of the written word and the motion picture: non-participatory reception of information."
& listen dear, i'm not trying to imply you're wrong, i'm simply stating the fact that *I* do experience participatory reception in my netizenship. See, my Christian brother, i don't see the internet as only written words and motion pictures. ..I think you have a great mind, and we're more alike, than not.
Again, I never said that people don't experience emotions in relation to books, movies, letters, songs, or commercials. I don't feel that, in itself constitutes participation.
Again, imagined community can be more "real" than the "real participation" you are describing... Think of the diaspora - it is clearly maintained through the internet. Schulte (1996:431) suggests, "the globe becomes a single 'place' in its own right." The internet exemplifies that global place.
I don't think I ever disputed that a person can invest themselves more in long distance relationships maintained over telecommunications than they would in real world, experiential interactions. That doesn't make it mainstream nor desirable, however.
It's not a BAD way of looking at things... only an incomplete way of looking at things. Not everything is about information exchange, and to reduce it to that is to divest it of its beauty.
That's a convenience, not a paradigm shift. A computer taking care of my tendency to double-up the letter "c" isn't making me rethink love and family. But nevertheless, thank you for your insightful comment.
Ah, but reducing things to an "exchange of information" is a very scribist way of looking at things rather than, say, a mystic one. Now, the act of reading is an experience, but that is unintentional. The purpose of the written word is exchange of information, preferably as objectively as possible, and not, say, eating a dinner, petting a cat, walking in the forest or making love to a partner.
Everything communicates to another something - kinesetics, proximity, how you eat dinner, what is on your plate, where you touch your partner - communication: exchange of information.
A face-to-face sharing of enfleshed existence is an experience, not mere processing of bytes of information. But as I noted in the video, the point is moot. Most of us have a pretty good handle on reality and are driving technology towards simulating that reality. Trying to question reality to make it better simulate technology (your mere "exchange of information") is haxx0r fetishism, and doesn't fly.
We discussed this line of reasoning many moons ago... check out the comment section!
The short of it is that to characterize experiential activities as exchanges of information is an attempt to reduce the real world to computer-age terms rather than uplift the computer age to reality. Most people know the difference.
Thank you for demonstrating one of the limitations of telecommunications that I talked about in my video: the need to overcome the inability to convey things like tone.
Well, for one thing, you can't read body language in a chat room. You can't smell, touch, or really access any of your other senses relative to the person and situation. It's an extremely flat exchange. Having this converstaion over beer at a pub is not. And heck, because of it, people even behave differently.
AS for reality, like I said before, haxx0rs won't force us to change our perception of reality to suit their illusions.
I don't see how that's ironic... That's what this is designed for. The question wasn't about publishing freedom, it was about rethinking what it means to be human.
Fair enough. I didn't mean that as a criticism. I just enjoy the freedom of expression it all brings. I wish democracy was so promising! Just keep it coming.
You say that it's still the same thing, in its essence, but isn't the fact that it's faster a meaningful distinction? How was the written word fundamentally different from the spoken form? We still use language. It's still one person speaking to another, or to many. But the advent of the printing press, as you undoubtedly realize, was that it bridged distances by encapsulating that message in a different medium that changed how people looked at it. The Internet, then, bridges TIME. (& damn limit
The written word was different because it divorced the story from the storyteller, allowing for the advent of objective discourse which is useful for science and academics. It also led to power shifting from storytellers to scribes.
That strength is also its weakness when it comes to non-objective discourses. Even over the internet there is still a wall of separation between you and understanding anyone you're watching or reading about. Making faster scribes doesn't bridge that gap.
You might be right in that we use the same media as we have used before, but the way we use them is different from before. The media are not just used in broadcasting mode, the way they used to be used, one way,in web 2.0 they are linked to communications with other people and have become many-to many. This makes that we don't just receive information, but that we are enabled to create knowledge.
I'd argue that it's still a broadcast-publication paradigm, only subsequent communication has become faster and easier. You're still watching a movie I made... It's just that your letter to the producer isn't falling on deaf ears. Still pretty cool, granted, but is it a paradigm shift that will force us to rethink what love, family or self is?
good! now Im waiting for it being approved. the first one ive uploaded had an issue if the subtitles - no subtitles at all. lets hope this one works. hehe
Actually, we discussed that many comments and a few weeks ago. No one here is doing anything new, either making a movie or writing a letter in response. We're only doing it faster. Nothing has fundamentally shifted except the speed and ease with which we can do it.
I'm not arguing that but it's stupid to say the internet in a non-participatory medium as you demonstrate the ease with which you can participate. It is a fundamental shift relative to something like television or just writing a letter, the cost and regulation around having a TV station is enormously prohibitive and writing a letter only reaches one person. What we have here is pretty revolutionary and amazing, it has come about gradually but that doesn't lessen it's impact.
Ah, you missed my point. We may be having an extremely rapid exchange of letters here and now, over the incredibly elitist and expensive medium of the internet, but that's still all it is. It's not like sitting in a pub having a conversation. This is a very flat exchange.
I didn't miss your point. Try stickam if you want to have a more dynamic exchange. Yeah the starving millions of the third world arn't on the net yet, but this is the most inexpensive and non-elitist form of mass communication ever, practically everyone in the western world can afford it.
Again, you point to something that is just faster, but still not fundamentally different from a movie or the written word.
As for inexpensive and non-elitist, that is nonsense. Even within the Western world, internet use is severely segregated along age and income lines. And yes, frankly, the 5.5 billion teeming masses who don't have net accessibility do matter.
Like I said most inexpensive and non-elitist form of mass communication EVER. I didn't say the rest of the world didn't matter, send a kid in somolia your old computer if you are so damn concerned about them. The point is millions more people than any other medium before can use the internet to output messages. Faster is revolutionary by the way, that's like saying the car isn't important cus it's just a faster form of walking.
I didn't say the internet wasn't IMPORTANT... I said it wasn't revolutionary to the tune of forcing us to fundamentally rethink what it means to be human. It is still movies, still writing... The medium isn't fundamentally different.
And how can Web 2.0 force us to rethink what it means to be human when the vast majority of humans aren't even in on it?
Let's say I put your brain in a dolphin or some crazy shit. You could say that you would have to fundamentally rethink what it means to be human. Just cus the rest of the world wasn't with you wouldn't make a difference.
Nothing on earth ever created is fundamentally different by your definition. You are just trying to frame basic pessimism in some profound context.
As opposed to reframing great techno-myths in a profound context? Accusing me of being a pessimist is right up there with calling me a luddite: it's entirely inaccurate, but it makes the person accusing it feel open-minded and progressive. Sorry, but haxx0rs won't force us to rethinking humanity or reality.
The point is moot anyways. As I noted, technology is moving towards increasingly sophisticated imitations of reality. We're not rethinking humanity, we're rethinking technology.
I'd say that it's fundamentally the same form as traditional media, though the content may have lesser effects. If anything, the effect would opposite of what Wesch proposes. For example, movies have always been a collaborative medium... YouTube has made it a solitary one.
Yeah, the original video could just as easily be accused of being overly optimistic and exaggerating the importance of it all. Like most things the truth is probably in the middle. However, being positive actually has a purpose from a motivational standpoint, to bring dreams into reality. Being skeptical and negative about things is sometimes needed but not here. You are just whining to whine with no purpose.
I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that I'm pessimistic from, unless it's the all-or-nothing logic that calls me a total luddite for not buying into the dogmas of techno-myths. I state right in my video why I think the internet is a remarkable achievement... But being a net user, I'm also cognizant of its limitations. It's a fantastic tool, archive, library, telecommunications medium, video game platform, and we're making it more and more like the real world all the time.
I suppose it was inevitable the luddites would have to sully themselves with technology to respond.
Reality is an illusion. What your eyes see are only a fragment of reality. You may not interpret color the same as someone else. You don't see the same spectrum as your cat.
All the other senses are the same.
You outgrew the skin you were born with a long time ago but you readily accept the touch of the one you have now. Why fear the next one?
I suppose if you want to accuse me of being a luddite who's afraid of technology, I could accuse you of being an agoraphobe who's afraid of reality. My point was simply that Web 2.0 isn't all that revolutionary because it's part of the movement towards making technology like the sensory reality we already experience and which needs no apologetic.
There is also the argument that the written word doesn't influence the message as does the addition of sensory interpretations that occur during a face to face conversation. This means that the message is more likely to be judged/interpreted on its own laurels/facts rather than a combination of the message and messenger which often influences objectivity.
One could counter that the lack of sensory interpretations diminishes accurate interpretation, as you lose direct, sensory access to the person's meaning and intentions. Overcoming that problem is part of why we invented smileys, and I'm sure that most of us have gotten in ridiculous e-mail or message board fights over misconstrued tones. Only an "objective" message benefits from an "objective" medium like the written word.
Ironic that he's using the INTERNET to get his point across!
OldNewsThinker 10 months ago
just as a piece of video - this is pretty poor. Half the time I can't read what the person is writing. It really is an animated article - or to go back to one of its earlier refererence, in this case, the medium is NOT the message.
kosboot 11 months ago
“The Market, the Web, the Collective morphs to subsume all deviations. The Bohemian becomes bourgeois; the heretical becomes the orthodox; dissent is consumed. Welcome to the Machine.”
t8770 1 year ago
Look up Augmented Reality. I think that may be the answer. It allows for the combining of the internet with the real world, digital information becomes more locational, with all the advantages of instant global communications. Digital information starts to interact with real objects around us, telling us all we need to know. Knowledge from human memory becomes less important, replaced by contextual information given to you where ever you are whenever you need it.
Limitless possibilities!
NikoKun 2 years ago
That depends on what your idea of a limit is. To some people, not being able to escape the global telecommunications network would be seen as a limitation.
CoryTheRaven 2 years ago
lol true..
At least technology can be turned off, in that event.
NikoKun 2 years ago
btw, I'm glad Wesch affirmed the good job. :-)
StephJoke 2 years ago
Do you happen to know if anyone has written academically on this debate? I'm interested in extending it to the use of language IRL - if one is bilingual, for instance, when does one choose a monolingual form to communicate with another bilingual who has a different mother tongue, and when does one choose to change the form of communication - Say i grew up Czech and learned English in school, and you grew up speaking Spanish - do we go for English or Spanish-interpreter-Czech?
StephJoke 2 years ago
Hi Cory - intriguing. I think your critique is constructive, especially: "..technology is moving towards increasingly sophisticated imitations of reality. We're not rethinking humanity, we're rethinking technology." (from a comment of yours "2 years ago")
I think it is possible for you and Wesch to both be right, you each highlight coexisting implications. How did he respond and do you have anything written in traditional academic form?
StephJoke 2 years ago
Wesch responded to me privately, saying that he thought it was a good reply but not engaging in any sort of debate over it ^_^
Right now, the only academic work I have is in the field of Museum and Heritage Studies... nothing on this topic.
CoryTheRaven 2 years ago
maybe the internet is just an extension of our neurological network in a continuing evolving universe of which we are only a link...or maybe not.
CamiloSanchez1979 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Awesome video! You truly are a leader. The content you provide, are the same great techniques that have caused me to achieve massive success, all through free marketing. Keep up the good work, and look forward to future videos...
TheatricalMarketer 3 years ago
I think this is the perfect answer for the original video and people did not get the presenter's idea. Why? Simply because he is *writing* (words, of course) with pen and paper and could perfectly show his point of view.
After all, what is the original but only a bunch of words?
twoevileyes 3 years ago
it's not about the content, it's about the medium. and that was really really boring.
xpxzampop 3 years ago
So boring in fact, that it generated pages upon pages of comments. Most of which are positive in nature.
saddiction 3 years ago
good point. that means one of two things: a) I am personally just more susceptible to boredom or b) Watching a guy write on pages for 3 minutes is not boring
which one do you think it is?
xpxzampop 3 years ago
Watching a guy write for 3 minutes may be boring, but is watching a computer write for 4 and a half THAT much more interesting? As twoevileyes notes, both of our videos were just batches of words. Does the flashy delivery fundamentally change that? Does it constitute the new paradigm shift that Wesch was writing about?
CoryTheRaven 3 years ago
nope. you are right and I am wrong.
xpxzampop 3 years ago
boring... learn to present your idea better. Not worth as a reply to the original.
TMThenu 3 years ago
Yep, really boring. Where's the boobs?!? Geez, the poster could have AT LEAST included some poor soul getting kicked in the pills, or some idiot eating a dozen habaneros and washing it down with a gallon of hot sauce!
Perhaps you could present a reply exhibiting what YOU think is a better idea in response to the original?
saddiction 3 years ago
good..
bizzbuzz2u 3 years ago
It's all about the bandwidth. If we can make more of it and sprinkle it everywhere, all sorts of really cool virtual reality stuff will happen.
If you think that you waste lots of time on the internet NOW, just wait until Web 2.0 -- we are all in for a major lifestyle change. No more time for TV or sleeping; just internet all day every day until it PERMANENTLY crashes your computer. Web 3.0 will be the backlash--just wait until you see THAT one!! (I got a sneek peek and it is amazing)
bbc789789 3 years ago
interesting, but a couple of thoughts. I see Cory's counter point to Wesch, not much has changed (aren't we conversing in text?) But Wesch, to me, is about organization - and there in lies the paradigm change. and to Cory's point about interaction: Wii we're only scratching the surface
gene11111 3 years ago 2
I really hate to say this, but I think I'm missing the point. I agree that Web 2.0 is nothing more than a re-organizing of written word and motion picture media (ok, recorded sound too), and that they can never replace other, more conventional forms. If Wesch's argument is that a paradigm shift is happening in identity and community construction because it is making those forms of media obsolete, I would say he is wrong... but I think such a paradigm shift is happening all the same... (cont'd)
panda1pandemic 4 years ago
(cont'd)
not because it replaces those forms, but because it is more useful-- my written words have never had the power to reach as broad or large an audience as they do right now. Not only that, I can write all this, and carry a conversation with a friend on AIM at the same time. Consider students-- Typical college students spend as much as half of their relational experience each year through an impersonal medium. If this trend continues, shouldn't we evaluate how we identify ourselves?
panda1pandemic 4 years ago
Okay... how does it change how we identify ourselves?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I can't answer that. But to start, substituting half of someone's personal experiences for impersonal ones is bound to be depressing and lonely, right? That definitely affects their identity construction.
panda1pandemic 4 years ago
WOW lot's of great comments.
I really enjoy reading your thoughts.
Isn't this what we're really talking about? :) COMMUNICATION
There are so many variables to the formula that we have to slap a 2.0 on it to comprehend the vastness of bringing all these things together in one place...not to mention the human factor.
That's the one were we all have different experiences viewing the exact same subject matter...
See why I'm so messed up? whew...
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ifxman 4 years ago
Brilliant! All this virtual communication is merely training wheels until we have the skills that enable us with the courage to face each other in the flesh. It's a start, and Thank God for that! Yeee Hooooo!
808jgirl 4 years ago
Hi, We had woops for the press and all the forms of communication that followed. What scares me is what we are really trying to unconsciously create. You mentioned the ultimate goal, Virtual Reality. Everything that has been designed, has been designed to enable us NOT to have the need to touch. This coupled with the rise of more deadly bacteria will leave us with only one option. For us to survive we can not touch. V.R. will be our only true ecsape from the threat of extinction by disease.
mrhope30 4 years ago
i think im missing the whole huge web 2.0 debate here as well...
the way i see it, the internet isn't reality, *duh*. end of story.
so i really dont understand where the disagreement comes from... like to me everyones saying more or less the same thing? i dont get it...
pimpinpan 4 years ago
I kinda got most of it. I'm only a youngen in my teens, and i got most of it, but i didn't get the whole picture of it. Is is that your saying the internet is changing lives much because we still read books and watch TV or Movies? Help. Please.
guthixworshiper 4 years ago
He is saying that the internet is only simulating reality. In other words, the fact that we can now all edit the internet and upload content (well, with a computer, connection, and information, at least) does not change the fact that it is virtual. We are not communicating in a physical sense, it just feels like it. The standard nuances of communication are missing. Regardless of speed and content, the internet is not reality.
Dylnuge 4 years ago
there are alot of great video's here, but I think this one is brilliant.
akseakayaker 4 years ago
So media form could be more important than content.
There *are* new media forms...video calls, social networking sites, online gaming
graham6419 4 years ago
:) I loved the cat at the end. Exactly - you can play some immersion reality game like the Sims or Second Life, which lets you simulate lots of amazing things you could never do in real life. But you can't fully interact with it - not even something as simple as reaching out and stroking a cat.
graham6419 4 years ago
Interesting and thought provoking!
novembertalespinner 4 years ago
The Web 2.0 video speaks of rethinking some 'exchange' between peoples now that most of the world are connected. Laws of each places are different according to various media and many information is censored in a country or another, but Web 2.0 is universal, this bring lots of laws and copyrights problems and the internet does not have fixed rules since each websites are hosted in various servers across the world which does not respond to the same laws.
Syldan 4 years ago
Actually, most of the world isn't connected. Only about a 6th of the population is online, and most of those people are from the Western world.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I can't read that handwriting >=(
JREAMING 4 years ago
I'm confused... :/
AARness 4 years ago
Nice, love the hand written entry
vaev 4 years ago
Anyway, thanks for making me think and for the distraction to my prep for discussion... Cheers!
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
Pretty cool, although I admit I am not a follower of McLuhan. In other words, I believe the diverse media do not each have an essential nature that then defines the forms of consciousness of the members of that society. Instead, the form of each medium is defined by, and entangled in, other social forces (the economic organization, political, cultural).
gracias,
Your professor Rich
RexTheMedusian 4 years ago
Pseudo-intellectual horsehockey. Get a job, you dirty Tube-hippies!
nathan37354 4 years ago
brilliant work. even if the government doesn't remotely serve the common man, it still tries to avoid pissing us off to the point of revolution. we need to become more sensitive.
uncleosbert 4 years ago
What's the difference between simulation and reality?
TiredNinja2 4 years ago
I find that those sorts of deep hax0r questions tend to be resolved either by a good lay or a punch to the face.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Basically, the media-saturated society tries to simulate participation. Since we live in capitalist-fascism, very few people have the POWER can alter REALITY, but everyone from Amy Goodman to Rush Limbaugh wants to convince you that you'll "participate" by listening, and you'll "really participate" by podcasting and emailing.
timetorevolt 4 years ago
Excellent observation!
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Ace.
radbla 4 years ago
1- Very interesting... For sure Web 2.0 is nice, but it's not all the internet ;-) I really agree with you :)
2- Paper waster! :D
3- Cute kitten! :)
simonpca 4 years ago
Yes, only a small minority of people edit content on the web, but the USPS comparison is just so dated. The web is no chain letter. Maybe the more basic functions on the web are like postal mail, but Flickr maps? Wikipedia?
Instant remote participation doesn't have too many real world analogs, much less things we experience every day. I don't think the aspects of Web 2.0 are consciousness changing on a world-scale, but maybe something better will come out of the One Laptop per Child project?
dfacetube 4 years ago
I would argue that Web 2.0 is actually making more things individualistic. Encyclopedias, films... those always were collaborative efforts. The internet has made them otherwise, and Web 2.0 might be a step on reversing that.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
oh boy... do u have a computer?
Greenders 4 years ago
Meaning?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
uhm... how would he have posted this video..?
rippawallet 4 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
By the nearest Monday, you shall wake up in the anime you are currently watching. However, this wonderful gift will not happen until you post this comment in 5 anime videos or amvs within the next twenty four hours. Once this happens, you deepest anime wishes shall come true. ^_^
markoftheboard 4 years ago
Interesting thesis worthy of thought and very cleverly presented. And a nice looking cat too. Thanks for posting this. You've given me more to think about with respect to the web, community, reality, and human interaction.
woodstockdc 4 years ago
what is the name of the cat?
gherebia 4 years ago
The cat's name is Kitten ^_^
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I teach multimedia and web design. I recently told one of my colleagues to read "The Medium is the Message" by McLuhan. They never heard of him. Your video was one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. We may have gotten so caught up in the simulation of reality, that we are forgetting that it's a simulation. Some kids play outside, some won't. Read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander - informative book.
estlacksensory 4 years ago
It is so basic but so true, a bunch of Gutenberg's presses and Edison's devices connected through a telegraph...so surreal but so true.
CamiloSanchez1979 4 years ago
great response. great video. This IS a movement... almost gonna be like global warming, where everything dies.
gunitzpqm 4 years ago
lol your handwriting is ace
paulrichardson6 4 years ago
Web 2.0? Everytime we type our username and pwd to login somewere we are interacting with the web and this interaction's been called Web 2.0. Also when I type 2+3 and push = on my calculator? Yes, we are interacting. But it was since the computer starts! But that is not the problem... that is just a definition. The privacy is the problem! Are you sure that someone else is not realy reading your email? As a computer programmer, I am not.
igasparetto 4 years ago
You make good points. Of course the Internet has its limits. But why stress the importance of "sensory"? Without those chatrooms and emails, even with their limits, there would be NO COMMUNICATION between many, many people. SOME communication with limited sensory experience is better than none at all, and I don't see the purpose in criticising it's limits.
Willocwen 4 years ago
I was only pointing out the limitations relative to the original Web 2.0 vdeo, which proclaimed that because of it we would have to rethink family, love and ourselves. The internet is a brilliant communications tool, but it isn't THAT awesome.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
You're right, we don't have to rethink it in terms of reinventing it. But I think we need to rethink it in terms of extending our former ideas about it. Internet gives us a means to construct our identity, for one thing, which is a way to rethink ourselves. Love, family... again, different forms of communication give way to different forms of understanding. If love and family are to be counted as things on a face-to-face playing field, that's not entirely accurate anymore.
Willocwen 4 years ago
Don´t agree. Everything has to be redefined because of this web phenomenon. No one has foreseen this. It might become some kind of external conscience. Face it.
ELTIETCHA 4 years ago
Face what? The arguement has yet to be reasonably made that the internet is more than people shooting letters, movies and catalogue shopping orders back and forth. If you argue that the internet is an external consciousness, then you might as well argue the same of the Postal Service.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
OK, take humanity: rule out ethics, laws, moral and censorship. The web. See where I am going with my thought process.
ELTIETCHA 4 years ago
No, I'm afraid I don't see. But that may be because you're using catchphrases rather than making an argument. Are you trying to say that the internet will change humanity because it's libertarian?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I see your point and it's very well presented, but you seem to be criticizing something that is essentially good. Digital communication and simulated participation are forms of media. The fact that they are media and not real life does not diminish their importance or value.
Your point is true. The internet is and always will be inferior to real experiences, but that doesn't detract from it's vital role in our society.
Vultrus 4 years ago
I never said it did. I just said we shouldn't think more of them than they are.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
i like the kitty ^_^
KGSGoFreak 4 years ago
That's a great response to the Web 2.0 thing, and so true. I'm very much "jacked in" to the Internet and have been since pre-Web days (whoa). I'm not sure what Web 2.0 offers in added value other than people being able to tweak their virtual realities more easily.
The other things people don't talk about is the re-creation of personality. Look for "The Second Self" by Sherry Turkle.
JillSerp 4 years ago
I've found that most disagreements usually stem from misinterpretation of the language of the discussion.
So Cory, what exactly would you consider a paradigm shift in human consciousness.
snowman1900 4 years ago
That is a good question, but without being a prophet, I wouldn't be able to answer on behalf of the future. Looking on the past, I would volunteer things like the development of the written word. Another, though not exactly media-based, is the transition between eras, like that from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Looking at it in that scale, I'm interested to see what will happen after we recover from the Dark Ages following the fall of the USA and the chicken flu plagues.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Can you send me a copy of that book?
Nice cat.
funnyav 4 years ago
Sorry, no can do. It's just a journal that I own.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
But this has been an active paticipatory experience for you and me and everyone else who left a comment.
publickatherine 4 years ago
It has been participatory in the same sense as writing a proper letter is participatory. This is just the latest form of the same medium.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
But... MANY more people are apt to comment because it takes virtually less time. Stimulates more interaction than ordinary "snail mail" would. I'm more apt to respond to emails and put out this response, than I ever would with postal mail and I was alive before Gore invented the internet. :)
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
However, truth be told, I haven't enough experience to definitively put forth an opinion regarding whether it deserves being called a paradigm shift. Just like globalization youtube and blogging are the shrinking of space and time, and if we were to agree with Wolf, not a new phenomenon. How would you fit youtube and facebook into imaginary community and globalscapes?
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
Even a spoken conversation is mostly passive reception of information, right? You are quiet, then you speak, you take turns.
Exchanges via the internet are the same in that way. There are differences in the quality of the information conveyed (text, audio, visual). But to say that an instant messenger chat is no more participatory than an exchange of letters, or even watching a movie or reading a book, seems a bit reductive.
graham6419 4 years ago
Cuddling with my girlfriend on the couch with the cats, in front of the fire, eating peppermint ice cream and listening to her talk is ANYTHING but a passive reception of information. Having spent the last few months away from her at school, I guarantee you even more now than I did in the video that MSN isn't even in the same ballpark.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
buuuuuuuuuuu
juanvarela000 4 years ago
But another important contribution of this video is the fact that remarks that not everybody has access to internet. It's really an elite that has access. Most of the people in the world even don't have clear water to drink or medicines to survive a cold!
Finally, is a virtual reality that we are simulating participation (wwhat?).
Regards!
antolintinez 4 years ago
I don't think that CoryTheRaven is pesimist just to say something that is clear: the language is the characteristic that "make us" (Wittgenstein). That language is still made by words and images, that represent (Kant) the reality (if such kind of thing exists). The internet is just another tool (for us) and another business (for "them"). Guttenberg made the first tool and the second is the internet. But still words and images...
antolintinez 4 years ago
Who cares, the internet does not have to become a multi-participatory brain to make us useful.
We are useful by living our distinct live, the internet only brings us a past-time distracting us of our real spiritual quest to happiness.
It is taking away the bliss that ignorance brings us by the information it transmits. Hopefully morals can be thought, and we might bring others to sense.
But our free-will is difficultly changed.
Estebandito22 4 years ago
Tsunami says has made.
I do not say these things have happened.
I am saying these things might happen.
Not quickly.
Slowly.
Cities,cars and phones have changed not only society, but the way we see the world.
I claim that you grandchildren will view the world differently than you.
And a great part of that will be caused by the net.
(If we last that long)
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
Reading "LOL" doesn't make ME PHYSYCALLY laugh out loud as being with a person who's actually laughing does.
NeoTsunami 4 years ago
As to Cory's point. You can look at it this way:
To Cory (and any other person who can do it) what FEELS more real. Reading this "*scratches his girlfriend's cat's head, feeling it soft dark gray fur between his fingers*"? Or actually scratching the cat's head at the end of the video?
What Cory is saying is that Web 2.0 has made exchange of intangible items (written word, video, sound)easier. But to the point we have to rethink who we are? Definitely not.
NeoTsunami 4 years ago
I've been backtracking the comments on this page and almost everyone here is accusing CoryTheRaven of being a pessimist for giving a rebuttal to the last few seconds of the Web 2.0 video.
In my opinion the Web 2.0 video is right in all the statements it makes about the technical and practical advantages Web 2.0 has brought to the way information is spread/exchanged.
NeoTsunami 4 years ago
We won't have to rethink every day reality.
We will have to rethink the barrier between
it and this place though.
That is what we are doing on this very moment.
Thinking as a group trough finding arguments on both sides.
As volumes grow, new abstractions become plausible
and even necessary. Are abstractions not real?
What do you think, is the internet already alive?
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
The internet is as alive as the television or cinema, a magazine or a novel. That we're exchanging ideas or life stories through it isn't new, nor does it make it any more alive than other written or visual media. THat was my point: no matter how you cut it or how much undefined jargon you use about "emergence" or "higher levels" or "necessary abstractions", we're still communicating via the written word and the motion picture, which has as many limitations as it has uses.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
My comments don't get posted, or else I would answer.
otisagabey 4 years ago
this is a waste of time, apparently you missed the whole point of the video
thedongregga 4 years ago
but how many of us want to pet your girlfriends cat? or walk through a forest? or take your girlfriends cat out to the middle of a forest and leave it? you are right you do get more sensory influx but we are not saying that the web will replace life, that was not the message, the message is that it is bringing us closer together. its about sharing an experience, creating opportunities for experience, and creating truth. nothing ever said is ever said the same way twice.
heero31337 4 years ago
Actually, the video did state that we were going to have to rethink everythng we experience of life because of Web 2.0. The effect of it in bridging cultural gaps is fundamentally limited by the fact that it is still the written word: it's still not the same as experiencing someone else's culture or life as a participant. My point is that while the internet is useful, it does not force us to rethink daily experience. Rather, we're trying to make the net more like daily experience.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
So I'm meeting some friends today. We have an event set up on Facebook. I look on Google maps, to make sure I know the way. I check the local weather forecast and look at the bus timetable online. After I get back I post some pictures of me and my friends for other people to look at.
This is rethinking daily experience, isn't it?? None of this was possible 10-15 years ago.
graham6419 4 years ago
i dont so much see that as rethinking anything, i see it as your having just done all the corporate medias work for them (how easy is it for them to advertise AT you all the time when they know where you go and for what), and youre being desensitized, being prepared for a day when all your movements will have to be government pre-approved via web 2.0 by cataloging your entire day, logging into websites to set things up, even reporting it to the authorities if you wander off course..
hovering1 4 years ago
I don't see the rethinking... I consult the computer rather than the TV, paper maps and schedules, and the telephone. Accessing all this online is more efficient, but it's not a paradigm shift.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
how is the act of reading an unintentional experience. you are very well spoken, perhaps far more so than i could ever hope to be. however my writings draw out emotions that run a larger range than some of the best speakers i have ever seen. the imagery i can re-create with words can bring out memories. perhaps the exchange we seek is not that of something new but of something that "connects" us with each other. our similarities, our experiences our thoughts and ideas. just my opinion.
heero31337 4 years ago
Oh, there certainly is power in writing... but no amount of writing is the same as taking a walk through a forest. Not a single one of you petted my girlfriend's cat, though you all watched me do it in the video.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I would say it is complete.
Higher level things could be seen
arising trough emergence to fill the gaps.
(Philosophical emergence, not Computer Science)
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
Okay Kurt... But what does that actually mean? How is looking at the world strictly in terms of information exchange complete, what things are to be considered "higher level", how are they to be seen, what sort of emergence, and what gaps?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I love walking in a forest. Even that can be be seen trough exchange of information. The sensory data of smells, colours and sounds witlls ones mind with a feeling of reverence and peace.
It might not be a good idea to see that as information exchange, but it can surely be done.
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
"It might not be a good idea to see that as information exchange, but it can surely be done."
Exactly.
It CAN be done, but it's neither good nor complete.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Do you not see the beauty of exchange of information?
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
Oh, there is certainly beauty in it, but reducing everything to an exchange of information declares that it's only your own aesthetic tastes that should be of any importance. Saying that beauty is only found in scribalism necessarily devalues beauty in other perspectives, especially when what those perspectives see doesn't fall under scribalist information exchange (eg: petting a cat, eating a dinner, making love to a partner, walking in a forest).
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I wasn't in Manhattan on Nine Eleven, but the emotions i experienced because the virtual media and their motion pictures, was as real as the sensation you got petting your girlfriends cat, if not more so. And, if you don't think we have to rethink copyright, identity, family, rhetoric & privacy.. Try to get the Law to listen to you once your identity is stolen, now that is non-participatory.
MotherNature1966 4 years ago
OR..
Ever have to moderate a 3 day flame war @ a Catholic vs. Protestant board? Or ran to check eMail 4 times a day, 'cuz your spouse is deployed overseas? .. To imply emotions aren't being experienced while exchanging these virtual words, is simply a lie.
MotherNature1966 4 years ago
Actually I have had to moderate religious flame wars and I did watch 9/11 on TV. I never said EMOTIONS weren't felt. I said that it's the same kind of EXPERIENCE.
No matter how many feeds you watched of 9/11, no matter how many hours you sat there, it simply is not the same as being at Ground Zero with buildings falling around you. Not the least bit.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Ahhh,. ..but the argument is that this medium is non-participatory. And that, in my heart and in my feelings even as i communicate with you now, is simply an untrue statement.
MotherNature1966 4 years ago
I think you were missing my point. I never said that emotions weren't poured into the medium of the motion picture and the writen word. I said that they're not experiential in the same way as the "real world".
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I was moved by the journal entry "The internet still follows the fundamental form of the written word and the motion picture: non-participatory reception of information."
& listen dear, i'm not trying to imply you're wrong, i'm simply stating the fact that *I* do experience participatory reception in my netizenship. See, my Christian brother, i don't see the internet as only written words and motion pictures. ..I think you have a great mind, and we're more alike, than not.
God Bless.
MotherNature1966 4 years ago
Again, I never said that people don't experience emotions in relation to books, movies, letters, songs, or commercials. I don't feel that, in itself constitutes participation.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Again, imagined community can be more "real" than the "real participation" you are describing... Think of the diaspora - it is clearly maintained through the internet. Schulte (1996:431) suggests, "the globe becomes a single 'place' in its own right." The internet exemplifies that global place.
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
I don't think I ever disputed that a person can invest themselves more in long distance relationships maintained over telecommunications than they would in real world, experiential interactions. That doesn't make it mainstream nor desirable, however.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Desirable to whom? I did look at the comments section what do you think I'm responding to??? I went through many pages of them...
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
Not all written word is meant to be objective at all.
It might be rather "scribist" to look at things from the perspective of information exchange, but does that make it a bad way of looking at things?
(Argh! Redundancy.)
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
It's not a BAD way of looking at things... only an incomplete way of looking at things. Not everything is about information exchange, and to reduce it to that is to divest it of its beauty.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I posit that word processors and spell check have caused a paradigm shift in your crappy spelling
thatfeel 4 years ago
That's a convenience, not a paradigm shift. A computer taking care of my tendency to double-up the letter "c" isn't making me rethink love and family. But nevertheless, thank you for your insightful comment.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
It's not? What if you were an international immigrant or refugee in the US, or other developed country, trying to keep in touch with your family?
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
You would use essentially the same communications methods used for a hundred years before... letters, telegrams, e-mail...
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Is reading not an experience?
And there is no "mere" in exchanging information.
Exchanging information is everything from electromagnetism to mind.
I am not thinning reality. I am widening "exchange of information".
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
Ah, but reducing things to an "exchange of information" is a very scribist way of looking at things rather than, say, a mystic one. Now, the act of reading is an experience, but that is unintentional. The purpose of the written word is exchange of information, preferably as objectively as possible, and not, say, eating a dinner, petting a cat, walking in the forest or making love to a partner.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Everything communicates to another something - kinesetics, proximity, how you eat dinner, what is on your plate, where you touch your partner - communication: exchange of information.
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
What a conversation is is an exchange of information.
Thanks to those physical things, the bandwidth is
larger than in pure text. Is that bandwidth the only difference?
And no, they cannot force us to change our perception of
reality, but they might lure us to do it.
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
A face-to-face sharing of enfleshed existence is an experience, not mere processing of bytes of information. But as I noted in the video, the point is moot. Most of us have a pretty good handle on reality and are driving technology towards simulating that reality. Trying to question reality to make it better simulate technology (your mere "exchange of information") is haxx0r fetishism, and doesn't fly.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Senses and their perception are exchanges of information - some are coded differently but still need to be processed and interpreted.
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
We discussed this line of reasoning many moons ago... check out the comment section!
The short of it is that to characterize experiential activities as exchanges of information is an attempt to reduce the real world to computer-age terms rather than uplift the computer age to reality. Most people know the difference.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Is it? when did "information" become solely the domain of "computer age terms"?
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
And, don't patronize me. I'm only trying to understand your distinctions. I'm not judging them OR your intelligence.
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
Thank you for demonstrating one of the limitations of telecommunications that I talked about in my video: the need to overcome the inability to convey things like tone.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
You are entirely welcome! Well played! :) there's some rudimentary tone...
Great stimulus for discussion. I can definately use this. Thanks again!
frickenalizethis 4 years ago
Reducing existence and interaction to bytes of information has been a distinctly computer-age preoccupation.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Not even conversation is fully real time.
What is the great difference between it and chat?
I agree that YouTube doesn't change reality,
but it may change people.
And we can only measure reality trough people.
KurtOfConspiracy 4 years ago
Well, for one thing, you can't read body language in a chat room. You can't smell, touch, or really access any of your other senses relative to the person and situation. It's an extremely flat exchange. Having this converstaion over beer at a pub is not. And heck, because of it, people even behave differently.
AS for reality, like I said before, haxx0rs won't force us to change our perception of reality to suit their illusions.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
How ironic that you've been able to respond in this way, and somehow get people to share your thoughts through such publishing freedom.
minnellium 4 years ago
I don't see how that's ironic... That's what this is designed for. The question wasn't about publishing freedom, it was about rethinking what it means to be human.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Fair enough. I didn't mean that as a criticism. I just enjoy the freedom of expression it all brings. I wish democracy was so promising! Just keep it coming.
minnellium 4 years ago
lol i wish i could sound as smart as you guys ( i've got that same pen lol)
isaac000016 4 years ago
You say that it's still the same thing, in its essence, but isn't the fact that it's faster a meaningful distinction? How was the written word fundamentally different from the spoken form? We still use language. It's still one person speaking to another, or to many. But the advent of the printing press, as you undoubtedly realize, was that it bridged distances by encapsulating that message in a different medium that changed how people looked at it. The Internet, then, bridges TIME. (& damn limit
devan216 4 years ago
The written word was different because it divorced the story from the storyteller, allowing for the advent of objective discourse which is useful for science and academics. It also led to power shifting from storytellers to scribes.
That strength is also its weakness when it comes to non-objective discourses. Even over the internet there is still a wall of separation between you and understanding anyone you're watching or reading about. Making faster scribes doesn't bridge that gap.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Interesting, thanks.
btocher 4 years ago
You might be right in that we use the same media as we have used before, but the way we use them is different from before. The media are not just used in broadcasting mode, the way they used to be used, one way,in web 2.0 they are linked to communications with other people and have become many-to many. This makes that we don't just receive information, but that we are enabled to create knowledge.
lskopr 4 years ago
I'd argue that it's still a broadcast-publication paradigm, only subsequent communication has become faster and easier. You're still watching a movie I made... It's just that your letter to the producer isn't falling on deaf ears. Still pretty cool, granted, but is it a paradigm shift that will force us to rethink what love, family or self is?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
loved!!
made a translation to portuguese, any problems?
twoevileyes 4 years ago
None at all! I'm glad you liked it!
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
good! now Im waiting for it being approved. the first one ive uploaded had an issue if the subtitles - no subtitles at all. lets hope this one works. hehe
twoevileyes 4 years ago
It seemed to, and it is approved... Thanks for making it!
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
What a debate 0o
thefriendlywolf 4 years ago
I hope you see the irony in your "non-participatory reception of information" comment in a video YOU MADE and in this comment I'M MAKING.... dumbass
ArchNME 4 years ago
Actually, we discussed that many comments and a few weeks ago. No one here is doing anything new, either making a movie or writing a letter in response. We're only doing it faster. Nothing has fundamentally shifted except the speed and ease with which we can do it.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I'm not arguing that but it's stupid to say the internet in a non-participatory medium as you demonstrate the ease with which you can participate. It is a fundamental shift relative to something like television or just writing a letter, the cost and regulation around having a TV station is enormously prohibitive and writing a letter only reaches one person. What we have here is pretty revolutionary and amazing, it has come about gradually but that doesn't lessen it's impact.
ArchNME 4 years ago
Ah, you missed my point. We may be having an extremely rapid exchange of letters here and now, over the incredibly elitist and expensive medium of the internet, but that's still all it is. It's not like sitting in a pub having a conversation. This is a very flat exchange.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I didn't miss your point. Try stickam if you want to have a more dynamic exchange. Yeah the starving millions of the third world arn't on the net yet, but this is the most inexpensive and non-elitist form of mass communication ever, practically everyone in the western world can afford it.
ArchNME 4 years ago
Again, you point to something that is just faster, but still not fundamentally different from a movie or the written word.
As for inexpensive and non-elitist, that is nonsense. Even within the Western world, internet use is severely segregated along age and income lines. And yes, frankly, the 5.5 billion teeming masses who don't have net accessibility do matter.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Like I said most inexpensive and non-elitist form of mass communication EVER. I didn't say the rest of the world didn't matter, send a kid in somolia your old computer if you are so damn concerned about them. The point is millions more people than any other medium before can use the internet to output messages. Faster is revolutionary by the way, that's like saying the car isn't important cus it's just a faster form of walking.
ArchNME 4 years ago
I didn't say the internet wasn't IMPORTANT... I said it wasn't revolutionary to the tune of forcing us to fundamentally rethink what it means to be human. It is still movies, still writing... The medium isn't fundamentally different.
And how can Web 2.0 force us to rethink what it means to be human when the vast majority of humans aren't even in on it?
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Let's say I put your brain in a dolphin or some crazy shit. You could say that you would have to fundamentally rethink what it means to be human. Just cus the rest of the world wasn't with you wouldn't make a difference.
Nothing on earth ever created is fundamentally different by your definition. You are just trying to frame basic pessimism in some profound context.
ArchNME 4 years ago
As opposed to reframing great techno-myths in a profound context? Accusing me of being a pessimist is right up there with calling me a luddite: it's entirely inaccurate, but it makes the person accusing it feel open-minded and progressive. Sorry, but haxx0rs won't force us to rethinking humanity or reality.
The point is moot anyways. As I noted, technology is moving towards increasingly sophisticated imitations of reality. We're not rethinking humanity, we're rethinking technology.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
So, you´re saying the internet it´s just an extension of traditional medias and it doesn´t have an impact on human beings?
iphigeniamdq 4 years ago
I'd say that it's fundamentally the same form as traditional media, though the content may have lesser effects. If anything, the effect would opposite of what Wesch proposes. For example, movies have always been a collaborative medium... YouTube has made it a solitary one.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
Yeah, the original video could just as easily be accused of being overly optimistic and exaggerating the importance of it all. Like most things the truth is probably in the middle. However, being positive actually has a purpose from a motivational standpoint, to bring dreams into reality. Being skeptical and negative about things is sometimes needed but not here. You are just whining to whine with no purpose.
ArchNME 4 years ago
I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that I'm pessimistic from, unless it's the all-or-nothing logic that calls me a total luddite for not buying into the dogmas of techno-myths. I state right in my video why I think the internet is a remarkable achievement... But being a net user, I'm also cognizant of its limitations. It's a fantastic tool, archive, library, telecommunications medium, video game platform, and we're making it more and more like the real world all the time.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
I suppose it was inevitable the luddites would have to sully themselves with technology to respond.
Reality is an illusion. What your eyes see are only a fragment of reality. You may not interpret color the same as someone else. You don't see the same spectrum as your cat.
All the other senses are the same.
You outgrew the skin you were born with a long time ago but you readily accept the touch of the one you have now. Why fear the next one?
DigitalVG 4 years ago
I suppose if you want to accuse me of being a luddite who's afraid of technology, I could accuse you of being an agoraphobe who's afraid of reality. My point was simply that Web 2.0 isn't all that revolutionary because it's part of the movement towards making technology like the sensory reality we already experience and which needs no apologetic.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago
There is also the argument that the written word doesn't influence the message as does the addition of sensory interpretations that occur during a face to face conversation. This means that the message is more likely to be judged/interpreted on its own laurels/facts rather than a combination of the message and messenger which often influences objectivity.
Teyec00n 4 years ago
One could counter that the lack of sensory interpretations diminishes accurate interpretation, as you lose direct, sensory access to the person's meaning and intentions. Overcoming that problem is part of why we invented smileys, and I'm sure that most of us have gotten in ridiculous e-mail or message board fights over misconstrued tones. Only an "objective" message benefits from an "objective" medium like the written word.
CoryTheRaven 4 years ago