Are we too far to turn back?

Bolter, speaks of remediation in terms of technology and uses this to make examples. This is something which is not seen as much with theorists such as Jenkins or Manovich. So taking what Bolter is saying about technological mediation, I want to look at how this would transfer into the way our society and culture looks at remediation and how we accept that along side technological advances.

Bolter says remediation is "the representation of one medium in another" (Bolter, 2000: 45). So this is taking one media form, the example he uses is paintings and photography, and representing them in another, digital picture galleries.

When reading through Bolters work, I couldn't help but draw parallels between this and the Convergence Culture which Henry Jenkins writes about (Jenkins, 2008). Although Jenkins talk about the formation of multiple mediums into one.

"By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms" (Jenkins, 2008, p2)

Inline with Bolter's writing, these "multiple media platforms" would show representation of their Old Media forms in this New Media platform. How we can stand beside the Mona Lisa painting and either take a photo of it or download a photo of it will just never be the same. 

I came across a video shared on Facebook which outlines how mobile phones have taken over the human existence. Its portrayals different events where humans are on their phones or video recording a gig, when they would enjoy it much more if they didn't use their phone



Its shows the convergence and remediation of going to a concert (Old Media) and capturing it on video (New Media) even though you may never watch it again.

Remediation is really in the advancement of technology, but this advancement can often be for the worst. We can get so engaged in finding ways to interact with the media easier that we start to lose the sense of our own human beings. Soon they will be lost in cyberspace, forever

Bibliography
Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.
Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)
CharstarleneTV, (2013) I forgot my phone [Online Video] 22 August. Available from; <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8> [Accessed: 6 November 2013].

Techno Culture and Human Bodies

It has been suggested by Debra Shaw that humans have a correlation to machines, rather than two different entities. Using the of the body's circulatory system as an example Shaw compares it to working with medical tools to create our 'natural' understand of the human body. Shaw tells us about William Harvey building upon Galen's findings how the heart served its purpose. Shaw continues to say "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart."(Shaw, 2008, p.82) This suggestion allows us to make correlations between machines and the human bodies being repaired and reassembled using tools. 

There is a fixation among individuals to create ideological embodiments of there perfect self using technologies which have only advanced because of our understand of the human body. The example used within Shaw's Technoculture is that of Bruce Springsteen and the modern geek. Bruce Springsteen used in the consumer society to relate towards those of the working class by doing so creating a body that was enhanced with technologies within a gym.

"He thus signifies the passage from the body of the industrial worker, marked by social class, to the body of the late capitalist consumer" (Shaw, 2008, p.85). 

 

Emphasizing Shaw's notion of Bruce Springsteen, the modern geek, as the machine driven body can be constructed to fit the ideological stance within their cyberspace. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the computer literate can create new identities, to enhance properties of themselves otherwise unknown outside of cyberspace. This allows a "construction of a wide variety of private worlds and, through them, for self-exploration". (Turkle, 1984, p.21). With the technology allowing us to use pseudonyms, and be annoymous within cyberspace, the reality creates convergence between collective intelligence and its participatory culture. Do we live as a machine or in a machine?

Bibliography

Shaw, D. (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Oxford Berg Press.

Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Life: Computers & The Human Spirit 

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. 

I Am Transcoding

Is New media really as new as we know it is, or does transcoding change the definition? Manovich identifies the commercial effect on New media stating that "since on one level New media is an Old media which has been digitized" (Manovich, 2002, p65). We can see throughout Manovich's train of thought that digitization controls "mass media and data processing [through] the complimentary technologies of a modern mass society" (Manovich, 2002, p46). We are transcoding and we don't want it to be hidden inside mass data programming, as it helps us work with convergence to create one media object from several formats.

As a new form of digital community, we become the transcoders. In doing so we identify with the convergence of New media data and its advantage over Old media data. "While from one point of view computerized media still displays structural organization which makes sense to its human user" (Manovich, 2002, p63). At this moment we can characterize the human user within the "cultural layer" (ibid) found in the recuse of the users mind. Cultural layers fall inside the mental identity of Old media such as photography and radio, through their use of storytelling in a physical format. At this stage we begin to see a character transformation from the users mental state (the cultural layer) to the "computer layer" (ibid) which performs the mass data programming and processing found in the basics of transcoding.

Transcoding isn't about separation, but about a collective nature in which both states of mind; be that human or computer, they can come together to form and intelligence of New media. Both these layers  combine the Old media such as photography with the New media. In doing so we store and relive that side media. With a culture nature and a computer intellect, the digitization of media is created to the format of how we become the the converged Old media.

Bibliography:
Manovich, L (2002) What is New Media and Principles of New Media from the Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass :London MIT Press)

Media, Technology and Convergence

"Old Media are not being displaced. Rather, their functions and status are shifted by introduction of new technology's" (Jenkins, 2008 p.16)

Jenkins explains during the course of his book that there is a dynamic shift between older mediums and technologies such as "the word-processing program converged with the typewriter" (Jenkins, 2008, p.5). Most technologies derive from older versions of the next version. Updates,  Recreations and Reinterpretations of the same thing making it feel new. Convergence being a form of forced teamwork, technology takes on a working progress of multiple abilities. Streaming platforms now a convergent of Television and Internet spaces shows the development of modern re imaginations by global brands such as BBC with the Iplayer.

Internet available Televisions known as 'Smart Televisions' have access to streaming broadcasters such as BBC, 4oD and Netflix. Although it seems like a great idea, one flaw always stands above the rest. The end user. Unable to understand or wont let themselves understand because they don't want to see it as a re-imagined form of Television. The Convergence of these technologies forces those end users to take a side they prefer

With all the technologies forming into one device creates an inevitable question, what can we put in it next? Jenkins talks about being at the New Orleans Media Experience, which was to discuss the future of media with its technologies. Jenkins suggests that those participants of the conference had taken a different approach towards the event, instead of visiting the conference to view ways of changing the media industry, they come to look for the "just right - the right investments, predictions, and business models" (Jenkins, 2008 p.7). Being happy with just getting by, business being more money making rather than life changing. If these companies insist on giving their consumers products that have all singing all dancing technologies and no one understands it, How does this help our future developments? Are they just reinventing the wheel for no reason?


Bibliography:

Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.

Convergence Culture is here... Ready or not.

"By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms..." (Jenkins, P.2)

Just over a decade into the 21st Century the way in which we now consume our media has come along within leaps and bounds. We are at the forefront of a digital age that has rapidly developed the way in which we live our day to day lives. None more so than how it has helped us consume media. We can all now go online, watch a film, listen to radio, listen to our music, read books and communicate with others while we do these. 

"Ready or not, we are already living within a convergence culture." (Jenkins, P.16)

We truly do live within a convergence culture whether we like it or not. We may not like it but we come into contact with it on a daily basis. As we watch television we are now reminded to follow the programmes we enjoy on Facebook or Twitter so as we are kept up to date. Some television channels inform us to watch episodes again by going online on websites such as 4oD and iPlayer. As we enjoy socializing on Facebook pages we have liked of our favourite music artists link us to their lastest music video upload onto YouTube or to tell us we can download their album online from such sources as the all mighty iTunes store. 

We seem to be connected to all forms of media even if at that moment in time we only want the function of one. This does not seem as if it will stop at anytime soon as the new generation of technology is trying to become more multi-functional than the previous. An example is the Xbox One. It is by no mean the first Xbox, it is 12 years late for that title. It is called this as it is the all in 'one' home entertainment system and there is likely more to follow.

Bibliography

Jenkins, H (2008) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press)

Critical reflection on the introductory chapter of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

Reading through the Introduction of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, it is noticeable that Jenkins does not think of convergence as being a principally technologically driven mechanism. Moreover, he states that a cultural shift is occurring whereby the media producers are losing their power at the expense of the media users. It is of course self-evident that consumers play a significant role in the process of convergence, as they decide how media content and media technology will be used, but can we truly state that an active “participatory culture” is more important than the technology and the media producers carrying out the convergence in the first instance? It might be better to put it in a way that these three components are all equally important in the phenomenon of convergence: on the one hand, media producers integrate the voice of the public, use this to develop new ideas and set out the lines of the media offer. On the other, however, media consumers contribute by evaluating the content or product and deciding for themselves what to do with it.

The fact that the media audience is not the exclusive crucial part in this convergence development became clear by reading through Jenkins’ review on the New Orleans Media Experience. People knew little about the coming changes and the event seemed to be set up for the media industry only to inform the public about what was ahead of them.

In this context it is worth noticing that although it might seem as an exclusively positive phenomenon that the broad media offer allows a wide variety of possibilities both for the producers and the consumers, it also should  be taken into account that the process of convergence causes some new sort of difficulties. For instance, producers now experience a new kind of stress caused by their new multifunctional responsibilities.


Bibliography

Jenkings, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide, revised version. NYU Press.

Convergence culture, An Introduction.

Convergence culture is not simply "the flow of content across multiple media platforms", it cannot be summed up in the action of using a mobile to watch TV (Jenkins, 2008, p2). It is a new media network of shared ideas and knowledge, "a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed  media content" (Jenkins, 2008, p3). No longer is the individual a powerless, passive consumer, but instead multitasking, sharing, exploring and interacting with other participants though multiple media, creating the media experience they desire. Without "participatory culture", creating a "buzz", media industry's would lose their power and influence over the masses, decreasing their media contents value (Jenkins,2008, p3). Identifying the significance of social networking where new media community's come together to create a "collective intelligence" (Jenkins, 2008, p4). Although empowering the participant, giving them mediums to share and create. The media industry's still build and control the mediums, using participants for the industry's own gain, such as how Facebook users generate most of the content.

Consumers are significant in "driving the process" of convergence, they are the active core mechanism which determines how to use and connect media platforms for their own media experience (Jenkins, 2008, p8). Identifying how singular platforms no longer maintain interest, no one wants a mobile that's just a mobile; they want a more connective experience. Where each mediums quality's and functions can connect and compensate for another's, such as using "games to explore ideas that couldn't fit within two-hour films"(Jenkins, 2008,p9), creating a richer media experience. This experience is delivered through "delivery systems" which are "only technologies", they become obsolete in our fast past consumer society (Jenkins, 2008, p14). What stays constant is the "media", the "cultural systems", rooted in our culture, our media desires, constantly evolving to meet society's needs (Jenkins, 2008, p14). Convergence resolves our need for on the go access to multiple media quickly and efficiently and will only grow more complex with time.

Although convergence is by no means harmonious, instead a "perpetual tangle" of different "specialized" mediums trying to intertwine and dominate one another (Jenkins, 2008, p15). With different functions, software's and intended uses "There is no single black box", but instead a mass of devices filling our homes (Jenkins, 2008, p16).

Bibliography
Jenkins, H. (2008) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2nd revised edition, NYU Press

Video Did Not Kill The Radio Star

"By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms" (Jenkins, 2008, p2)

Henry Jenkins is introducing to us the convergence, or mixing, of mediums to create new ways for the media audience to interact with different platforms. Although this seems strange to consider a generation of technology where multiple mediums aren't adapted by technology, we have to consider Jenkins' time of writing. In 2008, the first iPhone was only just released. Steve Jobs presented the iPhone as a "revolutionary mobile phone". He talks about three new products, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device. However, he soon reveals that these are all in the one product.

(BorisLeeHK, 2012)

The breakthrough of the iPhone is exactly what Jenkins is talking about when he talks about convergence. Jenkins says "Each old medium was forced to coexist with the emerging media (..) printed words did not kill spoken words. Cinema did not kill theatre. Television did not kill radio." (Jenkins, 2008, p14)

Jenkins talks about his living room, "I am seeing more and more black boxes" (Jenkins, 2008 p15) How long is it before we have one  device which literally does everything? Considering the technological advances of the past 5 years, we aren't to far away. Mobile phones are a cinema, doctors, supermarket, photo albums, (practically) DSLRs, banks, take aways, bibles, loyalty cards, compasses, book stores and anything we want them to be. What else needs to be converged with our pocket device to make life easier?

The "Black Box Fallacy" (Jenkins, 2008, p13) is when he talks about the technologies which are used to deliver the media, change and update, so for example, the iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4s, 5, 5s, 5c. These were all updated with new technologies, for example, voice recognition, mobile internet, finger print recognition, etc. "Media, on the other hand, evolve" (Jenkins 2008, p13)

Jenkins doesn't give much away about his opinion on how convergence is affecting our culture in the introduction but he talks technologies which we are using and seeing being developed today. I think that the Cheskin Research which he mentions would have a different view on todays technology, eleven years after their initial research.

"The old idea of convergence was that all devices would converge into one central device that did everything for you (a la universal remote). What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges."( Cheskin Research, 2002, p8,9)

Bibliography

Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.

Cheskin., 2002. Designing Digital Experiences For Youth
BorisLeeHK. (2012) Steve Jobs - 2007 iPhone Presentation (Part 1 of 2). [Online Video]. 22 April. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etyt4osHgX0. [Accessed: 8 October 2013].

Convergence and participatory culture

"Welcome to convergence culture (...), where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways." (Jenkins, 2008, p2). Convergence is described as a process where different industries work together and the boundaries between different media fade. In this introduction Jenkins highlights the active participation of media consumers as a key feature of this process. It seems as if convergence culture would not exist if the consumer hadn't changed. However it remains unclear whether today's "active" consumer is actually different from yesterday's traditional media users.

The term "participatory culture" brings the image to mind of an engaged community where everybody's voice is heard, like Plato's utopian democracy. But just as there was no role for women and slaves in Plato's state, not everybody's voice is heard in this participatory culture either. Jenkins (2008, p3) acknowledges this by saying that "(n)ot all participants are created equal", but with this he mainly seems to aim at corporate media. However, it could be argued that the "active" audience is merely a small elite group. Research shows that the digital divide still exists both within (Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2013) and between countries (Bacao et al., 2012). This means that there are large differences in access and ability to use technology.

Even if you look at the consumers who use New Media (almost) every day, the question remains whether they are really as active as Jenkins seems to suggest. When looking at Youtube for instance -for Jenkins says this evolution is still mainly restricted to recreational life - it becomes clear that most visitors don't actually upload videos or even comment on them and that the active produsers are just a small group. It looks like many users still use New Media in similar ways as the passive, old media.

Jenkins -like Time magazine in electing "you" person of the year- seems to be too convinced of a widespread participatory culture. Technology may have already changed a great deal in the process of convergence, but the evolution of the user still seems to be at an early stage.

Bibliography
Bacao, F., Cruz-Jesus, F. and Oliveira, T. (2012) Digital divide across the European Union, Information and Management, 49 (6), pp.288-289.
Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.
Van Deurzen, A. J. and Van Dijk, J. A. (2013) The digital divide shifts to differences in usage, New Media and Society, 0 (0), pp. 14-16.

Convergence Culture - An Introduction

"The centralised, dinosaurian one-to-many media that roared and trampled through the twentieth century are poorly adapted to the postmodern technological environment ... (and) have died on the barbed wire of technological change" (Jenkins, 2008 pp.13)

This quote, from science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling, is broken down and put to good use by Jenkins as he attempts to describe the process of convergence. Contrary to the somewhat downbeat opinion of Sterling, Jenkins uses this as an opportunity to declare that only the "tools we use to access media content" become obsolete and replaced, calling these particular tools "delivery technologies" (ibid.) It is at this point we are given a definition of what is meant by the term "delivery technology" and how it interacts with media as content.

Delivery technology is defined as being the physical medium used to convey media content, for example a CD being the physical medium used to convey recorded sound. Media as content is described as evolving depending on the medium used to convey it. Continuing with the example of recorded sound then, we track its evolution from vinyl to MP3 via 8-track and CD along the way. Applying Jenkins' logic to this, the sound remains the same, only the delivery technology used to access the media has changed. This evolution has in turn also enabled greater accessibility, as it is much easier now to gain access to music via MP3 compared with vinyl records. According to Jenkins then, "old media are not being displaced, their functions are shifted by the introduction of new technologies" (2008 pp.14).

Jenkins continues in a similar vein, introducing what he calls the Black Box Fallacy to contradict the old idea of convergence, which foresaw the development of a central hub that did everything for the user. In this, he simply makes the statement that we now have far more black boxes than previously envisaged by what was previously understood by convergence. This "fallacy" also backs him up when he makes the argument that convergence is not simply just driven by technological development but also "alters the relationships between existing technologies" (2008 pp. 15) as the multitude of new "black boxes" need to be designed with backwards functionality in mind so they can work with the existing ones.



Jenkins, H (2008) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press)