Voting ends on April 14, 12 noon.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Oooops! Careful.
In the advent of Facebook and other Social Networking Sites, much personal information are being shared online. Young and adult, the rich and the poor,almost every people with an access to the Internet has his/her own website and/or SNS accounts.
Not everyone are aware of the risks and consequences of this profile sharing as not only personal information are being shared but also preferences which is then being used by companies for advertising.
The ease of access to the web for Info-sharing and data gathering is so intense that it's consequences are sometimes overlooked.
This video mash-up, basically, calls the attention of Internet users to be on guard of their information. The video also shows some of the consequences of sharing data and information.
The Internet is not an only-all-good-things-for-you entity. The Internet also poses some horrors detrimental to the user's privacy and personality.
As we control the information we share online for the sake of our safety and the protection of our rights, how much of ourselves are we showing online? Is it still us or our true selves are well-hidden or, maybe, disguised? Where are we in this issue of privacy and internet personality?
I believe that Internet censorship and information ownership on the web will remain vague and gravely blurry for many years to come. We can not entirely own our information and lock it safely once posted online. In the Internet, there's no such thing as absolute ownership of information. Everything is being shared, intentionally or not. As the supposedly "owner", and as ahuman being with highly capacitated mind and wisdom, it is upon us to control what we have and to control what we're getting.
The internet is a tool for the "advancement" of human living. We must not allow the Internet to govern the way we live, virtually or in reality.
Sources:
Photos:
"Privacy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeB1HHUCl8c&feature= related
Videos:
"Privacy Online" by Sarah Mohammed; AP Productions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mwx_zdcTCo&feature= related
"Privacy and Social Networks" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7gWEgHeXcA&feature= related
"Online Privacy: Is My Information Safe?"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja_SrXtIq3Q&feature=related
"Online Privacy Secrets Exposed:What Google Isn't Telling Us" by Dino Vidovic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Sx4XfNmOM-
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Opting for a freer culture
by Marjohara Tucay
The discussion on copyright, I believe, not only stems from the encroachment of our ability to create and use past works for such. The issue on copyright is a systemic dilemma, a chronic crisis brought about by the reigning capitalist order.
As capitalist continue to devise means to earn more profit by making products out of everything and promoting a consumerist culture that lavishes on the concept of "private property," the concept of the "communal" has continually been effaced. Our consumerist selves revel on ownership and has forgotten how in the beginning there is no "private" to speak of, as everyone owns everything.
Along with the encroachment of capitalism and the hegemony of consumerist culture, the concept of "intellectual property" -- the ownership of ideas has also taken hold. And yes, copyright laws stem from that idea.
We must remember, that copyright laws, as being essentially a product of global capitalism, will inevitably suffer the crisis of this system -- the downward spiral of profit-earning -- monopoly. In the very near future, not only would capital be in the hands of those in the highest echelons of society, but so will ideas, so will creative output. In time, the global market will devise wilier ways to prohibit us to even create, as they would claim ownership on everything.
Thus we should struggle for a free culture -- a climate of sharing under the ideology that no one owns anything as everyone owns everything. There should be no restrictions in the use of past works. Build upon them! Be inspired by them! This, I believe, would usher in a new Renaissance Age, one where everyone will be empowered to create and to share.
If we opt for a free culture, we are hurtling ourselves onto a great wall that is global capitalism. But through our collective efforts, we can make this happen.
(The music bed is a combination of the songs "On the Floor" by Jennifer Lopez; "Stereo Love" by Edward Maya; "Love Generation" by Bob Sinclair; and "What I Am" by Will.I.Am. Inspired by the book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig and "Postmodernism: The Cultural Critique of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson.)
All videos used in this work were taken from YouTube and is viewable in the following links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWxqSEMXWuw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ShMZ0Xy2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4H_Zoh7G5A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NSeysrDYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyVzjoj96vs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58dYsywoQzE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ShMZ0Xy2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4H_Zoh7G5A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NSeysrDYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyVzjoj96vs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58dYsywoQzE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Downlod. Edit. Upload.
Download, tanggalin ang konteksto.
Edit, ibahin ang konsepto.
Upload, iba na ang konteksto.
That’s what I did (or tried to do) with my video mash-up.
Actually this video was my project in an editing class last semester (yeah, please disregard the inconsistencies in quality and lighting, my professor already said his piece about that). This is a musical interpretation of Toplader’s Dancing in the Moonlight. I used nine different videos to create this mash-up. My aim was to show fight scenes not as brutal act but orchestrated performance in the form of dancing. As what Marybeth Peters said in Remix, what I did is “taking something that was and turning it to something it wasn’t.” Download, edit, upload. Many people are doing this online, not only me or Girltalk.
Download, tanggalin ang konteksto.
“Culture emerges from constant interaction and negotiation between people.” This interaction happens online through sharing of ideas and creative content. Interaction in the internet starts with clicking on the links and discourse happens not only in the chat room but in modifying other people’s works as well. Most of the time, our mindset is that the author is dead; we make our personal interpretations of texts or creative products we see online.
Downloading gives us a sense of ownership or right to a property. Then we will have control over it. We can reconstruct what we have downloaded by influencing it with our personal experiences. We adapt it to our daily lives. For example, we download photos of beautiful beaches in the Philippines from a Flicker account of a tourist. We then make one of the photos our desktop wallpaper. Thus, in a way we remove the original context of the material and make it a part of our daily lives. The context is no longer the happy memories of a vacation but an inspiration or a dream summer destination. The context is no longer that of the uploader’s but it has become our own.
Edit, ibahin ang konsepto.
Robbins (1995) supposed “virtual world may be seen as constituting a protective container within all wishes are gratified.” In the virtual or online world, we can be the producer/director/writer/editor of our ‘own’ productions. This is particularly true with who Henry Jenkins calls “textual poachers”—the fans. According to Jenkins, “Fans actively assert their mastery over the mass-produced texts which provide the raw materials for their own cultural productions and the basis for their social interactions”(1992). They ‘edit’ the materials available online (most of the times files they share) and create their own world out of it. Subsequently it becomes the “cultural product” of the fandom. That is why they have fanvids, fancams, fanzines, fanart, fanfics, etc.
Atton is right when he said “we are seeing an erasing of the boundaries between amateur and professional creative practices.” A lot of editing softwares are accessible online. Most of it is user-friendly. Anyone now can do magic with images without the guidance of an expert. Going back to the example I gave, anyone can create a collage of the photos and make it their wallpaper. Anyone can produce a video presentation of his/her dream vacation from the downloaded photos.
Upload, iba na ang konteksto.
Atton (2004) argues that “the creative work is developed socially—through collaborative creation, circulation, commentary and consumption. The Internet has facilitated collaborative creation to a great degree.” This is the idea behind ProdUser. Content online became a collaboration: “social authorship is concerned with the creative collisions between the author as a contemporary creator, as a historical component within cultural production and previous authors; all combine in the field of cultural production.”
Again, my example about the photo-collage, we can upload and make it our profile picture in social networking sites. That way, we have changed the context of the photos. Of course there would be a lot more examples better than what I have given but my point here is that in the process of downloading, editing, and uploading we make creative contents our own.
Download, edit, upload. We do it everyday.
Downloading happens when we create a mental image of other people's works and store it in our memories. For example, when we look at a painting in a museum and remember how it looks like, how we felt, and what we experienced while staring at it. By subjecting other people's creation on the context of our own experience, we are downloading and editing their work. Uploading happens when we write a reaction paper or a blog post about the trip to the museum including out encounter with the painting.
Download, edit, upload is a routine we do in our daily lives. The question now is, is it bad?
Based on the copyright laws, yes. But as far as Lawrence Lessig is concerned, it is not bad. Culture is crafted when ideas are created and recreated. It works like a cycle.
We should (re)live in a free culture where it is filled with property but the property is not be feudal. We make the past the foundation of the future but we must not allow the past to control the future.
References:
Atton, C. (2004). An Alternative Internet: Radical Media, Politics and Creativity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, p.23-24.
Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture. New York: The Penguin Press.
Robbins, K. (1995) “Cyberspace and the World We Live.” In Cyberspace, Cyberbodies Cyberpunk: Cultures of the Technological Embodiment, edited by Featherstone, M. and Burrows, R. London: Sage, p. 143.
RiP: A Remix Manifesto.
Chryl
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
NO COPYRIGHT: We're born this way
Copyright or the economic right of the author to reproduce copies of his/ her work is a prohibition to one’s creativity to reproduce or to create a derivative to the author’s work or ideas. It is a big issue nowadays especially that the Darknet (Biddle and colleagues, 2002) or file-sharing websites and other applications are now available on the Internet which gives an easy way for the audiences to just download the files online instead of buying the album in music stores.
I believe that no matter how strict the policies on copyright, the Internet still continues to serve as an avenue to express and to liberalize one’s self. Thanks to the Creative Commons for reserving not the entire right of the author and that only some can be protected by the law.
This video challenges any copyright that the videos used herein have and also on the song Born This Way by Lady Gaga.
YOUR AVATAR: SHOW ME THE REAL YOU
Video by Jalyssa May Caccam
Title: YOUR AVATAR: SHOW ME THE REALY YOU
I acknowledge that this video wouldn’t be possible without the videos and pictures I used
(Please see list of sources)
Thank you for the people who allowed me to use their Facebook profile pictures (Comm150 Classmates and Friends) J
This video talks about the effects of the Internet and how it changed the way we interact, build relationship and the way of living. This also summarizes the things I learned from the course.
Song: Born this way by Lady Gaga
Sources:
FB Friendship
Took off from one of my favorite discussions in class, friendships in Facebook!
We discussed how friendship is being redefined by this online social network.
I went through a little bit of observation, and saw a parallelism however, on how friends interact in real life and how friends interact in Facebook. What do you guys think? :)
F.Recile
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