Quick! Record this!

Today we are steering away from the traditional sources like print, media, radio or television for information. They have now become somewhat outdated and have converged and/or mutated onto one smaller device such as an iPad. We can now control the content we wish to see or produce our own through sites such as Keek (the media platform I have been following). The people who participate in this new way of life are a prosumer which is a neologism from producer and consumer.

from dia.com

With the emergence of prosumers comes another new participator to the media scene, known as the citizen journalist  This is a person who basically takes recording news stories and images into their own hands and distributing across multiple platforms such as Keek.

Clay Shirky’s presentation at TED asserts that  “there is a new media landscape where innovation is happening everywhere and is moving from one spot to another”. He describes it as the “largest increase in expressive capability in human history”.We should keep in mind, however, with so many people uploading their own content, the creditability of the source.

When we consume a  monologic style of media, there is mostly always someone filtering the message to make it pretty close to the truth, but in dialogic media and active society, everyone can write what they think and label it as true, for example posting on Facebook that there is a fire when there really isn’t.

There are times though, that this citizen journalism as helped society immensely. Take the outbreak of the SARS virus  in China, for example. Janey Gordan’s  ‘Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies‘  highlights the worth of dialogic media: that is free of ‘gate-keepers’. While the government attempted to stop the flow of information about the disease (in Beijing after investigations by the World Health Organisation was there to conduct an audit, patients were driven around on a bus), citizens were SMSing  each other updates as the where the infected areas were and home remedies that they thought may work to curb the disease.

Keek, the platform I am following allows users to partake in this participatory culture. It allows users to   users to share short video clips with their friends, much like Instagram allows them to do with their photographs or twitter with their information bites. It has been coined as ‘twitter for videos’.  You can share a 36 second video to any one, any where in the world and wait for a ‘keekback’ (a person’s response). Keek says that they are redefining the future…

“Keek is a new kind of social network. It’s the easiest way to share video updates with friends. You can upload video status updates (“keeks”) using your webcam or the Keek app for Android and iPhone. Connect with friends, share funny videos and more. Join the social video sharing revolution!”

This is just one of the numerous platforms estbalished in this participatory culture. Whilst I believe this participatory culture is a great thing for our society, I don’t think I will be making the switch to getting all of my news on these new platforms. Below is link to a great blog that goes into more depth about participatory cultre. The video is also worth a watch to see just how much has changed (it is scary), but I warn you; it projects how this media revolution could get out of control and that is a little scary…

http://debradejong.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/about-five-types-of-prosumers.html

 

 

 

Haven’t you heard? It’s not just a phone, it’s a war.

I’ve never really given much thought about who controls the platforms and technologies I use, or why it is being controlled or contrastingly, why it is not. Take any platform and look what you can and can not do with it- all of this, is the choice of the manufacturer.

In particular we have Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones (for example a Samsung Galaxy). These two products both offer state of the art technological and innovative design, however they are both extremely different in their design and functioning because of the creators ideological choices.  Apple has gone with a ‘locked appliance’ way of running its iOs system whereas Android has taken a ‘generative platform’ approach (who tout that, no industry player will “restrict or control the innovations of any other”)

What we have here are these two technologies – a locked appliance or a generative platform; the difference being that the manufacturers of the locked technologies have complete control over the platform  which includes the content and user, and a generative platform; which allows the user to have complete control over the software.

Evan Williams stressed the value of generative platforms, commenting that we as users shape the system  and how our input can greatly improve technological platforms like Twitter. William’s witnessed this first-hand, as it was users that introduced the hash tagging component into Twitter.

This generative platform takes  Henry Jenkins quote to a whole new level, ‘No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity.’ Where we can feed off each other for bits of information to create our own personal and unique platform to meet our every need. Android offers this through such avenues as ‘rooting’. We, humanity  are the creators. Android allows us to, essentially create a phone, however we choose.

Apple strongly disagrees with this way of running things. Steve Jobs stated that “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore.”  This puts Apple devices in its own separate being, with their own stores such as the App Store. Apple wasn’t always like this, for in 1977 with the release of the Apple II allowed people to ‘tinker with it‘, thus making it a generative technology. I wonder if they changed for the safety of the user or to just maximise profits from their stores.

So what do users prefer? Recent news articles suggest that Apple’s mobile operating system continues to dominate against Android, however Android is growing, and growing fast. Read more here.

If you have a spare 13 minutes, here is a worthwhile (maybe a little biased) video to watch.

Which do you prefer? The generative platform like the Android or the closed application of the Apple iPhone?