wordwhacker

Well, it looks like this is it for the Media Living journal. I have a few closing comments to make that have to do with the last reading for the course, and a few more media use-type things to mention, too. Then this journal goes back to being my writing journal, and none too soon - I've got to get a few submissions to Vox out by the end of the week, and now that NaNoWriMo is over for another year (and as you can tell by my icon, I am a WINNAH!), my creativity has been kicked into high gear.

Last week was basically paper-writing week, which means that my life has basically been cycles of MS Word usage and, briefly, Rock Band / The Bully playing as brain breaks. I've been downloading stuff a little more lately, too - found a Cat Stevens song that I wanted to learn on the guitar, and one of my study breaks on Saturday was my learning to play it. And does anybody else remember "Saga," the Canadian progressive rock group from the eighties? My folks liked their stuff a lot and, as much eighties music does, it inspires me with nostalgia. My dad was listening to the radio the other day and "Wind Him Up" came on, and I remembered how much I liked it, so I poked around online and found that album. It's decent, but I don't know if I would bother purchasing it - there are only two songs that interest me (the other being "On the Loose").

I found "Wind Him Up" on YouTube too, and the "more info" that accompanies it is interesting:

Saga - Legendary Canadian Progrock
Live at the Metropolis - Montreal 1984
Rock Etc Canadian TV Broadcast
www.saga-world.com

Over half the songs from the show including this one, DID NOT make it to the Silhouette official DVD.

Here it is for your enjoyment.

This is kind of cool because it shows that putting concert footage up on YouTube isn't usually about any kind of disrespect for the bands, or even for the companies that have the rights to the footage. Lots of info about the group and the concert, even where the concert was broadcast, is included there. But there's obviously some annoyance about the DVD not having this and lots of other songs - how are consumers supposed to have any iota of support for centralized production and distribution if they're going to omit desired material? I recently found some Utopia videos from a concert in 1982 which belong to a discontinued DVD, as well. Obviously lots of stuff that IS available is spread around, and that's the main concern that copyright holders have (I'd wager), but it isn't the ONLY thing going on. People will happily distribute things themselves if they aren't worth it for a company to do it, or if a company is slack about it (like with the Saga DVD above.) And it isn't all about simply sticking it to the man.

( More hides behind the cut! )

I thought I would have more to say about this week's reading, but I am realizing something as I go through it: I don't really participate in participatory journalism. I know that it happens. I am also sometimes directed to political blogs and mainstream news sources with copious comments by other internet users - which, I guess, is really a big part of the whole idea of participatory journalism anyway. Even though my livejournal friends page is not entirely politically-geared, they can essentially morph into political discussion spaces, drawing in mainstream and blogosphere sources at the drop of a hat and spreading them meme-style.

Which I guess is a way of expressing - maybe even expanding upon - the introduction to participatory journalism that comes up in this week's reading from The Media Center:

"Participatory journalism flourishes in social media — the interpersonal communication that takes place through email, chat, message boards, forums — and in collaborative media — hybrid forms of news, discussion and community."

What I'm suggesting, I guess, is that the boundaries of participatory journalism are really easily blurred into the space that one could more generally call "participatory culture."

I don't have a lot else to say, but I wanted to also comment specifically on the weaknesses of "discussion group" settings:

"Weaknesses: Sometimes forums are too open, easily garnering flip, reactive comments. Active, large forums can get noisy, with so many posts from so many members, it's hard to determine what information is meaningful or useful. In addition, some moderated forums require each post to be pre-approved before it appears online, slowing down and smothering the conversation."

My comment is generally an emphatic YEP! This is, in a nutshell, why I don't go out of my way to participate in political (and other forms of) discussion online. In my last blog post I talked about the difficulty of navigating in a forum populated by thousands of active participants. And re: the modding business, I have heard some interesting and frightening horror stories about having to moderate big-name forums. Though this wasn't so much about conversation-smothering as reigning-in-the-hatemongering, which is a definite up-side to forum moderation. (I should point out that this reading does also focus on the positive aspects of online discussion groups, which I generally agree with as well - for instance, the ease of participation and the lowered technical and financial resources for participation in general.)

That's it from me for now - off to class!

So when I started this blog I made a generic entry which outlines my media use throughout the day. This is kind of handy, because it means that for the most part I can focus in on particular activities and try to be reflective and relevant to my course materials. Fun fun. But now and then I catch myself using media in different ways, and by the time I'm going to write a blog entry I've forgotten some of it.

Clearly, I need to get a little notepad or something and carry it with me for a few days so I can jot things down as I go. That way I can watch for trends, as well as remember neat little things that will make for a good blog entry. I'm toying with the idea of doing this through "Twitter" - I hardly EVER send texts, and I'm sure I have a number of "free" ones included in my cell phone plan. (And I think you can update them directly on the site, too.) Since lots of people are starting to do this it could be an interesting experiment. Look for some "twitter" updates here over the next week or so, between my normal blog entries.

For a while I've been thinking about the digital media fast that Danna Walker got her students to do in "The Longest Day". It would be interesting to do this - a few times I've all but decided to go for it. There are lots of things that I could cut out for a day or two, to see how I feel. I could go for walks without my mp3 player; I could write long-hand and read textbooks (and, y'know, normal books) instead of use the computer.

( Read more... )

My parents went to the Elton John concert last night. I would have loved to go but tickets were both expensive as hell and nigh impossible to get. So I was sitting at home listening to his greatest hits on the stereo when I get a call on my cell phone from my MUM's cell phone. At first it was just garbled bits of sound, but then it resolved into Elton John's voice singing "Tiny Dancer." The sound quality was mostly terrible; the piano (which I could only hear for part of the time) sounded like a mangled child's toy some of the time, thanks to the tiny microphone in the phone being TOTALLY blown out with the volume (and the speaker in my own phone isn't exactly audio magic itself.) But I could hear his voice well enough to make out the lyrics and the melody. So I stood by my front door and lip-synched to one of my favourite songs in the world, which was being sung live by Sir Elton himself, right here in Saint John, and bounced from mum's cell phone up to a satellite and down again to mine, about a kilometre and a half away.

I thought that was a pretty cool digital media experience.

My parents were telling me that there were signs up everywhere saying not to bring recording equipment or cameras to the show. But god, what's a cell phone now WITHOUT a camera? And I'm not too "up" on cell technology but if they're becoming mp3 players as well it seems to me that recording technology will be standard issue soon, too. So what are you supposed to do? Take away peoples' cell phones? That would probably be an exercise in complete madness.

( More thoughts below: why cellphones could soon be dangerous, writing papers long-hand, and sports TV as a dramatic narrative. )

School's in, and I'm cracking open the ol' writing blog again for use in my "Media Living" class. We have to keep a journal throughout the semester wherein we talk about our media use, in conjunction with the course readings. Because I'm nice, I'll keep most of these under a cut so you can skip 'em if you want.

I'm going to kick things off with a "day in the life" view of my media usage. This should be great fodder for the start of a discussion about media addiction, maybe in a day or two. How convenient!

So you're asking yourself. "Cass - how DO you use media in your daily life?" Right? Of course you are.

Well, ( it goes a little something like this: )