Who Owns Culture?

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Larry Lessig, and Steven Johnson talk about "Who owns culture?" at the New York Public Library. Jason Kottke recounts some of the better parts of the discussion.

The World According to LiveJournal?

New Media exhibition

Passing through the Union today, I was surprised to find an amazingly pertinent art exhibition currently housed in the Robert L. Ringel Gallery. The exhibition is entitled "Digital Concentrate." More information can be found here. Though class time is tight, this may be one of those opportunities that would be worth the effort of fitting in one way or another. What do you think?

Jake website

Here is the URL everyone is being directed to

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~culture

Class notes on distinctions between Chat/IM, email, threads, webpage, blog

Chat/IM:
Back and forth instant communication, a.k.a. “synchronous communication,” a communication in real time. Chat and I.M. are the only prominent forms of synchronous communication.

It is developing its own language. Or perhaps it is easier to say that it is predominantly an informal language. Code switching would be extremely rare.

Corrodes instantly…maximum bit rot. There is no archiving.

Email:
Asynchronous, two way communication model (sender and receiver).

Has various languages and levels of formality (code switching).

Does email corrode? After a certain amount of time they delete (or do they?).

Threads:
Asynchronous, one-to-many communication (the “many” here is generally a bit broader than it is for a blog). Potential for public audience.

Web-based form of communication

Corrodes overtime…? How long after I leave a thread does it exist? As the community corrodes, its pages corrode with it. Jenny would argue that the information is still there: it is available after its community passes. Final verdict (ha): it has an almost default archive option (they archive unless you choose otherwise). So it takes agency to corrode a thread.

Greater notion of network and communal authorship.

Webpage:
Asynchronous, one-to-many communication. Highest potential for general public audience.

We threw around a bunch of terms trying to get at ?????: contextualizing, orientation, subjective projection (projection of the self), investment of composition, composer has more centralized control, “the composer has more control over the means of representation” (Tirrell), “the control over the means of deception” (Godwin). Touching to our discussion of communal authorship, the webpage has the most writer oriented content.

Blog:
Asynchronous, one-to-many communication (but the “many” here is the most localized—small communities). Potential for public audience.

Web-based form of communication, (although aggregators provide alternatives), you can read the blog without visiting the page).

The same principles of corrosion that apply to Threads apply to Blogs.

Greater notion of network and communal authorship (although in many Blogs, there are dominant authors who hold a more powerful position). These are connection driven--a sense of recursiveness--not only with links, but with other ways and means.

Blogs and the wunderkammer

Julian Dibbell uses an analogy of the wunderkammer, or the cabinet of wonders, to describe blogs. I edited and typeset a museum journal last summer, and this concept came up a few times. If you are interested, this article from the journal discusses the historical role of the cabinet:

Museums as a Mirror of Society

Personally, I didn't find this to be one of the better articles in the journal, but it does provide some context for Dibbell's usage.