Mobile Phones of the future

The landscape of social media is constantly changing, so which social media area will dominate in the future? Wow, tough question. If you ask me, the trusty old mobile phone will truly become even more of a key player in the game we call social media. It is essentially the Buddy Franklin of the social media world; unstoppable!!
Mobile phones are more prevalent in our world than cars and credit cards combined, with more than 4.6 billion mobile phones in circulation. That is absurd. As discussed in my previous blog, no longer do we need our phone to call, our books to write, our Xbox to play, our TV to watch, our mp3 player to listen too, our camera to photograph or our computer to surf the net. We only need the smart phone to have a charged battery. The mobile phone is already a lifeline to many, but what can we expect in the years to come?

Mobile phones can now be used to alert us of dangers. Text messages such as those used after the Black Saturday Bushfires can be sent directly to the phones of those in direct danger of natural disasters, terrorist attacks or any other vital information and warn them in due time.

The mobile phone will also further keep us connected with the world around us. Internet access will be more accessible in remote places, letting people surf the web and stay connected.

It may act as a ‘remote’ for your life, controlling everything we do. With the power of GPS, it can programme the easiest way to work, avoiding the traffic, update us on weather conditions, public transport schedules on the run and the best time to get to Dakota to avoid a line or a stabbing. It will be able to turn the heater on before we get home; close the curtains put the kettle on and run a bath. If only it could cook dinner, do the washing and bring us a beer, there would be no need for us blokes to get hitched. Only joking. But its serious, the possibilities are endless.

So in the future, will mobile phones enhance our lives, or make them so regimental and controlled that nothing is left to fate or chance anymore? This is something we need to consider. How much trust and information do we place in these mobile mates? As our lives get busier and technology evolves, we must ask ourselves; will we place all our faith in a higher power, in destiny or make our own luck? Or will there be an app we can download for that too?

Discovering the new Michael Moore on YouTube?

I personally enjoy a good doco, especially a Michael Moore one. Sicko, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine are all present in my DVD collection. In case you haven’t noticed, I also like YouTube. So this is an appropriate topic to discuss the relationship between the two. I feel like a lot of the blogs I have written relate back to YouTube. This is probably because YouTube has had such an impact on our lives, and provides a platform for all voices to be heard and to exercise our democratic right to freedom of speech.

YouTube has inspired a generation of amateur documentary an outlet to create and distribute their art which is often critical of the status quo. As Vicente states “traditional distribution systems tend not to work for the bulk of the feature film documentaries” – Consequently, we are now seeing the appearance of alternative distribution channels”

Sometimes amateur doco’s are even more accessible than documentaries screened through the mass media. It requires little effort to view a doco uploaded onto YouTube, and can be seen almost anywhere by the viewer at any time and also allows for instantaneous feedback for the producers future projects.
There are a range of amateur documentaries on YouTube, everything from this waste of perfectly good footage...




To professionally-made ones such as the following:

http://vimeo.com/groups/20591/videos/10179430


http://vimeo.com/groups/20591/videos/9818707

It seems YouTube provides a basis for anyone with an idea and a camera to upload their personal take on what a documentary is. They are able to bypass the ‘red-tape’ required for funding and distribution of doco’s via the professional film industry which often prevents would be filmmakers from perusing their craft. No matter what objective the doco aims to achieve, the world of YouTube will no doubts resinate with someone.

I want my iPhone

Will the mobile phone screen become the dominant screen of the 21st century? Do we really need another screen to view movies, take photos, design art and access the Internet? Well the way things are going? I'd say yes.

My girlfriend and I share a similar trait: we are both horribly navigationally challenged (her more so than me). A simple drive 20 minutes from home will ensure an adventure in finding our way back. Oh shit do we get lost. Over the years this had lead to several arguments over which way we came from, or the best way to get somewhere. When we forgot to bring the Navman with us, all hell would break loose. That is until the day my girlfriend got her iPhone and our lives were changed.

No longer would we struggle to find our way, simply click on Google maps and our path would be lit. It not only helped us geographically, but in so many more ways. Listening to the radio and want to know the name of that song? Shazzam it. Want to find out movies times on the run? Google it. Want to stalk someone? Facebook stalk them first. All these are accessible from the palm of your hand if you are blessed enough to own an iPhone.

Over the years, we have seen change in the telecommunications industry, but the changes seen within the last decade are astronomical. Take for instance the first mobile phone I ever had, a trusty old Nokia 3315. At the time, I think it was around 2002, this was the most popular phone on the market. It had the game snake (everybody’s favourite phone game) and ear-piercing monophonic ringtones. No colour screen or camera here, just a bright greenish-yellow glow emitting from the dull screen... but you could change the covers and personalise your phone. What more could you want in a phone?? Apparently a lot more!

Fast forward 8 years, and look at the phones we all use now? We have inbuilt GPS, Bluetooth connectivity, still and video recording, email, internet access, music downloads and video streaming all in the palm of our hand. Gone are the days when all you needed a phone for was to call and eventually SMS. We have become so addicted and attached to our ‘smart phones’ that the basic need for a phone has become somewhat overlooked.

The 21st century will definitely see the smart phone screen become the dominate screen of choice. No longer do we need our phone to call, our books to write, our Xbox to play, our TV to watch, our mp3 player to listen too, our camera to photograph or our computer to surf the net. We only need the smart phone to have a charged battery.
As Levinsion said, ‘the iPhone starts to satisfy the longstanding human need to have any and all information, anytime we may want it, wherever we and the information we seek may happen to be.’

The dangers of old politicians on YouTube...and the entertainment it provides us

Ahh YouTube. A website favoured by uni students and all time wasters alike, second only to facebook in my top rated sites of all time, is now days becoming another avenue for politicians to spread their lies, or ‘campaign for votes’ as they call it.
So sure, YouTube can be used effectively by political parties and politicians, saying whatever they want to win some votes. But if you want my opinion, they only reason I would ever search a politician on YouTube is to see them ridiculed through satire and parody.

Those of us who enjoy seeing politicians embarrassed or making dicks of themselves have been blessed by having good old George W Bush sitting in the White House for an 8 year period, providing us in need of a giggle hundreds of opportunities to laugh at his stupidity and misfortune, and what better place to share these priceless moments than on YouTube. Just type ‘George W Bush’ into the search tab and see such predictive results as “George W Bush bloopers” and “George W Bush funny” just to name a few. One of my personal favourites is a collaboration of the top 10 funny Bush moments as seen on the David Letterman Show.


This is the risk which all politicians and political parties take when entering the unforgiving world of YouTube. The rise of the produser only adds fuel to the fire. Where there are politicians, there will always be people trying to cut them down. They open themselves up to slander from the general public, they risk having their message misinterpreted and most likely find themselves open for parody.
There are some benefits for pollies using YouTube, as long as you make the media appropriate to the demographic targeted (in other words, don’t just ramble on in front of a camera like little Johnny Howard does). Take for instance the viral video clip ‘Obama Girl’ which appeared on YouTube in June 2007, right in time for Barack Obama’s campaign for the 2008 election. As Levinson states, It is impossible to say whether this simple video had an impact on Obama’s eventual win in the election, but the 17million viewers, most who would be in the under 30 category, a demographic which Obama polled extremely well in. Is this just coincidence or did YouTube play a role in one of history’s proudest moments electing Obama into the White House? You be the judge.

YouTube, I tube, we all tube..

According to Bruns (2008) “There is an absence of producers, distributors, or consumers, and the presence of a seemingly endless string of users acting incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons, the value chain begins and ends (but only temporarily, ready for further development) with content.”

Discuss.

Wow. First of all, this massive chunk of writing makes it hard to grasp the concept of what Bruns is talking about, so I will try and simplify it for you. Essentially, Bruns’ statement relates to idea that users of new media content are no longer passive users; rather they are now taking on active roles in manipulating and re-distributing existing media content to make new media outputs. Yes? Kind of like taking something good, like a ham sandwich, and adding tomato and cheese to make it better. Make sense now? Excellent.

We refer to this as ‘Produsage’, and we call the people taking part in Produsage as “Produsers’. Think of it this way, it’s pretty much a producer and a user merged into the one thing with a merged name. Heaps of merging. The effects of Produsage and Produsers are common in the world of social media such as Facebook, Myspace etc, but no more prevalent than on YouTube.

YouTube gives produsers a great platform to take existing media content, such as a scene from Home and Away, and dub voices over the top to totally produce a new media output that can be instantly accessed and appreciated by people with a warped sense of humour (much like myself) worldwide. If you not following have a look at this (mind the language, bit rude, but good for a giggle)




There are so many videos like this on YouTube so it’s most likely you have been exposed to at least one of them. Some of my personal favourites include ‘Gumby banging horses’ and ‘Hitler finds out Santa is not real’. Well worth a look.



one final giggle...



So where do we draw the line between producer and user? Is there copyright or intellectual property infringements cause by produsage? To answer honestly, yes. Produsers are essentially benefiting from tearing apart someone’s original artwork. Whether it is musical covers, track mash-ups video compilations or re-enactments of movie scenes, there has to be a line between improving and destroying.

So I’ve ranted enough, time to answer whatever it was I came here to answer. Bruns wordy statement begs us to question whether the “value chain of the product begins and ends with content”. Nope. Of course the content is always relevant, but it’s the way the content is produced, or rather prodused, that makes it so.

Lets talk about SEX baby...

That famous song by Salt n Pepa may have been on to something with their title. Sex is on everyone’s mind from time to time. According to the old rule of thumb, men think about sex every 2 minutes, whilst women think about shopping in the same time frame, but apparently this is not the case according to Marnie C. Ferree in her article ‘Women and the Web :Cybersex Activity and Implications’. The cybersex industry is believed to generate anywhere up to $83 billion annually, yeah that’s right, $83 BILLION SPENT ON PORN EVERY YEAR!!!

I suppose you’re sitting there thinking that it is just fat old weirdos spending there hard (excuse the pun) earned money on nudie pics and bouncing boobie videos, but surprisingly, the rise of women in this cybersex world is far outside the stereotypical boundaries. The internet and cyber space has given women the power and anonymity they need to explore their sexual side online, and they are taking to it likes duck to water. According to Ferree’s research, although women spend significantly less time online then men, they account for 21% of cybersex addiction. They are overrepresented amongst those who progress beyond recreational use to the realm of addiction (mind blowing I know. I wonder myself where these women are hiding...)

But sex addiction does not only affect women, men are victims too. Shocking, I know...men addicted to porn? Never! According to wired.com’s ‘Internet Porn: Worse Than Crack?’ by Ryan Singel, he describes internet pornography as “the new crack cocaine epidemic”. It has been linked to addiction, misogyny, paedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction. Some heavy shit. The internet is described as a ‘drug pumped into your house 24/7 for free’. Pornography addicts have more difficulty recovering than drug addicts too, as junkies can get the gear out of their system, but pornographic images are imprinted in the brain forever.


So does this mean that porn is ruining our lives? Is it really as bad as it is made out to be? Try telling that to a 16 year old boy with raging hormones. But it’s how porn affects your life where people go wrong. They say everything is good in moderation, so maybe this is true with porn as well.

So maybe it’s us men that drive women to the brink of cybersex addiction? Maybe women are striving for an immediate sense of sexual power over men, or maybe they purely want sex and find it via the web cause all us blokes just give them the shits in real life?. They can go online, do their thing and leave us stranded...much the same as what many men do to women in the real world. Who knows, it’s not something I’m sure any women would admit to for fear of public humiliation, so the answer I guess will forever remain a mystery.

But we all know that girls don’t really like sex, well that’s what they tell us anyway. So maybe this whole debacle is just a misunderstanding. At the end of the day, women and men might not actually be that different. They both want to get their kicks and have a bit of fun, no strings attached. Kind of like an episode of ‘Sex and the City’ right??



So next time your missus locks herself up in the study on the computer, don’t believe she is spending all your money on eBay, she’s spending it all on porn... and blaming it all on you.

You only live twice...

Second Life, is it just a place for sad lonely weird geeks to escape their real lives, or is it something more, something deeper? What compels people to abandon their everyday lives to live in a somewhat perfect, but none the less fake, virtual world?

Firstly, you’re asking the wrong person here. I have never been one for computer games in general (unless you’re talking about guitar hero which is a different story). The thought of playing games has never interested me. I mean, why would I want to sit on my computer and slay dragons or kill terrorist or chat to randoms around the world when I can actually talk to and interact with my friends in real life, or go out and experience the world for myself? I personally don’t see the point, but the fact is there are others in the world that do. In the case of Second Life, it is reported to have over 6 million users worldwide, which means there must be something to Second Life that I just can’t see.

“People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief” Meadows (2008:51)

Meadows explanation above, although it holds some truth, forgets one key element of Second Life, that it is in fact not reality, it is not real. But he has stumbled across something here, the fact that there are people out their who’s perception of reality is now altered as they live their life through their Second Life avatar.

There have been fortunes made, fortunes lost, people meeting that special someone, people losing that special someone, finding a reason to live and unfortunately, finding reasons not to live anymore, all related to Second Life. It seems people become so attached to the avatar they have created (and by created I mean CREATED, everything from hair colour and body size, to facial features and the perkiness of their breasts), that they share the ups and downs of the avatars life as it was their own.

This parasocial relationship encourages players to spend their real money in Second Life to purchase clothes, homes etc and can often have them becoming so involved, they tend to withdraw from their real life. The possibility to be whoever you want to be in Second Life unfortunately is more appealing to some then actually living their normal everyday life.

At the end of the day, it comes down to personal preference; personally, I would rather work in the real world, and spend my real money to go on a holiday myself, rather than pay for my avatar to have a great time on the beaches of Second Life Hawaii. But hey, that’s just me.

I may not understand how someone can invest so much time, effort and money in Second Life, but I have a great life myself and I don’t need a second one. But for others, their second life may be all they have. So to me it’s not weird anymore, it’s just plain sad.