Our memories belong to whom?

Thought to van Dijck, J., “Mediated memories: personal cultural memory as object of cultural analysis”Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 261–277 & Dean, Gabrielle. "Portrait of the Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002) Readings:

I was seized by the first sentence that van Dijck, J wrote in the reading “I own a shoebox containing a variety of personal items signaling my personal past.” And the reason is that I have exactly the same “collective memory” or let’s say “social memory” as his experience. Just like what he has done to keep his “mediated memories” which has contributed to this shoebox, I’ve got countless shoeboxes as well as candy boxes to preserve my old photos, letters, birthday cards, tape music and video cassettes inside. I found that not many of my friends have this kind of habits to “record” their growth. I feel like it is a kind of self-construction and individual cultural identity for me, the meaning of this shoebox is more than anything but a cultural process of self-conducting. I still remember that the last time I opened up my shoebox was the graduation of university, I put my graduation pin inside along with the several previous pins from high school, junior high school and even primary school. Jose wrote “our shoeboxes deserve renewed attention as objects of research.” It is true that how many people use the traditional recorders instead of sound recording pen or MP3? I am sort of being proud of myself that I still keep the first cassette tape of my very first recorder from my mom. I enjoyed recording the voice and sounds everywhere in every occasions, such as my primary school’s graduation trip which I had collected the sounds from my classmates and any activities we’ve joined during those days. I was so stupid, wasn’t I? When everyone took out their shoot camera (Digital camera haven’t been produced and widely used at that moment.) to record the trip, I choose to use recorder to preserve the moment whereas Jose said collective identity are creative acts of cultural production which people make sense of their own lives and their connection to the lives of others. I mean, yes, who would know this little girl (me) who always carry the backups of cassettes and had been so fascinated with the sounds, has become a radio host today. I really enjoy reading this article because I am the person who is addicted to keep memories in maybe 100 ways that one could easily imagine one of it. For example, I made explanation for each picture I’ve developed in my photo album before I got my digital camera (but I love my snapshot camera more), and I am a kind of friend that always make “story books” with pictures for each of my friends as presents to describe how we met and how we been through everything. It always be an adorable present because most of people still prefer to have the “actual objects” especially memories. Thus, from the point of view in the social science, Jose raised the example about the ways that parents record their children’s first steps, first day to school or I guess maybe first time to speak out “Papa”, and while they decide to record it or not is actually the cultural frameworks that both consciously and unconsciously inform their intention and decisions to some extend. That is, most of people may choose record the memory when it’s positive, but how about the negatives? We would seldom or never take pictures when we are having conflicts or suffered from terrible experiences. For those happiness memories we are more likely to keep, this behaviors is like a norm that how we “shape” our memories. Therefore, there‘s another issue that Steven Rose suggested, “time and memory shape each other.” I believe that people changing with the time pass by, so does the memory. Philosophers addressed that “articulation of memory into matter,” I can’t deny that sometimes I get confused when I memorize something with my friend, such as, did I been here with you before? Or I was with whom? And it is really interesting that “dreams” sometimes involved with and linked with my memory connecting into the reality as a “matter,” but that is another issue, I won’t discuss it here. The other example he addressed is Anne Frank’s diary- one of my favorite book. He made the notion about how we mediate the past and present in the global present between individuality and collectivity. Anne’s diary is becoming a collective memory that was shaped by her father, directors and documentary makers…etc, and what we saw today is actually the representation of her memory. Therefore, isn’t it means our memory would never be ours under the various cultural collections and personal decision? As Dean in the reading talked about “book culture”, these kind of personal collections also has something to do with culture, people filled in their album with their own preference as identities or authorship. However, I think memory is somehow part of human’s thoughts that we may create, record, store, may be revised a little bit in some situations and finally restore. Isn’t it being ease and comfortable to live with the “ideal” memory? Yeah, the rule is: everything may change and is chaging all the time, so no one would say, I am in that old, antique pictures could always live in the truth of my own memory forever.   

I ,myself, bad digital or good digital?

Thoughts to the (Quaranta, Domenico, “Life and Its Double”& Clover, Joshua. “Edge of the Construct”, from The Matrix, BFI Modern Classics, London, British Film Institute, 2004, pp.6-28.) reading:

Isn’t it being pretty fascinated that when you could have your life start over again? Well, some people may agree with that. I remember that my brother bought me a computer game called “becoming stars” when I was in primary school. I was so addicted with that because I could actually being a movie star, a singer or a model in the game, so I could earn money, go shopping, go clubbing and meet friends there. I feel like this is my “second life” at that moment and spent lots of time on it. It seems that it may be possible to people who could living in the second life while they might be sick of living in real world. In the class, we discussed about the second life which is more related to Facebook nowadays and we raised the some issues that Facebook is kind of Avatar where we try to idealize ourselves, which I don’t really agree with it. According to Domenico, “Portraits bears witness to the gradual humanization of our digital identities.” I guess that is the reason why we are so honest to ourselves when using Facebook because we as human beings with actual body in real world trying to figure out whether we are “in world” or “out of world” in such an ambiguous situation. Therefore, I would say that we rely on facebook more than we could imagine nowadays, so we sort of internalize ourselves into it which affect the way we talk and communicate with others also the emotions we express on someone’s wall (facebook wall) which are almost the same way we act in the real world otherwise friends in our social network may misunderstand the meaning. However, I do believe that sometimes one would be an avatar in facebook when he doesn’t want to show pictures or some specific messages to someone he hates such as boss, colleagues, annoying friends or maybe ex-boy/girl friends. In that case, facebook can avoid the awkward situations and exclude the misunderstandings happened, which I think that maybe the way we change ourselves to suit for our friends depend on the privacy setting on facebook is a kind of avatar behaviours in such networks where we as a centre of it.

Good digital & Bad Digital

I still remember around 10 years ago when I was a teenager, “the chat room” had greatly been popped up during decades. I went on line to chat with different users every night for nothing but enjoying the characters I have been played. I pretended myself to be a 30 years old man who had wife, a 20 years old young lady with long hair or a 10 years old little boy who use his sister’s pc in private. I had so much fun to play around my characters with different visual friends, it may be suggested that to be a “good digital” as in second life, we could do whatever we want and change the appearances as we wish. Thus, Domenico wrote about “the most famous avatars in Second Life, those who have made a name for themselves “in world”, are rarely well known in the real world.” Thus, we may play around ourselves as famous celebrities or prince charming in second life with really fat body and ugly look lying down on the bed in front of the laptops whole day. I mean, that is not you or that might be you for some purpose depending on how you conduct it. “Good digital”, not so realistic, comparing to “bad digital”, facebook, in my opinion, is more likely to be bad digital, where we are more honest than we expect to this small network. Furthermore, I feel like the more people tend to rely on the social networking sites, the more actual characteristics that people may express themselves on it, because the one who being on line is exactly the one who talk to his friends in real way. Wouldn’t it because these networks have been built up the convenience of communication? Also, it’s free of charge which is more accessible than calling up to someone with phone.

The other interesting point of view is in The Matrix, which emphasized on absolute conceptual terms--- being digital, whereas it could lead to actorless in the future of Hollywood movies (EX: Pixer Studio’s Toy story, 1995). I found that the power of The Matrix effects are everywhere and ubiquitous on film business as well as the video games industry, but Anthony Lane (2003) addressed that it’s already from novelty to cliché. Due to the facts that the PC, PS and GC games has been made for fully digital while the movies seems like too “analog” to the video game players. Somehow, we, as the video players or the movie spectators, may quite enjoy the immersible world which is provided with fully digital so that we are so fascinated with it like the kaleidoscope we owned when we were children, in fact, we can’t deny the truth that we hardly could pull ourselves out of it.   

grassroots culture = New participation of Media?

Thoughts to the (Eric Faden, A Fair(y) Use Tale, Media Education Foundation videos & Henry Jenkins, ‘Quentin Tarantino's Star wars? : grassroots creativity meets the media industry’ in Convergence culture : where old and new media collide (New York New York University Press,2006): 131 – 168) reading:

We talked about “Cosplay” in the class tonight; I was quite surprised that this Asian culture has been spread out all over the world and become so strong enough that even westerns are so fascinated with it. Actually, I feel like it’s a shame to say that I used to be pissed of this kind of “culture” when I was in high school while my classmates tried to showing off her character of being the dead with her body bleeding from head to toe in front of me!!!!(gross!!!) After that, I guess I was quite scared by her, but it’s been almost ten years passed by, I could gradually see and tell the meaning behind this idea of being someone else. I found that “cosplay” have something in common between real world and virtual world on Internet, but they present in different ways. For example, when we disguise ourselves to suit for the “idea me” in our mind and try to being like that in the so called “on line world” to communicate with other “idea me”, similarly, they are doing the same thing but distinguished themselves as a reproduction representing in real world with virtual sprits. They plugged themselves into the characters which they played and totally act like an actress/actor. It seems like for some of them may actually feel the existence of themselves and confident when being someone else. In fact, I found the thread from reading that the current moment of media change encourages broad participation, grassroots creativity, and a bartering or gift economy. Within convergence culture, everyone’s a participant. Also, the popular culture is what happened to materials of mass culture when they involved with consumers.

Therefore, I think of that Henry Jenkins wrote about “The distinction between Interactivity and Participation” in ‘Quentin Tarantino's Star wars? : grassroots creativity meets the media industry’ in Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. So, I guess the interactivity is more concerned with the designers whereas participation is more related to the consumers. For example, remember the electronic interactive media involved in the exhibition which we have discussed it few weeks ago? It came up with some different arguments like the necessary of using it to enhance the spectators (consumers) comprehension and interests and the some commercial benefits may have been brought. I mean, some people may think it’s really good that many people may be attracted by these high technology, but meanwhile, it somehow distracts the focus of the topic of exhibitions. So, what I am trying to explain is, when spectators (consumers) do the actions of using the interactive media technology, they have already chosen to being designed passively to the events instead of participating it actively. That is almost the purpose of designers who attempt to set up the traps as lure to the consumers who are engaged their full attention. However, participation is the reflection and feedbacks of consumers which is more positive to the events. Taking one of the Jenkins’ examples in the reading, the movie theatre is just a facility provided as well as the contents of movies that consumers may suit themselves in as interactivity yet the way and the opinions which have been inspired by movies are more participial and evocable.

So far as be concerned, I reckon that the controversiality of old media and new media is another important issue to address here. I remember in the previous reading, The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich shows that digital media is characterised by variability, which in practice often means its customisation by and for individual users for commercial purposes. Thus, I agree that the “culture industry” also has its own reasons for encouraging active, rather than passive, modes of consumption. Furthermore, participation in the digital media imaginary is increasingly becoming an obligation. Thus, while new participatory modes of media engagement are almost always considered in enabling terms, complicit with the production of new media subjectivity–which means a performative mode ideally suited to the “flexible personality” demanded by contemporary capitalism.

The “new participatory modes of media engagement” and “culture industry” has changed the media environment a lot; I prefer to say the “grassroots culture”, like fan fiction, parody of movies and free improvisational music…etc. actually, I quite dislike the period whenever I turn on the TV, most of the TV shows perform the singing competitions from”American Idols”, “Australian Idols” and even in Taiwan we have “Super Idols,” after few seasons, it seems like everyone on the street may possibly attend to the show for over 80 %. I mean, it’s getting no big deal if you won the competition and become a singer when there’s too massive on TV. So, who cares? Who would know you anyway? I would say I don’t hate this kind of phenomenon which seems that everyone could make dreams come true, but isn’t it too massive? I quite yearn for the old time (maybe two decades ago) which people are surprised and excited when one of their friends or relatives shown on TV for some purposes which nowadays people may take it as granted.

P2P - Sharing is always a morality?

Thoughts to Vaidhyanathan, S., The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Cambridge: Perseus Books, 2004, pp. 1 – 23 & Goetz, Thomas (2003). ‘Open Source Everywhere’. WIRED. 11 reading:

I still could vivdly remember that when I was a kid, my mom always ask me to share candies or toys with my friends, she was trying to teach me that "sharing is always a morality." but somehow...it seems to be changed as I grew up. I start to wondering: Is it always be good thing? 
   
When Vaidhyanathan writes ”..., instead of cyberspace becoming more like the real world, the real world is becoming more like cyberspace.” It seems like we live in an information explosion era and the current change of media forces us to allow our virtual world somehow to invade in our real world. He also explains that Peer to peer communication systems could actually shape what we mean by culture, liberty, democracy and human progress in this new century. I believe that the rise of open sources has driven by not only about the progress of technology, but more about the intricate, sophisticated and complex human deliberations. I mean, people are more eager to share, to express and to participate. That is how we create culture, or that’s say the subculture. Thus, the Internet could be taken as one of the vital elements which enhance the subculture especially to young generations while culture jamming seems to be invading the era of massive loaded information we live with. Thus, we sharing music, movies, books or pictures...etc on line without any restrictions by this free platforms accompany with some benefits that Lawrence Lessig has addressed in his book Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid Economy, citing "hybrid" economies like YouTube and Wikipedia, that both of them rely on user-generated "remixes" of information, images and sound, so, Lessig (2008) argues in favor of what he calls a "Read/Write (RW)" culture as opposed to "Read/Only (RO)" that allows consumers to "create art as readily as they consume it." It evokes me of ideas of sharing the creativities and it’s more concerned with participation. So, when everyone starts to argue aggressively about copyright, he said “We, as a society, can't kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. We can only drive that remix underground.” (Lessig 2008). Therefore, I start to think about his theory, I could simply called these creativeness as “free culture” which Lessig (2004) has suggested in another book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, he said, “A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a”permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.“  I could slightly feel that it encourage people could use these free cultures to create and remake the new version of works while it could be well supported by the progress of technology without thinking the copyright issue for a while. 

However, in another reading, Thomas Goetz wrote about the rise of open sources is getting powerful because it’s alternative to the status, it solves problem fast enough and ambitious enough. He addressed one of the examples of Wales who create an internet encyclopaedia to make open source as a tool that turn consumers into producers. After that, Wikipedia is also successful that everyone could post and revise something on it easily. In this case, Wales seemed to be quite satisfied with that. However, is it always good to be like that? Since we knew that Internet has become one of the important sources we normally use and share, it’s definitely more accessible to any generations especially teenagers and kids who are born in the great development of technology era. They may somehow stick on it every day as we could know from the news in the newspapers or on TV. For those sources without strong references and reliable credits may easily to be read by them or maybe rewrite a little bit by them. So, how could we control about these “correct” information while people all over the world could revise it whatever they want for each single day or each single moment? It’s controversial to say that Wikipedia is merely one of the open sources I have mentioned here, how about others?  I was just wondering that when we are benefited from these open sources in many ways and enjoy the free sources which are provided, what would it be in the future while all of us and our next generations continue to use these changeable sources for the next decades or even longer? I guess maybe we will all believe in these “informative” mistakes until we and our kids passed away.(sorry,I know I am a little bit exaggerated here.:))    

Celebrity or Notoriety? Watch out! SNS Users.

Thoughts to the (boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship” in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11, 2007. & Beer, D., “Social network(ing) sites.revisiting the story so far: A response to danah boyd & Nicole Ellison” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (2008): 523) reading:

Danah m. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison have evaluated many different types of social network sites in the reading. For some people, they may register most of them to keep up with their different social networks either in this visual network or in the real life. So, I was wondering that people who use bloggers to record their daily life and share their experiences on this free platform instead of handwriting. Actually, I would say that I am kind of proud of myself that I have still kept the habits of writing dairy in my pink little notebooks every night since I was in high school. According to Jason R (2006) in Blogging for fame and fortune, he declares that “the process of creating and publishing a blog is known as blogging.” Therefore, the bloggers which could generally being defined as a kind of writers who write articles to share their own ideas, experiences or even their own stories (novels for example) on line for some purposes. They conveyed their ideas on the Internet by using such as blogger.com, my space, or yahoo blog…etc. In the book I have read recently, who are the bloggers? (Nate Anderson,2006), he suggested that “with the numbers of blogs doubling every 5.5 months, Pew took a close look at the 12 million US bloggers to find out what makes them tick. The result is "a portrait of the Internet's new storytellers" that paints a familiar picture.” This is quite interesting point that I would like to address. Generally, most of bloggers write about their own "life and experiences," Furthermore, they could also define as celebrities who suddenly become famous in this visual world and attract lots of readers who are interested in it by keeping post articles regularly. However, to some extent, technology plays a very important role to these bloggers who may have to express something anytime and anywhere. It actually gives them a brand new space and a sharing world to keep diary in different ways.

It is kind of embarrassing to say that when I was using the social networking sites, sometimes I just want to get noticed to whomever. So, I prefer to say that not only blogger but people who use SNS may be have some characteristics that they are eager to be seen and realized, be read and heard, be concerned, or perhaps be well-known. I found that it is intriguing to quote from Herman Melville who was an American novelist, might be illustrated one of the the perfect description concerned with SNS users:

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."

So, from the psychology point of view, not only bloggers, let’s say, people who use social networking sites may be kind of shallow via this "invisible threads" and "sympathetic fibers." They tend to be a lovely comfort of strangers. Like Raya wrote in her blog about the idea of watching someone as well as being watched in this platform. We could easily set up the privacy in facebook to avoid the friends you don’t really like to be with, for example, your boss, your teacher, or your parents. This is a controversial issue that are SNS (facebook, friendster, bloggers, or twitter) secure to everyone? They may bring us some entertainments and convenience, however, it is a great revolution which totally reverses the way people communicate with others, also the way that how we being ourselves in this visual world. One example has addressed in the United States, a female primary school teacher who is currently being fired by school because of “the unsuitable picture” on her facebook. It’s ridiculous that the picture is nothing but normal that you could see everywhere from your friends facebook. In her profile pictures, she’s just holding a glass of red wine in the restaurant with her friends. I mean, what’s wrong with that? However, when the parents saw that pictures, they suggested this teacher should be unemployed because she’s making a bad images to her students. in the readings, Danah m. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison also declared that some restrictions of using SNS, such as U.S. military banned soldiers from accessing Myspace, Canadian government prohibited employees from Facebook…etc. It reminds me of the period that everyone plays one of the applications called “Happy Farm” on facebook last year in Taiwan. The reason why they play it day and night is that if they don’t really take care of their farm, the plants, corns and livestock would die and you may lose money (money in virtual world). Thus, the users couldn’t concentrate on working even studying, at that moment; most of offices warns the employees and make the rules like: “Do not farming in office hour!!!” when the time that people always ask each other: “have you harvested yet?”

However, when almost whole world join facebook, China has been excluded because of the politics purpose. They are not allowed to discuss or share any opinions around the world because of the restrictions of speech statement, but one thing I would like to address is Chinese people do create the SNS called “people network”, which is exactly the same functions, applications and format as facebook to let only Chinese people use it. Isn’t’ it a dilemma for them to create the new system? In fact, no one will know who is whom when everyone seems to be a virtual individual who may try to being someone else on SNS while Danah m. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison raise the survey that 55% online teens have profiles, 66% of whom report that their profile is not visible to all Internet users of the teens with completely open profiles, 46% reported including at least some false information.