As an aspiring digital historian, I always find it weird to be living in two worlds at once. My work and play are intertwined; I find myself constantly bouncing between past and future, and I find it to be perplexing.

English 302 has helped me – I think – to further blur those lines, but also made me think about why the field of DH/New Media has become a priority for me. It’s always been clear to me why I’ve loved history, long before I declared my history major. But while digital culture and new media have been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember, it’s only been quite recently that I started to take it on in an academic fashion. This course helped me reevaluate my decision to actively investigate new media, rather than just be a part of it.

So in short, this class has taught me about how I use the Internet – and consequently, how the Internet uses me.

• It placed things like memes – which are a key component of Internet humor – in context with philosophy of simulacra and replication. The constant presence and cyclical nature of the meme is not necessarily a new concept, but one that is highlighted in the quick-sharing, visual nature of the Internet.
• Our discussions of Google and Amazon probably should have frightened me off of these platforms, and they momentarily made me question why I have used them so blindly. In my notes for our Google discussion, I have written in my notes that “Google is My Portal to the Internet.” I’ve developed a form of brand loyalty with both of these platforms, and it “seems” like they have it in return due to the “emphasis of you” strategy. Should I be worried? Should I be concerned?
• And our discussion of YouTube – especially since it has been Team Tubular’s task to tackle for the semester – has really got me thinking about the way we broadcast ourselves. Our self presence on the Internet has long been a concern for parents of Millenials, as it’s been unclear how it will affect the way the world sees us. But the formations of community, self-understanding,  and issues of representation are all seriously interesting things to consider.

Overall, I think I have developed a better understanding of the “back-end” of the platforms and systems and Internet culture that I use everyday. In talking about the theory and practice of new media, I felt that we kept circling back to one term – DIY Culture. It seems that we as users in the digital age crave the democracy and power given to us in a DIY culture. And when big business tries to take it away from us in any way, shape, or form, we try to fight back. We are creating and destroying, theorizing and analyzing, and so much more.

The fact of the matter is that the DIY nature of the digital age requires us to be active and interactive participants in the world of new media. And even more so, I think the DIY nature requires us to actively review and investigate this new turf on our own terms – as users and as academics. New media is like The Matrix, as we referenced so many times earlier in the semester. But we can’t escape it in our analysis or our critique, because it’s so much a part of who we are.

And so I think that’s why I’ve been so excited in investigating the study of new media so intensely over the past year, and certainly more so in taking this course – I have to be. It’s my duty as an Internet user and as a participant in new media. If DIY is our rallying cause, then I guess have I to take up this academic analysis of new media myself.

Note: the featured image was taken from here. 

Last week , we discussed our relationships with television. Is it dead? How does it fit into our lives? Does it matter?

These are big questions, and I came to this conclusion: TV is not dead, it’s just inactive.

In my family home, we doesn’t really watch television – we have it on as background noise as we go about our day. Out of any of us, it’s probably my mother and stepfather who watch TV the most. He normally watches live events like Sunday football, or obscure sci-fi movies. And even then, my stepfather ends up sleeping through most of these shows, so I can’t really say that any of us actively watches TV.

Out of the three people in my suite, I’m probably the one who uses the television the most. I like to have it on as white noise when I’m in the room, as a distraction when I’m doing homework, and occasionally have a show that I’ll watch live because I’m actually interested in it. But the type of shows that I watch on television are certainly not “quality” television – it’s usually an ABC Family drama like Chasing Life, a rerun of Friends or How I Met Your Mother, or whatever happens to be on HBO tonight. What I put on for background noise isn’t something I’m invested in. Again, TV is inactive.

If I’m watching something because I’m invested in it – television show, web show, web series, what have you – I’ll watch it on some other device. Normally that’s my computer, but it could also be my Kindle or my phone, depending on the location and whether I’m trying to multitask. If I want something on a bigger screen, I’ll hook up my HDMI cord to the TV in my suite. I watch a lot of things this way – some of them just regular televisions shows, but also old shows or webseries that I can bingewatch my way through. (If I had more room, I would write about bingewatching, since that’s a whole different subject that we didn’t get to talk about in class but I think is especially relevant in the conversation about television vs. Internet.) And better yet, I can watch them on my own time – not at the whim of TV guide everywhere.

I prefer these shows, especially YouTube series, because I’m a part of them. I financially support them by purchasing their merchandise or donating to the Kickstarter. I interact with the stars and producers. And overall, these shows are just better – they’re new and original and more in-tune with my life and my interests and they’re easy to share with other people.

People have long called the television an “idiot box” – and I don’t necessarily think they’re right in that description. But, like in Professor Russworm’s article, TV is not productive work or play – it’s just a constant presence that doesn’t do much for me anymore. On the other hand, the Internet is filled with new and exciting ideas, videos and series that I can invest it. Web series (or anything on the web, for that matter) are active and engaging places of media. They’re new media!

When we were discussing our team illustrations, I noticed that all of the boards explaining how platforms work featured stick-figure people. While the people figured into the equation in different ways depending on the team’s artistic interpretation, those little stick figures were all directly involved with the use of the platform. I’m pointing this out not because this assignment was supposed to showcase our drawing skills, but it highlights something that we all identified in our explanations of platforms – that in order to be means of connection or consumerism or presentation, there has to be some involvement on our part. Twitter as a social media platform allows our voices and our hashtags to find a community. Amazon as a shopping platform connects businesses and entrepreneurs with prospective markets. While could argue that platforms are about presenting ideas and products, the true value of platforms is about bringing people closer together.

This “humanity factor” of platforms is the most important aspect – and that’s why saying that platforms encourage desocialization is difficult to comprehend. Platforms are inherently social – as powerful ecosystems, they’re designed to develop and incorporate new planks in order to connect individuals to things greater than themselves, whether that means products, causes, or audiences. They are public spaces in which we interact on some level with the world. And in the formation of public spaces, whether it is a conscious or subconscious action, we create identities in these spaces that have social meanings. And so public spaces become racialized and gendered.

While some web platforms allow and encourage anonymity, that doesn’t necessarily eliminate socialization. We talked about Google two weeks ago as collecting and aggregating data on us to create a digital self and to place emphasis on “you.” As much as we wish we could claim anonymity on the Internet, it’s just not true. This racialization and gendering process occurs despite anonymity, because as we interact with social platforms, we still recreate some form the self to foster symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationships.

Amazon may seem just like a multifaceted business, with its Amazon Instant Video beside the Kindle Store and Direct Publishing next to Imdb, but it’s lazy thinking to believe that’s all Amazon is. In its attempts to create a singularity, Amazon is also creating a public space that operates along specific guidelines and social norms. By carefully cultivating planks that will benefit the evolution of the business, Amazon has constructed a place on which the “humanity factor” has to interact within these social norms.

Platforms filter our Internet experience as consumers, producers, and as voices in a digital environment. The so-called Gang of Four needs our participation as a user base to function and thrive as they monopolize the Internet. But we have to consider what it means for our humanity when we are utilizing Web 2.0 platforms. As stated in Gillepsie’s “The politics of ‘platforms’,” ‘platforms’ are ‘platforms’ because they afford us an opportunity to communicate, interact or sell (Gillespie 351). We have to be careful that the self that surfs the Internet is a self that we want to represent us, and is not just the result of platform influence.