Author Archives: prrapo

Final Reflection

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Week 2: New media’s rise has coincided with the rise of digital media, but the two are not interchangeable. What distinguishes new media is largely that it is free from the regulations of established mediums, therefore making it much more open and egalitarian, which in turn makes new media particularly attractive to marginalized groups.

Week 3: Each medium distinctly shapes any and all media produced in its form. The notion of “the medium is the message” addresses the idea that how a tale is told can be just as important as what is being conveyed. I believe the case is more so “in the medium, there is message” rather than the medium being the only point worth noting.

Week 4: Though Google has had a long history of posturing itself favorably to customers through campaigns such as “Don’t Be Evil,” Google is ultimately competing in the same capitalist economy that values financial success to the utmost. As such, wariness should consistently be exercised, especially in what one decides to share with Google.

Week 6: YouTube in some ways can be seen as the darling of Internet bootstrapping. If your content is consistently attracting attention, you can make a living. However, YouTubers still ultimately have to comply to the Google overlords and YouTube’s revenue system is based on intrusive, sometimes predatory ads that do not bode well with the average viewer.

Week 7: In Amazon exists a prototypical beast with a million arms, with specific single arms capable of pushing aside whole industries. And it continues to grow with no end in sight. Ultimately, nothing short of government regulation has been capable of stopping the monstrous platform from invading into every part of daily life, and now us UMass students are finding ourselves being pulled in even closer in its grasp.

Week 8: Neoliberalism promotes a lackadaisical, non-interactive world community and such a culture may very well have its benefits in economic sectors but I believe that there’s much potential for societal harm.

Week 9: The desire to play a computer game for recreation is not overwhelming favored by one gender over the other, as research has shown. With this in mind, it seems as if the mainstream developers are lagging behind the times by limiting the spectrum of character representation in their works.

Week 11: The web series is definitively a feature of new media but what I believe makes it one of the most fascinating is that it most closely resembles its old media cousins.

Hesitancy With The Term Monopoly And What It Means

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The Big Four of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have immense control in the markets they’re a part of, so much so that the term “monopoly” is thrown around in reference to them. However the term here functions more as just a catchall as opposed to a true descriptor. The Big Four can really only be grouped together under the umbrella of “Technology Companies” as each company has its own individual interests, products and services. Referring to the collective as a monopoly also misses the mark, as the four are often in direct competition with each other in certain sectors. The term “quadropoly,” while fun to say, does not do a good job of conveying just how strong of stranglehold one company can have in a particular field, such as Amazon’s reign in the business of book sales.

My caring about which proper business term should be used to call the Big Four could be interpreted as superfluous, dismissed readily with “a rose by any other name.” However, I believe that this vagueness is very indicative of a larger issue at hand with the Big Four. The breadth of products and services offered by each of these companies make it incredibly difficult to pinpoint what exactly is monopolistic about them, making legal action harder to come by.  In some cases, legal action against unfair business practices is virtually impossible because the business itself is so new and without legal precedent.  I’ve had a long standing belief that a parallel of Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, in any other sector, would have set off regulatory red flags in fear that the larger company is simply letting their money vacuum up more money as opposed to trying to win business with innovation.

I am unsure of the current policy advances being made to try to combat the ballooning of tech companies. I do not believe that the Big Four are looking to make life hellish for their customers but I strongly believe that business regulation is a necessity in capitalism. And the necessity is evident here. With the breakneck pace of business advances in the realm of technology, current regulatory practices struggle to keep up, allowing the Big Four to grow ever more dominant.

My Two Cents, His Two Million

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Around the start of this semester, I came across one of the leaked Sony emails where two executives at the media conglomerate mentioned how Kevin Hart was paid two million dollars for tweeting a promotional blurb about a movie. This revelation was not unexpected: tweets are very malleable and utilizing the medium and a celebrity’s fame for advertising is very common. But all the same it sideswiped me; I like to call this type of reaction “insurprised.”

One of the things that I appreciate most about Twitter is that there doesn’t seem to be as strong of an impetus to posture one’s self favorably, in comparison to other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or SnapChat. Twitter encourages stream of consciousness, which leads to heavy tweet volume, which leads to tweets having a very low baseline of importance, in general. I have found that it’s best to never place too much emphasis on any one social media post because they’re all inherently ephemeral by virtue of being on the Internet, even if they are saved to physical storage somewhere in the world. And I believe Twitter is at a very high level of ephemerality and disposability for its designated medium, the 140 character blurb. The number of unimportant, unnoticed tweets in the world must be staggering. However, seeing that one tweet could be worth millions made me stop and think to myself that I need to reexamine the methods I use to value a tweet, and by extension, any instance of social media. Luckily enough, I was developing the right frame of mind, through this class, to take on such a task.

It stands to reason that some form of effort was required in the drafting of any online post, whether it was the effort to come up with a few nice sounding sentences or the effort to automate the writing process with a computer program. With that in mind, there really is no such thing as a completely negligible social media update. There’s a myriad of factual extrapolations to be made for any given post, including but not limited to, its overall context, its purpose, and its positioning in respect to the intended audience.  Ultimately, a tweet is only what the virtual audience makes it to be. I’m most reassured while using Twitter when an average user’s poignant, timely tweet makes the rounds and reaches hundreds of thousands of views. This type of occurrence reaffirms to me the egalitarian Internet that I have come to know.

The “perfect storm” tweet above contrasts sharply with the alleged paid tweet of Kevin Hart’s. The former achieved its worth by keeping a steady hand over the heartbeat of society. The latter simply had money thrown at it. Though I am nowhere near as critical of capitalism as others may be, it’s this type of monetary hot air that I believe is incredibly detrimental. What I believe is best, and I think this philosophy can be extended to many other fields, is to not force an issue, even if that issue is something as slight as a tweet..

Live Tweet Life

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I didn’t get a chance to input during the class when we were surveyed on our television watching habits but I’m more than glad to utilize this blog platform to share my tendencies because I believe it represents an interesting cross-section of old media and new media.

I’m avid about setting aside time out of my week to watch a television program when it comes on live; what we would call a traditional approach.  Barring any pressing outside circumstances, I will without fail be in front of my television every Sunday night from 9 to 11 p.m. for this season’s episode of Game of Thrones, followed by Mad Men.  And it’s the same deal with every other season.  This is such a part of my routine that I shudder to think about what would happen if it was taken away from me, so I scour for new shows to fall in love with every time there’s a turnover of programming.

Undeniably, I’m drawn to the allure of the “premiere showing” aspect at work here.  However, that’s not all there is.  Whenever I watch a television program live, be it a sporting event or a television show, I usually do it in tandem with being on Twitter.  It’s difficult to do so for something like Game of Thrones, which has no breaks, but GoT is more of an exception when compared to the rest of the landscape.  When the commercials hit, I either go to the bathroom or I check Twitter, no inbetween.  I may post one or two tweets for a show and a few more for sports events.  But moreover, I’ll search for tweets to see what others have to say.  There are two Twitter comic personalities that I follow, @desusnice and @THEKIDMERO, that are guaranteed to chip in their two cents every time something happens in a New York area (I’m from New Jersey) sports game or a major nationally televised one and I peruse my timeline with glee for what they have to say when I’m also watching the same match as them.

Prior to my starting college and Twitter’s ascendance to ubiquity, I was far less interested in watching regularly scheduled television programming; I consumed visual media in typical millennial fashion: online streaming.  I was, however, still a major sports fan and often when I was not sitting down with friends or family to watch a game, I frequented an internet discussion board where live-watch threads occurred.  It was here that I experienced firsthand the joy of having a virtual crowd that reacts in unison with me.

I don’t think of myself as hyper-social.  It isn’t so much that I want to be heard and be part of a herd; I’m much more interested in hearing the breadth of what there is to be said.  And even if it’s banal, even it’s nonsensical, following along with someone’s thoughts as they engage with media is a wonderful learning experience.  The only thing that concerns me about virtual conversations is that I spend too much examining them, but that can be fixed with self-control via maturation.

Cookies

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Browser cookies were born out of the desire to implement shopping carts online. Prior to the advent of cookies, web sites did not have features that allowed for session-based interactions between a client user and the server.

 

Cookies are not programs.  Rather, they work in a similar fashion as how music programs use mp3’s.  The file of a cookie is little more than a set of identification codes and tags for things like which user is accessing the website, what level of security clearance is required for a current session (i.e. should this user be required to log-in again or should secure browsing be used), and other pieces of information necessary for keeping a website in the same state it was as the last time it was used.  A browser will make cookies on a per-website basis.

 

Cookies are saved on a user’s computer and are typically given a designated, short lifespan.  Though there has been legislation passed in the way of requiring user clarity to a web site’s cookie policies, most cookies do not serve as tools for data mining being that they are saved on a user’s computer and not on servers that are property of the web site.

Interacting With The Tube

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiFXWQ7bldr2uJx7S9mDAqDLRUuSlkssO[/youtube]

 

Pure Commercial (Star Wars Trailer, Majora’s Mask 3DS Trailer)

The first two videos are YouTube serving as a minuteman advertising agent. Often, I’ll find myself looking up video trailers on YouTube before or right when a video game or movie has come out so as to help me decide on if I wish to engage in consumerism of these works. Their existence doesn’t reflect negatively on YouTube in my mind. I see the place advertisements occupy as simply a matter of course because of the ubiquitous nature of YouTube and the Internet.

 

Online Transmission of Engaging with Existing Media: Reviews (theneedledrop on an Iron Maiden album, grumpyjiisan on The Tatami Galaxy)

The next two videos see YouTube as a platform for individuals to partake in the age-old tradition of sharing opinions. There’s an innumerable amount of people on YouTube who do review vlogs for all sorts of media but the only one whom I keep up with today is Anthony Fantano aka The Needle Drop, a music reviewer who covers a wide breadth of musical content of the day and occasionally will opine on old favorites. My all-time favorite reviewer of the universe though has to be Grumpy Jii-San, (Jii-san being Japanese for “old man”) a bespectacled elderly white man living in either Arizona or New Mexico who would regularly go out for hikes in the early morning, set up his camera mid-hike, and record his self giving anime reviews. His description is too weird to make up and that’s what I love about this channel. Unfortunately, he’s retired from the reviewing scene for reasons not everyone is sure about.

 

Online Transmission of Engaging with Existing Media: Exposition (Every Frame A Painting on Texting And The Internet In Film)

One of the channels I subscribe to actively is Every Frame A Painting, which does these incredible breakdowns of film-making techniques, with emphasis on the editing. This channel is sparse in terms of quantity but abundant with quality through his concise yet eye-opening expositions. I would not hesitate to call this my favorite channel.

 

Online Transmission of Engaging with Existing Media: Lists (License to Review on George Costanza’s Best, WatchMojo.com on Top 10 Video Games With Customizable Characters)

Top-X Lists are a mainstay of the Internet mediums of brevity. I tend to avoid banal ones that I would be able to easily predict myself, and instead I gravitate towards those that I feel offer a comprehensive collection of the most note-worthy examples in a field, whether it be through a long list or a list for a niche.  I view these lists as almost the complete minimum level of engagement with existing media.

 

Video Essay/Articles (PBS Idea Channel on North Korea and Hackers and SciShow on The Giant Crystal Cave)

 

YouTube as Artistic Media: Experimental Video (Donald Glover’s “Clapping For The Wrong Reasons” and The Weeknd/xoxxxoooxo’s “The Flower Shop”)

YouTube can act as a fairly low-risk platform where creative video can be readily disseminated.  As such, creative types can use YouTube to show off their potential in acting and/or film-making. I’d like to take this opportunity to note that YouTube has been extremely integral in getting the career of The Weeknd off the ground. His channel, xoxxxoooxo initially served as his sole personal broadcast station where he uploaded each of his first three mixtapes’ songs, all featuring an eye-catching background image for the video, with almost complete anonymity.  In turn, he came to build a persona shrouded with mystery and that control of his public image fueled his rise in the music world.

 

YouTube as Artistic Media: Music Videos (Breakbot’s “Baby I’m Your’s” and The Notorious B.I.G.’s “One More Chance (Remix)”)

As a kid, I loved watching music videos on MTV. MTV doesn’t do that anymore, ironically enough, so now I use YouTube to instantly look up music videos new and old. I believe that the greatest set of cameos in any music video ever is contained in the “One More Chance (Remix)” video.

 

YouTube for the Fans: Clips (Mulholland Drive’s “Llorando” Scene and Serial Experiments Lain’s Opening Credits)

Regularly, I’ll think back on excellent moments in visual media and I want to be taken back. Sometimes, YouTube is nice enough to do that for me.

My (Evolving) Notions On Sampling In Music And Song Mashups

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Endtroducing.....

In my personal overview of song mashups, I have this template in my head of a YouTube video where some soul somewhere has taken two or more songs and weaved several of their threads together to try to get a sonically pleasing result.  Occasionally, this process is also used for expository purposes, such as exhibiting formulaic tendencies in a sub-genre or repeated melodies between songs.  Outside of these informative examples though, I tended to be apathetic towards any given musical mashup on YouTube.  I had found that overall most of the mashups I have come across are at best one-time novelties and at worst a digital memento of misplaced earnestness from their creator in bringing together two worlds that have no business with each other.

On the other hand, I regard sampling as one of my favorite parts of hip-hop and electronic music.  So much so that it surprised me to hear people in class talk about sampling and mashups as if they were interchangeable and that sampling could at all be thought of negatively.  I wanted to take a moment to draw my line in the sand. “Listen, samples are not mashups. Two totally different things; mashups are mixes; samples are a strategic and often creative reworking of a melodic bit.”  I was nearly offended at the idea that sampling could be hurtful through how it would wear down the legacy of the original.  I regularly find out about music through looking up samples and just this week, I was introduced to the world of 60’s French pop music for the first time by finding out that the primary sample in a Dr. Dre song comes from here.  I may have very well never come across this era of sound if it were not for my respect for the craft of sampling.

After class, I came to inflict a binary thought process on myself.  Samples are almost always at the peak of artistry, deserving of praise, while mashups are almost always just simplistic cutting and pasting jobs, deserving of apathy.  Then the above image came to mind.  It is the cover for DJ Shadow’s highly acclaimed 1996 album Endtroducing….., one of my favorite albums ever.  It also holds the distinction from Guinness World Records as being the first album ever to be created entirely from samples.  I realized that this album that I hold so near and dear to me could be potentially framed as “a mashup of samples” and soon followed another realization that I was being too intense in my judgement.

As I sit here writing this, I am thinking back on all of the great music mashups that have eaten up hours of my life.  And its almost startling to me now that I held such a disdain for the umbrella term of mashups to begin with.  I assume that my finding too many bad apples turned me away from the whole batch.  There is nothing inherent in being a mashup that is discrediting.  There are good mashups, bad mashups, kind-of-good but bad mashups, and kind-of-bad but good mashups.  Just as is the case with many things in life.

(Incidentally, my TimeHop for today was a Facebook post from 5 years ago with this video and the caption “two of my favorite things had a baby”)