#11 Shirky Ch 4-9

Shirky continues in Chapter 4 with an introduction that publications and filtering become separate processes and that filtering takes place after publishing usually in a group/social/community sessions.  I had my own definition of "user generated content" before reading this book, and Shirky brings up some excellent points.  Just because someone creates something on their computer does not alone make it user generated, because then works by well known authors as they scribe their novels, those novels would be considered user generated.  He describes the content as a group phenomenon and from amateur users.  One of the examples like a gallery for this content to be displayed is MySpace where users create posts and blogs for a small group of people.  Shirky asking, "Why would anyone put such drivel out in public?"  The answer of course was, "they're not talking to you."

In the online community there is no ruling authority, only a group consciousness that weighs the scale of justice.  This makes me think of the current Trayvon Martin case in Florida where the group is calling for justice when the governing body doesn't seem to be doing anything.  The thing about the case is that it's expanding farther than just the city, or even state.  This event has garnered the attention of the nation in a call to action.  In essence Skirky ends the chapter by saying that never before have groups had the ability or freedom to say and do so many things.  With so many participating online, there is a removal of obstacles for that same participation by non experts.

Just because people can participate more freely, doesn't mean that people do.  Shirky describes a "caring" that draws people to participate, whether it be personal or for the greater good.  These days people are using social networking to organize, but the social network didn't enable the action, it merely removed the obstacles. In the same movement, the interaction becomes increased and more frequent.  The same action that could have taken weeks to mobilize a nation now takes days, even hours to capture their attention.

#10 Shirky Ch 1-3

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: the power of organizing without Organizing  begins with a saga about a lost phone and the ten days it took to recover and return it to its rightful owners.  An astounding use of resources through digital means and amassing a crowd that helped find and apprehend the thief.  There is immense group power that was utilized given the right tools.  As the saga showed, some sites weren't equipped to handle the growing demand of usership and thus failed.  
There are many things that the story helped to highlight including the expanse of the internet, the attention garnered by people's sense of justice, the ability for one-man to dispense this news through his social network of friends, the tools of the web, and the scrutiny that we could now be facing. As the "theif" found out, she was scruitized for her actions that weren't perhaps ethically pure, but they weren't illegal in the eyes of the law, she was thus guilty in the eyes of the public.
The thing about this initial story, is that it's unrepeatable, it's not something that the average Jo could do every time a phone was lost. What Shirky highlights in this chapter is the socialness of people and the new shift in technology.  To report a stole phone the example went to the police, but it was the detective work of hundreds of others who really helped solve the situation.  There are many more options to work withing besides traditional frameworks.  Police stations will continue to exist, but they are not as strong as the collective group of people out for justice as shown in the example.  It's not always that the police aren't willing to help, but don't have the finances or personel to help in a city of millions.

Chapter two states that sharing anchors community. With a growing number of connections made in groups, the harder it is to connect with each one of it's members.  Shirky suggests that a community is much easier to maintain through sharing, cooperation, and collective action.  Of these, sharing, involves the fewest demands on a community, cooperation involves changing your behavior to fit with those in the group to create a group identity.  Collaboration in a community means that no one particular person takes credit for the efforts, collective action takes the collective of the group to partake.  He shares these group dynamics through stories about photographers, and trains.
Chapter 3 - Everyone is a media outlet.  Much like in the first chapter, we each have the capability to share news, creating individual media outlets.  Shirky describes the phenomenon as mass amateurization.  Competition with local print newspapers were thought originally to be national papers, but instead, the internet has become it's chief competitor.  No longer is the job of reporting news left up to just the professional journalist, but everyone can report the news.  The other side of this is that people get to decide what news they feel is important, not just the news that mainstream media presents.

I think this quote by Scott Bradner sums it up quite nicely, "The internet means you don't have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before trying it."

#7 Tapscott, part 1, Meet the Net Generation

Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital begins by talking about how the Net Generation came about, and who we are. I say we, because it was obvious from the start of the book, that he was talking about me. Technology is “technology only for people who are born before it was invented.” Pg. 19.  I feel that this was a little misleading, because I am on the older side of his Net Gen, and I saw many technologies come about and watched them infiltrate homes. Especially shocking were the eight norms that Tapscott points out.

1.  They want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.
2.  The love to customize, personalize.
3.  They are the new scrutinizers. "Businesses (and churches) targeting the Net Gen should expect and welcome intense scrutiny of its products, promotional efforts, and corporate practices. The Net Gen knows that their market power allows them to demand more of companies, which goes for employers as well." p. 35
4. They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work. (and where to worship)
5. The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education, and social life.
6. They are the collaboration and relationship generation.
7. The Net Gen has a need for speed - speed characterizes the flow of information among vast networks of people.
8. They are the innovators

I saw myself in each of these eight norms.  Not in just a few, but every. Single. One. I am mystified at how clearly he had me pegged, as this had never happened before.

Tapscott’s been observing Net Genners since the beginning, watching his daughters Grow up Digital, I feel that he knew from the start that including those who were growing up in the 80’s with more and more technology surrounding us, that we were an important part of this Net Gen.

My mother marvels at my drive for technology, to figure out how it works, and even just how I think about technology.  I have two sisters, one much older, and another just a few years younger. We are all very different, and it’s interesting to see the eight norms applied (or not) to each of them.  My younger sister, for instance, looks for entertainment in life, but that doesn’t necessarily have to come through technological means. She also translates innovator a bit different.  My sister is an artist, and her brain thinks of creating her next installation of “green” art, instead of the next big invention.  When we were children, I was going to be designing her clothing line while she made millions doing something that required the raincoat and galoshes sets I was going to be making her in every color imagineable. The tables of turned a bit, my sister is more in the design and aesthetic of materials, and I see myself as more of an innovator and integrator of technology into every part of my life.

#3 First half of Achebe

After reading Ong's book about Orality, and discussing the difficulty associated with writing about oral cultures through literate means, Achebe has tackled that mission head on.  He writes Things Fall Apart, a book about an Nigerian clan, Umofia and Okonkwo.  The Umofia are an oral culture, and Achebe takes on the task of describing their culture and the infiltration of colonized literate people.  Okonkwo is a respected warrior in his clan, though he lives the shame of his father's life choices.  The values of the Umofia people are shown not by the books on a bookshelf, but by what the clanspeople find important such as Okonkwo's son being lazy, or his father being a coward and poor with money.

In the book, Okonkwo fears that if the social standards are changed, his status in the society will be changed.  The incoming Christian society values those who convert to Christianity over the warriors of the Umofia clan.  There are others in the village who do not have the same fears that Okonkwo does.  Though he sees his status as uber masculine, he is punished by the community for breaking the week of peace for beating his wife.

The Nigerian clans are heavily reliant on agriculture, and when Okonkwo is exiled his uncle Uchendu lends Yam seeds to help start his new life in a new village during his time away from Umofia.

I have read this book once before, but that was from an anthropological and women's studies standpoint.  Reading this book again after reading Ong's book on Orality, really gives this book a different feel.  I know from previous study that Achebe wrote the book in English to better show the colonial peoples what life in Africa was really like.  Achebe tried to include some of the Umofia words into his writing to better illustrate the complexity of the language, and its useage.

#1 First 1/2 of Ong

There was a lot of information packed into the first half of Walter J. Ong's book Orality and Literacy. From my initial impressions I took note of the author's first intent, to be able to describe a completely illiterate frame of mind, to a completely literate society, or in this case, reader: me.  I understood illiterate to mean that the person in question couldn't read.  Ong, however, quickly pointed out that illiteracy was without text, not just a lack of understanding the text. In fact, Ong writes that "in antiquity it was not common practice for any but disgracefully incompetent orators to speak from a text prepared verbatim in advance."

I was in 6th grade when we read the Illiad and the Odyssey, by Homer.  I don't remember much of the book (mostly because that was about sixteen years ago.)  It was quite facinating when reading Orality and Literacy to see just how often Homer's work was brought up.  Ong states, "for over two millennia literates have devoted themselves to the study of Homer."  My question was, "why?"

With further reading question was answered.  Ong claims that the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown, or imprecise, unlike other Greek poetry.  Ong also states that these works, "have been commonly regarded from antiquity to the present as the mot exemplary, the truest and the most inspired secular poems in the western heritage."  Even while others like Francois Hedeline attacked Homer's works as badly plotted, with poor character development, even going so far as to say "Homer" had never existed.   "The Battle of the Books thought that there was indeed a man named Homer but that the various songs that he 'wrote' were not put together into the epic poems until about 500 years later," Ong cites.

Despite the debateability about Homer's existence, Ong states that these works, "were so well structured, so consistent in characterization, and in general such high art that they could not be the work of an unorganized succession of redactors but must be the creation of one man."

One of the fascinating things that I learned about these poems was the variety of language used.  For instance, Ong states that there were a multitude of words used just to describe wines.  He references that this was probably to meet the specific metric of the phrase.  Ong talks about illiteracy not in reference to text as illiteracy suggests (illiterate, meaning not-literate), but in terms of the strengths, the orality or oral culture of the peoples.  One of the key points that I learned was that oral cultures used cliches, phrasing, and formulas to help tell stories in place of word for word memorization.

Ong suggests that perhaps Homer stitched together the poems based on the formulas and themes of his oral culture.  "In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost: fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration."

Formulas provide a mnemonic aid for oral cultures, some of which still exist today including, "Red in the morning, sailor's warning; red in the night, the sailor's delight."  As well as others such as, "the sturdy oak."  These formulas are also the reason that stories include a beautiful princess, instead of just a princess, a brave warrior, weary traveler, or a noble steed, etc.   These epithets are all part of the oral cultures.

Ong suggests that oral cultures strewn together stories based on these formulas, but that there were never the same verbatim story every time though each contained the same themes.  I wonder how different the poems Iliad and the Odyssey would have been if they had never been inked to paper to lock in the wording of the phrasing.