Digital Nation

When the journalistic team behind Frontline puts out a program, everyone expect greatness, and you won't be disappointed by this episode investigating the invasive digital world surrounding us.



You will witness colorful brain scans that prove today’s multitaskers do not possess such ominous skills as they proudly profess, businesses that have closed down their offices and opened a Second Life account, and today’s kids that never knew a world unconnected. A great deal of this hour long program focusses on students and teachers. Some teachers embrace their tech savvy students and their digital devices, while some sill maintain that a successful student should stay focused on the written page.

They interview eccentric entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of technology by introducing immersive 3-D worlds -- worlds that lead some to the marriage altar and some to rehab. One moving scene shows kids playing 3-D war games at a suspect Army recruiting center in Philadelphia then there is a qucik cut away to a computer screen of a Predator (an unmanned fighter plane) pilot honing his crosshairs on a very real caravan of Afghani Taliban.

I never miss a Frontline, thanks to my digital recorder, and once again I am rewarded by their mastery of television reporting.

Here is a link to a ton of extra video inspired by the show: (Click Here)

Has Any One Seen A Wandering Sheep?

"I need some nails for my gate!!!!!"

"Jimmy's horse has jumped the fence!"

I periodically receive similar posts on my Facebook account by some of my friends who work on virtual farms. Scrounging up nails and corralling rogue horses never seemed like much fun to me. I am more of the slay the dragon, wipe out the invading aliens, score the winning basket, or re-kill an army of zombies kind of video game player. I never saw the appeal of running a 2-D farm on Farmville, but maybe I am the one missing out. Maybe, just maybe, I'm missing out on the meta-appeal of this simple social game.

More and more people and more and more money are pouring into this phenomenon. So as an experiment, I am going to attempt to run my own farm starting today. It is time for me to roll up my sleeves and get some virtual grit under my nails. Film at 11.

My Top 10 (Visual & Content Imperatives)

I like my blogs crisp, clean, easy to navigate, and to the point. What I do not like is what I call the "MySpace mire." I have lost my password to MySpace, but I am not saddled with guilt because of it. People's MySpace sites got way out of hand with flash popping up everywhere, streaming music blaring, and background artwork that made reading their posts difficult and often hard to even find. I hated waiting, twiddling my thumbs, and rolling my eyes for all the flimflam to finally finish loading, just so I could share a photo or a quick quip.

When I started this blog, I got out a clean piece of paper and wrote down my ten commandments on blogging.

1) Thou shall be wary of long loadtimes by abstaining from an abundance of flash graphics.

2) Thou shall have a predominant theme.

3) Remember to break up large text blocks, be brief.

4) Honor the gods of grammar and spelling.

5) Thou shalt not steal, always accredit.

6) Thou shall use two columns making it easy to navigate thy blog.

7) Thou shalt not use music.

8) Write in thine own style but do not be shy about learning from others.

9) Err on the side of simplicity.

10) Covet content over put on pizzazz.

Here is a link to "25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs."

Diablo III in 3-D

Kyle Barron, a lead software analyst with over two decades of programing experience agreed to answer some questions about new media and its perceivable future.

Eddie Voyles: Thanks, Kyle for taking the time to answer a few questions about the direction of new media.

Kyle Barron: Sure.

Voyles: I don’t want to get too technical, especially right of the bat -- Ginger or Mary Ann?

Barron: Mary Ann. Hehe.

Voyles: How many hours of the day do you spend on a computer?

Barron: Counting work? 14 hours.

Voyles: Wow. What was your first computer, when did you buy it, and what were some of its specs?

Barron: In 1982, I bought a Commodore Vic-20 with 4k of memory, and you stored your data on a cassette deck.

Voyles: How much storage did a cassette hold?

Barron: 300 kilobytes. Today you can buy 1.5 terabytes.

Voyles: What was the first computer language, other than Basic, that you learned?

Barron: Apple 2-C.

Voyles: How many social networks do you belong to?

Barron: One, Facebook. But Netflix is pretty darn close. It has its own community, friends, rating movies; put me down for Netflix too.

Voyles: I would not have thought of Netflix, but I guess you're right. You don't seem to use a bunch of social networks? Do you use Twitter?

Barron: I don't tweet. At home I usually use the internet for news, alotta RSS feeds and also to keep up with my love of Japanese Anime.

Voyles: Are you big into Anime?

Barron: I've probably got over 140 hours of DVDs that I'v bought but still haven’t seen.

Voyles: That's alot!

Barron: Yes it is. I think I'm done buying for awhile. They take up a lot of shelf space.

Voyles: Why has it been so difficult for even hugely popular sites like Facebook, that have over 350,000,000 users, to earn money?

Barron: People expect it all to be free, and people ignore banner adds. Monetization is pretty tough. There’s only a few papers that successfully charge, and those are usually stock market, fantasy sports, or Nielson's rating pages.

Voyles: What do you foresee as the main medium for media distribution in the future - home computer/laptop, cellphone, iPad, or a game console?

Barron: The home computer is still the main workhorse, and I don’t see that changing tomorrow, but the Iphone revolution has just started. I can imagine the cellphone giving the computer a run for its money. Who knows about the iPad. I use my PS3 to watch blue-ray movies, download movies, and store music. I don’t surf the web with it, but you can.

Voyles: Do you play computer games?

Barron: Oh yeah. Just finished Dragon Age -- again.

Voyles: Name your top 3 computer games.

Barron: Whoa, that’s tough. Now you’re making me think -- Spellbreaker.

Voyles: The old infocom game?

Barron: Yep, wait. I’ll say Planetfall.

Voyles: Why Planetfall and not Spellbreaker?

Barron: It was much easier, and it had a great story. Spellbreaker could get insanely difficult.

Voyles: Ok, now there’s two more.

Barron: Baldur’s Gate II, that game had it all: a great story, romance, guilds, so much to do in that game and Diablo II.

Voyles: Did you play Diablo II solo or over Blizzard’s online service.

Barron: Strickly solo. The game really didn’t get going until you finished it two times, but when you reached Hell level then it was game on.

Voyles: Do you play MMORPGs?

Barron: I did but never again.

Voyles: Why never again?

Barron: Those games are time sinkholes. They’re designed to get you to stay on a long, long time. The time spent to advance in those games is too high for me.

Voyles: Not long ago you could go into Best Buy and there would be four rows of PC games, now it’s dwindled down to a single row.

Barron: One row and a section of $5 games like Cabela’s Deer Hunter 2004 and casino games.

Voyles: What do you see on the horizon for new media?

Barron: 3-D. I believe that is gonna be the future. For television there could be some growing pains, but it’s coming. And everything will be streaming. Itunes killed the CD. The DVD is next.

Voyles: Thanks, Kyle for sharing your time.

Barron: No problem. Bye.

This Bespells Doom

I am interested in seeing what new media will become ubiquitous, which will remain only a niche, and which ones will eventually die on the digital vine. How does Myspace, once the crowned king of all social networking, that allows its users to incorporate customizable home pages filled with MP3, photos, videos, flash, a banquet of gadgetry; get dethroned by a tiny blue birdie with its 140 character limit and mini-urls?

And is time-honored print media really gasping on life support? Here is a site that believes just that; it is devoted to reporting on every major daily's demise. Most printed papers are struggling to find a healthy financial formula in our irrevocably digital age. Will the New York Times start charging for content or will its articles remain free? Here is a unique idea: A one shot Sunday paper put out by Dave Eggers of San Fransico.

I hope there is new successful hybrid around the corner -- a little bit old-timey and a little bit cutting edge.

I Sold Some Plasma to Get More Books

I placed a nice, fat book order with the folks at Amazon today. I should receive the following four New Media books by this time next week (2/19/10): Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing WIthout Organizations - Clay Shirky; The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom - Yochai Benkler; YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture - Jean Burgess; and finally Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (Digital Formations) - Axel Bruns.

At the beginning of the semester, the class received a large selection of books to choose from. I chose the above titles over the rest because of personal-interests, one book's lack of availability, and a perceived redundancy between the YouTube titles. I hope to be able to split up the next purchase with a fellow student (hint, hint.)

I would like to put a wrap on this auspicious and seminal post with a big fat bow tied with candy canes, laurel, and a video. The clip below is taken from an interview with the two authors of “YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.” (Here is a book review.)

Relax, enjoy a sip of coffee or drink of choice, and watch how the authors explain their spiffy approach to surveying content posted on YouTube. One twist that they brought up really has me chomping to get my copy of said book -- YouTube as a true social network. Might seem obvious to some or most, but up until now, I had thought of the Tube as merely a storage site for music videos, television clips, piano playing kitties, pratfalls, and crotch dings; and judged most of its commenters as a pack of insulated jerks with a vexing attraction to over CAPITALIZATION and runaway ......ellipses..... . But Jean and Joshua say au contrare.

They claim that it is its own cultural space formed by a unique community of content (both user created and traditional) providers and responders. For the cursory user (me), it may seem like a video clip dump site, but not so for its devoted social community. YouTube can be viewed more like a gathering of video-bloggers and not solely as a convenient way to catch clips of last night’s “American Idol.”

But enough of my yakking, welcome aboard.