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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Rachel Cofer

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Rachel Cofer

Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...23wwln-future-t.html

shared by Rachel Cofer on 21 Sep 09 - Cached
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      As new technology comes in, old technology,well gets old I suppose. For example, with everyone accessing e-mail at home, work, and even on cell phones, layoffs are affecting US Post Offices because of the decline in "snail mail." The same is seen in this article about the change in movie standards. Now short flicks you can watch on your iPod or cell are becoming the "in" thing
  • The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that it was vastly easier to watch a movie than to make one. A Hollywood blockbuster can take a million person-hours to produce and only two hours to consume. But now, cheap and universal tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie) are quickly reducing the effort needed to create moving images. To the utter bafflement of the experts who confidently claimed that viewers would never rise from their reclining passivity, tens of millions of people have in recent years spent uncountable hours making movies of their own design. Having a ready and reachable audience of potential millions helps, as does the choice of multiple modes in which to create. Because of new consumer gadgets, community training, peer encouragement and fiendishly clever software, the ease of making video now approaches the ease of writing.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      I couldn't even imagine a world without paperbooks. I am aware of Kindles and eReaders, but a few slim paperbacks are much more appealing than a cumbersome computer book. Sure it would save money, but so does library. Also, what happens when you are right on the last chapter of a mystery book and the battery dies on that Kindle? Real books don't die.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • An emerging set of cheap tools is now making it easy to create digital video. There were more than 10 billion views of video on YouTube in September. The most popular videos were watched as many times as any blockbuster movie. Many are mashups of existing video material. Most vernacular video makers start with the tools of Movie Maker or iMovie, or with Web-based video editing software like Jumpcut. They take soundtracks found online, or recorded in their bedrooms, cut and reorder scenes, enter text and then layer in a new story or novel point of view. Remixing commercials is rampant. A typical creation might artfully combine the audio of a Budweiser “Wassup” commercial with visuals from “The Simpsons” (or the Teletubbies or “Lord of the Rings”). Recutting movie trailers allows unknown auteurs to turn a comedy into a horror flick, or vice versa.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      The use of free or small priced, easy-to-use editing software turns anyone into a moviemaker. In high school, I got paid to make little slideshows for family events. When people asked what I used, assuming it was something technologically hard to understand, they were stunned to find it was the simple Windows Movie Maker. Then with the advent of YouTube and other video sharing websites, everyone could sign up for a "director's" account just to add more videos.
  • The collective intelligence of humans can also be used to make a film more accessible. Avid fans dissect popular movies scene by scene. With maniacal attention to detail, movie enthusiasts will extract bits of dialogue, catalog breaks in continuity, tag appearances of actors and track a thousand other traits. To date most fan responses appear in text form, on sites like the Internet Movie Database. But increasingly fans respond to video with video. The Web site Seesmic encourages “video conversations” by enabling users to reply to one video clip with their own video clip. The site organizes the sprawling threads of these visual chats so that they can be read like a paragraph of dialogue.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      The Internet truly is a an online "community" and just like in the real world people love to break down tv shows and movies. Websites with message boards and forums allow you to critique and praise scenes, lines, and actors. However, new technology can allow you to post the specific movie and even comment on a particular time or scene. Also, you can post your commentary as your own video.
Rachel Cofer

The Technium: Consequences of Technological Convergence - 0 views

www.kk.org/...consequences_of.php

shared by Rachel Cofer on 21 Sep 09 - Cached
  • For the most part all civilizations are converging toward one global flavor of technology.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      Technology is truly beginning to bridge generations. Even though we speak different languages, there is a common goal. As with previous inventions, such as telephones, printing presses, etc, they are cross cultural. We seem to have similar goals.
  • Today, technology has converged so that how we build urban life is very similar around the world. We perceive that some places are "ahead" or "behind" others. California is ahead in solar, or the US is behind in bandwidth. Or we say that Africa is leapfrogging in cell phone use. In our heads we have a sense of a uniform development path. While specific cultures may drift a little sideways in the river of technological advance, the flow is all in one direction.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      We must remember that there is such thing as relativity. Poverty in the US is a whole different animal than poverty in Africa, for example. The same goes with technology. However, technology is being used to help future generations escape this poverty.
  • My hunch is that we are headed towards a path between 2 and 3.  For the most part, technology will converge to uniform usage around the globe, but occasionally some group, or subgroup, will devise and perfect a type of technology or technique that has limited appeal. But that subgroup or group will not continue to produce further isolated innovations in a sustainable offshoot -- simply because the advantages and pressures of a global society constrain success towards a global standard. (Note this technological convergence should not be confused with the media-centric technological convergence predicted for television, movies, books and the internet, although that will probably happen too.)
  • ...4 more annotations...
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      Even though technological advances are somewhat relative to various countries and cultures, they are beginning to merge. Certain things that wowed us years ago are the big thing in other cultures. Things that we don't even consider "tech" anymore, such as running water, are still future aspirations in some places. It is weird to think that electricity itself is still not in some places.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      Even though some tech is relative, we are coming closer to merging. Certain things that were big for us years ago are just hitting other markets. Some things that were once considered "tech," such as running water, are still in the future for some people. It's hard to believe that some things that we don't even think of as tech anymore such as electricity are still not a reality for people.
  • Fourth, the forces that conspire towards convergence don't seem to have strong counter-forces, suggesting that convergence will tighten over time. Perhaps in one hundred years, or two, technological development will not vary much around the globe. In this sense "the future will be more evenly distributed" to paraphrase William Gibson. In reaction to this homogeneity, perhaps the variation we see in regions we will see in individuals. People will choose to abstain or forsake particular global standards of technology in a form of idiosyncratic distinction. (See my post on the Neo-Amish.)  They will re-distribute the future themselves. But like the Amish they will harbor these "redistributions" as a personal choice within an ocean of planetary convergence. When everyone has access to all technologies (and all the same technologies), no one will have time to use or load them all. Then the only course will be to carry or "distribute" your personal slice of the technium. In this way while the planetary culture slides toward convergence of technologies, billions of technology users will diverge in their personal choices as they edge toward using smaller and more eccentric selections of available stuff. Your identity will be displayed by what you don't use.
    • Rachel Cofer
      Rachel Cofer on 23 Sep 09
       
      Some groups rebuke technology as evil. These plain people, however, separate themselves and do not get in the way of making new products. Hopefully, some day we will come to having a uniform technology. I think that at this point those of us in major countries can stop where we are and allow everyone else to catch up.
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