Exam 2 Study Guide - Summary The Meaning of Information Technology PDF

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Prof. Chris Carruth...

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Exam #2 Study Guide Format: No notes, 5 short answer questions (.4pts), 4 medium length questions (2pts), 1 bonus (2pts) https://quizlet.com/241893552/meaning-of-info-technology-exam-2-flash-cards/ Content: ● Wikipedia and Truth ○ Epistemology- the theory or study of knowledge ○ Absolute Truth- true at all times and for all people ○ Relative Truth- truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as language or culture or time or age or race or gender or sexual orientation or etc, etc, etc ○ Descarte and Solipsism- doubt everything that you cannot prove, “I think therefore I am” ■ Solipsism- the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. ○ Print Culture- Expert editors, monetary interests, ○ Authority- Author has the “authority”, ○ Wikipedia (Operation, Policies, and Statistics) ■ Operation- heterarchical (all editors on same plane), collaborative, transparent backgrounds ■ Core Content Policies- verifiable, no original research, neutral POV ■ 5 Pillars- Online Encyclopedia, Neutral POV, Free Content (Anyone can edit), Civility (Respect), No (firm) rules ■ Statistics- Approximately 1300 editors (90% male), Over 38 million articles, distinct lack of female inclusion ○ Wikipedian Accuracy ≠ Completeness ● Diversity and Representation ○ Why Diversity Matters: Expand talent pool, reflect your audience, better teams ○ Feminism- the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men ○ Diversity ■ Population- US (51% female, 49% male, 61% white, 17% Hispanic, 14% Black, 6% Asian)

■ Business- 5% of Fortune 500 Company CEOs are female (Only 1.2% are Black, 1.9% Asian, 2% Latino) ■ Entertainment- Film (11.2% female writers, 18.9% female producers, In 2014 1.9% of movie directors were female), Gaming (76% of video game workforce is male) ○ Misrepresentation in Media and Video Games ■ Hypersexualization- Women portrayed with big breasts, sexual outfits, etc. ■ Toxic Masculinity- Men have to be strong, mean, angry, independent, etc. ■ Age Representation- Women are always younger and they are replaced if they age ○ How? ■ Essentialism- human behavior is predetermined by genetic, biological, physiological mechanisms ■ Constructivism- human behavior is primarily based off social constructs ■ Mirror Effect- we associate with and have preference for people like ourselves ■ Stereotype Threat- refers to the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about an individual’s racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group ● Girls stink at math, White guys can’t jump, Girls can’t be engineers, etc. ● Put limits/restrictions on what we think we can do ■ Glass Ceiling- an intangible barrier within a hierarchy that prevents women or minorities from obtaining upper-level positions ■ Unconscious Bias- bias we are unaware of and happens out of our control ● A Philosophy of Art and Film ○ Frames per Second (FPS)- Frames per Second, the rate at which an imaging device produces unique sequential images called frames ○ Walter Benjamin- “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” Art is unique to each generation, therefore our methods of analysis and critique must also be unique. Reproduction changes how we experience artwork. Most notably the loss of “aura”. ■ Reproduction: Metaphorical ● The “Aura”- the in-person experience/true meaning ■ Reproduction: Literal ● Analog Reproduction (Water splashes out of glass)- lose data in copies ● Digital Reproduction (Stones stay in glass)- do not lose anything

● Generation Loss: each successive copy, or generation, of a piece suffers ○ Passive versus active consumption ■ Passive- when the audience doesn’t engage or question the media message but just accepts it, this what media outlets want to achieve when making a film or show as they want to view to accept and not question ■ Active- when the audience will engage and discuss media messages that comes across to them and sometimes question the media messages through life experiences ○ Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” ■ The camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. ■ Women are objectified, by both the characters in the film and the audience ■ Over time, as these scenes become common, women objectify themselves, internalizing the male gaze. ○ Digital Dualism (Nathan Jurgenson): the belief that the on and offline are largely separate and distinct realities ○ Future Technologies- VR, Face Mapping (Avatar), AI that writes movies ○ The state of the industry according to Soderbergh- cinema (specific vision, intentional choices) vs movie (what you see), movies today are all about the profit, lack of originality in today’s movies ● Digital Art ○ The nebulous nature of “Art” ■ What’s in a name: Digital Art, Net Art, New Media Art, etc etc etc ■ Art- the expression or application of creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting, drawing, or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. ■ Digital= an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as an essential part of the creative or presentation process. Since the 1970s, various names have been used to describe the process, including computer art and multimedia art. Digital art is itself placed under the larger umbrella term new media art ■ Net Art= a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. ○ Concept, Content, & Context ■ Concept- What are you trying to say? What’s the big idea? ■ Content- What does it look like? ■ Context- How does it fit into society, culture, time, place, etc.?

○ Ephemerality (the grandeur of the 90’s) ■ lasting a very short time; short-lived ■ Lots of web creations that have since faded away ○ Examples abound: ■ Experimentation- Inject chip that can be scanned into skin ■ Interaction- Lasers that act like strings on a harp, Rain Room where you do not get wet, ■ Light Painting- loss of spatial dimension ■ Glitching- JPG to TXT to JPG ■ Projection on wall to give it dimensions (Mountain In a Corner) ● On Language, Author, and Audience ○ Txting is killing language (wut??!?) ■ Language has been around for thousands of years and writing is more recent (speech is the predominant form of language) ■ Writing is not speech ■ Texting is not writing ■ Talking is fast and subconscious ■ Texting and emojis are in between ■ Texting is fingered speech, a new dialect of our language ○ Dr. Walter Ong: ■ Space- white space on pages allows for more freedom ■ Privacy- print allows for privacy during consumption of media ■ Print- stagnant, fixed, transition from auditory to visual ■ Closure- no dialogue with author, words are “final” ○ The Form and Function of Text- bold (pay attention), caps (yelling), italics (inside comment), blue hyperlink, # (Twitter), Comic Sans (meme/looks bad) ○ Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author”: “A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.” ■ Everything is a remix. The author is just borrowing from pre-existing ideas ■ The author’s original intent does not matter as the reader is the scriptor, the one giving meaning to the text ● Remix Culture ○ Traits of Creative People ■ Plasticity: open to experience, high energy, inspired ■ Divergence: do not conform, do not agree with the crowd ■ Convergence: persistence, precision, critical sense

○ Remixing: the act of rearranging, combining, editorializing, and modifying original content to create something entirely new ■ Meme, fan fiction, book to movie, song remix, photo collage ■ Why so popular? Accessibility of tech and media + formulaic approach, Nostalgia factor, Historically there has never been more content, Acceptable by society - remixes are all around us, It’s fun. ■ Remix is arguably just as original as the original ○ ©opyright & why you should care ■ Prohibits unauthorized actions and allows for creator to take legal actions if infringed upon ■ Fair Use- for education, criticism, comment, news reporting, etc. it does not violate copyright ○ Joseph Campbell ■ Monomyths- important myths that have been around for thousands of years ■ Similarities in world religion, Hero’s Journey archetypes ○ Carl Gustav Jung ■ Humanity all draws from the same deep well of collective unconsciousness ■ the collective unconscious is a “reservoir of the experiences of our species” ■ Jungian Archetypes: self/shadow, child/elder, sacred/profane ● Anima and Animus: there are elements of men in women and vice versa ○ William S Burroughs- language infects us in how we think, it steers our thoughts, it has certain limitations in communication and thus controls over people's minds by its very existence ■ Sinking kitchen vs kitchen sink ○ Examples ■ World leaders kissing, Warhol- Elvis/Monroe, Snow White and Seven Dwarves Song ● Social Media: Case Studies and Campaigns ○ A (r)evolution in communication ■ “We’re seeing the largest increase in expressive capability in human history” ~Clay Shirky ■ Social media has created a global village ■ Spoken-Written-Printed-Networked Information ○ Characteristics of Social Media

■ refers to the means of interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. ■ Forums, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit ■ The internet itself has become social ■ We are all consumers and producers in this new age ■ 1. Interaction 2. Content Creation 3. Collaboration ○ McLuhan’s Tetrad of Media Effects ■ Enhance: What does social media amplify or intensify? ■ Obsolescence: What does social media make obsolete? ■ Retrieval: What does social media make relevant again? ■ Reverses: What does social media do when pushed to its limits? ○ Case Studies & Campaigns: ■ Governance and Politics- online democratic voting style, bots during the election, crowdsourced constitution ■ Activism- Reddit and the Boston Marathon Bomber (false accusation), Arab Spring ■ Commercial Irreverence- GoPro and sharing content on social media, Dominos and tech (order pizza via emoji), Oreo’s short videos, Taco Bell and taco emoji being created, Hefty Cups and #partyhardmoms ● Surveillance, Big Data, Foucault, and Facebook ○ Foucault: Discourse and Subjectivication ■ Discourse: focuses on the power relationships in society as expressed and codified through language and behavior. Aka social conditioning. ● Discourse: how we talk about something constructs what it is--deterministic ● Being asked to strip down by a teacher vs a doctor (society gives power/authority to certain figures) ● Facebook has the same power to control us ■ Subjectivication: you shall know me by my works, identity formation ● We only share what we want to amplify in ourselves ○ Big Data & Digital Surveillance ■ Big Data: large or complex data sets that are analyzed to reveal patterns and trends as they relate to human behavior ■ Predictive Analytics: Mining big data using statistics and pattern recognition to make predictions about future behavior (Target and baby product ads) ○ FB: Numbers + A Critical Analysis

■ $490 billion market cap (bigger than most countries!), 2016 revenue of $27.6 billion, ■ Every time you click a button on Facebook. Every time you indicate to a friend, or business, you’ve seen whatever it is they’ve posted. Facebook sees you back. This information is used to predict what you want to see. ■ Personal information becomes a form of currency, used to create and maintain a sense of identity ○ Surveillance: the recording of an activity With a practical purpose in mind (i.e. preventing a crime) ■ Voyeurism: a person who likes seeing and talking or writing about something that is considered to be private, often sexual in nature. Common form = People watching ○ Sousveillance: the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity ○ Panopticon: Pan (All) // Opticon (Visually Observe) ■ We are never alone online. Someone is always watching. That someone includes you. ■ We are both guards and prisoners as we watch and judge others online, yet still feel as if we too are being constantly watched ● Selfie: Microframe and How to Succeed as an Artist ○ 15 Minutes of Fame ■ Andy Warhol claimed that everyone in the future would have their own “15 minutes of fame” ○ Selfie: A Modern Phenomenon ■ Selfie- a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media ■ Defining a new form of self representation ■ 24 billion selfies were uploaded to Google in 2016 ■ Why? ● “To make yourself look awesome.” ○ Microfame ■ Someone who may not be nationally/globally famous, but they have fame within a select group ■ Social Media has allowed for people to become microfamous ■ Subversion- t he undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution ○ Strategies for Success ■ Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans ● Founder and former executive of Wired

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○ Applies theory of 1,000 true fans to anyone that is creating anything ● 1,000 true fans → all you need for a sustainable career is 1,000 true fans ○ Fan: someone that likes your stuff and occasionally buys things ○ True fan: someone that follows you religiously and buys nearly everything that your produce ○ 1,000 true fans spend $100 each year you can make a sustainable income = $100,000 a year ○ The Long Tail- relatively a few products are hits, Kelly says to focus on the small end and to find a small group of dedicated fans/buyers ○ Examples: Chad Johnson (Batchelor)- fitness/nutrition plan, PewDiePie (Youtube Gamer)- sponsorships/ads Amanda Palmer & Crowdsourcing ● singer/songwriter, focused on being vulnerable and asks her fans for everything (food,money, sleeping arrangements) ○ She crowdsourced on Kickstarter to get money from her fans, asked for $100,000 and received 1.2 million ● Crowdsourcing → the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid typically via internet Michael Masnick’s “CwF + RtB = $$$” ● Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy = Business Model ● The way to make it as an artist today is to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy ● Examples: Radio Head asked fans to “pay what they think is fair” for their most recent album, Kanye West leaked out songs for free prior to release of full album to excite/engage fans Counter Argument for Masnick and Palmer- these people already had big audiences so they can afford to ask fans to pay ● If I ask my fans to pay then I will probably not make a whole lot… Transmedia Storytelling- technique of telling a story across multiple platforms ● engagement with each successive media heightens the audience’ understanding, enjoyment and affection for the story ● Transmedia stories can be simple, across a few low-tech media platforms or break down the barriers between the story and reality

by bringing the narrative out into the real world, in the form of complex and exciting alternative reality games (ARGs), where participants engage with narrative elements and characters using real world locations as part of the storyworld...