10 november session

Moderators:
Mirjam Dissel
Lieven Van Speybroeck

Keywords

• Users as developers
• Wisdom of the crowd vs skill/knowledge of experts
• (Old) mainstream media vs (new) democratized media
• Classification of users
• Corporate responses to further user-development/hacking/modifying/... of their products
  
  

Summary of key points raised in the texts:

Henry Jenkins - Fans, Gamers and Bloggers
NYU Press, Sept. 2006
(see also: here)

• Originally (2001) misperceived due to unfortunate editorial changes
• Bloggers as minutemen of the digital revolution
• 2 kinds of media-power:

media concentration: "corporate" broadcasting

Grassroots media: user-driven

-> evolution of media is shaped through the interactions between both

Once a column appears, the writer's authorial control ends and theirs begins

Andrew Keen - The Cult of the Amateur
Crown Business, Jun. 2004
(see also: here)

• Digital T.H. Huxley:

web 2.0: infinite monkeys providing infinite information for infinite readers, perpetuating the cycle of misinformation and ignorance.

Web 2.0: one long commercial break

• Mainstream ("trustworthy) media vs democratized (flattened) media

Gatekeepers/experts (middlemen) vs wisdom of the crowd

-> loss of intermediaries (<-> opposite viewpoint on new media then Jenkins': creation of intermediary media

-> internet as a mirror: narcissistic approach to information

-> extinction of old media

• Lack of media literacy: unable to distinguish the good from the bad
  
  

Eric S. Raymond - The New Hacker's Dictionary
The MIT Press, Oct. 1996

• User: using the computer as a means rather than an end, someone who pays to use it

See: Real User: programmers that don't think twice before contacting the maintainer

• Luser: using the computer (software) from the outside, without getting into the internals of the program.
• User-friendly: programmer-hostile
• Hacker: using the software from the inside
  
  

Lev Grossman - Person of the Year 2006: You.
Time Magazine, Dec. 2006

• Web 2.0:

- threatening when you believe that an excess of democracy is the road to anarchy

- harnesses both the stupidity as wisdom of crowds

- Impact on (blogging) traditional journalism & (wikipedia ) traditional encyclopedic research:

- most web 2.0 is not challenging the authority of a traditional expert (<-> Keen). It's a working zone where there are no experts, or the users themselves are experts.

- local knowledge used to be mouth-to-mouth, now it has a broadcast channel

Mirko Schaefer - Made by Users
Mar. 2004

• Collaborative work of users leads to innovation
• User-driven networks: new communication systems
• Computer technology -> space for cultural production/reception and a platform for cultural discourse:

- ~ Jenkins on blogging: once a product gets released by a company, a new stage of further development through it's users begins

-> Cultural freedom

• Collective intelligence (wisdom of the crowd) can be much more productive and innovative than a company's research and development department (<-> Keen)
• Copyright issues: digital distribution = reproduction
  
  

Discussion notes and afterthoughts:

• Big difference between dilettantes (superficial, passive) & amateurs (love, passion, driven)
• Early ('pioneer') hackers saw themselves as amateurs
• Hard to find real collaboration between corporations and user communities (NASA Clickworkers)
• Why are mainstream media to be considered trustworthy (as opposed to democratized media)?
• Is there more at stake for mainstream media to be 'correct' because of their position?
• User-driven communities/development leads to copyright issues: necessary redefinition of copyright laws?
• Can we compare the contemporary fear of new technology/media with earlier technical/industrial/technological/... revolutions in history?
• Searching for analogies (the car metaphor) for the personal computer is problematic. Why? We'll go further into that next session.