User:Emily/Self-Evaluation trimester II

The loss of attentive and affective qualities of watching: a question of online video watching

Marshal McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt suggested in their 1972 book Take Today, (p. 4) that with electric technology, the consumer would become a producer. In the 1980 book, The Third Wave, futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer" ^[1] when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge. Nowadays, we are assembling even more roles in ourselves. Provided with all kinds of online platform, “prosumer” master the role of publisher and the phenomenon of “15 minutes of fame” has already been superfluous. Further more, social networks empower us to comment, retweet, like, forward. We are so multitasking, but are we really that multitasking?

consumer+producer=prosumer—> prosumer+publisher+commentator—>multitasking-self

Here I aim to draw attention to online video watching. Dose the transformation to multitasking-self change our way of online video watching? Geert Lovink provided an answer, “We no longer watch films or TV; we watch databases.” Database watching seems to be the most customised way for us. We search online, get a watching list followed by another watching list, we can skip, we can jump to another, we have been provided with “an endless branching database”[3].

mass production to mass customisation —> search endlessly branching database

We constantly watch online, each video lasts from a few seconds, to a few minutes. The moment we are in front of our computers or smartphones, we are unable to pay attention, we easily get distracted even in a short period. We start to judge in the middle of the watching; if the duration lasts a bit longer, we start to scan around; those seamlessly recommendations and links drive us to the next. We seems always be on the way to the next. Crystallised time become a sign to make us dive in and be on the move. “Attentive watching and listening give way to diffused multitasking” .

the loss of attentive watching —> what will engage with our eyes and our emotions?

So how shall we behave ourselves in front of those incredible amount of video content. Why we are constantly on the move to the next and seems never get satisfied. We have been encouraged to give away our personal information in order to generate the best respond for each searching and recommendation. We send out “likes” which start linking. But ”similar to other social networks, online video sites assume that we have an incestuous desire to be just like our friends. The essential fact of postmodernity - namely that we seek difference, not similarity - has not (yet) persuaded the Web 2.0 entrepreneurial class.”[4] What’s more, are those really the only elements that algorithm takes in account for sorting contents? Are we really in dialogue with the machine? There are multiple reasons out there obviously, but as Geert Lovink argues that “ to study online video is to study this intimate aspect of affect, no the theories of commercial repackaging that underline common rhetoric about remediation…the social is the core constitutive element of contemporary video practice and not some leftover redundant noise surrounding audiovisual content.” [5] (to be continue)

what does it mean that our attention is guided by database systems —> what is the alternative way of watching?

[1] Prosumer, producer and consumer; see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer>.

[2][3][4][5] Networks Without a Cause by Geert Lovink, chapter 8.

My question:

How database-watching can be affective (Should I magnify subjectivity while sorting/using the database)

How to present my way of seeing (are we in dialogue with machine, or with the "editor" behind it)

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