User:Renee Oldemonnikhof/Final Project Proposal

Ideas for my exam project 2011

Step one, writting down three subjects that interest me

1. Public vs. Private space/ corporate vs. non-corporate - What can be found on someone on internet - Address (google maps), phone numbers. School records, bank accounts, friends, photos, etc. - How has this open culture effected our lives, and what are the dangers connected to this - Cameras

2. Mapping out all the China towns in the world and comparing them to social networking culture - How big would a china town be if you where to add all the China towns around the world into one big China town - What would the population be? - Why the Chinese culture is so strong and continues to spread itself in such a manner - Is it comparable to a social networking culture?

3. Continuing my internet newsgraph project from last year and extending it - Making it accessible to more newspapers (magazines) - Allowing people to compare one graph to the next (overlapping) - Making the clock work, and the calendar as-well - Making it clearer how information is being spread through internet and how censorship can slow down the process.

Step two, three ideas that came out of mindmap

1. Creative Commons Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. They provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof. The problem I have with creative commons is that people on for example flickr do not know what they are getting into. They are simply giving away their “personal” pictures and allowing advertisement agencies, amongst others, to use their “private” photos for commercial purposes. They are not being paid for this but are only credited for it. This might seem like a very creative way to work but it is truly causing a big problem because photographers get less business, models are no longer needed, and the only people who profit from this are the agencies.

2. Participatory information I am very much interested in citizen journalism. I believe that in a few years the need for professional journalism will disappear and their only job will be collecting information from the internet that citizen are putting on their. Twitter, You Tube and blogs are bringing in so much information everyday from so many angles that the need for professional journalism becomes unnecessary. The only job that remains is selecting the best ones to publish.

3. Internet privacy surveillance Internet privacy and surveillance is ruled and controlled by private companies who make all the decisions. This item has become a major issue especially when it comes to social networks. What is and is not shared is the big question. Also Google controls allot of our internet usage, they control the page rankings and what we see and do not see. Where is this being controlled, and how can we get more information and control on this issue?

Step three, Why? What? How?

Describe project and desired outcome

I want to focus on “citizen journalism”. I believe that in a few years the need for professional journalism will disappear and their only job will be collecting information from the internet that citizen are putting on their. Twitter, You Tube and Blogs are bringing in so much information everyday from so many different angles that the need for professional journalism becomes unnecessary. The only job that remains is selecting the best ones to publish. The question is how legitimate is this information that can be found on Blogs, Twitter, YouTube etc.? Where is the information coming from, are the users getting information from the journalists or are the journalists getting there information from the users? And how are these “citizen journalist” being credited for there work? My desired outcome would be an interactive participatory newspaper (with photographs, movies, forums, polls) created by amateurs and checked by professionals.

Describe three previous projects:

Mycity.com

I created a new initiative for a website titled “MyCity.com”. It is a social web community, travel-guide and interactive map all in one. Visitors of the site are able to explore the city Amsterdam (or other cities of choice) through the eyes of others. Colored lines and pictograms show the routes and the destinations of its inhabitants. The more people participate the more the contours of the city are revealed and the more information is given. This project was successful because as expected the more people who participated in the website the more the city appeared, bringing both a microscopic view of peoples activities and at the same time building a macroscopic urban and social map. The reason I decided to make this project was because I wanted to give people the opportunity to explore the city in the way that its inhabitants explore it, rather than explore it as an ordinary tourist.

Contemporary City Guides

I translated the website parole.aporee.org into a series of books. While I was analyzing the site I quickly was confronted with the complex nature if its navigation. The most important goal I set for myself was to create structure and clarity to my design. I made a set of five “contemporary city guides”, for every continent one. I created a loose-leaf system of observable folding booklets, ordered and easy to take with you on your travels. Or even better, have you experience the travel without actually going somewhere. This project was successful because I succeeded in translating the site into a new medium giving it more structure and clarity but maintaining its purpose of informing people of contemporary architectural terms and staying close to its actual design. The reason I decided to work on this project was because I found the content of the website very useful but the way it was executed not, and found it a test for myself to take the useful information and give it a form that best expresses its quality and use.

Internet News Graph

I created an interactive graph that focuses on four different newspapers from four different continents. The graph collects headlines of each newspaper and places them within the graph according to the time and date that they are released. In this way you are able to see the exact time that headlines are being published and the delay some newspapers have according to others. The graph also allows you to search for particular words, the words are then highlighted thereby giving you a visual image of the published time of each newspaper and the amount of headlines that are being written about your particular word search. I believe that this project was successful because it truly gave you a understanding of what the newspapers of each continent are more focused on, how long it takes the newspapers to publish and allows you to read the same articles in four different view points. The reason I made this graph is because I wanted to show a different way of perceiving and viewing the vast quantities of information the internet is giving us.

Describe what you want to do:
I want to create a type of wikipedia that creates a platform where people collect events, happenings etc. each day into a type of document. A newspaper that completely relies on its participants to grow.

Describe why you want to do it:
The reason I want to do this is because the information is out there but its spread out so much that its hard to get a good overview of everything that is happening. I want create a structured controlled space where the information can be collected, compared and critiqued in one overview. But it is not only about collecting and structuring information it is also about showing the people that the information that they are sharing is seriously being read, and giving them the idea that they are honestly participating in world events.

Describe how you attend to achieve it:
I want to create a wiki that creates a new page each day and is open for public use. Or I want to create a website that collects information from different social medias and places them into a site day by day.

Describe the criteria by which you would deem it a success:

People need to participate.
People need to trust the information that is given (just like on wikipedia)
It most not become a popularity contest

User:Renee Oldemonnikhof/Final Project Proposal

Contents

Ideas for my exam project 2011

Step one, writting down three subjects that interest me

Step two, three ideas that came out of mindmap

Step three, Why? What? How?

Links/Inspiration