Four guidelines for conquering new media

By Matthew Gillis

After a semester of exploring new media, I’ve decided to reflect on the digital experiences I’ve had and decide which lessons are worth taking with me as I continue to venture into the ever-changing world of technology. I’ve compiled a list of the four biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my digital adventures that one should follow when conquering new media.

1. Create your own new media. As we’ve discovered, we’re all submerged in a world that is dominated by technology (whether we like it or not), and we’re dependent on it in order to function in society. Technology structures the way we maintain communication, from the use of cell phones to Facebook, to how we educate ourselves, from Google searches to social bookmarking. But the biggest lesson I’ve learned from our use of technology is that we have to learn how it works and the best way to do so is by creating our own new media. In the introduction to Douglas Rushkoff’s book Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age, he stresses that in order to maintain control in a world dominated by digital technologies, one must learn how they work to be able to manage his or her everyday life. Learn HTML, start a blog, or make a Twitter. Don’t you want control over your reality?

2. Embrace technology. The benefits of using many of the new media technologies that I’ve written about throughout the semester are seemingly endless. Specifically, social bookmarking sites like Pinterest, Google Reader, and Delicious make gathering information easier and faster than ever before and supplement traditional media forms, such as newspapers and encyclopedias. Take advantage of our culture of shared thinking by connecting with others on LambdaMoo or by sharing your “random, fleeting observations,” which Julian Dibbell describes in “Future of Social Media: Is a Tweet the New Size of a Thought,” on Twitter. Without a doubt, I’ve learned that there’s no harm in trying these technologies, which aim to comfort us and make our lives easier. You’re only doing yourself a disservice if you don’t.

3. New media isn’t perfect. Danah Boyd writes in her article “Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitious Web 2.0 Technologies for Everyday Life,” “As you build technologies that allow the magic of everyday people to manifest, I ask you to consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.” While you should take advantage of the benefits of new media, don’t forget that technology is not perfect, as I’m sure many of you have frustratingly experienced before. Your iPhone could break at any minute, your Wi-Fi could go down without warning, and your Facebook could become hacked. While new technologies usually generate utopian hopes for its users, as Fred Turner describes in “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology,” it’s important to be aware that technology isn’t actually foolproof. In the same token, it’s important to question what you see when using these new technologies. In an age where everyone is a publisher online with sites such as Wikipedia, information is bound to be wrong. We can’t expect that what we’re reading is perfectly correct, or else we all may fall into a culture of misinformed people.

4. Look out for the future. I know it may seem impossible to predict what’s coming next in regard to new media, but I think it’s important to the process of deciding how to interact with the technology around us. As I wrote about it my last post, I believe that technology is headed toward a reduction of information with the use of imagery over text as seen in technologies such as Pinterest and Instagram. It’s important to be prepared for new technologies by educating ourselves about imagery as a communication form, for example, especially because that new media may end up being a part of our everyday lives.

Now go forth and dive into our media-filled world.

Lambda-what?

By Matthew Gillis

I’m assuming that most of you have never heard of LambdaMoo, and I don’t think you’ll ever hear of it again after this. LambdaMoo is described as a “text-based virtual community.” For those of you who are still confused (just as I was), imagine creating a character and his or her virtual world in The Sims and then having all of your creative work converted into text format and pasted into a chat room. Welcome to LambdaMoo.

From the minute I logged into LambdaMoo, I immediately rejected the idea of a virtual community in which you could not see but only read. After spending several minutes trying to understand the site’s new lingo, I then struggled to navigate through the imaginative hallways of this virtual world, all of which only exist in writing. It felt like I was trying to find my way while being blindfolded.

In Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age, Douglas Rushkoff says, “The bias of our interactions in digital media shifts back toward the nonfiction on which we all depend to make sense of our world…” (112). I not only struggled with the technical aspects of LambdaMoo, but I also had a hard time making sense of a virtual reality in which there was little connection (especially visually) to what I experience in daily life. Could I not make sense of a world crafted out of nonfictional text?

Despite my initial struggles, I finally got a hang of the site enough to have a conversation with a veteran user named Kephalos. He said that he had begun using LambdaMoo at the height of its popularity when he was an undergraduate student about 18 years ago. Kephalos explained to me the dynamics of the site and how it was now a ghost town where mostly dedicated users revisited to mingle with old friends they had met through the virtual community. It still amazes me that social networking sites and even text-based virtual reality sites like LambdaMoo have the power to create and sustain relationships. Rushkoff explains, “…The invention of technology gives us the ability to program: to create self-sustaining information systems, or virtual life” (144). Technology is another platform where one has the ability to build and foster friendships.

 

But the number one thing that surprised me about the site is the way my initial impression of it changed. After unintentionally spending close to an hour conversing with various users on LambdaMoo, I began to understand its draw. LambdaMoo functions through the use of one’s imagination. Interacting in the virtual community is like reading a book that you have the ability to write yourself. If I can make sense of a world crafted out of nonfictional text in books, I could sure understand a “novel” that I draft up on my own using LambdaMoo.

However, my conversation with Kephalos taught me the true function of sites like LambdaMoo: it is a way to keep people connected. “If living in the digital age teaches us anything, it is that we are all in this together. Perhaps more so than ever” (Rushkoff 150).

Research trials and tribulations

By Matthew Gillis

After my post last week, I started thinking more about Facebook and its implications on society.

I went straight to Google (obviously). I searched “effects of social networking on society” and glanced at the first sentence or two of each article, returning to Google when necessary.

Quickly, I selected “The Health Effects of Social Networking” by Robert Mackey from The New York Times, not necessarily because I read the entire article and found it useful (because I didn’t), but because the first two sentences seemed promising, and it’s from a credible source. After actually reading the article, I found that it discusses the potentially harmful consequences of the constant stimulation qualities of social networking sites on the brain.

Immediately I thought of the “skimming activity,” which Nicholas Carr describes as the process of hopping from one source to another on the Internet without returning to the previous ones due to a decreased attention span in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” That’s just what I had done. Was my mind no longer capable of concentrating long enough to read an article online?

Next, I turned to Google Scholar. I became extremely frustrated, because I was getting no articles that pertained to social networking, even though I had only spent about five minutes searching.

Finally, searching “Facebook,” I came across an article, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends:’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” which discusses the correlation between Facebook and psychological well-being. For research purposes, I find this article useful in providing an opposing argument for The New York Times article.

Lastly, I turned to Loyola’s library resources for research help. Again, I became frustrated with how difficult (in comparison to Google) it was to find relevant articles. It took about ten minutes to find a useful article using the search “effects of Facebook on society,” which is by Zizi Papacharissi and describes a comparative analysis of several social networks and the way privacy shapes self-presentation. This article provides an interesting outlook on the way social networking sites shape our identities in society.

Throughout my research, I found myself searching for articles that reflected my current attitudes toward social networks, which confirms Douglass Rushkoff’s idea in Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age: “…we overvalue our own opinions on issues about which we are ill informed, and undervalue those who are telling us things that are actually more complex than they look on the surface” (66). Not only was I facing the struggle of a reduced attention span, but I was also avoiding learning anything new about the particular subject.

However, I did learn something.

Steve Kolowich’s article, “What Students Don’t Know” is accurate in saying that students overuse Google and don’t know how to properly use scholarly search engines. I’m not claiming to know the answer to what has caused this new lack of concentration and avoidance of effort, but until these search engines are as efficient and easy-to-use as Google, I don’t see myself or other students switching loyalties.

When it comes to getting knowledge in the age of Google, we’re impatient and lazy.

Technology: an uncontrollable monster?

By Matthew Gillis

Overwhelmed. This is the only emotion I can distinguish after reading the introduction to Douglas Rushkoff’s Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age.  I keep coming back to the same question: do the digital technologies we willingly choose to be a part of actually have control over our individual realities?

To put this uncontrollable digital monster into a more manageable context, I’ll use photography. When I take a picture, the lens in which I’m looking through presents a portion of the world. I, being the photographer, am able to choose what aspects of the scene I want shown in the frame of the image. These deliberate decisions reflect my position as the producer of each image and show my role in constructing a new or altered reality for the viewer of these photographs. I have the ability to omit or highlight aspects of the scene.

As a photographer, I am responsible for both understanding how to use the camera and also how to produce my desired image, because I am shaping a potential viewer’s idea of reality. I am in agreement with Rushkoff, who similarly believes we are responsible for knowing how to use technology and being able to program, or create, it. Photographers are creating “reality” through images, while programmers are creating technology that is able to think and operate, controlling our realities and, ultimately, us (Rushkoff 21).

If we choose to ignore that photos aren’t necessarily reflections of true reality, we choose to be falsely influenced. Doesn’t this seem similar to Rushkoff’s idea that failing to understand programming of technologies, which control our realities, is choosing to be programmed?

Going back to my original question, I have come to an answer: yes.

I think it’s our duty as consumers of technology to be able to discuss the function of technology. If it’s our job as a society to shape each technology’s use and meaning, according to “What’s New About New Media?,” then isn’t it equally our responsibility to be able to understand how to use it and how to create it?