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Content creation and distribution has become far cheaper than it was in the past. Whereas in the past you’d have tons of equipment to create television programs today the barriers to entry are lower as a result of which the cult of the amateur is allowed to flourish. As the technology is adopted by more people those who have never studied the theorie point and shoot. What this means is that there is a huge amount of mediocrity on the web. Some like to say that it’s ninety nine percent crap and they’d be right. Why else use a search engine? The cult of the amateur is a great thing because it encourages those who have no training to produce content for others to enjoy. The problem is that they’ve had no training. As a result they’re sloppy. They don’t shoot b-roll. They don’t edit anything and then they put it on the web. What’s worse is that it’s long. Andrew Keen concentrated on audio and really wanted it to promote the sharing of great works and high culture. Instead there has been a steady rise in low culture. This is a debate that goes back to the days of Adorno when public literacy for all became a hot topic. Over time the general level of knowledge increased and so the natural balance returned. Professional journalists are investigative, going out and doing their own research before digesting this information out and writing their pieces. They have an in-depth knowledge of their topic and rather than go off on tangents they are going to backup everything they say with facts. I listened to a woman present her theories about one topic a few days ago and she always said “I did this” and “I did that”, a few days letter I listened to journalists, ambassadors and other professionals speak about how “we did these things” and “we did those things”. They often looked at creating a sense of a community or group of people working on an idea. The point is that whilst everyone has opinions which they want to share not all of them have the credentials to provide the content. Whilst as individuals our knowledge is not detailed enough to be of value if all of us work together towards a common goal then that work is of a greater value, hence the reason behind wikipedia’s success as a resource. During the Andrew Keen conversation talent was discussed and whether it is natural or whether it takes years to aquire. The discussion focused on the gatekeepers and how they were there to find talent, polish it and then commercialise it. He saw the value of transparency for trust. Both evidence and backing up the information help make resources more reliable. As a student you learn that there is no point in writing something down until you have found someone to backup your sentiment with research. Andrew Keen, to get a definite rise out of the crowd referred to bloggers as a mob and who can blame him. Whilst Journalists go out and interview people and do a lot of background research before writing about their topic of interest bloggers tend to go on what others have written. Whilst listening to this it brought up thoughts about how blogging would be better for content analysis since it is easier to read a collection of articles and write about them than to go out and get access to all those of interest. Andrew Keen made the remark that many blogs do not have original content, recycling what they found on a variety of resources. At one point Keen did accept that his book was written tongue in cheek and that whilst the book had a lot of success in Canada and England the Americans did not understand his point of view. He went on to say that he knew who he was writing it against rather than who he was writing it for. He said that it was a response to digital eutopians. At this point he made clear that he was not a technological determinist but a social one. In other words he believes that people, rather than technology determine the type of life and interaction we have with our environment. Towards the end of his conversation he spoke about web 3.0 as the rediscovery of expertise and professionalism, point which agrees with one of my earlier posts. He wanted the information economy to be about distributed trusted content. He also wanted it to be given a solid backbone. During the Q&A one person asked him whether he was a troll searching to annoy people through the writing of his book. He answered humourously that bloggers don’t read books. It was a clear and deliberate provocation but it was clear that he meant this as a joke rather than a direct attack. I don’t agree with all of the points made by Andrew Keen but he does make some interesting and valid points about the future of the media. it’s something that we must all think about. Culture production is an important aspect of our lives and it would be a shame, after centuries of hard work, to promote works of mediocrity. Finally if you would like to listen to the speech in person it can be found at this address

There are many podcamps but Podcampuk was my podcamp. This was an event which was similar to just one previous experience. It was an event where everyone you talked to had at least one website and others may have had several. They also used twitter and prepared radio programs. What is great about the podcast UK crowd is that they’re a creative entrepreneurial group. Rather than take a 9 to 5 job some work as freelancers. They have a variety of skills from drivers to information technology people, university and schoolteachers and more. They range in age from mid twenties and upwards. It’s a nice sample of people. When I arrived on Friday night I heard John Buckley talk about his podcast Dissident Vox and it was interesting to see him describe the cost of creating podcasts. He was talking about time. For certain topics he would spend more than seventy hours researching the topic in order to gain an in depth understanding of his topic. Another podcaster mentioned how the personal nature of podcasts, reaching their audience through earphones, meant that he should be careful about how to present his research. In reality certain podcasters are highly informed people who want to present their ideas and worry as much as academics about what they present. Podcasting I simpler than some thought initially. One great example of this is the presentation by Jason Jarrett who talked about how he had complicated his own life when learning about podcasting. Equipment requirements for podcasting are not as great as some had expected. He talked about how he had purchased one piece of technology and then another to attempt to resolve an issue he was having, sound in just one ear. It’s only after a few weeks that he was informed that the problem was mono sound. He was a great presenter getting many laughs from his audience. Another presenter that was of interest is the one by Trevor Dann from the Radio Acadamy talking about broadcasting. What I got from his presentation is the contrast between professional sports and broadcasting. In both mediums people who are at the top of the scale can make really good money whilst those at the bottom do so mainly for the pleasure. One point which I thought was of particular interest was that of amateur cricket players not taking money away from the professionals. In other words both could cohabit quite easily. I really appreciated that sentence. For months or even years I have been worrying about the new media and what effect it will have on me whilst I look for work. If more and more people want to get content for free and appreciate mediocrity would this mean that there is less space for professional content to be in demand. According to that speech I understood that whilst people’s consumer habits are changing the need and appreciation of well-produced work will still be great enough to make a living. In effect both complement each other. As more and more people pick up a microphone and camera to create their content so the same passion from amateur footballers watching the best of the best is transposed from the amateur viewer to the professional player. Podcasting has a great diversity of talent and some participants of podcamp UK looked at this from an education point of view. Joe Dale from the Isle of Wight was telling us about how he was using podcasting within the classroom. He is in charge of students ranging from 7 years and up and encourages them to create audiovisual content which will help them learn French. They have to produce, write and script their own shows. As a result of this they are involved in improving their written work as well as their aural skill. This is a great, and for young students, far more fun way of learning. It also creates an opportunity to link with people living in different parts of the world. If you’re in England and you’re learning one language then via the World Wide Web it is easy to reach a global audience who may give feedback as to how you could improve. What made Podcamp UK so interesting is the European flavour of the event. One person travelled from Rome to be there whilst UK podcasters came from everywhere in England. As a result of this we saw what the British podcast environment has to offer rather than be limited by what’s going on in San Francisco. I’m glad I got to meet so many interesting individuals with so many interesting projects and I hope to remain in contact with them and see how their ideas progress. It was a great look at the podcasting sub-culture and how it’s progressed in parallel with mainstream media.

I would love to go back to the countryside where I can sleep whenever I choose and wake up when I can. I love being around people, going out and partying but I also love being able to sleep and waking up to the sound of silence. It’s been hard these past few weeks with all the work I’ve been doing in the academic sphere. I would go to sleep between 10pm and midnight were it not for the drunks making noise till 3am and the cleaners and others making noise from 9am onwards. Six hours to sleep is plenty of sleep… theoretically. When you’re woken by the sound of others though and prevented from sleeping by the sound of some then the countryside’s pull is really strong. I’m day dreaming of getting out of the suburbs. They’re the worst of bost world. They’re crap because everyone commutes into town for work yet they’re not deep enough in the countryside to allow for the freedom to walk for hours without interruptions. I want silence. I’m exhausted at the moment, longing for nothing more than a full week of sleep cycles where nothing but my mind wake me up. The villager in me is stronger than the urbanite and that’s clearly visible.

Going out is great, especially to an empty night club when friends of yours are present. It immediately becomes less fun when one friend decides to enjoy the freedoms of nature on a fence whilst a police car is rolling past. At the time I was sitting in a kitchen with my back to the window when I hear the siren go off. What’s the cause of this I wonder and lookout. I spot two people I know and immediately I understand what they were doing. Harmless engineering term, up to you to figure out which one. A friend standing behind me decides to yell out of the room “stop them, they’re terrorists” which in itself would be a harmless joke except for bored policemen. They decided to give the guy they had interrupted when nature calls an £80 fine. That’s annoying for anyone who’s been fined. You know the feeling. It became more interesting when those two people came up to see me and ask whether I had caused those problems. Having a clear conscience I answered that I had not been the one to land them in trouble. Ok, who did, was the next response. This person Ok, now the situation escalated. At this point, both people knew who was responsible for what and they were willing to fight. I used all of my body strength to come between both individuals because I did not want to see a fight take place when I was a key witness in the unfolding events. No fight took place but the echauffement definitely did. I was asked to leave the flat although I had done my best to avoid a fight and everyone went their separate ways. That’s definitely not what I want to have to deal with after spending so much time and effort on the dissertation. When I wake up I’ll spend some more time adding the finishing touches to my dissertation before handing it in. Goodnight

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of podcasts. Probably 5-10 a day on average. I go through one collection of podcasts and once that one is finished I move onto another. As a result of this, the culture of those I am listening to is sinking through. Yesterday I listened to four or five of NBC’s meet the press and I found them interesting. I wasn’t always paying attention to what they were saying but it did make a change. I recently listened to the whole of the Net@night series and the previous series on the RSS feed as well. As a result, I’ve learned quite a bit about new technology. It’s been fun. It’s about web 2.0 and how everything is “innovative” although ten years ago people were doing the same it was called differently. It’s all O’reilly’s(sp?) fault. Today I listened to something quite interesting. It’s the Mac break weekly recorded in Dolby headphone surround or some similar tech. It’s interesting because it does paint an auditory landscape. Leo Laporte was in front whilst the girls on that podcast, Justine and Kendra were to the right, and the guests, whilst two others were to the left. Walking to the shops with that sound was a little disorienting at first but I grew used to it and it’s more fun. I want to hear more podcasts recorded with that technology. I am going through a phase of cultural assimilation. I watch and listen to all these podcasts that are coming from the US and as a result, I’m starting to absorb the culture. I’m telling myself that I should move to SFO where municipal wifi is a reality rather than a dream. We’ll see what I do once university is finished and I have the rest of my life in front of me. We may find that the work experience module teaches me to think more creatively about getting a job. If it does then it’s truly worth writing up tomorrow when I get up. I’m rambling so I’ll leave you to wait for the next post. Ciao ciao

Twitter is a global short messaging system that allows people to post what they are doing 140 characters at a time. For the moment it is a relatively new phenomenon therefore it’s not too hard to keep track of the conversations going on. They are also geo logged. As you’re watching people’s messages you can see China say that they’re getting ready for the night ahead whilst in Europe people are going out to lunch. In the US people are complaining about having to wake up early in order to catch their planes, go for walks or in certain cases go to bed. It’s amusing and it’s reminiscent of ten years ago when I spent 13hrs in a chatroom at a time when spending ten minutes online was expensive. it’s cyclical. One thing is popular, then is replaced by something else before becoming popular again. One difference this time is the technology used. Google maps show where in the world people are tweeting from whilst the twitter site simply shows what people have written. It’s amusing to watch the world and what people are doing in it.

Dear Victim, Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions.   This type of activity could have a detrimental effect on our network and therefore we cannot allow this to continue.   Should you continue to exceed the daily download limit we will, unfortunately, be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your users could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Regards Appallingly crappy ISP —————————- I’m a third-year media student who has spent the past decade online practically every day. I know where to find content. I understand the nature of the medium. I’m not your garden variety fifty-five-second user. I’m the type of user that would wake up every morning and download a gigabyte or more a day when at home. I go to the uni network and I’ve downloaded 600 megs within about ten minutes and my daily allowance is a pathetic 500 megs. Five hundred megs is not even one full copy of Linux. Some video podcasts are over a hundred megs each. Podcasts can be up to 100 megabytes in size. I hate their false advertising and promises. I have no choice though, I’m not the one selecting the ISP. afterthought Where did Yahoo go wrong with their implementation of advertising along the same lines as google? They took two years longer than they should have to implement what belonged to them. I hope they go bankrupt.

At one time a website called mp3.com existed to facilitate the sharing of music. I enjoyed this website and downloaded quite a lot of music from there. At the time the idea was to share music for free. It was in the days before myspace grew in popularity. The site is http://amiestreet.com/ There is one slight difference: All songs on Amie Street start FREE and can rise to 98 cents. We’re about discovery, not raiding your wallet. That’s perfect. If it’s good they make money, helping to fund the website and the artists and if it’s not that popular yet then lot’s of people getting it for free means more advertising. It’s an interesting idea

In less than twenty four hours there will be a total eclipse of the sun that will give us a red moon and this should be interesting to see. Back in 1999 I was in Salzburg for the total eclipse of the sun by the moon. I was almost within the area of totality. It was over 99%. There is nothing like a total eclipse of the sun. At the start you see hundreds of people go into the square and look up at the sky. You see the moon eating up the sun. Over time you see that more than half is eaten. Then you see three quarters and you approach totality. At the time I wasen’t spending too much time looking at the process as I was looking for shots for the video. I climbed up the road to the castle and turned around. As I did so I saw all the birds fly away and I saw a grey shadow racing across the landscape. Hundreds of flashes started going off and people started to make noise in excitement. Totality was here. The light was grey, with no depth, then it was night. As it was night I looked up and saw the corona that forms, where the solar flares are twelve kilometers long, visible because the sun’s main mass is blocked by the moon. Totality is over within a few seconds and day comes back. Many people have enjoyed this event. It’ll be another century for most people to see the next one. That’s why I want to see the red moon, that’s why I’d prefer seeing a silver ball turn reddish. That red is formed by the refraction of sun in the earth’s atmosphere being sent to the moon and bouncing back to give us a splendid sight, as long as there are no clouds

The more time you spend online the more headlines and articles you read, the more you see mass idiocy. Every time a phone comes out that’s slightly similar to the iPhone they rant about how similar to the iPhone it is. It’s not. There are several models of phones preceding it. My phone is very similar in design to the Samsung f700 but I’ve had it since October/November of the year. It’s got a touch screen and the slide-out keyboard and it’s got all the synchronization features. Why has Apple become the standard for a product they’re not even releasing to the market for another half a year. What a lot of excitement for a device that’s more of a gimmick than anything else. The iPhone is for the myspace generation. Those who are looking for entertainment value in electronic devices rather than usefulness. How are you going to write notes in lectures with the i-phone? One of the things I hate most about web 2.0 is that it’s all about hype, what’s popular, what’s not. What does the mass want, what doesn’t it want? Why is everything over-simplified to such an extent? At the moment you can’t open a paper without the aftermath of the CBB article being rammed down your media-saturated throat yet intelligent articles like “Identity and Migration” by Francis Fukuyama published in Prospect for February 2007 goes unnoticed. It’s a well-written article that looks in-depth at the issues that are relevant to the future of the international community as a whole. The disjuncture between one’s inner and outer selves comes not merely out of the realm of ideas, but from the social reality of modern market democracies. After the American and French revolutions, the ideal of la carrière ouverte aux talents was increasingly put into practice as traditional barriers to social mobility were removed. One’s social status was now achieved rather than ascribed; it was the product of one’s talents, work, and effort rather than an accident of birth. One’s life story was the search for fulfilment of an inner plan, rather than conformity to the expectations of one’s parents, kin, village or priest. One of the strongest arguments within the article is this one: The first prong of the solution is to recognise that the old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, and that it needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences—and in some cases out of imperial guilt—it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members. Liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral, since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives. There are some valid and interesting points within the article. Take a few minutes to read it.