Latest Unsymposium VoxPops

Patrick has a long, good post on the 80/20 rule, networks and structure. Good read if you want to think about how it relates to networks. Shannen is living proof of the small world that Watts and Barabási discuss, while Kate engages with the long tail and its relation to economics. Holly applies all this to the recent election battle over Indi (Obama also cracked this with his first campaign, which everyone has been trying to imitate ever since), which is very much long tail and relied heavily on social media resources. Lina highlights a very important passage about how linking is not random, In the very simple example from the unsymposium even in writing an academic essay in hypertext linking is not random as a result is both a power law distribution, and a meaningful structure. Lina also has a good introduction to power laws, using bell curves to help think about their difference. Brittany discusses the ‘rich get richer’ reading which is about preferential linking and also the advantages that first movers gain.

Vacant Possession

Quite a few of the terms for Niki haven’t been used (for a variety of reasons). We’re now letting groups use empty terms if they like. So, if you are in a group that’s been given a term, and it is empty, but you are planning to put something in there, then please, immediately, get in there and leave some placeholder text saying the term is occupied, and there will be content happening shortly. Anything that remains empty is ripe for others to use.

Networky Stuff

Lucy has comments on the 80/20 rule, and its relation to the Web where 80% of links point to 15% of pages. This is why linking matters, it is how you build and nurture the long tail (and that the tail is where immense niche value lies). Lucy also discusses the second reading noting how the web isn’t static, its structure changes over time, and that hubs and connectors are important attributes of these sorts of networks, which occur in nature and online. Prani discusses the long tail, though it isn’t so much about being niches as that niches become viable in dramatically different ways courtesy of power law distributions and the long tail. Lauren tackles power laws, awkwardly but the discussion is good (must be the science). Nga on the long tail, with links to two useful clips. Danielle on the long tail, recommendation systems, and supply and demand, Tamrin with more detail on retail, long tail and the marketplace. Rebecca S has a joyfully scattered meander about long tails with various swishes along the way, it’s an excellent read. And Lauren M has notes from Watts and networks and nodes. there are lots of questions in other posts about why. Hope we get a chance to colour that in.

From the Niki

What’s niki about you ask?

  • make something that others can use, to make to leave behind things for others
  • (this was the founding rationale and ethos of the internet)
  • learn how to make small things easily, and to learn from these so that they, and you, get better
  • (the age of monuments might be in decline?)
  • a viable model for media making is small things, that can then be joined
  • (radical aren’t we?, cinema’s used this model for over a hundred years)
  • to learn how to make knowledge in creative ways, you need to be allowed to make knowledge, in creative ways
  • (unless you’d prefer not to be creative?)

The entry on Tim O’Reilly is nice. Ludic, technoliterate, this is what we call code work.

Unsymposium 0.5

Some carry over questions from last week,

  • Can video games be considered hypertext narratives? How/why?
  • How do you actually write a hypertext narrative?
  • Why is hypertext considered influential in the future development of media making and storytelling?

And the new ones:

  • The Long Tail seems to advocate a free-market model for the entertainment industry. Anderson says this model allows for more diversity, however, do you think problems such as a recommendations hierarchy could emerge?
  • Does a network have a centre? Or do we all create centres for our own networks?
  • What does Watts mean when he talks about synchronisation? How does it relate to networks?
  • Anderson states that infinite access to entertainment media is accommodating more niche tastes, encouraging exploration away from a hit-driven culture that thrives on “brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop songs”. Why are these still the most popular, mainstream and successful in our entertainment culture?

08 Reading (For Week 9)

Required

Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. This is the introduction from this book. Short, very general but lays out some important general ideas and terms. (PDF)

Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. The MIT Press, 2006. Print. (PDF). This could be experienced as dense. It is great work that combines critical theory, technology studies, technological understanding (Galloway knows how to do things with code and computers, as opposed to knowing how to do things on computers) to think about the significance of ‘protocol’ as a social and technological requirement online. I’ve set this reading because it brings together technical and philosophical understanding very well, as well as making some interesting points about something that is specific to the internet as a sociotechnical thing.

Optional

Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. “Theoretical Frameworks” (PDF)

This is the first chapter which is a survey come overview of key theories to think about culture and technology and their relation. This covers a lot of material. Some of you will enjoy it for its range and the theorists and ideas it introduces, others will pick up bits and pieces and others perhaps a bit lost. This is straightforward writing (this book was a set text for this subject in 2006 or 2007) that I enjoy as it covers a lot of ideas, contextualising them very well in the process.

Small World Networks

Chantelle looks at the Barabási readings on networks, paying particular attention to the 80/20 rule (which also describes blogging activity in network media). Kevin also discusses the 80/20 distribution, power laws, preferential attachment and growth. Preferential attachment and growth are important because it is how networks work, and also before being figured out our models for networks tended to think of them as static, and random. Olivia picks up the stuff about power laws, which is the maths behind the long tail. Anna D has a nice post about getting lost and bored, going elsewhere, returning, then a moment where things went click. Louisa discusses 80/20 and wonders if 20% of employees really do generate 80% of profits. Certainly at a university there would be an affinity between 20% producing 80% of the research, and I would suspect research income. Also with the blogs I don’t bother with accurate numbers but there would certainly be no more than 30 very active bloggers in network media out of 130, and in tutorials it is clear that most questions come from a very small group… Samuel mentions power laws and links to A list tech and tech culture blogger Jason Kottke’s post on power laws. Brittany discusses the economics of the long tail, and repeats Anderson’s ‘three rules’.

Splot

Is a term we should all adopt. Thank you Courtney. Story is what a story is about, plot is the order in which it is told. We reconstruct the story from the plot. Story is also sometimes used as the term to describe what happened, and plot is the reason for why this happened. In narratology, the study of narrative as specific sorts of structures and systems, we use the first concept more. Story are the events that happen, plot is how it is narrated.

Unsymposium, more VoxPops

Rebecca has unsymposium dump of notes. They won’t make sense if you weren’t there. James comments on ‘what rhymes with shop’. The point of the example was not to show that authors can’t trick, but that we all think reason is sovereign, comes first, because we think we are in charge and at the end of the day this is much the same as thinking our minds are what is in charge and we’re in charge of our minds. The ‘trick’ is to show that rhyme tricks reason in very simple ways, that reason and logic is very easily conned, seduced, lulled, and so on. Cognitive science knows this, brain biologists and chemists know this, lots of contemporary critical theorists know this. In the same way that every semester attendance declines by approximately 50% when the weather changes. In semester one it is after the first real cold snap. In semester two the first warm one. We all think we’re in charge of our minds and decisions, but this is nature and biology. In winter it is hibernation mode. In spring it is sex, once that sun kicks in your body is all hormones and the last thing nature intended a young body to do in spring is sit still in a windowless room and listen to people talk for 50 minutes. This drop in attendance happens even semester, every year, and always coincides with the change in the weather. It is a conceit to think that 50% of you all ‘decide’ not to come at the same time, the pattern is that consistent, and the numbers that high, that it isn’t a decision that is ‘made’ in the sense of deciding the red shoes or the blue shoes. It is our biology deciding for us.

In relation to writing or making stuff. I know plenty of people who picked the ‘twist’ in Fight Club and The Sixth Sense within a few minutes. This doesn’t make the work successful or not as whether a work ‘works’ is not defined by whether or not it achieves what the author intended. For example, I make propaganda for the Nazi party. I want people to despise several other groups in society to the point where we are happy to execute millions of people. My intention as a maker is clear. Apparently it has worked well. If we think quality equals integrity of my intent then Nazi propaganda needs to be considered as some of the highest creative work we have created. It isn’t. Intent is not what matters, for quality, judgement, and aesthetic experience. Except to the extent as mentioned in the symposium that we take it to be a meaningful thing that intends to say something, and then the game becomes what do we think it wants or is trying to say. But it, not the author or maker. (In the case of something like The Sixth Sense for instance is it the author, screenwriter, director, editor, or is this a Star Trek Borg hive mind where five people’s minds have melded into one?)

I hear the comment that it is really a symposium. Except the unsymposium is pickking up the unconference movement. A symposium would be defined in advance, contributors would prepare material a long time in advance, possibly even share their papers before hand. Here the questions or prompts don’t come from the speakers, and we don’t know what the other is going to say. The difference might appear small, but in surrendering some of the agenda to you it is qualitatively different to what a symposium ordinarily is.

Jackie has great questions about what would be shared in a hypertextual work. This is precisely the question that needs to be considered. There are lots of good answers, and so the problem it poses is how to craft a meaningful pattern rather than just experience it as difference or chaos. We won’t get there this semester, but this is what we explore in Integrated Media when we begin to make works with these qualities and then want to think about the sort of story and experience that could or should be made available.

Long Tail Vox Pops

Victoria has useful list. Key point? The long tail lets what we might think of as ‘minor’ but deeply important works to find an audience, survive, and be available. Courtney uses the long tail to think about blogs and blogging (blogs absolutely exhibit the long tail stuff), and how the long tail intersects with recommendation systems. Jackie thinks about friendships and connections, and hopefully some of the questions raised will be picked up by the next lot of readings. Dominic picks up on the importance of hubs (dense connectors). It is these hubs that make all the difference in small world networks as it is how you find your way from one point to another. Rebecca My meanwhile discusses Anderson’s three rules of the long tail for online business. Anna C notices that the long tail provides a way to rethink the creative economy online, with crowd sourcing, which didn’t exist when Anderson wrote his article, as a case in point.