What Does Ethical Social Networking Software Look Like? — The Message — Medium

This is a site that has just garnered a lot of attention. It is presenting itself as an alternative to FaceBook and Twitter (app.net is also promoting itself as a Twitter alternative). The main difference is the desire to not sell you stuff, or sell your social profile to others. What Does Ethical Social Networking Software Look Like? — The Message — Medium.

However, this post, on Ello, points out some of the problems with these claims.

Work in the Media | Deuze | Media Industries

Mark Deuze is a key academic in the area of media and labour. I haven’t read this yet but suspect it is a good pointer of the sort of precarious labour that creative professionals very much find themselves within in contemporary media industries. (This is also one of the reasons why many of our graduates end up as reasonably high level managers in production houses, government agencies and so on – there’s a guaranteed salary each week.)

Work in the Media | Deuze | Media Industries.

Networked Practices

This brief article is about Vine (an app we used to get media for interactive projects in a second year subject), what’s interesting for me is not the shortness (in an industrial age dominated and paid for by the 30 second commercial I don’t think anyone in media is in a position to point fingers about short duration works) but how this is an example of those ways in which access to audiences and big institutions is changing.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/21/famous-vine-stars-jack-and-jack-shawn-mendes-liane-valenzuela

Self Assembling Robots

These are small robots that have the capacity to self assemble into ‘architectural’ forms. This is a very big change, and while we can get all whatever about tech determinism the key thing I’d take from it is that it is a networked/distributed model of organisation. Small pieces that only know enough to do enough, rather than our older intellectual models which assumed you needed to know all of something to be able to do anything. For example software companies once thought you needed a very strict design document to write code, but agile development showed that wasn’t the case. Then software companies thought you needed centralised command and control to write any major software, open source development demonstrated that that is not the case. Companies once thought that the top of the organisation had to be in charge of all, and that is no longer the case, and in education we once thought the teacher had to know all and somehow just communicate this to students. Likewise, the internet as a scale free network just happened, and just happens, with no central command and control decision making. This is a big theoretical change in how we understand the world, a move from centres (the brain, one part of the brain, some sort of dominating ideology or institution) to realising that there aren’t really centres (to the body, to the brain, to the world).

Oyster, Unlimited Books on your Phone

Relevant to recent discussions here, oyster is a service that let’s you subscribe for $10 a month and it works like a book library. Get as many books as you like. It is like last.fm or spotify for books, haven’t looked at it yet but the design experience looks good. The article on wired is worth a read.

Things to notice. It is not selling books, it is selling a service. It relies on mobile media, it is not selling ‘things’, it is subscription based which means an ongoing revenue model.

Must Read

This excellent blog post is about advertising, design, and young creatives. Everything it says could and does apply to TV, radio, print, and our own university. If you want a snapshot of what your future career looks and feels like, and what you need to know and do to not be only the service company that films the clip once everyone else has decided what it is going to look and feel like, then read this. If you have questions, ask, in the blog, your blog, the unsymposium, classes. My favourite line, btw:

It’s amazing that so many agencies get away with saying they’re innovative but have nothing to show. Oh so you love being innovative so much that you never create anything internally? You’re creativity stops at client work does it? Do us a favour, stop the bullshit.

And as a teacher, my take away is that if you’re not at uni to be tested and extended and challenged, then what the fuck are you doing wasting your time here?