I feel like I may have already alluded to this in my discussion of the week four unlecture.  The idea that social networking and other online communities don’t provide you with any content.  In fact the content is provided by the people who use it, the websites just provide the means by which you do it, and yet these companies still make millions even billions of dollars by selling your details to commercial companies.  Adrian highlighted the fact that he does not use networks such as Facebook because they make there money by selling things that we provide and that we do and we never see any of that money returned to us.  In fact all people really must do in order to make money in this social networking industry is find a new and exciting way in which people will freely and willingly generate there own content.

The reading by Lev Manovich quoted the editors of the Mediamatic  Journal as saying that “A growing nuber of organizations are embarking on ambitious projects .  Everything is being collected: culture, astroids, DNA patterns , credit records, telephone conversations; it doesn’t matter.”  The reading suggests that the World Wide Web is a way in which we store millions of data and we link it to other data – “therefore every website is a type of database.”  In the lecture Adrianshowed us a site called the faces of Facebook on which somebody had collated every single user of Facebook’s display picture and collated them in order that the person joined.  If you click on the photograph you are taken to that persons profile – thus it is a massive data base where information about the sixth of the world’s population is stored and accessible to all.

The way that people are raised, the experiences that we have, and the different places we come from affect the way in which we interpret films, books and art. Although the artist, author or director may have a particular way that they want something to be interpreted they cannot make 100% sure that this will be the case.  If they could do so it would almost serve the same roll as propaganda, brainwashing people to conform to a certain belief, making everybody the same.  THANK GOD for being unique., thank God we have the freedom to interpret films, books and art – if everybody had the same opinion and experience then the world would not be a very exciting place

Can you imagine a world of cafes and vintage stores who sell books!  Where people have prized collections of novels and collect the now ‘vintage’ book.  One day people will collect books like they collect vinyl.  Where having a bookshelf full of books will be like having a record player and a pile of records.  Granted the lecture this week was not highlighting that this was coming any time soon, the technology of e-readers is not yet good enough to compel people to ditch the books.  I think that people still like the feel of books, still like being able to turn the page and be able to highlight and write on the page.   So although maybe one day books maybe classified as ‘vintage’ I think that day is a long way away.

The reading (Books without pages novels without endings) led me to look at the debate of book Vs. film.  Both are a form by which people can receive/be told a story and in my opinion one is not better than the other.  I think perhaps a film is  a more relaxed way to receive a story, we are given what the characters look and sound like, along with setting and environment.  Books on the other hand, are defiantly a longer and personal way or receiving a story.  Readers are left to imagine everything that a film will show you thus allowing for more hypertext.

The reading uses the same example which I am also going to use – that of my favourite novel Pride and Prejudice.  For me the film or adaptation from book to screen which I like most is directed by Joe Wright, staring Keira Knightley.  For me it captures the characters of Mr and Mrs Bennet the way that I had always pictured they would be, however like many films based on Austen novels it lacks her wit and insight into human behaviour.  I think that it will always be hard for a film to convey these things about Austen without using a narrator however this would not reflect the subtle ways in which Austen includes ‘her own voice’ in her writings.  In terms of book to film adaptations once you have seen the film it is hard to go back and read the book without hearing the voices and seeing the faces that are used in the film, something that I take as a negative impact that film has had on books.

I walked away pondering a couple of issues raised in this lecture.  First is that we have no real way of telling where this industry of media is heading next.  In order to be successful in a career we have to be adaptable.  We need to be able to constantly roll with changing demographics and technologies if we are to keep up with this world where, thanks to amazing outlets such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook; all people can be producers of media.   Thus linking to my second issue that the world of media no longer need people who will produce information and news because the global community will already do this for free.  When news breaks it is no longer first recorded by news stations but by ordinary people at the scene who make a post on Facebook or Twitter and even attach videos and photographs.  Rather what the world of media is looking for is the next big platform that will allow this information to be communicated.

Imaging the perfect world and then what may be required to make that world function properly and make life easier.  Then the idea that all of this will one day, most likely be possible.