Social Proof/Start of Bibliography

To start this post I want to begin with a preface: this class has been hard for me. I am not against social media by any means, in fact I think it's wonderful that we have it, but I personally don't use it. I am used to doing my own thing most of the time and having to find social proof has been a bit of a stretch for me. 

That being said, I found the way to make this blog post most useful to me was to make a working bibliography of what my classmates have said as well as to list other sources where my topic has been discussed.

Here is my working bibliography:

Audrey Blake has a great blog about civil disobedience and the internet: http://sittinginherenglishgarden.blogspot.com/2010/06/thoreauvian-vision-coming-to-pass.html

She has also responded to my blog.

There has been a movie made about V for Vendetta:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/v_for_vendetta/

Here is an article about Anonymous and Guy Fawkes masks from slate.com:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2011/12/guy_fawkes_mask_how_anonymous_hacker_group_created_a_powerful_visual_brand.html

Here is an article on Anonymous and V for Vendetta from BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16968689

Here's an article from examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/november-5-anonymous-celebrates-guy-fawkes-day

Here's an article on social network unionism:

http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/anonymous-power-by-felix-stalder-via-viewpoint/

Here's a list of photos from publicintelligence.net:

http://publicintelligence.net/you-cannot-arrest-an-idea/

Wikipedia also has some good articles, as well as other resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_mask

There are lots of resources out there that discuss my topic. It has been interesting to go through a lot of these websites to learn more about V for Vendetta and hacktivism.

Comic Books and Digital Culture

For my fictional book I am reading V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. It is based on an anarchist who uses anonymity to tear down a totalitarian regime and give rule of the people back to the people.

There are so many ways to weave this into digital culture, I've decided to make a short list of promising subjects:

• How the internet is decentralized, or "run by the people"
• How Anonymous is taking down "regimes," and at the same time literally using this graphic novels as one of its symbols
• How the medium of comic books has shifted from a print culture to an online culture
• Online comic books

My favorite topic to pursue is the second one. I think it's fascinating how Anonymous is against centralization or government of the internet, and they use Guy Fawkes masks to represent themselves in public. They are literally acting out much of what the graphic novel is about in a digital universe where physical actions are not possible. It blows my mind a little bit.

Thoughts on Piracy

In chapter 10 of the book we read Derrick Clements talks about how bloggers may figuratively assassinate institutions. His argument is that many in this internet age feel entitled to receive certain things for free when the item is for sale. One example of this would be music piracy. Individuals may feel entitled to the music because they see the price of music as a form of corporate greed.

This is an argument I had with myself for a very long time, in fact for probably around 12 years. It felt unfair that I had to buy an entire album when all I wanted was one or two songs on the album (this was before the music industry realized how lucrative singles could be and started focusing on singles instead of albums, but that's a topic for another day).

When I was 12 years old I had a cd burner, I was the only kid on the block with one. My friends and I would spend hours burning cd's for each other. It was great. My music collection grew and grew. It became ridiculous how much music I had during my teenage years. I would put my incredibly old school, black and blue screened iPod on shuffle and try and find new songs to like because I didn't have time to listen to all my new music. Music was my passion, so how could it be bad to give into something that helped my passion grow?

About three years ago I started to evaluate my life. I'll spare the boring details but I realized that even though I loved music and was supporting starting musicians by attending their shows, that simply wasn't enough. I realized that I had given up my integrity because it was convenient to download music to my iPod that I hadn't purchased. I had "assassinated" the music industry, and without meaning to "assassinated" the musicians I so dearly loved and followed.

Late one night (I had to do it late at night, otherwise I don't think I would have had the tenacity to do it), I started making a list of all the music I needed to delete and buy back. I can't relate how heart-wrenching an experience it was. I deleted the music and started buying all the music back. I'm embarrassed by how much money I've spent (think hundreds, and hundreds), but it was worth it to buy my integrity back and support artists I love.

Along the way I've found there are some amazing artists who have put out songs and even whole albums for free (thank you The Civil Wars!!!). I've also realized that even though there are many ways to route around a bad node, it is not always worth the price.

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though this book was written over 10 years ago, the majority of it is still relevant today. In the 10th Anniversary Edition the authors take the time to evaluate how their work has held up.

One of the great things about this book is how it suggests that the internet is a conversation and that markets are made up of human beings. It is easy to see in today's world how the internet has leveled the playing field between business and the consumer. One example of this is the ability via Twitter for celebrities to interact with their fan base in real time.

While most of the book is still applicable, there are some things that aren't. For example it says that, "we are immune to advertising." If we were immune to advertising there wouldn't be any pop-up ads.

I felt that one of the major oversights in the book is that the premise of the 95 theses assumes that everyone will get on board with the internet. That certainly isn't true today, and I'm not sure it will ever be true.

While the book may be a little dated, it is still a great book to read with relevant principles.

View all my reviews

BYU Directory

This past summer I compiled and edited the BYU Telephone Directory. When I first started thinking about this job, I wondered if a printed directory would still be relevant. For example, my uncle teaches at BYU Idaho and he said that they went to an online version of the directory years ago and that there is no printed directory.

In a meeting I attended with liaisons from all over campus we discussed the issue of having an online directory verses a printed directory and I was surprised when there was an overwhelming amount of support for the printed directory. The reasons given were that it was faster, they could take notes, that it's the way they'd been doing it for years, etc...

In the same meeting there was discussion about a forthcoming app that would put the directory on anyone's smart phone, and all they had to do was to click on the name of the department and it would dial the department.

It was a little bit of dichotomy being there to discuss the printed directory while seeing an app that does the same thing as a directory. It helped me realize that while our culture is turning more and more digital, there are still a lot of people that haven't caught up with the digital age (which is not a bad thing). I feel that as our culture progresses more and more digital, we need to make sure that we don't leave people behind.

The Johnny Cash Project

Today in class when we saw the video of the choir singing it reminded me of a project I particpated in a couple years ago: The Johnny Cash Project. I can't say it was as uplifting as the video we watched, and nowhere near a spiritual experience as Dr. Burton had putting together the video he created, but it was still neat to be part of a project that was open to anyone with an internet connection that had an interest in Johnny Cash.

The Johnny Cash Project was (and still is) a collaborative effort to create the late Johnny Cash's final music video. When I signed up for the project I was assigned a single frame of the video to paint online in any way I wanted. I created the best artwork possible and then posted it on the website for others to view. The way that your artwork makes it into the video is by other users voting it up or down.

I am not an artist, and going in I knew that my artwork would not be chosen, but it was still neat to be able to create artwork that might end up in his video. I was able to vote on others' artwork as well and view some incredible (as well as some pretty unspectacular artwork like mine) art.


Here's a link to the website:

http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/

Here's a link to the YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwNVlNt9iDk


I have a huge background in music. Growing up I played the trombone and I have been in countless ensembles (I actually attended the University of Utah as a music major before my mision). One of the most powerful experiences I have ever had is performing with a full symphony, and since I don't play anymore I miss that quite a bit. Being able to collaborate with others on projects online has been a similar experience for me. Even though my artwork didn't make it into the video, it was still neat to be able to participate in a musical project with thousands of other people.

Map of the Internet

On the first day of class one of the first comments made in the discussion we had about digital culture is the idea of the internet being "real estate." This idea fascinated me and I remembered a website I'd been to that tried to map out the internet.

The map is searchable both by country and by website. It was no surprise to me that Google had the most "real estate," but like I mentioned in my earlier post I was surprised by how small Netflix was. The reason for this is because I'd seen the statistic that Brandon posted about how Netflix makes up 1/4 of all internet traffic in North America. I assumed that other countries used Netflix like we do in the US, which would make Netflix bigger on the map, but apparently other countries don't use Netflix. I wonder what people in other countries use the internet for, whether it's keeping in contact with friends and family, watching video on YouTube or other sites, business, wasting time, etc...

Here's the link:

http://internet-map.net/

The maker of the website also gave a great summary of a lot of the things we've been discussing:

"The Internet global network is a phenomenon of technological civilization, and its exceptional complexity surpasses anything mankind has ever created. In essence, what we are dealing with here is a huge quantity of utterly unstructured information. The Internet map is an attempt to look into the hidden structure of the network, fathom its colossal scale, and examine that which is impossible to understand from the bare figures of statistics."

It's fascinating to me that there is a place that exists on earth that has essentially changed the world, yet none of us have been there (unless you're Kevin Flynn). Through the internet everyone can be connected, and this is the best map I've seen of how the internet is interconnected.