Black Mirrors

While I didn't always enjoy the topics discussed in the season one episodes of "Black Mirrors", they brought up very thought-provoking topics regarding media and technology use. They discussed dependency and ethics and caused me to think differently about how my life is influenced my media and technology.

The first episode, which we watched in class, was the most realistic to me about our world today. No new technology was introduced, it merely raised a question about how dependent our lives are on technology. To me, this seemed like a very real scenario in which a person of power was blackmailed into doing something inappropriate in public, in order to save the life of another person in power.

The following two episodes seemed to be set in the future and, to me, required a bit of imagination for them to be believable. The second episode was confusing to me because I didn't feel that enough context was provided. During this episode, I was more questioning the logistics than their media use. The final episode of season one seemed like it could be possible in the near future, and drew a strong connection to the book "Feed". While there may be some conveniences to being able to conjure up memories at any time and replay them, the people in this episode were living in their past memories and not trying to make new ones with the people they love.

Overall, I found these episodes to be very thought-provoking and I have since been questioning my media use. It took me a while to understand the title "Black Mirrors", but even the title sparks questions for me now, as I have since been noticing people constantly checking their reflection in the black screens of their phones and other technology.

Geek Heresy: Chapter 3

In this chapter of Geek Heresy, Toyama discusses the idea that technology may not be entirely to blame for our reliance on it. He discusses some of the ways in which technology has instead adapted to our lives and our needs. This has caused our addiction to the technology, and not the other way around.

It is very easy to see a pattern in how we adapt to new technologies. This generally happens in four phases. The first phase involves the recognition of a problem, which leads to the second phase of determining how technology can be used to solve that problem. The third stage involves finding the faults in the technology and either adapting to them or fixing them. And the final stage is the domestication of the technology. In this final phase, the technology is now ordinary and accepted; it is no longer viewed as a threat.

Toyama recognizes these phases and blames our addiction to technology on the fact that these addictive tendencies have been in existence for some time, the technology just amplifies them. He uses an example of a clothing line that itches those who wear the clothes. These clothes won't create demand in the market, and therefore won't sell. Instead of items becoming popular due to their creation of a demand, products become popular because they satisfy a demand in the market that already existed. Technology was and is created to fill a demand, it does not itself create the demand.  

Geek Heresy: Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of Geek Heresy, by Kentaro Toyama, discusses the introduction of technology into the school systems in worse off countries and its impact on the education that the students receive. There seems to be the general thought that if everywhere in the world can be on the same level playing field, technology wise, then every country will have access to the same resources and no one will be worse off than others. This chapter caused me to rethink that notion and reminded me of the week I spent in an inner-city Buffalo middle school over winter break.

Everyone seems to think that if you give a child access to the latest technology, they will be able to learn as much as another average student, and at the same rate. However, that is not true. Just because everyone may have the same access to technology, does not mean that they all know how to use it in the same manner so as to reap the same benefits. Not only do people need access to the technology, they need the resources to be able to understand it and use it efficiently as well.

This phenomena holds true within our country's borders as well. Over winter break I participated in one of the MOVE Extended Service trips and spent a week volunteering at an inner-city school in Buffalo for at risk students. As no one can afford to pay tuition to attend this school, the board relies strictly on donations to keep the school up and running. One of the biggest projects that we tackled there during the week was to get the latest computers donated up and running so that they could be utilized in the classrooms. The teachers explained that the computers had been donated over a year prior, but no one had had the time or knowledge to install them and get them running. Upon further exploration into the unused classrooms in the school, we found dozens and dozens of old computers stacked up collecting dust. People think to give old and nonworking computers to places like this, thinking that they can be fixed and put to use. Often times, however, these places don't have the resources required to put these donations to use, and they end up being a burden instead of a solution.

Reading this chapter of Toyama's book reinforced, for me, a phenomena that I had the opportunity to experience firsthand. Technology isn't the end-all fix to the world's problems. Often times it creates more barriers and problems than it does solutions.

Guest Speaker: Nate Herzog

For class on Tuesday, we had a guest speaker. Nate Herzog is a Digital Media Storyteller and the founder of StoryHackVT. I found his presentation to be very relevant to what we are doing in class, as our midterm project is to do a StoryHack in small groups. His presentation explained where his idea to do the StoryHack came from and how the Hack has worked each year it has been in existence.

When we were first assigned this StoryHack project, it seemed very daunting and I was confused about what we were supposed to be turning in. Herzog's presentation helped to make this assignment more clear to me. I'm really excited to get to do this project because I feel like it will give me useful experience that I will be using in my career (hopefully...). 

Transmedia Storytelling: Part 2

While the first chapters of this book made little to no sense to me, chapters five and six really helped to solidify this concept in my mind. I found it very helpful that the author broke the concept of storytelling down into the components of character, conflict, plot, rising tension, setting and mood, theme, and originality. In my mind, I knew that these were all concepts of storytelling because this idea had been drilled into my head all throughout middle school English and Literary classes. In order to understand storytelling as a marketing and social media tool, I don't think that I full understood it until those same concepts were applied.

When applying these concepts to marketing storytelling, I believe that the definition of transmedia storytelling has become a lot more clear to me. This concept is truly all about building up a brand identity. This identity can belong to pretty much anything and everything. In order to do this successfully, the identity must be able to relate to the target audience; and audience wants to feel like they personally know the brand itself. This is an extremely key component in building a trusting relationship between the brand and the potential or current customer.

Looking back on my internship last year with KnockKnock Social, the main objective in everything we did was to tell the story of the company for all of the clients. We did this by ensuring that there was one unified voice for each client across all social media platforms. This ensured that there was one solid brand identity, in which customers would immediately think of when they thought of the brand. This kept a base of loyal customers because they truly felt as though they could trust each of KnockKnock's clients.

Transmedia Storytelling

Before taking this class, to me, social media was a simple way to "stalk" your friends and a way from business to promote themselves while creating a brand identity. Even though we aren't halfway through this semester, this class has broaden the way that I think about social media. One of the new ways that I can think about social media is in terms of the idea presented in this article: Transmedia Storytelling.

While the definition for this term is fluid and constantly adapting to the environment around it, to me, it simply means that social media is being used to as a tool to market some of form of entertainment on a technological platform. It is important to remember that this term is going to be used to define a lot of different ideas and projects. Like the article pointed out, focusing the definition too much will exclude the work of talented storytellers, thus not giving them the credit they deserve for their hard work.

The successful examples of transmedia storytelling are all focused around one key factor: they used many platforms and forms of media to create one cohesive image or identity for a brand, a store, an idea, a movie, or an individual character. An example of a successful transmedia story that sticks out in my brain is of Mickey Mouse. The cartoon character is literally everywhere; on tv, in comic books, stories, movies, and in person at the theme parks. All of these portrayals of Mickey are identical and cohesive and together they create the identity of the mouse that we are all so familiar with.

Super Bowl 50

Personally, Football is my least favorite sport to watch. However, I was looking forward to this year's festivities due to the fact that it was Super Bowl 50. A large anniversary such as this one calls for big celebrations. I was expecting an enormous half time show and ads that blew me away. Coverage of this year's Super Bowl started long before kickoff, with the hashtag trending on all social media platforms and previews of the commercials showing up everywhere. There was plenty of gossip circulating about the stars of the half time show as well.
With all of the buildup for this year's Super Bowl, I was pretty disappointed. Not only in the commercials themselves, but in the social media coverage as well. A lot of the ads that I saw tried desperately to get a laugh out of the audience, but some of them took it too far and the humor was lost. In years past, ads featured cute animals and talking babies. The ads this year featured talking animal/baby combinations and babies being born prematurely because they just couldn't wait any longer to get their hands on Doritos. With so many companies trying to branch out, I found myself missing the traditional ads. I'm under the impression that the marketers in charge of the ads knew they'd be a bust as well, due to the number of celebrity cameos.
During the game itself, I think that the social media coverage was lacking. As I was scrolling through my favorite platforms, it became clear that half time stole the show away from the ads. Most of the memes I saw were of Beyonce recovering after her fall, and the gossip following the show was about the motives behind the political stances that the performers were taking. Overall, I think that the best advertising I saw during the game was for Beyonce, and she is all viewers can seem to talk about.

Chapter 4: Communities and Networks

This chapter in Baym's book gave me a new perspective on what the definition of a community could be. There appears to be two sides to this argument; one that believes that a strong community can only exist when there is physical social interaction (such as in a local community), and one that believes a community can thrive when people are using technology to communicate (via social network platforms). For me, this definition can be very fluid. However, I do agree that within any type of community, there always exists little subsets, or smaller groups who have more mutually-agreed-upon norms than those of the entire community.

When considering the subsets that exist in communities, two clear examples come to mind. First, I think of the community that Twitter has build over the years. The large community that can be considered here would be all of the users on the platform; anyone who has an account, no matter their degree of usage. There are tons of possibilities that can be taken into consideration when considering all of the subsets that could exist on the platform. Twitter is an extremely customizable social network, so the amounts of subsets are limitless. For example, a subset could be as simple as the group of people who all follow the same celebrity. These users all have the same tweets appear from that celebrity as they scroll through their twitter feed, and therefore all carry the same knowledge about that celebrity. Another subset that exists on Twitter is the people who follow certain hashtags. Similar to the previous example, these people are all gaining the same knowledge about the specific information that is relevant to that hashtag.

A second example that comes to my mind regarding communities is right here on campus. All of the people that associate with Saint Michael's College (whether they are students, staff, faculty, or alumni) can be considered the large community. All of these people can then be broken down into subsets, based on their interests and involvements on campus.

The Victorian Internet: War and Peace in the Global VIllage

Both of the chapters that we have read in The Victorian Internet were very interesting to me. I can relate the invention of the telegraph to what we are currently going through with new forms of digital media. The telegraph was the first form of communication that truly allowed people to hide behind something when conversing with other people. In order to send a message to someone, the message had to be relayed through two operators. This is very similar to how people communicate through the various forms of digital media today. It is rare that people now communicate without the message being relayed through some sort of middleman.

The second chapter of this reading, to me, brought up a great point. With the invention of the telegraph, there was a new standard of how quickly news was supposed to travel. Everyone was hearing about news on a global scale, not just local news anymore. This also caused a change in what people would consider a reliable news source and who people would now consider journalists and reporters. We are currently going through this same type of conundrum with the increasing popularity of social media. Social media have raised the question of what considerable news sources are today and it appears as though anyone and everyone could consider themselves a reporter. These questions lead me to ask the question of what the true definition of a reporter is? Is there one singular definition that all of society shares or is it an opinion based definition?

Chapter 1: New Forms of Personal Connection

This chapter gave a lot of information about what the reader can expect in the coming chapters, before discussing some of the pros and cons of different digital media and some of the key concepts of the media that will be discussed. Of the seven concepts that were given, the one that stood out the most to me was the temporal structure of a medium. This structure can either be synchronous or asynchronous, meaning face-to-face communication and delayed communication, respectively. Baym goes on to point out both the positives and negatives for each structure. She then asserts that face-to-face communication is the most important, saying that face-to-face is more authentic because it puts the "communion" in communication. In this instance, communion is taken to mean the sharing of a person's intimate thoughts or feelings, and this exchange is often more meaningful when it is done in person.

This chapter also raises many questions about the authenticity of the connections that are happening in our world today. With more romantic relationships taking root through media, it can be hard to determine the intentions behind that relationship and whether or not the person on the other end is truly present or absent. This raises the question about what is occurring virtually and what is happening in real life. This can lead to a skewed sense of reality, dependent on how much of total interactions take place synchronously and asynchronously.

Overall, this chapter caused me to question how I currently perceive digital communication and whether or not the interactions that I have with others are truly reality. I generally try hard to be both physically and mentally present when I am having synchronous interactions with others, but this chapter made me question whether or not I'm doing enough to be present.