New Media Reflections

I read an article in the online New Yorker about how a cover artist, Jorge Colombo used an iPhone app, Brushes Viewer to create a cover for their magazine. There is a video that shows the work in progress, which, the artist admits, has been edited to remove the undeletes so it is a smooth progression. Even so, it’s a fascinating adventure, and despite calling it “Finger Painting”, it shows an obviously very talented artist at work. As he mentions, the progression of the creation of the painting tells a story of its own.

This is for me, a new and unexpected turn in the world of media convergence. Here we have an artist working on an electronic phone device creating something that will end up in print that I am watching in video form on the internet. Nice! I like to see useful convergences that have real world applications.

Watch him at work:

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I saw a video that Microsoft has produced: Microsoft’s 2019 Future Vision Montage.  It visually demonstrates the potential for how the evolution of our digital products will interface with and influence our lives, sometime in the next 10 years. It is a very well-conceived vision with a multitude of practical applications. The applications cover every area of our lives from personal and entertainment to use at work and in medical practice.

Usability is an area I’ve always been interested in and picky about. One of my observations of what they propose is that it all looks quite user-friendly and may actually add value in our lives. It isn’t just about wowing us with technological achievement, but envisions practical application of technology with a true human-machine interaction. Rather than trying to describe the wonders, I’ll just recommend that you watch the video:

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I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Case Western Reserve University implementing a stand-alone version of Second Life. This may sound like just another University following the fad of bringing their students into a virtual world for education, but what makes this entirely different is that they are not connected to the main Second Life grid. This has many implications. They can control who is allowed or not allowed into their space. They can use personal information and case studies since this isn’t available to the public in general. They are also granted “God” privileges, which is a term usually reserved for the employees of Linden Lab, who created and run Second Life. It means they can create their own rules and change things regular users don’t ususally get to change “in-world”.

Education in SL remains questionable and uncertain. But I think the stand-alone version solves a lot of common problems such as privacy of information, copyright protection and simply controlling who is allowed in to the space. I have had some experience with education in SL through my studies at Quinnipiac University. In fact, my first introduction was an example of not being able to control who enters. As an introduction to Virtual Worlds, my class met in SL at Harvard’s in-world Berkman Center. We were benign, but nonetheless, intruders. My second foray into SL for education was in a class that was conducted primarily in SL. While we discovered there were some technical issues for some of the students involved, we were mostly able to conduct a class. But we had no control of who might “drop-in” to see what we were up to, and were limited to available creations of others to interact with. Had we been in our own “world” we would have control of it, and could leave proprietary information or creations in-world without any concern for who might see it, as well as interact in our own University environment.

I think this new direction for SL is a good one. I can forsee it being something highly desirable for private corporations as well as educational institutions. Others have attempted to create worlds that can interconnect, and maybe this is the prototype for SL having individual worlds which can, by choice, interconnect with other independent virtual SL worlds, or stand-alones.

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There is a lot of movement in the newspaper industry. All too often we read about yet another newspaper closing down. Even some of the established giants of the news industry like the New York Times are struggling to stay afloat. They are looking for new ways to stay relevant, and to produce revenue. There have been many suggestions and attempts to change such as going online only, which would seem like a good solution, but apparently it isn’t generating the needed revenue. Maybe those readers who are online want something different than a traditional newspaper on their computer screens. Personally, although I really like newspapers, I have been reading the New York Times online headlines version for a couple of years now. It’s a clear, concise summary of the news, that I can explore more deeply with a simple click. So if I grew up with newspapers and like them, yet I only seek my news online, one can only imagine that the younger people and older online converts are doing the same.

Newspapers serve a vital role in our society. Even the Supreme Court has recognized the value of good news reporting to keep government honest and accountable. They have ruled to protect the role of reporters many times throughout our country’s history. Facing the loss of our newspapers in this country is as much a social threat as it is a cultural and economic loss. One movement that seems to address many of these issues is the localization of news reporting. This keeps the scope of the reporting within a certain demographic area, which should assure local interest, as well as encourage local advertising. The idea of having more localized reporting means that the reporters have an opportunity to become more deeply involved in the workings of their community. Some of these attempts are using the “Citizen Journalists”, or non-professional reporters. This turns the reporting into primarily a printed blog, which I believe has some value, but I think we are better served by having professional reporting by people who know how to flesh-out and vet a story.

I blogged earlier about the Printed Blog which is a local model, but depends on the Citizen Jounalists and Bloggers. A recent start up is Patch. While it has been associated with Google, which should get your attention, this isn’t technically correct, yet. One of Google’s top executives, Tim Armstrong, president of advertising for North America and Latin America, has used his personal investment fund to back the efforts of a hyperlocal (newly popular term, get used to it) reporting model. It has taken root in New Jersey, and is planning to expand into Connecticut soon. See the article in Muckety for more details. This is an encouraging approach. I hope it has early success and that Google snaps it up and grows it. The model is using professional reporting with local news gathering, reporting and advertising. This seems to me to be a sustainable model and one that I would like to have in my area. I’m not quite sure what direction the larger-area reporting will take. I still want to know what’s going on in my state, country and the world. We need a sustainable model for that type of reporting.

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