Lessigs reading present four hypothetical’s which are based around his genuine concerns and trends in a world where offline rules, customs and laws are struggling g to keep up with the rapid changes of online life. He identifies the four trends as regulability, ability to encode regulability, latent ambiguity and competing Sovereigns.

Some of the key points I took in and reflected upon in this reading are as follows:

·         There is a lack of offline consequences for anonymous online actions

·         The web allows what would have been deemed as deviant offline and so isolated and regulated to easily form communities online for these deviances to gain validation

·         Anonymous online personas allow for the post modern exploration of many different aspects of the self

·         Remediation of offline reality into online play and interaction

·         Online life is limited by how each environment is coded – which can result in both freedoms and restrictions

·         These freedoms have been seen if the effects of P2P networks etc and sharing music, films etc

·         The environments can be modified without participant knowledge – which normally would not happen in the offline world without some community discussion and analysis (i.e. facebook changes constantly on its users)

·         Online worlds allow for a wide range of different communication and interaction methods that to the user mimic offline life but actually are missing some key parts of offline communication such as context. These changes may inadvertently spill over and change rules and customs in offline life. Thus a lack of online consequences can spill out and create a real world affect.

·         Break down the restrictions of time and space placed by old media and communication forms.

·         Decentralization of media distribution due to the low barriers to entry. These have distabalised business models of old media

·         Deviant behavior such as piracy seems to be only an online issue which is separate from offline norms and rules of society. Probably related to the high level of anonymity online?

·         Lack of content gatekeepers online, and the low barriers to entry meaning and one can publish, is a great change from old media where publishing houses controlled the content that would get to society.

·         Does audience created content, free of gate keeping mechanisms, expose previously unrecognized realities in society that were previously controlled by publisher regulation?

·         Who should these gatekeepers be in an online world? Government? Enterprise? Community? Whatever it is it needs to be transparent  to ensure that valid community groups aren’t undeservedly discriminated against

·         Old laws from the offline world are often inadequate for application in the online world to police online activities in cyberspace

·         Concerns over big brother are here already I think as companies like Google and facebook build online user profiles. It is the price the user has paid for so much free content, free content distribution and creation tools. We have now become out IP address as the economies of information and attention build.

·         Web filtering by the state or corporation is a concern as it can filter out information that challenges the dominant paradigm thus limiting cultural growth.

·         Lessigs regulation online “regulation by code” is a very complex issue. It is a regulation that needs involvement from all parties government, corporations and audience in order to use Surowieki’s “wisdom of crowds” to build an effective gate keeping solution for online society. This process also would need to be under constant review as culture in cyberspace is subject to sudden change – just by changing some code.

·         All of these concerns are no longer limited by sovereign borders. They are global concerns which need global solutions for future cultures and societies which is why finding a one size fits all solution is almost impossible but will become easier as culture is globalized over time. Is this is the period of transition into a global society.

Anonymity online is the largest issue in my assessment of Lessigs reading as online consequences are usually unseen and hidden in real life as with his example of Jake.  If this anonymity was removed then the online experience would greatly change as a user would be responsible for a single identity linked both online and offline meaning the remediation off offline to online life would be far more accurate. They would still be able to investigate aspects of themselves with the wealth of online information but just not free of their identity making the regulation of cyberspace easier.

In your opinion, which is the most engaging format/medium?

I think the video is more engaging as it uses imagery (semiotics) to help convey the messages to the audience which are more easily understood then the text. The text needs to be read, contextualized, and then analyzed by the reader; whilst the video, through the use of semiotics, helps to contextualize the message being presented, thus better engaging the audience and presenting the message is a more condensed format for easier consumption.

In this thread, also pick out a few of Jenkins’ key points – the ones which appealed to you the most – and discuss, with examples.

The key points I took out of the video were:

·         That media is in a state of transition from a spectorial media to a participatory media and that in this process media production and consumption is becoming decentralized away from the old media conglomerates. This can be seen with Facebook being at the core of a political revolution in the Middle East, and with entertainment media such as movies, music and television being available online for steaming or download as the audience is now moving to a pull model away from a push model.

·         The change in recent times from the past where stories were past down from generation to generation and were parts of folk culture. This changed in recent times as the rights to these stories are now owned and cannot be freely shared by the ‘folk’ today as seen with ever extending time frame for copyright which protects companies like Disney from losing ownership over characters such as Mickey Mouse. However the audience still has the desire to remediate these owned media within participatory culture seen as a remix culture which brings the ‘folk’ into conflict with copyright laws.

·         Collective intelligence means that the more people can participate in problem solving meaning better solutions than any single individual could ever hope for. Making for more community involvement in complex issues, producing stronger societal bonds between participants in the process. Also the participants may be exposed to the ethical, and cultural views of the other members of society which they may not have previously considered which may differ greatly from their own making society more diverse. I think an example of this could be Wikipedia where many people contribute to the knowledge base to create an accurate information base.

·         The low barriers to entry means that stories previously unseen and unheard of in society are able to be told and distributed so that their stories can get out to the public. So without the tools of a participatory culture on a global scale a site such as wikileaks could not have been constructed and much of the information published would be impossible to distribute in the old media models.

·         I think the imagery at the start of the video of people using mobile devices to access the information is the most important point as the information is progressively becoming free of both time and space, and mobile devices are much more likely to fill the digital divide in cultures without a strong terrestrial network structure.

Jenkins, H. (2009). Great video w/ Henry Jenkins on participatory culture & how media is changing [Video file]. Retrieved from http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-video-w-henry-jenkins-on.html

This weeks lecture was about how a piece of media originates and then is remediated into different formats. This remediation is done though the work of individuals, within corporations using distribution networks present for the media. It made me reflect on how pieces of media are often seen as single cultural artifacts when in fact they are the result of several generations of remediation within the copyright restrictions of the media, and that they have altered over time with changes in culture and technology.

Probably the change I related to most was that of fan fiction onto today's remix culture and how this new culture collides with copyright restrictions when it is akin to fans remediating the original text just as the copyright owners have done but i would posit that the motives behind these remediations differ from fan love to financial desires as seen in many of the clips shown. And how these remediations over a period of time can indocrinate themselves into general pop culture.

The final clip of Leonard Nimoys ballad of bilbo bagins was disturbing and i will never forgive Helen for exposing me to it. NEVER! So now i am exposing all of you!

• Identify and discuss community fears and concerns about new media use.
• Consider violent and sexually explicit content on the web and in games.
• Discuss net filters and government regulations as well as resistance to regulation.

Concerns about new media I think fall greatly on the issue of authentic identity online. It is very easy online to create a fictitious persona and become someone else in cyberspace – someone very different from your offline identity. This can be within social networks, chat rooms, forums, games, blogs, dating sites etc.  It is difficult for online users, in fact almost impossible if you don’t know them in the offline world, to know if someone is who they say they’re online. Add to this that online communications are largely devoid of the verbal inflexions and body language that over the history of mankind have been used to connote and communicate effectively – giving the correct context to our communications -  then  it is possible to indicate this as a major issue. An issue that is trying to be resolved by net users as they develop new ways to communicate online but are still to simplistic to succeed (emoticons don’t cut it I’m afraid).  Online people can choose to set their own framework for themselves and act out a role that may be very different from their real self within that framework, whilst this may not be new as Goffman (1959) proposes that we do this in all kinds of different social frameworks, the scope of different roles, and the ability to play multiple roles all at once is different.

Violent and sexually explicit online content should be “regulated by code” as Lessig put it. Whilst this may be seen as a big brother measure the web needs some structure to provide social and cultural gate keeping. I don’t think access to such materials should be denied but the individuals who do use these should be easily identifiable and mirror the access to these materials offline. For example, if you want sexually explicit material offline you actually have to go to a sex shop, and whilst the workers don’t know who are and you still have anonymity, the act of actually going there for the individual is very different as the shop is in the public sphere. Online you can remain in your space and the public sphere would never know in anyway what you are looking at which makes it an easier option for consumers of the material as it is far more removed from the public sphere. Not many people would walk into a sex shop whilst down the street, but many more may take a sneaky look online free of prying eyes.

With violence I find it hard to condone violent movies, games, music and say that these remain separate from the offline world as when they become commoditized (Turner, 1969), as they have been as part of the process of regulating a deviance into popular culture, they then become part of pop culture which we all then begin to consume in some way thus creating an ongoing trend towards the acceptance of violent media in the community and thus I think a gradual increase in violence in the community.

I am not in favour of Net filters and government regulation unless it is a process that is completely transparent and inclusive of all parties equally – State, Corporations and Community. I am in favor of a reduction in online anonymity as if a person is held accountable in the offline world for their online dealings then I think the web would be a very different place and far more regulable as many of the rules and customs of offline society would be more easily transferred and applied within cyberspace. In short – Don’t block the content just make people accountable for the content they access.

Goffman, E 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 1st Edition. Anchor.

Turner, V 1969. ‘Liminality and Communitas (part 1 of 2)’ in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure , Aldine Transaction, pp.94-118.