In response to Fei's Understanding Media: The extension of Man

I agree with Yifei that the definition of hot and cold media given by McLuhan is ambiguous.
McLuhan has distinguished hot and cold media with two charecterstics:
1) Level of Definition
2) Participation of audience

I think 'level of definition' is no longer a valid characteristic because now almost all mediums can cater relatively high level of definitions. It is up to the creator to decide how much information should be provided and how much should be left for the audience to fill in.

Level of participation is surely a valid charecterstic in defining hot and cold media.

I like the part where McLuhan says poets were far ahead of Newton in their response to the challenge of the clock. If we look back in history, all what we have now was thought up by some poet at some time. These creative souls(poets, artists, musicians, writers etc.) think up the future which is later implemented by scientists and engineers.

In response to Mauri's E-Learning

"Downes argues that online learning no one involves a medium, but instead a platform. I would say that in the Web 2.0 there are lots of what can be called platforms, but such are just a special kind of interactive media."
Mauri


In a bigger picture he is talking about removing the middle man and to enable direct relationship. Right now the middle man, medium, is responsible to transmit information between producer and consumer. With the idea of prosumer the middle man is not required. In student centered learning the typical learning hierarchy is turned upside down and the student is given a charge of his own learning. The term medium in my view is used by Downes to represent the middle man composing, organizing, packaging and finally delivering the content.

The platform he discusses will surely be a special kind of interactive media. Here the communication will be between the student (user) and technology. And an Interactive media designer would design self learning middleman to channel information from technology to the user (human).

Mutability of New Media

Term 'mutable' is used in context of new media as objects that can be mutated, that is, changed.
Because new media can be broken down to bits and bytes it is easy to play around with existing object and create new ones out of it. Lev Manovich refers to this as variability.

While writing about the article "Quality of experience" i wondered what Mutable means.

http://imd-nash.blogspot.com/2009/08/quality-of-experience.html

The Language of New Media

Lev Manovich’s attempt to record the emergence of new media before it is lost. He draws various analogies between new media and the cinema (new media for 21st century)
While cinema was emerging and taking shape no one recorded the development as it happened year by year and all what we were left with was newspaper report, diaries of cinema’s inventors and other bits and pieces. Historians had to reconstruct ‘How cinema evolved’ painstakingly.

One significant difference that he draws between new media and old is that new media is build up of discreet blocks where as old media was continuous. Cinema sampled time (24 frames in one second) and new media samples both time and space.
This sampling in my view restricts the resolution of both space and time. The plus point is that this modular approach makes it easy to re-use the discreet objects. But it looses the details.
Then again brain cannot register frame rate faster then 24 per second. So why bother increasing the frame rate when the mind will eventually skip those minute fragments of time.
Talking about space, vector drawing can be zoomed in without loosing the sharpness but that is not true with raster objects where pixels get muddy if you zoom in.

Because we are so used to discreet approach now it is hard to turn back and start again using continuous spectrum. But that is just my thought.

Media and Economy

Video Remix,

30 Sec video advertisements

Corporate companies can put up competitions to make video advertisement for their brands. Users will be given set of characters and sceneries which they can choose from. Ad with most number of views and good aesthetics will be chosen by the company for TV and other media.

Dilemma of 3d animation is that many creative people have ideas in their heads but can’t put them to work because they lack basic skills. Even if you are skilled it is well known that drawing characters and then animating them takes a lot of time and effort.

The aim of video remix is to provide users with pre-made characters, props and environments, where they can use their own creativity and storylines to create short movies. Many of the advanced options will only be available to registered paid users.

Actors will have the following changeable properties
 Actions
 Postures
 Dialogue

Camera Angles, Three basic cameras will be provided. This will be a long shot where once user has decided upon the script movie produced won’t be editable on the software.

Soundtrack of different genre would be provided like fast paced action, slow drama or romance to create a scenario.
User can play around with the actors and the environment. It is very much like recording of video games but because users will have their own story lines its going to be their own video.

Some sort of easy to learn scripting language can be used for animation. Final product would be rendered put up for viewing in the video gallery.

Earning can be done from corporate brands where the pay to get their ads made by the users. Top 3 ads will be the property of the brand and the creators would be given royalty for that. We will charge nominal fee from the brands. Though users will be provided with number of characters and props they can also register and buy new characters and props. Same way artists can put up their models for sale. We will charge a nominal fee on every sale.

A forum will be available for discussion various issues regarding ad making.

Made by Yngwie, Naseh and Ali

Self Organizing Systems

Self organizing systems produce themselves. It’s a system that reproduces itself with the help of its own internal logic and components. Each new iteration is more stable than the previous one and on a higher level.

Self organizing occurs in complex systems. These systems are distributed and have a border that separates them from their environment. An important point to note is that it is difficult to model complex systems and predict their behavior and exactly the reason why it is not possible to predict the order of the system after self organization.

These systems have control parameters and when these parameters reach a certain critical value the system enters into a critical instable state. This is when the local disturbance inside the system intensifies and initiates the organization. When the system reaches critical state one knows that the overall system will be transformed but one doesn’t know the exact direction and form of change. The phase transition from stability to instability is call bifurcation point. This is when the system has multiple alternative development paths in front and it has to make a selection. New qualities in self organizing system emerge in this critical phase.

Once the system is outside critical stage and new order has emerged it is stable to the local disturbances. The structure is fundamentally changed.


Reference:
Internet and Society, Social Theory in the Information Age by Christian Fuchs

In response to Kamil Kozuchs eighth reading

The view of hacker managing time in his own way is not applicable in todays fast pace life. In this age of technology where information is abundantly available, at least quantitatively, time management is very important. We certainly don't have the leisure of working when we want to work. There are deadlines to be met. Time is money.

Community Media, International Perspectives

I am reading “Community Media, International Perspectives” by Linda K Fuller.
Though I have read around 4 chapters I would like to discuss the first chapter titled Introduction.

Media, which can also be referred to as corporate media is strictly profit oriented and treat people as consumers. Community media on the other hand is driven by social objectives to empower people and nurture local knowledge. They are committed to human rights, social justice, the environment and sustainable approaches to development.

She defines public access as public spaces where issues pertaining to local communities that are normally under-represented can be brought forward and democratically resolved.

Community media can be defined be following characteristics (Maslog 1997)
• Owned and controlled by people in the community
• Usually smaller and low-cost
• Provides interactive two-way communication
• Nonprofit and autonomous, therefore, noncommercial
• Has limited coverage or reach
• Utilizes appropriate, indigenous materials and resources
• Reflects community needs and interests
• Its program or contect support community development

Corporate media is dominated by advertisement, canned programming and audience-tested news casting. This book is recommended for those who are interested and parallel media. Later chapters are case studies of community media in different parts of the world and good examples on how culture can be preserved with community media. One of the biggest hurdle in my opinion is the availability of content for such medium. As one of the case studies say that the listeners got bored of the community radio channel where same programs were run again and again.

Community media is also referred to as Citizens Media.

Pakistan president Asif Zardari bans Emails, Texts and Blocks ridiculing him

Pakistani government acted proactively to curb the revolution before it could take place and banned Emails, Text messages and blogs with jokes ridiculing President Asif Zardari. Offenders will be arrested and given 14-year Prison sentence under new Cyber Crimes Act.
Find below the link to the news and laugh :P

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/5878525/Pakistan-president-Asif-Zardari-bans-jokes-ridiculing-him.html

*TV and Print Media still mock him though.

link to google doc
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ab9U5K41RphOZGZodmNxNGJfNDFmbnQ1aDJkOQ&hl=en

What makes interactive media interesting?

Interactive Media Design combined with psychology and cognitive science can be used to device methods of easy learning for masses that have access to basic computing and mass media (TV, Radio and Print)
Media has three basic responsibilities: Information, Education and Entertainment. Entertainment is the flashy part that attracts. Info-tainment is already in working where information and entertainment combined. Next step should be to amalgamate the educational aspect with entertainment in such a way that the audience is educated on a sub-conscious level while they are being entertained.

Interactive Media opens wide range of possibilities for this. Learning methods can be developed that are individualized and intelligent enough to adjust to the need of the subject with respect to his/her responses/emotions/actions.

Education is the core issue in developing nations.

In response to Marcus McCallum's Blog on what makes interactive media interesting to him

talking about phones.. these ain't just phones but mini computers in our pockets. I was reading about Dynabook and was fascinated that the idea tossed in 1968 is actually a reality now. Though most of us just used it for info-tainment and the educational aspect have been long forgotten.

** i wonder how i can tag Marcus so that he is informed that i have referred to him in my blog. Thats how i guess the blogosphere should work. Any one have any suggestions?

Digital Representation of the World

In my opinion digital representation can only map the physical representation of the society. Its still not possible to represent human psyche digitaly. If given a choice we can only predict what would be choosen and cant be sure of it till the action is taken

Mockup Assignment

Hi all,
For our mock up assignment Yifie Ali and I teamed up to make a community website for fashion enthusiastic people. Our persona was 35 yeah old woman, Cathie, working as a teacher in primary school and with interest in fashion designing. Initial idea was to develop a small application to allow Cathie to develop her own clothes and to share them with other members of the community. The community could also vote for the design and each week a designer would be chosen.
New designers can put forward questions for old experienced designer to answer. A small blog would also be maintained.
The basic idea was to promote young budding designers and give them room to expand their skill set and boost confidence.

The mock up can be found at

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dc9d24s6_10cqs7wngs

The Experience of Distant Collaboration

Yeeey! It was fun making the report with your group partner sitting miles away. Google
Docs is a great way for simultaneously creating a document.

One thing that all of us must have noticed is that majority of the prep, before and after the joint convo was dont via texting! Like setting up the time for the meeting. Cell phones and SMS services has really helped multi-tasking. Now we all have Inter Dual Core processors in us :p

All in all it was a great experience and a new step forward. No need to actualy meet in person to complete assignments and projects. All can be done online, sitting on your couch, munching and changing tv channels :)

The report can be found at
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dc52fg3v_0fnhdbfcv

Quality of Experience

Of many works that I read today using GOOGLE scholar the article “Quality of Experience” by Lauralee Alben striked me the most. Lauralee Alben is a principal of Alben+Faris Inc., a firm specializing in graphic and interface design for interactive multimedia. The article appeared in a special issue of interaction magazine devoted to first annual ACM interaction Design Awards.

These awards were first of its kind that acknowledged quality in interaction design, as distinct from software engineering and research.

The basic question of the award was “How does effective interaction design provide people with a successful and satisfying experience?”

The word experience was defined in form of the following 8 questions. And in my opinion these eight criteria define the quality of interaction media:

1. Understanding of users
How well the needs, task and environment of the users were understood by the design team?
2. Effective Design Process
Is the product a result of a well thought out and well executed design process?
3. Needed
What ‘need’ does the product satisfy?
4. Learnable and Usable
Is the product easy to learn and use?
5. Appropriate
Does the design of the product solve the right problem at the right level?
6. Aesthetic Experience
Is the product aesthetically pleasing and sensually satisfying one?
7. Mutable
** Well I couldn’t understand this criteria. Nor did I google it :p .. but I ll sure post something on this later
8. Manageable
Does the product account for and help users manage needs such as installation,training and maintenance?

I will post more on this later on. The article can be found at http://www.albendesign.com/albenfaris/downloads/pdf/quality.pdf

I have also been reading how blogosphere works. And the idea has caught me. We all should start interconnecting our blogs 

Ready Set Go

The Classic IMD Blog is here :)