Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

I was able to conclude a few things about the broadband after digging through 50 or so pages of statistics on Broadband usage and general Internet connection information provided by John Horrigan in June 2009. In addition, I read through an excerpt Palfrey and Gasser's Born Digital, which was especially interesting to me since I, myself was "born digital."
Glancing through statistics from the 2009 survey about Broadband Adoption, a few things stood out to me. One was the increase in usage of Broadband/Interent among folks over age 65. Another was the increase in low-income households that acquired Internet access. Both of these facts made me think about how necessary the Internet and our online lives are becoming. People who can hardly afford it are getting it, as are people who are quite possibly completely uncomfortable with the concept because they grew up in a whole different age of pre-online life. This is where Palfrey and Gasser's writing comes into play.
As a so-called "digital native," I related to most of, if not all of, this article on the digital age and its relation to people. Digital natives are defined as anyone "born after 1980, when social digital technologies...came online."Yes, I fall into that category. I was digital born. And yes, I have, as said in the book, grown up around digital media. I don't know a life without computers. I write e-mails and Facebook messages far more frequently than hand-written letters. (The only time I really consistently wrote letters was when my best friends were in basic training for the US Air Force Academy. Shout out to you studs.) Thank you letters have always been necessary in my life, however. It's just not the same as a "thank-you e-mail." What I'm trying to say through this tangent, is that although I am a digital native, I'm not entirely digital. Personally. But yes, I rely on my laptop, iPod, phone and TV daily. Hourly. In the very least. And it's been that way for years.

I found the statistics from the Broadband Adoption results interesting in relation to the digital natives. It's a total generational thing these days. To those over 65, the online world is totally unfamiliar and potentially scary and unknown. However, from spring 2008 to spring 2009, the broadband usage among senior citizens rose 19% (Horrigan 2009). This is evidence of how vital having an Internet connection at home really is. Even people who grew up going to dances to meet dates instead of through Facebook, calling or writing letters to friends in order to communicate plans or catch up instead of shooting a quick text their way, are connecting online, and at a bigger rate than the rest of the population.

This also made me think, what would those teen years be like without a cell phone or Facebook? I can hardly imagine. Credit given to the non-digital natives!

The Digital Media of Interest: Pinterest

As digital technology advances, many new forms of media are revolutionizing the way we live and interact with each other. From social networks to blogging, the web connects us and allows us to spread information faster and more widespread than ever before. One digital media artifact, Pinterest, has changed the way people discover, share and organize ideas, interests and things.

Pinterest is a form of blogging where a user can “pin” various things to their boards after discovering them through Pinterest itself, or on the Internet in general. It is set up so one can “follow” their friends, family, acquaintances, or anyone around the world who has a Pinterest account. By following people, users can see recent pins, which are featured as pictures with descriptions, on the main page, and either repin or like them, which then organizes them into personal categories called boards. Users can create as many boards as they want, and organize pins as they please. Similar to pinning things on a corkboard in an office, Pinterest is the virtual way to share, store and organize products and ideas.

Each pin on Pinterest is actually a link. By clicking on the picture of a pin, the link will open, and the user will be directed to a new page where they can read more about the recipe, product or article, for example.

Created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp in December 2009 and launched in March 2010, Pinterest was made to change the way people share interests and ideas. Within the first 9 months after the initial launch, it gained 10,000 users, according to Wikipedia. By August 2011, Time magazine listed Pinterest as one of the top 50 best websites.

 Pinterest features numerous categories where users can browse through all the recent pins, whether they’re following them or not. From cars, traveling, wedding ideas, photography, home decorating and more, Pinterest brings people with similar interests together in one spot.

Personally, I use Pinterest to organize things I find on the Internet. I mainly use it for recipes and travel aspirations. I also use it as a reference to keep ideas for clothes and home decorating. I primarily use Pinterest for myself, but I also connect with other people, mainly my Facebook friends who are also on Pinterest. By following them I see their pins first, and often repin them to my own boards. I’ve never followed someone I don’t know, but people who I don’t know follow me because of similar interests I suppose.

Another interesting way Pinterest is used is for marketing. Companies can pin things for fans or followers to see and click on the link for more information. Based on an article from Entrepreneur.com, Pinterest is “driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, GooglePlus and LinedIn combined,” which is based on research done in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For example, I am following Roxy. I often see them pinning clothes, art, photographs, and ladies they sponsor in surfing, snowboarding and more. When I click on a pin from Roxy, it brings me to a new window with their homepage and that product I selected. It is just another way to market their products and ideas, mainly to get across to Pinterest’s primary audience, women.

Women can arguably be Pinterest’s main audience. They often possess a few more organizational skills than men, and are mostly more intrigued by recipes, home decor and wedding ideas. Although many men are also interested in these areas, I’m just speaking generally. There are also categories that may appeal more to the average man, including sports and cars and outdoorsy things. But for the most part, women are the main audience of Pinterest.

According to this infographic on Pinterest’s audience demographics, women make up about 72 percent of users where men make up about 28 percent. Because women make up the majority of Pinterest, it can also be accountable for 40 percent of all social media driven purchases. The most users are aged 25 to 44, and the average income of all users is $25,000-50,000 a year.

Self-expression is large part of Pinterest. Like blogging, as Andrew Sullivan illustrates, pinning up things that express the user makes them feel an “exhilarating literary liberation,” (Sullivan, pg 3) just in form of pictures. Everyone gets to make their own boards and pin their own pins, just as people get to write exactly what they want on blogs. Looking at someone’s boards on Pinterest can really tell you a lot about them. Who they are. What they’re inspired by. What their dreams are. This is how Pinterest also connects people from computers across the world.

Like Lisa Gitelman pointed out, anyone and everyone can be on the Internet (Gitleman, p 146). Likewise, anyone and everyone (who’s been invited) can join Pinterest and start pinning. There are an uncountable number of types of people in this world, and just as another form of digital media, Pinterest works to being us together.  In fact, it’s even written in their mission.

Pinterest is ultimately considered a digital artifact according to Lev Manovich because it is a form of “culture (shifting from) computer-mediated forms of production, distribution and communication,” (Manovich, p 19). Before Pinterest, our culture lacked an easy and organized way to discover, store and share common interests. Sure, some of this can be done through social networking, but it is not the primary purpose of these sites. Now, Pinterest is actually connected with Facebook and Twitter so pins can be shared and tweeted with people who aren’t even on Pinterest. The social networking has combined with Pinterest to create one system of communication, self-expression, and organizing.

Each pin that is pinned on a user’s board on Pinterest has an embedded link within it, as stated earlier. This could be evidence of a digital artifact, according to Manovich, because of the Modularity Principle. Modularity is when a media object has “the same modular structure throughout” (Manovich, pg 30). Each pin has a link. This is so anyone who views the pin can click on the picture of the pin and will be immediately directed to a new window with the link to the website where the pin came from. It is very similar to hyperlinking on a blog, just in more user-friendly terms. Click on the picture, and the website pops up. This is more evidence that Pinterest can be considered a digital artifact, since it brings a lot of the Internet together on one site where millions of users create pins, re-pin pins and like pins, or links, in order to save them for later use.

The concept of variability according to Manovich is also present in Pinterest as a form of a digital artifact. Because each person is unique in this world, each user, or pinner, is different. Therefore, the home page of Pinterest is always changing, with new pins coming in on a live feed. Pinterest is a digital artifact with the support of Manovich and his ideas of variability, or the idea that Pinterest “can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (Manovich, pg 36).

All in all, Pinterest is an easy, convenient and very user-friendly digital media that connects people with similar interests and ideas. I use it mainly for personal use, to discover, organize and share my life all in one spot. Companies can use it for strategic marketing. Others use it to connect with and follow people who have similar interests as them. Overall, Pinterest is a unique form of new digital media that has changed the way people communicate all over the world.

Bibliography

Falls, Jason. “How Pinterest is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media.” Entrprenuer.com. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222740

“Pinterest: Shifting Usage and Demographics- Inforgraphic.” The Marketingbit.com http://www.themarketingbit.com/pinterest/pinterest-shifting-usage-and-demographics-infographic/

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

www.pinterest.com

Manovich, Lev. "What is New Media?"

Gitleman, Lisa. "New Media </Body>"

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog"

A Much Needed Massage

After trying to wade through Baudrillard, I welcome anything for my next blog post. I was assigned to read the book, The Medium is the Massage for class. Ironically named, a massage was exactly what I needed after that deep discussion on what's real and what's not real at the same time.

After reading and viewing all the unique writing and pictures in Marshall McLuhans book, I sorted through it all and selected a quote that hit me and I thought I could elaborate on and write about on here.

In relation to the Digital Media class I'm enrolled in, I chose a quote in McLuhan's book that related closely to today's digital media and media in general. The quote is:

"In the name of 'progress,' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old."

We discussed this notion a bit in class. New media today is indeed doing the job of the old media. For example, old photographs and modern day scanning. Today, there are digital archives being made by scanning old photographs into computers in order to store and organize them better. 

This is considered progress because all the old photographs are being archived into a computer so they can not only be found easier, but they can be shared online and it even saves physical space. It is a lot of work, I know this because I've scanned old pictures  before for sake of sharing and storing important pictures. I made progress with my family's personal pictures, or old media, by doing the work with the new media, my scanner and computer.

This relationship is important. It's a form of insurance as well, both for scanning old photographs specifically and for old media in general. I'd say that's progress.

Follow up on Simulation

So I was a bit off on Baudrillard's piece, "Simulation." After attending class yesterday, the fog lifted and I am just writing this so I can remember what exactly it is about and to correct my earlier post.

Baudrillard's main point in his writing is that nothing is real but everything is real. The way I see it, if enough people are convinced that something is real, it's real. For example, the couch I'm sitting on is a couch. But what makes it a couch? A better example, one that we talked about in class, is Santa Claus. Santa is real because we make him real.

Another concept I've thought about before I even read this writing was the fact that the colors we see may not be the actual colors we are seeing. Ok, you may need to pause and think that one through. It's crossed my mind before, and it's kind of made me second guess everything in this world. Kind of creeps me out to be honest.

Well, there's my deep thought for the day!

Baudrillard's take on Disneyland

I'll admit, reading Jean Baudrillard's "Simulations," was challenging for me. I brought the stack of his writing to work with me, where I sat behind a desk for 3 hours and (tried to) read through it. 2 hours and 15 pages later, I sighed and pushed it aside, my mind was too overwhelmed and exhausted already.  I did get something out of it, however, and I know I'm not the only one from my class who is posting on the topic of Disneyland for this weekend's reading assignment.

Upon viewing this picture, one automatically thinks things like "fun," "children," "youth," or "it's time for a vacation." I know I did. As a typical kid, I grew up taking spring break trips with my parents down to Florida, where we visited my grandparents and yes, spent a few days at the beloved Disneyworld. I remember having the time of my life, swimming in the pools, flying on the Dumbo ride again and again, and always being dead tired from all the action by dinnertime, if not sooner.

Because I have a connection to Disney World, I was taken a bit aback when I read Baudrillard's "Hyperreal and Imaginary" section of "Simulations." Although he discusses Disneyland and not Disney World, they essentially mean the same thing in context. Baudrillard associates Disneyland with a make-believe, or simulated, world, which exists so we can believe that our world that we live in is indeed real, in a sense. Without going further, I do agree with this notion.

It's when I kept reading that brought about mixed feelings for Baudrillard's ideas in his writing on simulations. He claims that even our previously thought "real" world, specifically in Los Angeles and America in general, is similar to Disneyland in that it is "hyperreal and simulation."

Now I'm not entirely sure what he means by this, but I'm not totally on board with him and his thoughts that life in America is just simulation. Taking into account that Baudrillard is indeed French, I can understand his reasoning to a certain extent. Sure, we have L.A and Hollywood culture that seems to put a shallow label on the country as a whole, but that's not necessarily the truth.

America was once thought of as a place to go to chase down your dreams and live the "American" life, filled with business potential, baseball and apple pie. Although it's hard to see sometimes, it is still present in our culture. There are few exceptions, but most people work hard every day to make advances in every area of work here. I mentioned the word "dreams," just above. Baudrillard may associate that negatively with places like Disneyland. However, America isn't Disneyland. The difference? We can make dreams a reality if we really, truly work to our full potential.

Again, I'm not sure if I quite understood Baudrillard's main point in his Disneyland analogy, but this is what it made me think of at the time.

The Internet: AKA the World Wide Web

Oh the glorious World Wide Web. What would we do without it? It is a resource, a tool for anyone with access to a computer and a connection to use. This can be wonderful in many aspects, but also terrifying. In Lisa Gitelman's piece, "New Media </Body>," she explores the Internet, from it's many flaws to its extra-ordinary abilities.

One of the things I found truly cool that Gitelman brought up was the fact that anyone can join the Internet. There is no central authority. I can attest to this, since I am currently typing a post for my new blog from my cozy apartment. And I will post it soon, and it will be out there. For everyone around the world to see. Well, everyone who cares to read this anyways (haha). Still, the fact that anyone can post anything from anywhere in the entire world opens up so much possibility. Good, and bad.

Gitelman brings up one negative aspect of how easy one can post on the Internet. CNN released premature obituaries of VP Dick Cheney, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela as well as other living figures accidentally one day. I can imagine that this caused quite a scare.

On the other hand, people can bring up real issues and ideas on the Internet. It is a place for interpretation as Gitelman states. Real time events happen on the web every moment. The Internet is an infinitely large place that provides the opportunity for anyone to contribute and for everyone to interact with each other. In a sense, it's a rare place of unity in this world. And I think that's pretty neat.

New Media

After absorbing 2 chapters from Lev Manovich's writing about new media, I learned quite a bit on the history and development of media as a whole and how it got to be as we know it today. Manovich relates this "new media" very heavily to computers in these few chapters. The way I see it, the computer is almost like the center of a wheel, and all forms of new media are connected to it like spokes. From cinema to photography to still text and more, all of it is now created, shared, and stored on computers.

Thinking of computers made me wonder how far back this so-called "new" media really goes. Manovich provided a well thought out and informative history of old media and how it transitioned into new media. Starting with the separate inventions of Babbage's Analytical Engine and Daguerre's daguerreotype in the early 1800s, and ending with the invention of the digital computer in the mid 1900s, old media is essentially considered any form of media that isn't involved with a computer. Once the modern computer was created and the synthesis of media and computers occurred, the age of new media was born.
New media also has five main principles as according to Manovich. Starting with number one, Numerical Representation, I will discuss these briefly.

1. Numerical Representation: Whether it's an image or a web page, created from scratch or converted from analog to digital, all media can be described mathematically. The difference between old and new media is that old media is considered continuous while new media is discrete. As Manovich states, all new media is vulnerable to algorithmic manipulation. One great example that I can relate to is in photo editing. To manipulate a photo by changing proportions or changing the contrast is actually a mathematical process done by the computer itself. This is just one example of how new media is represented by numbers.
2. Modularity: I had to do some definition searching for this one, since I am not familiar with this lingo quite yet. The definition of module, to start, is defined as each set of standardized parts that can be used to create a more complex structure. Manovich relates modules to media elements in his writing, and then goes on to relate modular structure to a multimedia movie made on iMovie for example. This movie consists of the media elements including motion picture, sound and still images.
3. Automation: Automation is permissible via the two principles above. One example used by Manovich is in Hollywood films, flocks of birds and crowds of people are all automatically created by a software called AL, or artificial life. The layout for word processing or web page creators is another good example. 
4. Variability: New media is something that is subject to variation, or change. Customization is also involved in this principle, which is something that is vital in marketing and business nowadays. We can now create different versions of the same object for different customers, whereas in old media, once something was human-made, there was little to be done in terms of customization.
5. Transcoding: Finally, transcoding is the idea that the computerization of media transforms it into computer data, which is in turn easily found and manipulated for the user's benefit. This may also represent the relationship between human and computer, or as Manovich says, the cultural and computer layers. Each one influences each other in various ways as they both evolve over time.

I found these five principles of new media by Manovich fascinating not only because I wasn't aware that there were two distinct groups of media separated by old and new, but because I truly had no idea how much of a role the computer has in all media these days. Sure, I'm on my laptop a ton everyday, checking websites and editing photos and listening to music. But I never truly realized how much each of those activities and more revolves around the computer. 

When I go for a run on the Tech Trails, I often bring my iPod. The music that flows into my ears is from my computer. When I travel up in the Keweenaw for some weekend exploring and camping I take my DSLR camera with me to capture the beauty and the adventure of discovery, only to come back to my apartment to import, edit and post the photos online to share with family and friends via computer. Even when I printed off the Manovich article to read on a Sunday afternoon after returning from a camping trip, I used a computer before I had the pages in my hands.

Perhaps it's because I have started to take my computer for granted and it's just simply a vital and familiar part of my life similar to my arms and legs, but reading this writing by Manovich really made me appreciate living in the world of new media, where there is one spot for it all. I own one laptop on which I do all my schoolwork, listen to all my music, catch up with friends and discover new things online, and look at and edit all my photos. My world is in my computer, be it good or bad, and I couldn't have it any easier!