Phony 2012?

My last blog post was about the viral video Kony 2012. I have to say I was a bit sceptical when I first saw the video but didn't think much of it at that time. I was watching it go viral for a couple of days as it's popularity became stronger and stronger. Then I came across this video by David Childerley who expressed his thoughts on the video, basically saying it was fake and that it just might have been the new 9/11 if it were to succeed. As the activists have a fair share of politicians on board, he suggests that interests of bankers might be behind the project (the same way as it turned out in the case of 9/11).

I must say that this guy has a point, now that I think about it. Could this really be an excuse for the US (and it's leaders, political as well as interest groups) to deploy troops in a foreign country again? We can not be sure if this is the case, as we can not say for certain as in the case of 9/11 (there still is no hard evidence for the 9/11 actions to be a politically planned action to invade the East for oil, as far as I know). But the Kony case does have similarities, doesn't it? One of the main differences is that 9/11 came at the brink of the millenium and Kony some 11 years later. Not a huge time span there if we shine light on it from a classical perspective. But when you think about it how the world wide web has evolved in that time, we get to see the big picture, why Kony might fail before it even starts to become reality. People all over the world are connected nowadays via the web, much more so than back in 2001. The power of connectedness is obvious in the revealing of this "scam" (let us presume, for the sake of this blog post and the point I am trying to make, that it is indeed a scam) as thousand if not millions have changed their perspective on the Phony case and might have stopped another disaster from happening. As I see it, as well as David Childerlay, this is the power of today's social networks and the internet.

Is the era of manipulation on the grand scale coming to an end? I do not dare to predict it, as people will always find a way to manipulate with the masses, but one thing is for sure... we sure will make it harder for them.

KONY 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

A friend of mine shared a video on Facebook today, Kony 2012. First I was sceptical and thought "Right, just another help Africa propaganda clip" but decided to watch it anyway. And I was pleasantly surprised. It supports and acts on the idea of stopping Joseph Kony from conducting crimes against humanity in Uganda. Half way through, the video got me thinking. It is stated that Facebook is becoming a borderless state of some sort, which, if combined, would be bigger than the USA (as far as the number of users goes). According to Facebook's statistics the community is more than 845 million strong. It is also stated in the video that the world as we know it is changing. The people are rallying up and starting to demand change. Online communities are a great way to do so. Many successful campaigns have prospered due to people connecting over the web, from all over the world. Is this really becoming a world-changer? Are we witnessing some sort of a new politics and world government forming before our eyes (on our monitors)?
"The internet" has a voice in today's world and is becoming ever so louder. A prime example of people stepping up and forming an idea-driven order is the IPP - the International Pirate Party. The Pirate Party has managed to enter the German parliament - talk about power of will and new media.

I bet we will be seeing more and more cases like the IPP and Kony2012, all thanks to the new world superpower - the web.

Remember analogue? I'll just google it on my super device...

Born in 1986, I was raised into the digital world. I am the generational link between the analogue and the digital. I still remember when my father first brought home a personal computer. It was a "386" something something... we set it up in the living room, next to the television. It had a "turbo" button which did absolutely nothing. Me and my sister used to quarrel over who is going to use it at a certain time... now look at us now. I have my own PC and she has her own Mac, along with multiple other gadgets which were just a dream once. Much has changed in the last couple of decades, especially electronic gadgets for personal use. Not only have they gotten faster and smarter, some completely new and ones have burst onto the market as well (tablet PCs for example) . And what is common to them all? Digital imaging. Today, almost every phone, laptop, tablet PC, music player.... you name it... it has a digital camera built into it.

Why am I writing this? Because yesterday, Nokia announced a new smartphone (or camera phone as they call it) with a mind boggling 41 Megapixel Camera Phone. This is beyond the standard smartphone with a "decent" camera built into it. This is the story of the true convergence of technologies... digital technologies. A couple of decades ago few dared to dream about having a digital camera for personal use, or a personal mobile phone for that matter (the first digital camera was invented by Kodak's Steve Sasson in 1975 and the first commercial telephone call was made in 1973, by Martin Cooper). Now, almost everyone has one or the other, most have both which is not surprising as, again, smartphones nowadays have cameras built into them. Nokia's new camera phone is, in my opinion, the future of digital imaging for the regular consumer (excluding serious photographers) as it combines the best of the two, a smart phone with a digital camera which has never before seen capabilities regarding image quality which is comparable to state of the art compact digital cameras. Point and shoot digital cameras might therefore become a thing of the past.

Not only have the devices changed, so have the digital-imaging related services online. Everyone can upload and share their photos with a click of a button. If photography was once a process (taking the photo, not knowing exactly what you captured or if the image would turn out okay, going to the photo lab to pick up the photos and being surprised/disappointed, then showing the photos to others) then we might call today's photography - instantaneous. One can immediately see if the photo turned out okay and share it with everyone via services such as Facebook, Flickr, Google etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing... but the process has certainly changed dramatically. The principles of making a good photo still apply though... but the phases after one has taken the photo will never be the same again.

And what does the future hold for us? It's hard to say, but Nokia's new cameraphone might hold a glimpse of what is about to come. The integration of multiple devices into one super device perhaps? We will see... I might stumble upon this post in a couple of decades on one of these super devices and think to myself: "Remember digital?"

Blogging about blogging

This is the first post to the newly created blog for the completion of the course New Media and Society.

After thinking about how to start writing, or rather the topic of what to write about, I thought to myself what better way of starting than writing a blog post about blogging. As I see it, blogs have revolutionised the way people communicate and reflect on other people's thoughts across the internet. Web 2.0 has brought us a number of new communication tools for us to use. In the last 5 to 10 years, blogs have skyrocketed across the internet and nowadays a vast amount of people present online are connected to blogs in one way or another. Some write blogs and some read the, but almost everyone visits blog on a daily basis.

Blogging started in the late 90's. The term "blog" was coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger and is short for weblog. According to him, the act of blogging is a process of logging the web. In the beginning, blogging wasn't as simple as today (I have created this blog in less that 2minutes and am already writing my first post) as post had to be published manually. The popularity of blogs started to rise and with it blogging platforms arose. On of the first was LiveJournal. As stated on their site: "LiveJournal.com, a blogging platform and online community built around personal journals, was started by Brad Fitzpatrick in April of 1999. It was begun simply as a fun project to entertain himself and some of his friends. As friends told friends, more people joined and it became a huge success. The platform soon grew to be bigger than a single person could easily handle."

In the same year, 1999, another platform was launched what would later become known as Blogger, and was started by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan at Pyra Labs. Blogger is one of the bigger reasons blogging has become mainstream (Note: Blogger was the first platform which sprung to my mind when I was faced with the task of easily creating a blog. It may not be the most flexible but it sure is the fastest and easiest way for setting up a blog).
It is said that there were 23 blogs on the internet in 1999. That number has been growing exponentially since that and there were over 50 million blogs present on the web by 2007. According to RoyalPingdom there were more than 100 million blogs present only on two platforms (WordPress and Tumblr). Do we dare to predict the number for 2015?

As we can see by the numbers, blogs are becoming an everyday thing for a internet user. Blogs are full of useful resources and bloggers are intertwined with eachother more and more. Not only do blogs (or rather blogging platforms) allow an internet user to set up a personal homepage easier than ever (remember Geocities?), they allow them to connect with other bloggers and thus communicate in a new, exciting way. The two-way communication which is one of the foundations of Web2.0 has made blogging possible as we now it today.