IT 695 - Week 1

One of the class readings for this week was a 2004 article by Henry Jenkins from the International Journal of Cultural Studies. This article suggested that media is currently on a path of convergence, where media that is so prevalent in our society can now be accessed, viewed, interacted with, and even altered by the "collective intelligence" of the global community. This convergence will require creative industries to rethink their definition of consumer from passive to active and unpredictable.

Jenkins suggested 9 areas where the "negotiations between producers and consumers" were likely to focus. One of these areas struck me in particular, the idea of redifining intellectual property rights and media ownership. I read earlier this week that YouTube has begun to confront the issue of copyrights and digital rights by muting the sound on videos where the soundtrack is copyrighted material. This move was hardly unexpected, but will certainly cause a huge reaction in the YouTube audience.

A second assigned reading was Kevin Leander's review of several ethnographic studies considering social spaces, both on and off the Internet. One finding that seemed consistent across several studies is that today's youth does not really see their online social activity as being different from "real life." The Internet is a "cultural artifact." It has always been part of their cultural and social experience and, while it carries different importance in various cultures, it is considered part of the whole and not seperate.

I read an article in T.H.E. Journal that detailed the extreme lack of computers available for use in education in Latin American countries. Can these students share that same inclusive attitude toward the Internet as a social space? The article, "A World of Hurt" by Rama Ramaswami, focuses on Internet availability in schools, but in a country where the ratio in an elite school is 40 computers for 1000 students, can technology be widely available outside school? The article really caught my attention because of the Leander readings and raised many questions that went beyond the scope of Ramaswami's study. His article details the state of computer availability, but cautions that just getting machines into the buildings won't be enough to create instant change.