Preaching the Economic End Time

The article written by Bower and Christensen was a good read given the knowledge I have gained in both Digital Economics and Digital Democracy.  I found it ironic that on the first page it listed Deere as taking over its market, yet today on the news I saw they had to lay off a few hundred employees.  So even the companies that the article praised, still ended up having some serious flaws in their business plan.  The inability of these companies to properly prepare for disruptive technologies time and time again is astounding.  They just wont ever learn that Corporate Joe up in the penthouse suite isn’t going to predict the future magically.  The article also used Seagate as an example of not preparing for disruptive technology, I was not even aware that Seagate had been around this long.  I guess after reading the article it is easy to see why they aren’t at the top of the hard drive industry.  Misreading the habits of the lead customers and terrible response actions to their competition doomed Seagate.  Now I am buying their external hard drives as an afterthought instead of them leading the market.

 

Project Thesis and Statement

Thesis :

One of the many qualities that make up human behavior is our desire to communicate and work with others.  In this digital age, it has become common for those lacking social skills to accomplish these desires to turn to online message board communities to interact with others.  However, not all of these message boards are set up as havens for the socially inept.  Could the true power and potential of community lie within social networks geared towards people with both offline and online social skills?

Statement:

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

I intend to look at a specific on line community and show how its members have used their various talents to create a vast and powerful network, despite at first only having their message board as means to communicate with one another.  As time went on and it became apparent which members possessed adequate social skills, this translated into projects and meet ups facilitated by offline interaction.  The ones who neither had this quality or simply weren’t interested in that type of social interaction eventually were pruned from the ranks.  This left a fellowship of like minded individuals who would not let the constraints of a computer screen hinder goals that in the past would only be possible with face to face interaction.  This is the digital age’s e-firm.  There are no physical offices, which is perfect when work needs to be done in Seattle one day, and in Houston or Barcelona the next.

This project will show the way humans need for community are being met with today’s technology, and the pros and cons of accomplishing them using this technology. Finally, it will show the boons of creating a community that makes the best of both the on and offline world.  Social networking does not have to be strictly digital, it is the hybrid version that will accomplish the most in today’s age.

 

Research Source

Kline, David.  Blog! : how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture. New York : CDS Books, 2005.

This book is relevant to my topic of Online Communities because it discusses the benefits of putting ones personal thoughts and views online and into the public eye.

 

Preliminary Topic Idea

My idea for a topic for the research project is Online Communities.  I would like to examine how these communities are used as places of expression, social interactivity, and dsicussion of common interests.  I would also like to discuss the pros and cons of these online communities and their effect on my generation.

 

3 Questions

1.  How has your realization of the existence of Cyberspace affected your time spent on the internet?

2  Why do you believe that those of the older generation have such a hard time establishing an online life?

3  How has the younger generations reliance on having an online personality affected their offline lives?

 

Young and Participatory: A Voting Story

Chris Caravello and Garrett Grieb of the University of Washington’s Masters in Communication of Digital Media program took out their inexpensive digital cameras and filmed some of the world around them in the midst of the 2008 US Presidential Election. Footage includes the election and its immediate aftermath, as well as interviews with voters aged 18-26.

Check out the video here: Young and Participatory: A Voting Story

Young and Participatory: A Voting Story pt1

Young and Participatory: A Voting Story pt2

 

Nole’Core’s network

Nole’Core’s network

 

REVOLUTION Is My Name!!!!

Trippi, J. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised … Ch 11, 12, Afterward (pp 201-269)

Like last quartes Digital Economic course, my favorite reading of the class came at the very end.  Joe Trippi explains the e-Revolution that has been roaring to a defeaning crescendo over the last decade and how it has effected the business world forever.  Comapnies can either embrace these changes, or fall by the wayside.  As someone who gre up in the rise of this digital age, it makes all of this an especially interesting read.  I was not an observer in all of these changes, I was a guinea pig.

DONT BE EVIL

 

Data Mining :: GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!!

Howard, P. New Media Campaigns…. Ch5 (pp 170-238)

Campaign Managers that try and justify data mining that obviously violates the privacy and trust of citizens are truly the bottom of the barrel. How they can even assemble and motivate the teams of designers and coders to carry out this type of operation is beyond me. As a designer myself, anyone assisting in this is truly a traitor the cause. High Treason.
“When campaign managers pushed designers to build these kinds of hypermedia tools, staff reacted ambiguously and were neither enthusiastic nor critical. Even when designers expressed their reluctance to pursue problematic campaign strategies, they did so with peers, and their reservations were only weakly signaled to senior managers.”
Sorry Big Brother, but “Win At All Costs” applies to college football, not political e-campaigns.

 

Digital Democracy Reflection

At the beginning of the class, I wasn’t completely sure what Digital Democracy entails.  8 weeks in, I have a better understanding, although I see there are a large group of boundaries that stand in the way of our population as whole from enjoying the all of the benefits of the “digital” aspect of democracy.  I guess it was something I always took for granted as a media designer, thinking that “oh I can put anything online and everyone all over the world can enjoiy it”.  While trying to reach people across oceans, there were people in my own back yard that couldn’t even access my work.  The Digital Divide is a huge hurdle in my eyes, and from my research into online voting that I have done in this class, it is apparent that this hurdle needs to be breached for us to fully utilize the “digital” side of democracy.