Blog #6

Summarizing & Key Terms

Summarizing Weinberger: Weinberger's book was all about the organization of information into the three orders of order. The first order involves physical objects, the second order involves short descriptions of those objects, and the third is dependent on the user to define how the object is categorized.
We learned that everything is miscellaneous, and everyone searches for information differently because they need it for different reasons. This is why using metadata as tags is important to finding the information you seek. Thus, Weinberger encourages us to participate in Web 2.0 by tagging sites and information. With enough participation, we can truly make the entire internet into miscellaneously ordered information, customized for everyone's needs.

Weinberger's other key terms include:

• top-down & bottom-up content which refer to who is categorizing the information (corporations/government or the people)
• metadata are the descriptive tags we give to information to better organize it
• miscellaneous is the state in which everything starts and to which it will return through categorizations

Summarizing Jenkins: Jenkins is big into the idea of participatory culture. He believes that to be media literate, we must not only "read" or view the media currently available, but we must become part of it to make media a "read/write" process. Jenkins uses convergence to describe the method through which how we interact with media is evolving. He makes references to pop culture and the niches of extremists who are creating affinity spaces for exchanging information and ideas based on media programming.

Jenkins' other key terms include:

• collaborative authorship which deals with fans and the author working together to create new ideas for the media
• user-generated content is something that is created by a fan of the media, like fan fiction, and rights are given to the company who created the original on which the new content was based
• collective knowledge is in a sense the wisdom of the crowd, combining everything a certain group of people know on a subject to create a greater whole
• world-making is the process in which a fictional world with its own rules is created with enough depth that it can be the basis for expanding story lines

Summarizing Lessig: Lessig tackles the idea of copyright, how it is currently being implemented, and recommendations on how it could be changed. He says that copyright laws are outdated for our digital era and need to be reworked in order to ensure creativity. Currently, the laws are set to protect the author of media, but end up benefiting the companies who own them instead. By incriminating people for downloading and remixing media, we are fueling the corporations which bind our hands and creative rights.
In addition to file-sharing and remixes, Lessig spends a fair amount of time talking about sharing, hybrid and commercial economies. When it comes down to it, it's all about the money. Sharing economies and commercial economies both benefit financially from working together.

Lessig's other key terms:

• amateur creativity produces a true "read/write" culture
• fair use is the portion of media you can use without copyright infringement
• creative commons is home to the "copyleft" doctrine and share and share alike way of copyright thinking

Connecting Weinberger, Jenkins & Lessig

All three of these books come back to the same fundamental point: Collaboration and online spaces is the way of the future. There are so many ways in which our current media enables users to contribute. Participatory culture and true media literacy with everyone using the idea of "read/write" media will produce new ideas, more access to information, and, with any luck, reformed copyright laws so that amateur creativity can blossom.
Weinberger wants to change how information is not only organized but thought about and accessed. Jenkins wants to change the way we interact with media, so that it becomes more engaging and customized to us. Lessig wants to change how copyright is regulated to legalize creativity.
All three of these books have some call to action, a message that is screaming to be heard. It's up to those of us who've heard the message to spread the word.


Application to the Final Project

The Community Action Center has another message, but it also requires participation and collaboration to be successful. The information on their site needs to be reorganized to make it more accessible and understandable. Perhaps a search box where users could input metadata would be a useful addition to the homepage. Of course, the CAC is trying to inspire participation, but not just in its online space, but in our community. By creating an exciting and useful site, we will be encouraging others to collaborate and make Pullman a better place for all. Making a site that stimulates creativity will help the community in new and exciting ways. When creative projects have been completed, they will promote more positive action within our community.