In this week’s lectures we explored the key differences between closed appliances and general platforms. We looked at the differences between Apple and Android as an example. When a creator releases their software to the public they have to decide whether it should be open sourced or closed sourced. From the start CEO of Apple at the time Steve Jobs made it clear that Apple would have ultimate control over the Phone.

“We define everything that is on the phone.” This quote by Steve Jobs insinuates that the iPhone is designed to filter all content that can be accessed by users. A walled garden of apps is used within the iPhone. The iPhone is a great example of a closed appliance as it does not allow users to interact and modify code within the software. Apple has complete control over the platform, the content and the users. 

The android phone however is an example of a general open platform in which anyone can access and modify the code. Android contains an open garden of apps and has various places you can download apps from which have nothing to do with the developer. As a result of this there is no control over the platform and there are less filters for the apps. 

The main difference however between the two companies is that the iPhone is sold as a product, a commodity for users. The product of an android is connectivity and not the hardware itself. 

2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/technology/12apple.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/technology/12apple.html> [Accessed 21 May 2020].

Today we explored in depth the notion of copyright from its history and role it places in today’s society. Prior to copyright the notion of property related to only scarce resources for example land. Anyone could modify, sell ideas to others, content creators had no property claims on their intellectual work. Ideas were considered public commons. The content industry argues that a world without intellectual property would be a world without new ideas. 

In this day and age anything not under copyright is in the public domain and can be remixed, modified and copied by others. Digital rights management is a systematic approach to copyright protection for digital media which first appeared in the 90s. The aim of the DRM was to restrict and control how people use content and prevent unauthorised redistribution of the content. They control how you use content, where you use content and on what terms. DRM uses spyware, invasive software and encryption to do this. 

SearchCIO. 2020. What Is Digital Rights Management (DRM)? – Definition From Whatis.Com. [online] Available at: <https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/digital-rights-management> [Accessed 13 May 2020].

This week’s lecture explored hyperreality, simulation and spectacle and it was probably one of the most confusing topics for me to wrap my head around. Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist who created the concept of hyperreality. Hyperreality is a premise in which modern reality is mediated by images. TThis concept revolves around the idea that the audience viewing photos perceive the reality of the situation in the photo. Simulacra is a large part of the concept of hyperreality and is where something pretends to be the real. 

The phases of a sign are;

• reflection: represents a basic reality [ a copy] 
• mask: covers up a basic reality [ perverted copy]
• illusion: substitutes the absence of a basic reality [pretending to be a copy] 
• simulacrum: bears no relation to any reality [simulates a basic real]

I found a good example of the topic of simulacra is the movie Spiderman: Far from home. The main villain in the story uses illusions to make people think that he is actually performing stunts and that he has superpowers when in actual fact he is just a normal person. 

Another example of simulacra is the website called This person doesn’t exist, which is a website where faces are created by artificial intelligence to look real and appear to be real but are not.

In this week’s lecture we dug a lot deeper into framing and how the way we perceive reality can be influenced by many different notions. Schema determines perception as it is based around the concept of your past experiences and memories. Richard Heuer describes Schema as ‘Any pattern of relationships among data stored in memory’. Schema plays a huge role for propaganda and advertising in that if you can control a person’s schema you can control what they think is important and what they can expect in understanding reality. Schema can be changed by altering the association chain that forms it. This involves creating frames and building new frames. By using elements from schema already existing in the audience’s mind (selection) and arrange them in a new way (salience). Through salience companies trying to maximise the frame you have created are stored as schema. It is said that those who can dictate what is in the frame have ultimate power.

In this weeks lecture we looked closely at how exactly the distributed media network functions and how it differs from a centralised network. Distribution networks work extremely well in that they can both scale up and easily maintain low coordination costs are there is no pronounced hub. A hierarchical and vertically integrated network with a central hub will experience high coordination costs as it scales up. The more nodes joined will overthrow the central node if not. There is also a lot of pressure on the one central node to deliver content.

In this day people don’t want to respond to inert content they want to engage and challenge the content, which doesn’t sit well for monological media as their main process in gaining information includes framing an event in their own hands. Framing is extremely important in the process of telling a story as it gives the perception, point of view and propaganda to the audience. Compared with dialogical media you have the audience participating in all stages of framing and telling the story. This might be through filming the story via phone or taking notes themselves.

Memes are the building blocks of distributed media. Memes act as perception modulators. Influence the way people see reality. In distributed media a propaganda exchange looks like meme warfare. A lot of memes and meme warfare originate from 4chan. The reason for this is 4chan is a site with no filter and users don’t identify themselves so there is no negative output of posting. This creates an extremely fast feedback loop, if an idea fail and gets rejected there is immediate feedback.

Peters, M., 2020. 5 Ways Framing Can Influence Your Story. [online] Meetcortex.com. Available at: <https://www.meetcortex.com/blog/5-ways-framing-can-influence-your-story> [Accessed 20 April 2020].

tutor2u. 2020. Centralised Versus Decentralised Structures | Business | Tutor2u. [online] Available at: <https://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/centralised-versus-decentralised-structures> [Accessed 20 April 2020].

In this week’s lecture we explored in more detail the internet paradigm and collective intelligence. Specifically the key differences and assets of both dialogical media and monological media. Ever since the development of dialogical media the internet has been a very different place. You now have content that is not packaged for consumers that is a continuing collaboration project. As long as an emergent media paradigm exists there is no form of content that is finished. There is always a way to remix, reproduce, repurpose and reshare the content. The introduction of dialogical media has also allowed for content aggregation and curation to be a conversation with many different produsers ranging from professional to amateur. There is no strict role in the production of media. 

A great example of collective intelligence is 4chan which is an anonymous imageboard website that hosts discussions and solves puzzles. There are a lot of examples of where they have solved big problems and have been great to help the community. Ted showed us an example of 4chan finding a training camp during the syrian war only using footage from the camp. This is an excellent example of collective intelligence as it is coordinated in the real time with a many to many interaction. Anyone could have also participated in the discussion as it was universally distributed. 

Here are some more examples of 4chans work.

This week we continued along the traces of Marshall’s McLuhan’s studies with the key focus of the week’s lecture being based around how mediums are extensions of ourselves. However this week we dived deeper into the internet and industrial paradigms and the key differences between legacy media and emergent media. Legacy media is media that audiences can only engage with the final product. The writers and producers of the content are able to filter their content to allow only specific information they want to be seen by their audiences. They also have complete control over the distribution of their content. This form of media is prone to propaganda and manipulation and has a high risk of failure due to the high cost required to ideate, produce and distribute the content. Emergent media acquires hardly any filters, low production cost and distributing as well as having the audience participate in all the steps required. 

Throughout the lecture Ted showed us examples of the industrial paradigm and that products produced must have no iteration and experimentation. The products are all conceptualised before starting. The internet paradigm however allows for changes to be made during the process of making the product. For example updates, which shows that iteration is a feature of the internet paradigm. An example of this that Ted gave us was that gmail was released in beta and they allowed for people’s criticism and feedback before the full version was completed.

In this week’s lecture we were talking about Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement of “The medium is the message”. This proved to be quite daunting because for the last couple of weeks we had just been learning about memes. Sitting in the lecture listening to Ted explain the concept on the “The medium is the message” blew me away at just how deep and meaningful conversation is and the medium that goes with the message communicated.

The term “The medium is the message” refers to the subject of how the information is received is determined by the way in which the message is presented. This could be anything, ranging from a t-shirt to a text message from someone. Interpretation is everything when it comes to communication. A good example of this would be Mcluhan’s book named “The medium is the massage” not the “The medium is the message”. A lot of people would look over that sentence and interpret it as “The medium is the message” because it makes sense and people tend to read things in their mind that makes sense without thinking twice about whether the word is spelt wrong or differently. 

“Each medium, independent of the content it mediates, has its own intrinsic effects which are its unique message.” Is a great quote said by Mcluhan which represents that mediums contain an independent message to the message being intentionally told. The medium also has its own unique effect on the audience and creates its own message to be interpreted and decoded by the consumer. 

Sources 

Smashing Magazine. 2020. The Medium Is The Message — Smashing Magazine. [online] Available at: <https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/the-medium-is-the-message/> [Accessed 23 March 2020].

Marshallmcluhan.com. 2020. Commonly Asked Questions About Mcluhan – The Estate Of Marshall Mcluhan. [online] Available at: <https://www.marshallmcluhan.com/common-questions/> [Accessed 23 March 2020].