Essay 5: Final Thoughts

I am sliding towards graduation and I have just a few credits left. New Media was supposed to be an easy class where I reviewed subject matter that I already knew on my way out this illustrious university’s door. Damn. Not even close. Instead, I have been challenged and I have discovered that what I already knew was like the captain of the Titanic making an off-hand comment about an ice cube floating off to the port side of his ship; there just might be more to this! What I learned, more than anything, is that digital media and communications is the single most important event in modern history. That is a huge statement to make, I know. However, I believe it to be true, and here I will tell you why.

In Thomas Friedman’s augury article, It’s a Flat World, After All, he states, “When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.” Netscape founder Andreessen: “Today the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want.” This is the realization I made this quarter. The world as we have known it is no longer the same. Sure, most Americans haven’t realized this yet and when they do it will sound just like an 18-wheeler rushing past inches away as they try to change a flat tire on I-5. The world “out there” is gone. It’s tiny now.

We covered the digital divide in the quarter and my opinion of this divide has shifter. I do not think there is as much of a divide as I once did. I understand that in certain places they lack infrastructure and they lack access to hardware. I do not dismiss this as insignificant. However, I see the new media revolution as still in its infancy and I believe that once it spreads as it will inevitably will, international borders will evaporate. It is not going to be like the predictions of the people living in the times of the telegraph that we read about in The Victorian Internet. It is not going to bring world peace. Rather, it is going to make the world uniformly competitive.

Chris Anderson says as much in his article The Long Tail. “This [was] the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.” Indeed. Anderson’s two rules—Make everything available; Cut the price in half. Now lower it—give us some idea of the power that new media will bring to people. Furthermore, changes to how information is distributed will be completely turned upside down. One of the group presentations on Skype showed me this. This, along with VoIP, showed Anderson’s rules to be prophetic. There is no reason to use “old” communication systems now.

Thee are some down sides to all of this, and we were exposed to them this quarter in our readings. Information overload is real. Not just in our daily lives with Balckberries, Internet pages, email, IM etc., but in more significant and dangerous ways. Vannevar Bush pointed out the diminishing value of scientific information overload in his article ‘As We May Think.’ “There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less remember…” He is suggesting that when there is too much information, it becomes as if there were none at all because it is useless. As we learned, space and time have ceased to exist in many cases in the new media space. This can be a great thing when I want what I want when I want it. It can also be a terrible thing as time is compressed and our lives are forcefully sped up and the quality of our experiences and interactions are stripped down to just “good enough.” I do not know about you, but I feel rushed all the time. All the time.

The lasting impact of this course is that I think differently and I see the future differently. That is profound (that word again). It may just change the direction of my life. I have long been a man of history, learning life’s lessons by looking back. But the future seems more interesting because of the new media revolution and I now have the opportunity to be a part of history if that makes sense.

Essay 2: Alexander Hamilton on Wikipedia

Alexander Hamilton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton is the most controversial Founding Father and the subject of as much ridicule and scorn as he is the receiver of praise. The wiki article on him is very active which supports this claim. However, it would be disingenuous to not admit immediately here my very biased opinion in favor of Hamilton.

The original posting date of the article is February 24, 2002 and it has been edited weekly, if not daily, ever since by well over 500 contributors. The article contains 76 notes and 18 external references.

I chose Alexander Hamilton because I believe he is the most important figure in American Revolutionary history, yet his contributions to American society remains largely unknown to the majority of its citizens. Those who do know of his military, political and personal exploits tend to fall on one side or the other of the love-hate divide. The article is very thorough and covers the most important events of his life: education, military career, Constitution and the Federalist Papers, Secretary of the Treasury, founding the Federalist Party, his affair with Maria Reynolds, the 1800 presidential election, and of course, his famous duel with Aaron Burr in which he was killed.

The article is fair and unbiased in my opinion. It holds no reservations in exposing the negative exploits of his life and death as well as giving him credit where credit is due. The discussions pages are archived into four separate files as they are very long. Supporters write, for example, “Hamilton is America. He belongs more on Mount Rushmore than Roosevelt or Jefferson. People want to honor those who are excessively naive and can’t accept a prophet.” Or, “Until Franklin Delano Roosevelt set Thomas Jefferson as pretty much the patron saint of the United States, Alexander Hamilton was considered as such. In fact his contributions to economics, especially the United States economy, affected the world eventually. Americans live in a Jeffersonian political system with a Hamilton economy. He might not have been one of the most honorable men, but he is extremely important, nonetheless.” Detractors comment, for example, “This topic (Hamilton’s face on the $10 note) is under current debate over whether Hamilton should be removed from currency for his Federalist beliefs. There is a high profile movement that is attempting to replace Hamilton with Reagan.” I have read four biographies of Hamilton, Ron Chernow’s being the most thorough in my opinion, and the wiki article seems in line with his conclusions (Chernow is quoted referenced 16 times in the wiki article).

A comparative article was found using ProQuest. It is titled ‘The Guy on the $10 Bill’ (James Taranto. Wall Street Journal. [Eastern edition]. New York, N.Y.: Oct 20, 2004. pg. D.12) This article describes an exhibit in New York’s Historical Society displayed in 2004 and gives some detail of Hamilton’s accomplishments. It is not neutral in any way, but still relies upon truth. Taranto closes the article with this statement: “Hamilton was only 47 when he died, and most Americans know him today only as the guy on the $10 bill. Visitors to the New York Historical Society will come away with a newfound appreciation for the many contributions he made to America in his short life.” The wiki article is clearly and without any question the more credible of the two articles. In fact, the wiki article continues to serve as the active dueling grounds where Hamiltonians and his detractors wage their daily battles over the credibility of sources on this great man’s life. He was not without flaws and the article exposes them, however his contributions to the the United States and even the world should not be overshadowed by some minor indiscretions as they have been throughout the 20th-century. The article does a great job of revealing the true nature of his deeds.

Essay 4: The U.S. Digital Divide Hysteria

The idea of the digital divide in the U.S., like everything technology-related, has already become outdated. There continues to be a misguided belief that in the U.S. there is a huge gap between techno-haves and techno-have-nots. While this may seem perfectly logical, the statistics just don’t bear it out.

The fact is that anyone who wants to get on the internet and use the powerful tools for e-commerce or social networking can. Those who are most unable to acquire technology on their own due to financial restraints still have tremendous access to it in our public institutions. Take a look at the second floor of the downtown Seattle library. There is an ocean of computers available to anyone—able bodied or not— who wants to use them for free. Multiply that out by the number of computers in the rest of the country’s libraries and you start to see a different picture. That’s just the libraries. As Andy Carvin reported in September of 2006, “Internet access is almost ubiquitous in schools now, allowing students of all backgrounds relatively equal opportunities to go online for educational purposes. Nationally, 83% of students access the Internet in school…” Statistically, these are kids of every possible ethnic background.1 In fact, as early as 2003, more than half of Americans were online.2 Five years later that number has jumped exponentially as the price of laptops continues to fall and the pipes into our homes bringing faster downloads via DSL, cable, or satellite continue to get bigger and run further and further away from urban centers.

What may appear to be a digital divide in the U.S. is more than likely a matter of a divide in choice. Sonia Arrison writes, “Not all individuals want to use computers or get online. Everyone knows someone, rich or poor, who chooses not to have voice mail, call waiting, or even a television. Many of the Internet’s so-called “have-nots” are really “want-nots.” This is not a sentiment to brush off casually. My mother is a great example of this. She has the resources to own whatever technology she wants, but she chooses not to. She seems to have some sort of natural phobia to society’s advances and purposefully rejects whatever is happening. She still has an ancient TV. No cable. She took nearly 12 years to get her first cell phone, but not surprisingly, refuses to turn it on unless “it’s an emergency.” She was given a computer and guess what, she still runs Windows 98 and has free dial up and uses AOL, that is if she ever goes online. Some people are just like that. She’s an educated woman with a PhD in education and has taught for over 30 years.

A paper published in 2008 in Information Economics and Policy magazine shows that statistically the poorer you are the more time you spend online. The less educated you are the numbers actually go up for online use.3 I realize that may seem counter to our beliefs. Those of us with shiny new expensive Macs somehow use them more often, right? We don’t. The short answer as to why is that the more educated and the more money you have, the more the opportunity cost of being online takes a bite out of your valuable life. Stated another way the digital divide has closed so much in the U.S. that being online is tantamount to wasting hours in front of the television. The sad fact is that poorer people do both. Statistics show that most people use the internet for “wasteful” entertainment value (e.g. Facebook, chatting, or watching television or movies)4.

This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of how the internet is really used and that, as we all know, is for pornography. Some statistics from 2006: 12 percent of all Web sites are pornographic; 35 percent of all downloads are porn; 266 new porn site appear daily; in 2006, internet revenues from pornographic Web sites was a whopping $2.84 B.; 72 percent of online porn is watched by men (that leaves 28 percent as women!) And, this statistic alone should make you reconsider whether or not the digital divide is worth getting upset over: 70 percent of all porn is watched between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.5

The digital divide today may be more accurately a reference to who has a computer in their house. Just like television, eventually everyone will. The bottom line is this: anyone in the U.S. who wants to get online, can, with a minimal amount of effort. What they do once they get there is a whole different story.

End notes

1. Andy Carvin. New Government Report Exposes the School-Home Digital Divide. PBSTeachers.org. Published: September 8, 2006.
   http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2006/09/new_report_exposes_the_schoolh.html
2. Sonia Arrison. Perspective: What digital divide? CNET. Published: March 13, 2002.
   http://www.news.com/2010-1071-858537.html
3. Avi Goldfarb, Jeff Prince. Internet adoption and usage patterns are different: Implications for the digital divide, Information Economics and Policy 20 (2008), 2-15
4. ibid
5. GOOD Magazine, Internet porn. 2006.
   http://www.youtube.com/v/QOFTQpNhsWE&hl=en

How do you expect VoIP to impact cable and telephone networks

VoIP is similar to other innovations and disruptions caused by the digital revolution. They tend to be resisted by those companies that will stand to lose the most immediate revenue. Once those companie, which tend to be slow moving, finally catch up to the technology’s possibilities, they then figure out how to regain control and legitimate charging like they did before. A common example of this is the music industry which fought so hard against digital music until it figured out how to control and make money from music in the example of iTunes. Carriers who have spend billions setting up networks around the world still maintain control of VoIP because VoIP is still reliant upon phone lines, cell towers or satellites. It seems to me the money is in the hardware part of this equation not the networking. Similar to the internet, it’s the devices that sell not charging for the internet. Charging for VoIP, or the internet for that matter, would only serve to limit the innovation that has driven the digital revolution. Companies will need to figure out how to make money and continue to keep the networks themselves free to be innovated upon.

Questions

How will carriers survive if they cannot charge for use of the phone lines for VoIP?

Why is it fair for users to expect services like the internet and VoIP to continue to remain free?

How long will it be before the majority of people are using VoIP?

 

Final two news sites evaluated.

The final two sites I was assigned to evaluate are the Toledo (OH) Blade and the Morning Call of Allentown, PA

Toledo Blade
The site design is terrible. It’s little more than a heavily laden wrapper for advertising surrounding feeble amounts of content. The ad content is so high that the eyes are assaulted by myriad color and fonts. The navigation for the entire site runs a thin column down the left side. The buttons are very small and difficult to read. There is an alternative navigation across the top based in five tabs of which only one is useful in terms of content. But, that one tab, ‘news’ is already the home page, so it really serves no purpose. The site reflects a newspaper, so the content is updated daily for main stories and weekly for the three blogs. I would give this site a 40 out of 100.

Each story has the ability to RSS, email and forum. The forums require sign up and you must go five to six clicks deep to get to the forums you want. The forum interface is very dated in the way it operates.

There is video section on the site that is supplied by AP Video feeds. The player opens in a separate window and has links to all the video that is featured on the home page in a scroll. The only audio I found on the site is some church related bells and chanting. There is another link where readers could submit photos taken with celebrities. There is a photo gallery link on the home page but it links to another site and is a black screen dead link.

The Morning Call
I like this site. It has a great balance of white space and content. Things are easy to find, even with a large amount of links. There are many blogs, commentaries, video, photos and an easy to use navigation on the side and the top. The advertising is larger and so the page isn’t as cluttered. I especially like the small orang highlights letting readers know where there is video and photos. There is a ‘Last Updated’ at the top of the page in red indicating the freshness of content. I would rate the site 95 out of 100. I deduct points for not having social media interactivity.

The articles themselves have a great little navigation called ‘Article Tools” where there are icons for email, print, single page view reprints and posting comments. Especially useful is the share link where the icons of Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Newsvine, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Digg rotate. When you click then the whole list opens up in the same menu box. In the same space as the story is the link and window for comments so there is no clicking to leave the story and you can see other comments immediately. This is a great feature for timeliness.

The multimedia is also well designed. The video player is embedded on the home page, so you do not have to leave to watch the videos. If you choose to, you can open a video page that shows a robust site full of videos. The video section on the home page is divided by tabs into sections. There are photos associated with stories as well as a section called ‘Today’s Photo Journal’ where every day there is a large selection of photos from the top stories from the local photography staff. I didn’t see a separate page for user uploaded video or photos.

Of the two, the Morning Call is far superior. The content is better and easier to find and interact with. Neither site is as good from a Web 2.0 standpoint as was the first site I evaluated, The East Valley Tribune of Arizone. That site of the all six was the most socially interactive and user driven while still supplying news and multimedia capabilities. It would require more research to be sure of what I suspect is not just a coincidence and not a correlation, that being the the larger the population of a market the better and more robust the site. Robust and better here are qualified as more interactive, more user driven, easier to find and use the content, with a great balance of design, commentary and opinion, as well as good old fashioned reporting. This isn’t always the case of course as my earlier post on the UK’s Independent shows. However, in the US at least, it seems to be true.

Evaluation of four newspaper sites

I have evaluated The East Valley Tribune (Phoenix, AZ), The San Antonio Express News, The Independent (UK), and The Buffalo News (NY). It is very surprising to me just how very different each are from each other.

In my opinion the ranking of the four so far would be The Independent first. This may cause a stir because there is virtually no Web 2.o elements to the site. However, the content is just so great. The writing is excellent and there so many columnists and commentators to read; their version of bloggers. The site is easy and clean to get through. No media whatsoever, no noise, no clutter, just great writing. Not everyone would agree with me, obviously.

Number two would be The East Valley Tribune and for almost the opposite reason from why I chose the Independent. The website is robust and modern in terms of its offerings. There is a significant amount of web 2.0, user driven interaction. There are user blogs, videos, photos, forums and the now-expected social networking components. There is a section on most viewed stories, commented and recommended. They have crammed a lot of interactivity into the site and that’s great.  There is digg with each story. There are most viewed, commented and recommended tabs. There are reader forums.   The video available on the page is significant and robust. There are both paper and user posted videos available. The player self loads and allows for RSS, linking, emailing and info. The list of videos scrolls and has a thumbnail and description. There is also an easy to use button to load your own videos. The site also offers photographic slideshows in a separate player. This is very well done. The downside to the site is that the usability is not good. It is a busy web site that is very difficult to know where to begin. Spending some time with it allowed me to start to discern what was what. It’s just tough to focus.

Third would be The San Antonio Express News. The site is a joint effort between the Express News and KENS5, a local CBS affiliate, so there considerably leveraging going on with the video and multimedia components. The site has an easy to figure out navigation going down the left side. It seems to be updated continuously. There is way to email stories, but there is no rating system in place. There is no Digg, Twitter, etc. There is a place for user uploaded photos and a way to get stories on your mobile device. For the most part, the site is one way out to the viewer.  The multimedia offerings here seem bare minimum and nothing more than a front for the TV stations offerings.

Last is the Buffalo News web site. The site is just okay. It has a clean layout and easy to find content, but lacks the robust Web 2.0 user driven components that are seen in the above newspaper sites. There is only one place for leaving comments and no way to leave blogs, videos or other content. There is also a ‘Most Popular’ section for stories in the recent 24 hour period.

My recommendations for improvements would be different for each. For the Independent, I would suggest they catch up with the rest of the world and offer user-driven  interactivity to complement their already stellar content. For the EVT, I would recommend a site redesign that cleared away a lot of the clutter. The site is an all out assault on the eyeballs and needs to be made easier to figure out. The SAEN needs to generate itsown content and not just serve as a portal for the TV station where it gets most of its multimedia. As a reader I may as well just go the the TV site, right?  And, finally, for The Buffalo News site, they need serious help. This site is boring. I would not revisit after one stop there. I hope this is no reflection of the city.

My judgments are based on wanting a balance between tons of content and usability, robust user-driven content and excellent site-generated content, and most of all great writing. Otherwise I may as well just watch You Tube or TV.

Extra credit

The digital divide in this country is nothing like it is in other countries. My presentation will show that those who are not as educated or as well-off economically tend to use the internet more that those of a higher economic status or a higher education. I realize this probably doesn’t make sense and once you see the presentation it will. Nevertheless, the point is that the internet coming into people’s lives usually follows a trajectory. It is adopted earlier and faster by those with the means to make use of it or who can afford it. The less well-off, once they do adopt it, tend to use it for chat and gaming. Eventually, they get around to using it for “more important” purposes. I think a terrific example of this pattern is our classmate Mariani’s blog. She describes her process of not having the ability to use the internet in her home country and then migrating to having full-time access as she increased her schooling, which in turn increased her need, which increased her desire to know more, etc.

It’s terrific as the author explains the incredibly high numbers of students who now have access to the internet in schools and at libraries. Frankly, I think that’s all they need when they’re young, as unpopular as that opinion is. Once they get it full time, they basically socialize their lives away and in my opinion, that is a huge waste of access considering all those who don’t even have it globally to do more important things like learn.

Public space and accessibility

The article this week brings up some interesting topics. It is amazing to read about the breakthrough technologies allowing areas in the world access to networking. Especially the free radio frequency possibilities and the “lilly pad” concept of overlapping networks. The digital divide is certainly getting smaller. The article mentions something that I don’t think can be overlooked or brushed off in the glow of all of the technological advances in RLANs, VANs, and CorDECTS: Once the networking is in place who will have the computers and software to use them? The costs here are staggering for an underprivileged area. Remember how expensive the technology is in western countries or even Asia where this technology tends to be cheaper? Even a stripped down non-hard drive computer at $300 is just not feasible. This can mean only a single computer or similar device for an entire village like the one described in the Dominican Republic. The idea of bringing the value and benefits of the internet to the third world is far from “there” if there is no way for the individual to have the time and space necessary to learn the ways of the internet, the computer, and what it may do for them socially and economically. Real progress needs to made here in equal strides to the networking. This does not diminish in anyway the remarkable things written about in this exciting article. In fact, one of the more innovative possibilities mentioned is the free-ness of the MHz networks. This is where accessibility as a topic becomes salient. In the third world, network accessibility is treated more like a human right being somehow regained. We don’t have that in the U.S. Like everything else here, nothing is free and you get what you pay for. For them, it’s a giant step in the right direction. I know this article is already five years old and so I can only imagine just how far they’ve gone since.

Essay 3

I wanted to explore the web sites of political groups that are at the opposite end(s) of the spectrum from my personal politics. The Cato Institute and the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute web sites are the Web presence of anti-government Libertarians in the former and anti-feminist conservative women in the latter. I am a life-long democrat.

The Cato Institute’s Web site is very robust. There is an easy to use navigation on the left side that is in very large type. I assume this is because many of their readers are older and they understand how frustratingly small many site’s type is these days. There is also plenty of white space. They offer an ‘About’ page as the first link and it explains their views clearly. They are a pro-business, pro-individualist, anti-big government organization that desires to see the “true meaning” of the Declaration of independence and the Constitution be more fully subscribed to. They offer multimedia, blogs, publications and an area that lists their speakers. They have daily podcasts and video clips very prominently displayed on their page. I see no outside advertising. The titles of their stories are very large and are all you need as a visitor to immediately understand what this organization is about. For example, “Why Government Planning Always Fails” or “Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property.” As a Web site I have to give this organization much credit for such an easy to use site that offers a lot of information that is easy to find. The site is modern and offers most Web 2.0 features.

The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute’s Web Site is equally engaging. The site relies upon visuals to grab a potential viewers attention. There is a slide show running at the top of the page that shows pictures from functions where many young, conservative women have gathered for speakers or social events. The look of the women tell you much about who they typically attract. The navigation runs along the top of the page and like the Cato Institute’s Web site has an ‘About” link as they first link. Unlike Cato’s, the page isn’t as robust in terms of offerings and tends to be very text heavy. It does have an ‘Issues and Policy’ link that takes the viewer to a page that is bisected into two parts: Issues and Policies and Policy Express. Here there are large, bolded, and underlined topics that give a flavor for the site’s views and content, similar to the way Cato does. However, the two site’s do not share policies. For example, “How Sex Ed Risks Girls’ Health” and “Balancing Social Security’s Books on the Backs of the Wealthy.”

The writing style of the two sites differs dramatically. Cato Institute writing is brash, forward, and unapologetic in its demands for bootstrap rugged individualistic positions. It makes no bones about its strong desires to return to Jeffersonian principles of American Democracy and a revolutionary times’ definition of liberty. A quote from a blog post by Daniel Griswold:

“Of course, supporting a middle class family can be and often is hard work. But we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be panicked into grasping for big-government solutions to an economic crisis that does not exist.”

You can click on Griswold’s name and it takes you to a bio page about him. I find this to be refreshing. They do not hide their views and make it easy to engage in dialog with their policy setters.

The language used by the Luce site is more reserved and requires one to already vaguely understand what they are about and to read between the lines. Once you read for a while you understand very clearly that they don’t like lesbians, liberal feminist university professors, open sexuality of any kind, and especially welfare women and illegal immigrants. This shouldn’t be surprising coming from a group whose aim it is to return to the days where women don’t talk about sex and they blatantly state that their should be a fence along the entire border of Mexico and the U.S. They are also endorsing all-out attacks on the Vagina Monologues and the use of the “V-word” in popular culture (their phrasing, not mine!) Titles of some of their publications include How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), and Global Warming: What You Haven’t Been Told. They have links to see Anne Coulter speak.

While I do not share the politics of either of these groups, I do appreciate how easy to is to find out what they stand for, who their board members are, and what activities they involve themselves in. Their Web sites are actually quite good. I spent several hours watching videos, reading blogs, news stories and board member bios, and this on sites whose views I don’t agree with.

What are the qualities of a good web site?

At the risk of opening a big can of worms, I am going to attempt to answer this question.

A good web site merges functionality and usability into a package that has emotional appeal. This isn’t any new revelation, in fact, all design is based on these principles. The problems begin when one of these is out of balance with the others. A great looking site that doesn’t do anything for me is just as bad as a site that is completely packed with interactivity but is so confusing and busy that my eyes start to bleed down my face. I have noticed over the years that sites are getting more dense. I think this is a result of a physiological change in our ability to manage more information comfortably. As we spend more time on the internet our brains get exercised in juggling much more stuff all at once. Combine this with the tools of Web 2.0 and the sites are very heavy. Taken to an extreme, visit any web site out of Asia and marvel at the lack of white space and all of the moving, fluttering, chachkis that compete for your attention. So, yes, some of what makes a web site good or not is cultural, we must keep that in mind.

Today, the expectations are that we must have user control. I expect to be able to post pictures, videos, comments, opinion, reviews, and have a dialog. I also expect to see these same elements posted by others. THEN, I also want to see offerings. This is a significant change in web sites over the past few years. The user has control and if you don’t recognize that as a web content provider, then I leave. The social aspects of web use are fundamental now.

As for design, it seems the days of good web design are receding in the rear view. Content is king. I do hope there will be a return to clean, user friendly design, but I don’t have my hopes up. (Here’s the part where people respond and tell me I’m crazy because there is plenty of good design)