Share your photos. Watch the world.

Welcome to Flickr: a Yahoo company, "almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world." With nearly 5,000 uploads in the last minute and 3.2 million things "geotagged" in the last month, Flickr seems to be the ultimate photo sharing website. Personally, I had never heard of Flickr and wondered how/if it differed from sites like Facebook and Myspace. So I took the Magical Feature Tour (yes, it's actually called that) and found it to be marketed as a bit more family oriented, a place to share your favorite photos with "the people who matter to you". Stay in touch, make albums, organize/edit pictures, make "stuff" including "sexy cards" and photo books.
We decided to use Flickr as our primary medium. We chose to focus on the keyword identity, and picked out some of our favorite pictures that came up when we entered the word in the search bar. We chose those pictures for specific reasons, we knew that we would be able to make some commentary about them in the context of our class, of other key words and concepts that we've been talking about in the past few weeks. We wondered though, how would the general public react to these pictures. Would they evoke the same ideas? Would people be able to recognize these as social commentary rather than simple, contextless photos?
Clearly, we could not get opinions representative of the "general public" (I still can't grasp any concept of statistics, help Crystal!) But we could chose an audience through various other media to get an idea of what at least a few people thought about the pictures.
We narrowed our photos down and decided on Youtube, Facebook, and several other sites (for the purposes of this post I will focus on these two because I am most exposed to them). Our intended audience then is internet users.
Youtube: "Broadcast Yourself." The famous website with millions of videos from the Obama speech at the Democratic National Convention to one of a cat playing with yarn. These videos are posted by anyone who has the free subscription to Youtube, and are accessible to anyone who has the internet. We made a video that included all of our pictures and posted it on Youtube. Though not all internet users utlize Youtube, there are a great number of people who do, the video would allow many people to comment on the photos. A concern here is that people may not bother to do so. There are so many videos out there, what if no one comes across ours? And if they do, again, will they take the time to comment? Because we could not use some statistical surveying method to ensure enough commentary to generalize about Youtube/internet users, we decided that we had to simply put, take the comments that we could get. Another consideration is that those people who did comment are ones who were interested in the photos and did have something to say. Those who did not comment may have not had anything to say.

Next we made our Facebook group where we posted each of the pictures and asked our friends to comment. Facebook: "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." One of the most popular sites on the internet, millions of people join to keep up with friends and family, share photos, even reconnect with old classmates. Our main audience now is our friends on Facebook.We were each in a position to "invite" others to the group, we hoped that most of the people who joined the group would help us by commenting on the photos. In my case, I invited several people, a few of whom I thought would actually participate. We have 68 members so far, five have made comments on the photos. I found it interesting that so many people joined, yet so little took the time to note what they thought of the pictures. I asked my sister if she had gotten my invitation, she said that she hadn't really paid attention because she gets so many "random" group invitations that she is not interested in. A concern again for this medium is that people will write the group off because there are so many other groups out there, this one may simply not catch their attention.
Again, we must take the comments that we do get and discuss those. Our audience for these two mediums are not as specific as for our forums that Crystal is working on (each of which has a majority of participants of the same gender with specific interests and ideas), but the idea is that for each of these we do include the entire internet population. Though people may not go to a website, join a forum, or a group, or take the time to make commentary about a few photos, they do have the option to do so. Our photos are out "there", they are accessible to anyone who can access the internet. Whether they will come across them, let alone participate, however, is a very different question.

We were able to get a lot done today as far as planning and organizing our project. We had decided on several pictures (from Flickr) in class that we thought conveyed some of the complexities of the key word "Identity". We decided to narrow those down to five photos which we will post on some forums, asking the public for their response/reactions to them. As of now we will use Facebook, Naver, Youtube, (sorry Vicky and Crystal I didn't get the names of the sites you guys mentioned! Possibly a comment with those if you see this?). So far, we have our Youtube video (thanks Komal!), and have a general idea of individual tasks/how we will split up the work.
We thought it would be interesting and useful to get opinions from individuals outside of our group,the class, the state, even the country. We will compare those photo comments to our own ideas of what the photos may signify. We are hoping to get some new insights, and maybe some that greatly contrast our own. It will be interesting to see how responses vary based on the forum we use. Will we even get any responses? Will people have the attention span to sit through our 40 second (or so) Youtube video, let alone take the time to comment? There are some concerns and technical issues, but I think that this whole process is worth noting.
We will be making the Facebook group soon (which we will each be assigned to, allowing us to "invite" people to share opinions about the photos). We hope to meet again soon to talk about each individual picture and hopefully tie together some key concepts and ideas we have discussed in class.

Dave, my mind is going...

It's all over the place! Like Carr, I strongly believe I've become increasingly unfocused and unable to submerge myself in and retain detailed information. The media is supplying my "stuff of thought" while simultaneously shaping my thought process. Google isn't making us stupid, its aiding in our development of Attention Deficit (sometimes Hyperactivity) Disorder.
Just as I sat down to write this blog I checked my email, The New York Times for a "quick" overview of world news, and Wikipedia to see what there was to be said about "culture". Each of these pages, filled with links to other pages, distracted me for far longer than I had anticipated. Ultimately, I suppose, allowing me to narrow my blog down to this: I am easily distracted and I don't think it's just "the way I am". My constant exposure to various forms of media have shaped and reshaped the way that I think. I would argue it is inescapable. "It" being the media- the various medium used to transfer information. If we are not bombarded by images through one medium, its another. Television, radio, magazines, newspapers, the internet, billboards. We are surrounded by these channels of information strategically produced to capture our attention. And yes, I do believe our attention must be "captured". Advertising specialists are aware that if one commercial does not achieve this, another will. The hope is that flashing lights, strong language, dramatic effects and funny slogans are the things we will ultimately pay attention to and commit to memory. So much are we affected by these techniques that lengthy, detailed, and difficult books and articles have become quite hard to focus on and often undesirable tasks to be completed.
I do not believe we are less knowledgeable. Our generation is not escaping information. As we become more technologically advanced, we have access to more than ever before. We are also at greater risk though. At risk of being misguided, deceived, of not recognizing propaganda, not looking to understand all "sides". We fall victim to the politics of fear, standards of beauty, gender expectations. If we are not critical of the constant media images and information we are exposed to, we are malleable "subjects" without opinions that are our own.
The ever changing techniques of the media have not made us"stupid", I would agree with Carr though that they have greatly effected the ways we receive and process that information.

"Not Reality.Actuality."

A slogan I never really thought twice about, except that it seemed a bit melodramatic. "truTV", a network with the "most": shocking, daring, dangerous and intense. A network with hours of footage on police chases and crime investigations outwardly rejects the notion of "reality" television. I think of the programs they (the wonderful people at truTV) may be referring to: "The Hills" (most notably for the "stars" it has produced), "Real World", "The Bachelor", the list really goes on forever. These self proclaimed "reality" series are now faced with criticism because of the sudden realization that an editing room may be involved, and that episode after episode of drama, backstabbing, tears may just be a result of some simple copy and paste technique by the network itself.
Someone in class asked the question of why we need so much reality. Simply put, but excellent questioning of our country's wide television audience. Why is it that "non scripted" programs have become so exponentially popular, a new one coming out each season? I was fascinated by "The Truman Show", it really was ahead of its time in it's predictions about entertainment. Could it be that Christof was right? Did we simply become too aware of the "phoniness" in acting? A show deemed reality seems to capture our attention more than ever before. Because there seems to be limited acting involved, we believe that the lives portrayed on these shows are real. They are not always going to be perfect, but at least they are honest. The little worlds shown to us on MTV are, in fact, just like ours. And just like ours, we want to keep up with all of the sex, fights, makeups and ruined friendships. It seems to be our way of distracting ourselves from our own situations. And once one show is over, we ask "what else is on?"

My very first blog

I have never written a blog before, though I've encountered several in the sort of classic journal entry form by friends traveling or studying abroad. While I enjoyed keeping up with those bloggers, I never considered writing my own. During the year I get so busy with midterm, research, and final papers, I am not sure I would consistently take the time to write my (unassigned) thoughts down. I am a bit hesitant to do so otherwise because of the wide audience. I am aware that the work may remain confidential, but I would rather not have such personal information accessible to strangers.
My relationship to writing has evolved greatly through my time at Davis. As I narrowed my major and minor down I have been able to take greater interest in (and often choose my own) paper topics, certainly making them "better" in quality than pieces in which I simply struggle to meet the word count. I am sure my writing reflects my Sociological discipline, though I've enjoyed several English classes as well. I have never written in this form but I think it is important to have variety in writing and am looking forward to trying something new.