foxhuntvintage.pbworks.com

“When people care enough, they can come together and accomplish things of a scope and longevity that were previously impossible; they can do big thing for love.”

This sounds ridiculously cheesy, “too squishy and too private” as Shirky would call it, but it’s true. This became clear to me when I met up with my friend and fellow classmate Jen. We were discussing her online vintage store and website that she herself has been working on now and I found it amazing that she could orchestrate all those things by herself. She admitted that it was a lot of work, but the pay off was more or less the experience she was getting from it and the different sorts of people she has been in contact with ever since she’s started it.

Lesson 1: People WILL do things for free.

One story that she told me was about how someone from London had contacted her saying how much she liked the store and asked if she could do a photoshoot for her. At first I thought, “Whoa that’s kind of sketchy, someone from all the way on the other side of the world wants you to give her some of the clothes you are selling and is willing to take some photos with them with a model and then give them back to you with some photos attatched…all for free?” Jen was skeptical too, but she ended up going for the gamble and packing up a few of the clothes, sending them to London and after a few weeks, getting them back and seeing the photos the photographer did with the model! People ARE willing to do things for free just because they love what they do and want to contribute and collaborate with like-minded individuals! How awesome is that?

So, after hearing that story, it’s no wonder to me that people contribute to wikipedia, wordpress, youtube and albinoblacksheep. The satisfaction that you contributed to something you care about or are interested in, even if it is just fixing a grammatical error is enough for a lot of people. I must admit, even I am willing to contribute to Jen’s site by doing some photography for her. I figure, she gets some cool photos and I get to see them up online and say “Hey, I took those.” I love photography, fashion and styling and I feel like Jen’s site is a perfect platform to showcase my talent and maybe even add what I have contributed to my portfolio. No money exchanged, just some awesome high fives and smiles and a whole lot of love. ☺

“Everyone is a media outlet.”

How very true. Thanks to Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody,” I finally feel, after three weeks of debating the idea, that yes, our mass collaboration, remixing and sharing information is a revolution that is definitely changing the way we live. The writing is much more relatable and not so business oriented, so for me, it became easier to understand. ☺ Every second someone, somewhere around the world has something to say, something to show or something to share to the world just because they think it’s cool or important enough to them that they think it’s worth posting up to spread the news. The quote “everyone is a media outlet” ignited my writing spark because it got me thinking about a blog post I wrote a couple weeks ago titled “Twitt-ing.” What is Twitter? According to Wikipedia, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets.” So it basically filters all but 140 characters from regular blog sites such as this one I am writing on, leaving only the bare, to the point, instant micro blog. My whole thing on Twitter is that I think it’s hilarious that anyone would care about the retarded none sense I update about. I don’t contribute anything worthwhile or even mildly educational, it’s mostly just random things I see or things I hear when I eavesdrop on other people’s conversations when I ride the bus, or when I walk around downtown. And yet, people still “follow” me and want to know what I think and see my crappy iphone pictures of weird things. But I could imagine, if something tragic happened in Vancouver, (knock on wood) I would write about it, make it my Facebook status, make a tweet about it etc. and I know many of my friends would be doing the same. So, yes, I full heartedly, 100% believe that everyone has the power to be a journalist as well as a lomo camera phone photojournalist (thank you cell phone cams) and feed the masses as a media outlet much quicker than our local news team or CNN.

Am I weird or do I enjoy reading much more when the book is in my hand, and I flip pages? In our last online class chat, someone went out of their way to scan every page of Shirky’s book and make it into a .PDF to share with the rest of the class. Admitedly, she said the quality wasn’t that great, but still, many people in my class who hadn’t bought the book yet, were quite happy with the fact that she was willing to share and email everyone who was in need. I think that’s great because half the time, required books we need to buy for school aren’t that great, so why spend another $50 on a book that collects dust on your shelf and she could also be doing a really big favour to some people who would not be able to afford the book, so, in a way, it’s like she’s freeing up education! ☺ But for me, I don’t know why, but when I compare reading Shirky’s book in my hand and reading Tapscott and Williams as a .PDF on my screen, I can focus a lot more and (this may sound ridiculous) but I feel a lot smarter. What the hell right? This got me thinking about the section where Shirky writes about his uncle who was a small town newspaperman who criticized “USA Today” as “TV on paper.” I agree, they were both newspapers, only one was filled with colourful pictures and his uncle felt threatened by this new form of media because he had been in the newspaper business all his life and felt the old newspapers were being replaced. Which got me thinking, will electronic media and blogging replace CNN and The New York Times? It just seems like the international and national news can not compete with how fast everyone eles can get the news out to the large masses of people by simply uploading their thoughts or video or cell phone camera pictures onto the internet. But in the same way that some may argue that Wikipedia isn’t quite the most reliable source compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, people have more trust in old newspapers because it’s “professional work educated with that professional background.” I find this is a tough call, do I trust the people who write up these news updates and/ opinions or should I wait for the more well known, familiar source of news?

Can our old forms of media really compete with all the new technology we have and new platforms of collaboration made for us to voice our opinion and points of view? Will the printing press along with books, and newspapers become rare commodities the way mp3s replaced cd-roms? I think at the end of the day it comes down to how well you know the web and knowing which sites to trust, and if people are able to correct, mediate and filter what some people may think to be true.

I look forward to reading on with this book, maybe it will answer my questions. That’s it for now!

“Google Wave is a project announced by Google at the Google I/O conference, on 28 May 2009.[1] It is a web based service and computing platform designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.”

that’s from wikipedia.

horray for cross platform, open standard, open collaboration!

I think the one thing that I couldn’t wrap my mind around was the fact that people could come together and do something for free? In my last response to “Wikinomics,” I chose to play the role of cynic and argue that people would feel cheated if their collective work only gave compensation to the one person or corporation who reaped the rewards of their new ideas and calculations. But Tapscott and Williams made me re-think that argument with the statement that “by doing away with the overhead of contracts and negotiations, and enabling participants to work on any project they find interesting, peer production can be more efficient at allocating resources.” This makes sense to me and yes, I do see and understand that the system is possible and profitable (e.g.: Linux, Wikipedia), but I’m still finding it hard to imagine the idea of Prosumers replacing the current system we have right now.

So again, I found myself confused and trying to separate the pros and cons of open collaboration. On one hand, I see peer production as a company that opens up their doors to an internship team. In exchange for small tasks, which help the company grow and speed up its efficiency, the interns get a first hand look at the workforce, make network connections and get to know the business. This saves the company money because they don’t have to pay the interns and come away with some new ideas they may not have considered. On the flip side, the interns are happy to do the work for free because it is something that they love and even though they’re not being compensated, they still get an enriching experience they can take with them. Now I myself have been an intern for a company and sooner or later I started to wonder, “so…it’s been 6 months, when am I getting paid? He…he…he…”

The section “WHY THE OPEN SOURCE CRITICS ARE WRONG ABOUT FREE ENTERPRISE AND PROFIT” again, contradicted my thoughts and made me re-think my conclusion on the overall idea, in fact it made me feel bad for being so negative all the time. I feel like this book was partly aimed for readers slightly pessimistic and narrow minded such as myself. One thing I loved out of this section was how Linux Torvalds compares free enterprise to public road works; “That’s like saying that public road works take away from the private commercial sector. Even if public ownership of key aspects of the transportation network forecloses opportunities for private profit, the gains to the rest of the economy make these losses look minuscule.” I find that this is undeniably true, yes, maybe in the beginning a company or corporation may lose some money, but in the long run they’ll either be saving or making (or both) more money than they did in the past.

I feel like these arguments as to, which system is better will always be there and that critics and social analysts will always have their own opinions and have their arguments, but what it all comes down to is the us, the people who will be working these systems. Are we capable of re-organizing ourselves into a completely new system? Yes, Wikipedia and Linux are some examples of free-enterprise, open source collaborations that work for people who have the passion for sharing and remixing information, but what about the rest of the population that needs to be told what to do? I mean, it makes sense to let people choose what they are interested in and have them work in that sector because the output from that work will be better than someone who was told to work at that specific position who had no interest for it, but laziness and disorganization are pretty big issues that hurt work places. Could we really do without the social hierarchy and top-down orders? I feel like in order to re-organize ourselves as a society; we need to start from the very beginning, for example, like in grade school. That changes everything! Ahh!

I’m too doubtful of my thoughts, or am I just afraid of change?

Meriliese Cabebe’s “Sneakerz”

It’s amazing how blogging, websites, chatrooms and torrents have literally connected us to the rest of the world. When I post anything up on the web, most of the time I put it up there for myself, not expecting anyone to reply, but once I see that people have taken notice to things I’ve said or questions I’ve chosen to ask, it gives me a feeling of happiness, like I’m not crazy and think up these things all by myself. A couple months ago I was introduced to http://pbworks.com/ and saw how quickly information sharing could be and how open collaborations push ideas in directions you could have never thought up by yourself. Sometimes I feel like people, students specifically, are so used to being the first or only one to come up with an idea, that they forget that sharing and asking for help is probably the best way to better one’s self and or one’s work.

Whilst reading the first few pages of “Wikinomics” and being amazed at the fact that the open sourced collaboration method the “Goldcorp Challenge” used increased their profit margins to about 9000%, I have to say I was extremely impressed. The fact that a privatized gold mining company would open themselves up to the public asking for help is something that I have never heard of because I always feel like competition amongst corporations is about being number one and not sharing, especially in the mining business where a big part of the business is having a secretive edge.

Sharing vs. competition, this becomes a tough call especially when you get into copyright law, ownership and the legalities of ideas. Is anything ever really free? Although, like I said, I’m impressed that so many types of people responded to the “Goldcorp Challenge” and ended up successfully helping their company grow, the challenge was a competition with a prize at the end of the finish line. I’m curious, much of what Tapscott & Williams were talking about was how they think mass collaboration and web 2.0 is going to change the way corporations work, but once profit is involved and mass collaboration goes beyond a means of finding higher education or networking, is it fair to all the contributors that they do not get a piece of the prize? Within the reading, Tapscott & Williams do touch upon the fact that some people like Bill Gates, think that the idea of remixing, collaborating and sharing ideas is a form of “communism in various guises.” As we know, at the moment, the majority of the world has not looked kindly upon communism in a capitalist, hierarchal society. So, once again I’ve become cynical about the idea that people will only do something for free to an extent. * Sigh *

Though along with every new found technology or technological revolution, there will be problems. Some people will not want to adapt and some will embrace the revolution quicker than others. At this point, I think it’s going to be interesting to see how people will have to be re-educated to adapt to change. Like Jody said, (yes, a shoutout to my professor) if his and my mother can figure out how to blog, and are doing it on a regular basis, there definitely is a huge amount of potential out there for freedom of remixing, collaborating and sharing information.

This is what I feel today.

Oh well. Time to read, light a cigarette and pray tomorrow will be a lot more eventful.

Lots of work to do! But I’m glad I got to print it to see it in context, in my hand and actually turning the pages. It will only grow and get better from here. I’m definately going to look to contemporary as well as past magazines for inspiration.

So here’s my .pdf http://www.sendspace.com/file/nz8kvr
Thank you for all the great comments and critiquing. This class had a really good positive energy, which made it pleasant to be in and I enjoyed the company of all my peers

xoxo

Meriliese Cabebe