diy media - the good, the bad and the ugly

The shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0 has meant that the internet is no longer characterised by one-way published content facilitated and updated only by webmasters. It is now a social entity that allows and encourages information sharing and user generated content. Web 2.0 has spawned the rapid growth and expansion of online communities such as blogs, wikis and social networking websites. With such a wealth of user-generated information at our finger tips, has DIY media made it easier or more difficult to fulfil our information needs?

There is no doubt that DIY media has changed the way we view, collect, sort and share information. We are now assaulted with thousands of suggestions when we perform searches for topics of interest. We are offered an expanse of resources at the click of a mouse, but how do we know what is useful?

So much content with so little regulation prompts some to argue that DIY media has, in fact, made it more difficult to find useful information. They believe that quality of content has been sacrificed in favour of quantity.

To illustrate this, I have just now performed a Google search for “Napoleon”. The search greeted me with “about 23,000,000” results, the first three being a Wikipedia entry on Napoleon I of France, a Wikipedia entry on the Napoleonic Wars, and the website for Napoleon Perdis Cosmetics. Not a single site listed on the first page of results had any academic credibility whatsoever. Of course, by simply searching “Napoleon” with no other details to narrow the search, I did bring this sort of useless information overload upon myself, but it is an effective example of what DIY media critics are saying.

The internet has given us a voice. Not just those of us worth listening to however, but everyone. Everyone with access to an internet connection can now share with the world their opinions on the best way to lose baby fat, Paris Hilton’s sex tape, butter vs margarine, sumo wrestling, John Howard’s eyebrows... It seems the human race feels it is obligated to share thoughts, feelings, ideas and opinions about anything and everything.

But how do we sift through the oceans of worthless crap to find the information we are looking for? Online academic journal databases are a useful place to start if it is credible, scholarly information we are after. But almost all of these resources cost money to view. Does this then mean that only the privileged have access to academic resources and everyone else must wade through the rubbish?

If it is opinions we are after, DIY media has certainly improved the scope of information available to us. We are now able to view and understand different opinions on just about any topic that could ever interest us. In this way, the growth of DIY media has been positive as it allows us all the platform to express our views.

When we come to true, credible, scholarly information on the other hand, I believe that DIY media has indeed made our quest for information more difficult. We are simply bombarded with too much garbage for our searches to be truly effective.

online communities - the new black

The modern, digital world we live in allows us to connect and socialise like never before. We have advanced telecommunications systems that allow us to contact each other at any time, virtually anywhere in the world. The internet gives us instant access not only to the people we know, but to everyone, everywhere with a connection. With the ability to connect to others via mobile phones and instant messaging, one would think our need to be socially connected would be more than satisfied. Instead, we have become social networking maniacs.

Telephoning, Emailing, IMing and SMSing is clearly not enough. The phenomenal success of websites such as Facebook and Myspace are certainly testament to our voracious appetite for online communities. It seems we cannot bear to be isolated from each other for even one second of our day. Don’t we all feel naked when we forget our mobile phones and even worse if our internet is down for a period of time? Don’t we feel like we might be missing something?

Is it this feeling of being “out of the loop” if we are not connected to everyone, everywhere, every second, that prompts us to use every piece of technology we possibly can as a social tool? We use our Ipods to podcast, our mobiles to take photographs and connect to the internet, our laptops to organise and manage not only our schedules but now our friendships as well. When we discuss the notion of friendship, can we even class our “friends” on Myspace and Facebook in the same league as our real-world acquaintances? What does this mean for modern relationships? Have online communities redefined the very meaning of “friend”?

While we are procuring, organising, managing and ranking our “friends” through the use of online communities, are we sacrificing the quality of our real-world relationships? Christine Rosen (2007)suspects we are and says we use social networking sites as “convenient surrogates for offline friendship and community”. But what does this say about us? Rosen (2007) believes “it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails. Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.”

So... do we use online communities as social tools in order to enhance our true, real-world relationships or to conveniently avoid them?

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Rosen, C. 2007. Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism 17 : 15–31. (accessed April 12, 2008).

how do technologies become cultural technologies?

Technology has long since progressed from its original purpose to make our daily tasks quicker and easier to fulfil. We now witness the emergence and growth of new technologies every, single day without batting an eyelid. In fact, we are now at the point where we not only embrace it, we expect it. It has become so much a part of our cultural identity that the concepts of culture and technology must now be considered as intertwined.

In his book “New Media: an Introduction” (2005) Terry Flew discusses the notion of technologies becoming "cultural technologies", and explains that this occurs when technologies are used for personal purposes. One common way technologies become “cultural technologies” occurs when we use the technology as a social tool. Thousands of modern inventions have been utilised for social purposes though this may not have been the use for which the technology was originally intended. Modern forms of social networking have birthed these “cultural technologies” and created cultural communities.

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Flew, Terry. (2005). New media : an introduction, Melbourne: OUP, pp.61-82.