Too hack or not to hack...that is the question..

So the topic of hacking is a very strange one to many, particularly considering the many shapes and forms it takes. When I immediately hear the word hacking I always think negative. Thoughts of people stealing you're private and personal details or hacking into government computers to damage systems or cause problems instantly spring to mind. Obviously, this isn't a good thing. Flip the coin around and you start to observe organisations like WikiLeaks as Khatchadourian describes as 'a media insurgency....designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public' in his article No Secrecy. So is the latter a good thing or a bad thing?

If we look back numerous weeks into the course one of our discussions was on the whole argument of free speech in the cyberworld vs those that want to control. We had cybertarians who believed that information should be free to everyone and should be shared, that nothing is secret. On the other hand you have organisations, particularly governments, who through censorship and other means attempt to control the flow of information for their own benefit. Does anyone see a parallel here?


To me the concepts of hacking, hacktivism and civic hacking are not necessarily new, they have just been adapted into a new form. Activism itself has been around for years and years, and although again it can take many different shapes and forms the principle is still the same, to bring about some kind of change. In terms of WikiLeaks I see them doing just that, they are revealing information that is being kept secret by Government's to protect themselves. By releasing this information they are trying to bring about a change so Government's begin to see that they should tell the truth from the start, if not it will come to light anyway. I see this as a good thing, even though it is associated with the hacking title, because WikiLeaks does indeed hack. What I like is that they leave systems intact and only aim to reveal information as they believe it should be free and thus people are entitled to know about it. To me, this might be the only real benefit of hacking and since they are going about it the right way....I applaud them!

Source: Khatchadourian, R. (2010) 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency' The New Yorker, June 7. URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian

From industrial media to citizen journalists...

When I think of news many thoughts and words go through my head...truth, deception, fabrication, importance, relevance, stupidity, agenda, point of view, arrogance and I guess limited choice. When we are presented with news as it was initially intended by the industry, one to many and to a mass audience, we have only two choices. We either take in what they have to say or we switch off and ignore it. As A Bruns (2009) recognised in his article there has been a shift from the notion of gatekeeper to that of gatewatcher. In the past the flow of news and what is actually considered news content has been at the hands of the industry, in which they have acted as gatekeepers. Now the introduction of the internet, mobile technology, blogs and twitter etc has allowed users to generate and distribute content to the world. Thus, they are able to create their own news, which is freely available to anyone who wishes to view or use it. As individuals we now have a lot more choice and freedom in which news we want, the agenda it has and how we wish to absorb it. We are the gatewatchers. Better yet this allows us to cross check and reference with a ridiculously large number of sources allowing for a more succinct analysis, in which to determine truth, significance and relevance.

On the topic of citizen journalism I was browsing through the internet trying to find further information. I came across a post which was created by just that, a citizen journalist. His name is Michael and he is a computer science and maths graduate from England. Michael had this very interesting point to say in his post titled Crowded Journalism:

The Internet isn't just a new medium for delivering the same old news. Citizen journalism brings (alongside a lot of noise) important reports faster and closer than any professional correspondent can get. News isn't delivered, it flows. Stories can't be controlled, structured or segregated. They have to be curated, the important content mined from the ceaseless torrent of the world's fractured perspectives.


This is exactly what we talked about in our tutorial discussion and there are two very interesting points that he makes. The first is that citizen journalism creates a lot of noise. This of course links back to a previous week of study on mass amateurization, whereby there is such an abundance of information and so many sources that there is indeed a lot of useless crap out there. As a result it is up to us as individuals to sift through the noise and find the news/information we need. Now some would say this is a huge disadvantage, as it is time consuming and can be arduous. However, it allows for a number of advantages such as allowing for a larger scope of information and a varied array of viewpoints, opinions and analysis on a topic/issue. 


The second point that Michael makes is that news is continuous, uncontrolled and unstructured. In the past industrial news outlets have been able to manipulate and change news in order to make it more favourable in terms of a story. In fact some countries are doing the same in the form of censorship to try and control what news is viewed by it's public and how it is viewed. New media and technology has given rise to the ability of users to turn information into news much quicker than news outlets themselves. An incident can happen at 11pm and a photo taken at 11:01 through a mobile phone. This picture can be uploaded to facebook, twitter etc in a matter of seconds and in a matter of minutes a huge amount of people know what has occurred, when and where. In the past it may have taken hours or even days for a story to circulate with the amount of speed and ferocity that news can travel today.


On a side note...Don't you find it interesting when typical news outlets use twitter, facebook and youtube for news stories, photos and quotations??


Sources: 
Bruns, A. (2009) 'News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism' 
URL: http://produsage.org/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf

The long tail...is it long enough?

So after this week's readings and lecture my mind was opened up to the whole notion of the long tail, and although the term was new to me, what it entails is not new. To me it pretty much just summarised the idea that people want more choice and if that choice is available it benefits not only themselves, but whoever is on the other end giving that choice. The common example used was that of Amazon, who through very intuitive and clever measures, has become the biggest and most notable book store in the world. Amazon is an online book store and as result do not have physical store fronts to serve their customers, it is all stored in warehouses and distributed to consumers when they purchase a certain product. This means they are not restricted by physical limitations and as such can stock a ridiculous amount of books, notably more than a physical store, allowing them to target niche markets. As Chris Anderson mentioned in his article The Long Tail 'the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.' So how does this apply to other stores and shops in a similar position? 

A great example to look at is JB Hi-Fi and particularly their music department. This is the department that most notably has the widest range of products on offer, basically due to the reason that stock can be imported from overseas and bought from suppliers who focus on getting overseas CD's. DVD's on the other hand cannot be imported from overseas and can only be bought from Australian suppliers, thus there is a much smaller amount of product available. An individual can get a DVD from overseas personally, but it is illegal for a company to do it under what is known as parallel importing. Anyway, so one of the great benefits of the CD department of JB Hi-Fi is that they have access to a large range of products both from overseas and local suppliers. In the past if there was that rare CD you wanted and couldn't get....you went to JB Hi-Fi ( or a number of smaller retailers of CD's such as Utopia or Red eye records). However, with the introduction of iTunes, MP3's and other forms of digital content JB Hi-Fi no longer has the longest tail, at least not in terms of their physical store. They have tried to counter attack this though through their online presence, which much like amazon.com provides information on other products consumers bought or related items which may also be of interest to a buyer. Is this enough however to survive, at least in terms of the music department? 


Given that the music industry is struggling to deal with issues of piracy and digital content in particular I would have to say the days of the CD store are somewhat numbered. It seems much easier these days to download music, whether legally or illegally, and with the amount of choice on offer it is almost a no-brainer. Kevin Kelly (2008) labelled eight generative values, of which I feel three apply directly to digital downloads, those of immediacy, accessibility and findability. Although some of the other values may not be present when downloading content, such as personalisation, it is still enough to make us value the product because of the speed and availability on offer. Would you rather pay money for a CD that might take a few weeks to come in (if not longer), or pay for the digital content which is downloaded almost instantly and was much easier to find? As much as I'd hate to say it, the latter is definitely the preferred option. As Clay Shirky (2002) said 'Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the equality.' In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.





Anderson, C 2004. The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10  URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html


Kelly, K 2008. Better Than Free. URL: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html


Shirky, C 2002. Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing. 

URL: http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html