New Technologies, Modes of Production and Opportunities + Social Bookmarking

Shirky addresses the Internet as a new ecosystem that has hit the world by surprise and has changed the way information is published. No longer do we ask whether or not something is worth publishing; we ask, "Why not?" (60) This is partly due to the freedom that the web has created. With an endless number of outlets for the spreading of information, such as weblogs, anything can be covered by anyone. The result is the "mass amateurization" that Shirky speaks of.

Surely you can imagine how the flow of information can be endless. As users of the web then, how do we select what to read and what not to read? A simple way that I'm sure all of us do, is to read according to relevance. Relevance creates interests and as a result, people with common interests form groups or networks that Shirky has mentioned in Chapter 1. At the simplest form, groups come together to socialize and eventually to collaborate and produce.

In the realm of fashion blogs, which I am an avid reader of, there is this existence of sharing and collaboration. Fashion bloggers rely on each other to create content. There is this mutual understanding that information and images are meant to be shared and re-posted. All it requires is some "netiquette". I believe it is passion that brings people together. In this case, the love for fashion allows people to be so willing to socialize.

This is also highly apparent in design too. I notice the continuing increase of people who are willing to share design ideas and resources. There are numerous design professionals who voluntarily share there knowledge with the world through the web. Professionals connect with amateurs; "instead of mass professionalization, [what is created is] the process of mass amateurization." I see good in this, because if someone wants to create art, write about fashion, or design, why can't they?

Rhizomes and Social Tools

With the advent of technology, there has been the rise of new tools to connect people together. Prior to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter etc., gathering large groups of people together relied on the most traditional tactic: the organization. The organization runs on the management structure to coordinate members of the group, and this form of hierarchy survives because there is a pay out for the members. Clay Shirky states that with the manesfestation of new social tools, activities that would be deemed too costly for organizations to carry out could happen through a new form of coordination created by such tools.

In the second chapter of Here Comes Everybody, Shirky mostly discusses the advantage of the photo sharing website, Flickr. Flickr has become a great outlet for a diverse range of people. It is not only about displaying the photos one has taken; it is about a new form of sharing and connecting. Shirky gives a multitude of real life examples about Flickr that prove this whole new level of human interaction.

During my second year at Emily Carr, we had a final project that required about 40 students to source 4 images each. The goal of the project was to have groups of 3 students use this pool of images to develop a concept and create a publication or website based on the derived concept. The first issue was how we coul allow to all 40 students to access 160 images easily. Of course, we used Flickr to do the job. Flickr's simple interface and tagging abilities helped create an easy, efficient, and fool-proof way for students to share and navigate the images. Since we only had to use 48 images out of the 160, Flickr was a great way to view the screen quality images before going into the Emily Carr server to download the high resolution ones. Also, I cannot stress how vital the tagging system was to this project. Each student tagged the photos with various information that allowed quick and easy search.

Needless to say that without Flickr, it would have been almost impossible to compile all the images in such an efficient manner. I believe it is the simplicity of Flickr that has made it so popular; anyone can use it. People are not intimidated or bound to a complicated interface.

It's Still Summer! It's Still Summer!!!

Even after the first week of classes, I seem to still be in denial.

What is so great about a Blackberry? I think if I had one I would be on that thing 24/7; I'm already glued pretty tightly to my iPhone. I think there is something about cellphones that make people feel more comfortable and less lonely...

A quote from class today:

"Amateurs borrow. Professionals steal."