blog six

In the introduction of Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, the author discusses the concepts of convergence culture (weird – it’s in the title) from the past to the present.  Jenkins talks about old vs. new in terms of technologies, programs, and media and how consumers/viewers differ today. 

The convergence that Jenkins’s discusses is one that will not be resolved.  There is no answer or no way to get ahead or “no magical box that puts everything into order again.”  Instead of attempting to resolve the changes and or issues, readjustments will occur.  Instead of looking back, changes must be made in order to move forward. 

“Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands…Each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives” (Jenkins).

The participation involved in the changes for the consumer will ultimately shape the new media and culture.  Jenkins’s also acknowledges that not all consumers will have skills, resources, etc. that are needed to help shape the new media culture.  This is what we know as the digital divide.  In another class of mine, we discussed the digital divide, and how certain people will be “set back” if they are unable to understand, recognize or have access to certain technologies.  Though media culture is constantly changing and being shaped, as Jenkins’s says, it will be impossible for everyone to keep up with these changes, thus the digital divide will constantly occur and the gap will be widened.

I believe that the passage we read from Jenkins had ideas that were similar to those of Henry Weinberger.  Both author’s discuss a user’s use of the web.  Though Weinberger pays more attention to the organizational aspects and how people find things, Jenkins discusses his idea that people obtain the information they wish to receive out of something.  For example, someone could provide a search for a certain film, but only to find out about a certain actor.  The rest of the page would be ignored, but the person would obtain the information they wanted.  These authors’ primary ideas dealt with usability and how the user navigates or gets information.

blog five

In David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, the author relies on German philosopher Heidegger to provide a certain point of information.  The author states, “the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world” (170).  I believe that what Weinberger meant by this was that the meanings of things are defined by are made up of the parts that surround it.  The sum of the parts equal the whole, and this is particularly true when it comes to context.

To better understand this (and to better clarify my response to Weinberger), it is probably best to give an example of what I mean by this.  For example, a song is made up of several notes, verses, etc.  If a person were to be given one word from the song, they might not know what it means or they might think that the word came from a different contextual background.  Perhaps when the person is given a line within the song they could figure it out, but that is depending on the person.  Now let’s say that the person was given all of the lyrics to the song, in which all of the words and lines given would be in their proper and intended context.  Without providing enough information, certain things can have either different meanings or their meanings can be lost.

This idea, given by Weinberger (with the help of Heidegger) has to do with the third order because of the ways in which an object, for example, can have many meanings or terms associated with it.  Weinberger gives the example of a hammer, and how it can be associated with several categories and grouped with certain orders.  Another example of this could be a frame.  A frame could be grouped into categories such as metal frames, white frames, door frames, and so forth.  With various orders within just one object, this is a good example when recalling the third order. 

The images I selected to portray my favorite song, "Breathe Me" by Sia, are all aspects of my life that I correlate with the lyrics of this song.  The song itself is one that makes me feel really inspired and allows me to take a look at the things I cherish most.  I also drew out out a portion of this image, because an implicit meaning is that this song can help me with my creativity and I listen to it a lot when I am drawing, painting, etc.