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WordPress Wins. My Number One.
WordPress is my number one. My numero uno.
(this post is directed towards my tutor Nicole just in case you aren’t her and you’re wondering why I’m talking about this)
You know how internet browsers these days like Safari and Internet Explorer keep a list detailing your most visited websites so that you don’t even need to type in the website address, you just open a new tab and a list of your ten most visited websites are right there ready for you to click on.
Well, for the last few weeks, I have been seeing WordPress making its way up that ranking. it started at number ten. Then made a massive leap to number six. Then to number five, and then it went to number four!
The point is, as of right now – WordPress is my most visited website. The big kahuna, the big cheese, the big enchilada.
See ya Facebook! Bye-bye YouTube! Move Over ABC Iview (its presence in my top two websites indicating how I manage to procrastinate during SWOTVAC week). even Google has lost its metaphorical arm wrestle with WordPress, sliding down the ranking into 5th place – a dramatic fall from grace.
WordPress now rules my life, it haunts my dreams and lingers in my thoughts while I’m awake. And now, as the ultimate sign that I have become a slave to my blog – it’s my most visited website.
I just thought you’d like to know how hard I’ve been working.
Time for Web 3.0?
In February of 2009, John Markoff published an article in The New York Times called Do We Need a New Internet?
Effecively, Markoff suggests that the internet as it exists today is a sick entity. Prone to cyber attack whilst we use it, prone to viruses, at risk of accidentally passing on our banking details to fraudsters – the internet is a very unsafe place to be. Markoff proposes what some have said before him – that security and privacy on the internet have become “so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over”.
©2002 The New Yorker Collection from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.
This would require a new internet, and although this seems like a Mamoth task, people are already seriously considering it. After all, the internet that we use now was a first go, a shot in the dark that happened to catch on. The internet’s first designers never foresaw that the military and academic research network which they wrote the protocols for would one day carry the world on its shoulders, bearing the burden of carrying the brunt of international commerce and communications. “There was no one central control point and its designers wanted to make it possible for every network to exchange data with every other network. Little attention was given to security”.
While the form the ‘new internet’ should take remains a debated topic, it is generally agreed that it will function much in the same way asthe current one, as a web of servers with no central heart which feeds life into the system.
One of the major problems with maintaining internet safety with our current system is the ability to remain anonymous in your activities. An Internet attacker can route their connection through a number of different countries to confuse those trying to establish their location, which may be from an account in an Internet cafe purchased with a stolen credit card.
To combat this, some have suggested the new Web should take the form of an online “Gated Community” where a user’s anonymity on the Net would be given up in return for the safety while using it. The current Internet could “end up as the bad neighbourhood of cyberspace” where the hackers and cyber-hoodlums hang out as civilians and corporations alike flood to the new web for the safety it allows.
I’m interested to know what other people think about this prospective Internet – I can’t decide. It seems to me that forced identification on the Web may begin a cycle of censorship which then acts to ruin what the Internet stands for at it’s core. But it does seem that something must be done to mend the current system. As Rick Wesson, Chief Executive of computer consulting firm, Support Intelligence said, with our current Internet we’re heading “for a digital Pearl Harbor [and] have the Japanese ships streaming towards us on the horizon”. A strong image, but probably an accurate one too.
2: Infinite Freedom in a Finite Space; how the limits of code can’t limit expression
WordPress “masks the database and creates a continuous blogging experience within the browser” (Helmond in Reader, p. 180), yet the database is rigidly defined and categorised. Discuss how this shapes the way we interact with the World Wide Web through blogging and how it affects user agency.
The image the internet projects is an illusion. It’s an illusion in the sense that it is not what it seems.
The internet seems, from a cursory glance, to provide us with infinite choices and opportunities. It does not appear to be rigidly structured or formulaic, but rather it seems free-flowing, continuous and obscure. I have always thought of the internet, and by virtue of that – of websites – as beyond human control. I have understood the internet as something self-determined, self-sufficient and self-perpetuating which has superseded and surpassed human control. In reality, the internet is not what I have understood it to be. In reality, websites are simply code – cold, structured math.
My misunderstanding of websites however is not something which came about by accident. Indeed, I have been deliberately lured by those who created them into understanding them the way that I have. Networks, codes and the fundamental structure of websites are “out [of] the way, to not be seen… the technology should be transparent” (Galloway 2004: 64-65). The surface of internet applications like WordPress is like the outer casing of an iPod touch. It is sleek, meticulously designed and apparently simple. It gives no hint to the mass of wires, cables, batteries, chips and processors which lie beneath it. The code of the internet is this interior. It is something which must exist and which the iPod could not exist without, but something of which we’re supposed to remain blissfully unaware.
In WordPress, this unseen interior includes the WP-Content/Uploads folder which stores all the data requied to maintain each blog (Helmond, 2007: 51). It includes the 42 predetermined content types restricted by the WordPress interface (Helmond, 2007: 51), and the Open-Source MySQL database upon which WordPress is built.
While I admit – none of this makes any practical sense to me, I do understand the implications. Although WordPress seems almost infinite, and the possibilities limitless, in reality there are very real and defined limits placed upon the way that we interact with the application due to the highly structured nature of the database upon which it is built.
A number of my peers have responded to this question by suggesting that our interaction with WordPress is limited by technology. They highlight how the internet is predictable and defined, it is structured by code and by virtue of that it limits our interactive potential.
This however will not be my response. This criticism, I believe, relates to ‘point and click’ websites. We click on a button and the button takes us where its meant to take us. We are feeding off what someone else has created and merely following the pathways of code which lead us along the way. Lev Manovich termed this ‘closed interactivity’ (Gane & Beer 2008: 92; Tulloch, 2010: 32; Manovich, 2001: 59-60).
To me however, the purpose of WordPress and the process of blogging is considerably more free and places a much greater emphasis on user agency.
Fundamental to this enhanced agency is the fact that rather than button tapping, through blogging on WordPress we are creating something individual and unique. The experience of blogging sees the two entities of technology and the human mind cohese.
Image Credit: Unknown
Even according to Manovich, the man who looked down upon the apparently ‘closed’ interactivity of electronic media, the blogosphere represents perhaps one of the purest forms of user interactivity today. After all, according to his theory of “open” and “closed” interactivity (Gane and Beer, 2008; 92), the blogosphere would have to fall into the former category. What restrictions are there on what a person may blog about? The possibilities are literally limitless. The sorts of fonts in which I may publish my blog is limited and the manner in which I may format it is limited too. But the central act of blogging which is allowed by WordPress and the ideas which I am able to express and engage with know no limit.
I am reminded of the ideas of Spiro Kiosis. He believed that to base a discussion of interactivity on the ‘technical-ness’ of the media in question is to miss the fundamental crux of the matter (Kiousis, 2002: 355 – 357). Rather he believed that interaction stems not from the potential of technical systems but from the user’s own sense of interaction. Interaction relies upon the user’s perception of the interaction being present, and their ability to achieve their desired effects from the medium in which they are engaged (Kiousis, 2002: 355 – 357).
Therefore I don’t believe that user agency in WordPress is affected by the presence of this database or the practical restrictions imposed upon us. The infinite possibilities for interaction and engagement are bound up in the lack of censorship involved in WordPress.
By writing this blog today and expressing my opinions on the matter I have been able to achieve my aims entirely. I have been free to express myself and everything which I set out to achieve has been achieved.
I have been interacting with WordPress, feeding off the plain canvas which it has provided me, and colouring it with the paint of my opinions and beliefs. Isnt that what interaction is all about?
References:
Gane, N. & Beer, D. (2008); “Interactivity”, in New Media: The Key Concepts, Oxford: Berg, pp. 87 – 102
Kiousis, S (2002); “Interactivity; A Concept Explication”, in New Media & Society, SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi (355-383)
Manovich, L. (2001); “The Language of New Media”, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press , pp. 60, 71 – 74, 123 – 128
Tulloch, R. (2010); “A man chooses, a slave obeys; agency, interactivity and freedom in video gaming”, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds Vol. 2, Issue 1, pp. 27 – 39
Stop flirting with me twitter bird, you ‘aint my type
So, Net Communications, Nicole and Marcos, I understand, that you want me to make a Twitter account for my blog, but I’m sorry, I can’t do it. Twitter is something which I oppose, or not so much oppose – but find uttertly pointless. Allow me to elaborate:
Tweets by celebrities are being reported in the news today as though they were taken from a press conference, tweets fill the bottom of the screen during Q&A and scroll past Tony Jones’ chin as he asks his next pointed question to his panel. A new mathematical equation seems popular within trashy Journalism circles today, being that Celebrity + Twitter = Front Page News. In the words of the “Hungry Beast” crew, that’s “a little bit bullshit”. It seems everyone is being urged to tweet these days. The sexy little twitter bird is flirting with me, luring me in and encouraging me to, in 140 characters or less, inform the world of my newest exploits from eating my breakfast to waiting in the line at the Supermarket.
Twitter now has around 160 million tweeters worldwide, with about 400,000 new accounts being opened every day.
But for the life of me, I can’t understand why!
Honestly, Twitter is banal, boring and fundamentally useless. It fosters what is becoming an unfortunate trait in my generation of excessive narcissism and self obsession. Borrowing the words of Clive Thompson from The New York Times, Twitter represents “modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme – the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world”. His astute observations are summarised by this helpful pie graph:
Apparently I am supposed to believe the ‘Twitterati” are contributing to and providing avenues for citizen journalism and societal critique. Through their rapid-fire updates on what they’re currently eating, Tweeters embody the voice of the collective. Twitter therefore is a cornerstone of democracy!
Bowman & Willis (2003: 9) define participatory journalism as “the act of a citizen or group of citizens playing an active role in the process of collective, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires”. With this I do agree.
I do however doubt that Bowman and Willis would go so far as to suggest that their ideal of participatory journalism is achieved by Twitter and its level of utter banality. So far the closest thing to citizen journalism encountered via Twitter has been Charlie Sheen’s rants about tiger’s blood and melting faces – which while inspiring and hilarious (and a little Dali-esque) , are fundamentally pointless.
The sheer vacuity of the content posted on Twitter is only encouraged by the 140 character limit to each post. Such a limit simply serves to perpetuate a societal trend of perpetual ADD. In a society in which newspaper readers on average only make it 60% of the way through each article before looking for a new one [a statistic which falls to below 45% when individuals read articles on the internet], I don’t think that doling out information in 140 characters is at all beneficial. It simply furthers the diminished attention span which is apparently becoming endemic to our society.
I am willing to concede that there are those who are able to post snarky gems on Twitter, taking advantage of the 140 character limit to deliver short, sharp punch lines. Unfortunately these individuals are but a teardrop in a veritable ocean of rubbish. Indeed it seems the overwhelming population of Twitter consists of those who struggle to comprehend ideas which require an explanation in excess of 140 characters, and attempt to compensate for their lack of intellect with the sheer volume with which they post. Supplying an avenue such as this for their useless comments is akin to giving a cap gun to my little cousin Alex. He will be able to make all the noise he likes, but to what effect?
So no thanks Net Comm, and sorry Nicole, I won’t be making a Twitter account – I just cant do it. I’ll keep my inner tweets where they’re supposed to be, stuck up in my head, and I’ll continue to recognise that there are better things with which I can occupy my spare time than by feeding a ravenous narcissistic habit.
I’m perfectly happy to contribute to something which actually provides an avenue for citizen journalism, but Twitter just aint it.
1: Response to Mark Zuckerberg
Analyse critically the following statement by Mark Zuckerberg while comparing it to privacy issues raised by online social networking collaborative practices:
Video Credit: “Mark Zuckerberg on Making Privacy Controls Simple”, uploaded to YouTube by theofficialfacebook
“When people are in control of what they share, they begin to share more”.
The reality of the internet and of social networking practices is that often we are not in control of what we share or what is shared about us. Indeed, any person may publish something about us or post an incriminating photo, and suddenly this photo spreads or the rumour about us, through repetition becomes fact (Ruane, 2005: 6-7). Long standing ideas or enduring assertions after a period of time are taken as truth and slowly we cease to be who we are in everyday life – the well mannered student or the competent lawyer – but with every view of the published material, we become the drunken buffoon, the irresponsible teacher, the un-hireable job applicant.
Zuckerberg’s assertion that we can ever be in control of what is shared is a fallacy, and this casts a dark shadow over the remainder of his argument.
While occurring on a personal level, this phenomenon has also occurred on numerous occasions on a corporate scale. Consider the piece of information that circulated the internet in 2004, that Bananas from Costa Rica carry a flesh-eating bacteria (Ruane, 2005: pp2-4). Let me begin by telling you that this story was a hoax of unknown origin. It is categorically false. And yet though false, these rumours still exact a price. The price in this case was a $30 million dollar loss in sales for the banana sales industry (Ruane, 2005: pp3).
Original Image Credit: Eva Rose
Information is not what is being shared over Social Networking sites but more often than not what is being circulated is rumour, gossip and hearsay – all of which are taken out of context and assumed to be absolute truth.
Unlike the gossip which circulated the halls of your highschool, which was present one day and then gone the next, the gossip which circulates the internet is permanent.
You need look no further than the story of Ghyslain, perhaps better known as “the star wars kid” (Solove, 2007: 44-49) to witness the effect of permanence on the internet. An embarrassing video of Ghyslain was posted without his knowledge or consent. It spread globally in an instant and was picked up by all manner of sites. It was reported on by news stations in many different countries, it was satirised in South Park and Arrested Development, it was mashed, edited and re-posted hundreds of times and was the topic of millions of blogs posts and comments. The video on YouTube is one of the most watched to ever be uploaded. All this data will never disappear. Some of it might be deleted, but it will never go away.
And this, apparently, is the world which Zuckerberg seems so excited to create – a word with no privacy – under the guise of aiding communication and helping people work together.
“A man’s character is what he is; a man’s reputation is what others imagine him to be” (Solove, 2007: 33).
This is not a world in which truth may become more evident or in which problems may be solved – it’s a world of constant misunderstanding, construing of fact and misinformation.
The very “freedom” which Zuckerberg suggests social networks provide is in fact being threatened rather than enhanced by the greater flow of “information”.
Given the ease at which information can be recorded and spread, there will be more instances when information we want to keep on a short leash will escape from our control, and once it is beyond our grasp, it’s everyone’s to share. So far I have focused only on small pieces of information, like photos and Facebook posts, but consider the wealth of information currently being accumulated by Google, whose ideology is fundamentally the same as that of Zuckerberg.
Indeed, the grand plan of Google [and Facebook alike] is to achieve the vision in which“any kind of information will be accessible to anybody” (Hungry Beast, 2010).
Google controls database searches, scans & files information sent through G-Mail and establishes your interests and social interactions through their own social Network, Google Buzz – which has been involved in a number of controversies lately relating to abuses of privacy (Hungry Beast, 2010). Disturbingly, two of the earliest investments made by Google were in genetics testing companies Navigenics and 23andMe.
Consider then the fact that Google may have a dossier on you, with your internet searches, your physical attributes, your interests, information you have sent to others through G-mail and even your DNA and genetic information. This is what we don’t consider when Zuckerberg speaks of the joys of “spreading information”.
This is the world envisaged by Zuckerberg, one in which everything is known, every personal detail is recorded and filed for later reference. It is a world in which the private life which you live is as public as if you were on The Truman Show and increasingly it’s the world in which we live.
And with his ideology, I could not be more opposed.
References:
Solove, D. J., (2007), ‘How the free flow of information liberates and constrains us’ in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumour and Privacy on the Internet, New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press (pp17-49)
Ruane, J,M. (2005), “When Should We Trust What We Know? Why Research Methods?” In: Essentials of Research Methods. A Guide to Social Science Research, Malden, MA: Blackwell, (pp 1-15).
Video: Unknown Author (2007), “googles (sic) dark side – google conspiracy”<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNofb-OlZyQ&feature=related> accessed 8/4/2011
Video: Hungry Beast, 2010, “Joining the Dots: Google”, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv4j4bguYYk> accessed 8/4/2011
Solove, D. J., (2007), ‘How the free flow of information liberates and constrains us’ in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumour and Privacy on the Internet, New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press (pp17-49)
Ruane, J,M. (2005), “When Should We Trust What We Know? Why Research Methods?” In: Essentials of Research Methods. A Guide to Social Science Research, Malden, MA: Blackwell, (pp 1-15).
Video: Unknown Author (2007), “googles (sic) dark side – google conspiracy”<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNofb-OlZyQ&feature=related> accessed 8/4/2011
Video: Hungry Beast, 2010, “Joining the Dots: Google”, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv4j4bguYYk> accessed 8/4/2011
Blogs – Straight & Narrow
Finally, I have my own blog!
I’m so excited to express myself and have my thoughts read by my friends. I’ll be part of the internet now, I’ll be directly contributing to the heaving body of knowledge and interactivity that is Web 2.0. Like Marcos Dias I can put links on my blog and put tags under my posts, fighting it out with some other Perry Singleton on the other side of the world for the #1 spot in a google search! I can do whatever I like!
But I can’t do whatever I like.
Even a cursory glance around the WordPress.com site is enough to make you realise that there are a vast number of things for you to do. Everything is customisable, right down to the ‘dashboard’ where you can manipulate the page to organise and structure the information however you see fit. If it tickles your fancy you can look at graphs which illistrate how many people have been using your blog (graphs which I’m sure will be off the charts for me once publish this post). And this is the point of the internet, isnt it? To enable us to do as we please; limitless potential, infinite horizons, unhindered expression.
Yet my expression has been hindered!
Those of you who were lucky enough (and according to WordPress, 12 of you were!) to have looked at my blog prior to this post being written would have come accross a thing of real beauty. A page dedicated to Net Communications, with dragons and youtube videos. It was my baby, but like so many babies it was snatched from my open hand by the schoolhard bully before I could shove it into my mouth [you realise I mean gummy babies, right?].
“Nothing unrelated to the course is to be on your blog!” was the line used by Marcos in today’s lecture. And suddenly, with those 11 words and one exclaimation mark which I added later for emphasis, my limitless potential was limited, my unhindered expression blocked, and my infinite horizon juxtaposed by a large container ship – and with the loss of all these things, lost too was my ability to truly interact with WordPress.
Losing his interactivity makes Perry sad
The game designers Salen & Zimmerman (2004) say that “an interactive context presets participants with choices” . Spiro Kousis (2002) believes that the experience of interactivity is not simpy the product of a techical system but relates more to the user’s sense of interaction and their ability to produce the desired effect from interacting with the machine. Jensen (1998) states that “the root of [interactivity] lies in our contemporary understandings of selfhood and freedom and the way in which these ideas have come to be associated with interactivity… the conflation of agency with authorial power has brought about an association of interactivity with free will”. Interactivity must present me with choices, interactivity must allow me to achieve my desired effects, and interactivity must bring with it an association of freedom. None of these things have been achieved by WordPress!
Granted, all of these things were present three days ago when I developed my online shrine to Dragons and Youtube videos, but no longer. Restrictions have been placed on my ability to express myself and thus my ability to interact with WordPress as a technology.
I am reminded of the theory of “Freedom within Limits”, freedom to do whatever I desire so long as it conforms with what I am allowed to do. This is not real freedom, and real interactivity cannot come of it. If I were Manovich I would call this “closed interactivity”, but as I am just a lowly undergrad I’m going to call it “super lame”.
The (almost truly) limitless potential of self-expression that WordPress.com offers is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 applications. This is what drew the consuming masses to the internet and inspired them to produce. This is why, according to a friend-of-mine’s blog, “124, 250, 851” words were posted today by “414, 291” bloggers (Katherine Hayes, 2011). To all of those people, this is a web 2.0 application, they are achieving what they seek to achieve, they are communing with the internet!
But without me being able to suckle on the sweet necter that is the freedom of expression I am unable to engage as I want to, limiting the interactivity of this website for me. Relegated to a Web 1.0 world, this post doesn’t exist because I want to engage with the media and become a fabled “produser”, it exists because I am being told to make it exist, and not only that – I am being told to make it exist in a certain way. I am but a tired gray hair on the lush ‘long tail’ of the Internet, one that is being denied the nutrients of self expression which it requires to prosper.
Goodbye Self Expression, adios Individuality,
That dragon blog looked so good. We will always have the memories
Dinosaur Dan
Recent Postings & RSS Feed
- WordPress Wins. My Number One.
- Time for Web 3.0?
- Do you think it happens to Obama too?
- 5: Want to work together? (or) Don’t Compete, Collaborate!
- 4: Didn’t I see you on YouTube? YOU MUST BE FAMOUS
- 3: If centralised media organisations are a symphony orchestra, the blog is a one man band.
- Are you blogging this?
- 2: Infinite Freedom in a Finite Space; how the limits of code can’t limit expression
- Stop flirting with me twitter bird, you ‘aint my type
- 1: Response to Mark Zuckerberg
pjsingleton.wordpress.com 