The Linguistic Lockdown
When we talk about videoblogging, how do we describe it? Is it a show, is it a window into someone’s world, is it edutainment, or is it content? How do we relate to it? Do we browse through the feeds in Miro, see the next video in line, and move on? Perhaps we write a comment, and, unless we subscribe to the comment thread in co-comment, forget about it.
How about time? There is an underlying perception of videos on the net as being extremely time-critical. I call it the curse of the time-stamp, where video is judged by how fresh it is, as if it is a piece of toast, not media that can enter ever more relationships with other pieces of media.
The serial nature of the media, the time-bound condition, the strictly contextualized environment, it all adds to limiting the media, limiting the video. Or the media, for that matter: Imagine how extremely time-sensitive a twitter-message is.
Some years ago, Howard Rheingold wrote this:
(…) when a metaphor attempts to reify human relationships, to make a dynamic process into a concrete, unchanging thing, what the metaphor fails to describe can be as important as what it imparts.
How we talk about these new media opportunities shapes how we think about them, and how we ultimately benefit from them.
A few questions:
* Do you have examples of how the labelling of a practice has limited the practice?
* How do we as agents work around these labels? Are we even always aware of how these labels affect our own practice?
* What can we - on a very practical level - do to keep reminding each other of the ways in which tools Can be used?
Trackbacks
Use this link to trackback from your own site.
Here’s one: “newspaper”. We are merciless to newspapers that refuse to change, or at least supplement, their dead-tree pipeline, as we should be. However, the top-tier local and regional papers have gotten the message, not just on the Internet but even social media. They got it later than they could have, but not as late as people think. Here’s wishing them success: investigative journalism must always be profitable, one way or another. Blogs can’t have all the fun!
Hey Rick, thanks for the comment. I agree that newspapers will continue to have an important role, as does books. Yes, books. The things that are written, then corrected, edited, proof-read, sent to a printer, and published maybe 6 months after the author stopped writing it.
But I wish for more interaction between the newspapers/books and the more interactive, online elements. It would be good if a book like The Shock Doctrine had more collaborative elements in it. Not just a list of links to places where you could get involved, but also where we collectively could work out more intelligence on the issues at hand.
Profits and investigative journalism have no business being tied to each other. Requiring such a relationship ultimately sabotages the investigative journalism part if it doesn’t fit the profit demands of a media source. Media should never have been labelled a business like any other business. It is a very special and essential institution, online and offline, small or large.
I think the problem already exists in online culture. Knowledge and valuation of history is in a constant decline.. people seem to know (or want to know) less and less about history.. which gets transferred to the online sphere… where whats old is old… and isn’t given value.
How to change culture and make history important again? I think the best place is in primary schools. We need good history teachers who not only know alot, but can inspire and help students understand why history is ALWAYS important.
Bicyclemark: The old media that is deemed irrelevant online doesnt even have to be 100 years old, or 20 years old. It could be something like that podcast from 7 months ago, or the twitter discussion from last week. I agree that history lessons need to be re-affirmed somewhat in the educational system. I don’t know what the real status of history teaching is around the world. Do you have any reports about it somewhere?
I dont really see the ideological schism between profits and investigative journalism. I agree that in many cases, it does constitute a problem, but that with the right owners, it can surely function in a good way.
Online, what can we do to be better at seeing different media from different media sources (and dates of publishing) within the same zooming level / scope?