Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Blog #6

In the introduction of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins says that "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" (3). This statement is directly related to the key points from Weinberger. Weinberger, with the help of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, says "The meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" (170). Both Jenkins and Weinberger note that we use implicit and explicit meanings to make sense of our everyday lives and things.

Convergence is also a key point in the introduction (see title of book) and Jenkins offers some unique insight. Jenkins says that convergence is an old concept taking on new meanings (6) and this also relates to the key points from Weinberger because Weinberger talks about how people are becoming a huge part of the internet and contributing to its content. Jenkins says, "Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through social interactions with others" (3) and Weinberger would most definitely agree. These social interactions create "buzz that is increasingly valued by the media industry" so collective intelligence comes into play (Jenkins 4). I would say that collective intelligence is also a key point from the introduction and is directly related to the key points of Weinberger as well. Weinberger discusses metadata, the way it is collected, and how it impacts the web, pointing out that the information is highly valuable and necessary for social interactions.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Blog #5

At the end of chapter 8 Weinberger, with the help of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, says "The meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" (170). The hammer example helped make this statement more clear. We only know the meaning of "hammer" because of the implicit (context or background) meanings . If we didn't know what it was used for, we wouldn't know what it was. Weinberger and Heidegger make it clear that in order to understand what a hammer is, we have to know more and that more comes from the implicit web of relationships.

This is related to the third order of order because that implicit web of relationships is growing and people are adding more relationships that are not only meaningful to them, but that are meaningful to others as well. Tagging is becoming more and more common and it is only increasing the web of relationships. According to Weinberger, "We are building this connected miscellany link by link and tag by tag. Its value is in the implicit relationships that turn into an infrastructure of meaning" (171).

More (RedOne Jimmy Joker Remix) - Usher
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59273738@N03/5429023674/