Tenth reading

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture

By: Henry Jenkins

I got a hold of this book through SH library, it’s an electronic resource.

Ch.6 - Interactive audience? The “collective intelligence” of media age

This chapter describes the development of how consumers through fan culture communities interact with media and its producers. The focus in this chapter is on fans of movies, series and games.

In the time before Internet fans of different kinds communicated through meetings, paper mail, phones and such. Fan communities at this time where rather closed up and only the dedicated where engaged in these kind of communications because of its nature.

When Internet entered the society fans could finally interact with each other through web-based communication. Big online community’s started to appear and fans had an easier time gathering together to communicate their passion. These community’s served as a collective nest of information about particular movies, series and games where fans could post information, have discussions or distribute their fan material such as novels, pictures, home made movies, music and so on.

When these platforms started to bloom more and more participants gathered to contribute and engage in their own way. By this time the producers opened their eyes to fan culture and started to engage them to se what people thought of their work and to get influences on how to further develop their productions, and meet the expectations and wishes of the fans. This resulted in a to way communication where fans finally where able to influence the outcome of productions.

Nowadays I think this can be easily seen in examples such as game-mods where players can play around with the designs of games and reshape them into new content or ad something new themselves. TV-shows where people can vote to decide the outcome. I’m sure there are a lot more examples I just cant think of any right now when I am writing.

In my own thoughts I think that this is a very good progression into letting people decide of what the get through media, that there is no longer a one-way decisive power.

Ninth reading

Community media: International perspectives

Edited by: Linda K. Fuller

Ch. 5 - Use of television as a community media by farmers in Bangladesh

By: M. Abdul Kashem

This chapter presents a case study of how television used by farmers in Bangladesh enhances their knowledge of agriculture. I will skip out on mentioning the raw data facts and try to summarize what I found interesting.

In the beginning of this chapter the author talks generally about media and its uses in Bangladesh and explains how radio Bangladesh and Bangladesh television broadcasts shows to inform the rural masses about how they can develop their socioeconomic status. Thus suggesting that media is used as an educational tool for the people. Many of the programs that are shown focus on informing about education, agriculture, family life, religion, health, and the like.

The study that was conducted about television showed that 46% of 100 randomly selected farm families saw television as a highly useful information medium. This suggested that television was a highly useful tool to distribute information about agriculture. The author thoughts about this are that the government should take this into consideration and distribute television sets into the rural masses.

Though this chapter focuses on something that can seem way behind our own advanced media society, I still think that it’s important to take into consideration on how much power media holds. That using media technology in the right ways can improve the quality of life.

Eight reading

The hacker ethic
By: Pekka Himanen


Ch. 1 – The hacker work ethic

The chapter discusses the hacker work ethic and compares it to the working ethic of protestant religion.

In the hacker’s point of view, the task of programming is something enjoy full and exiting even challenging, not seen as work. It is the passion for the challenge and exploration that motivates these kinds of people to dedicate their time and life for what they do. This kind of attitude can be applied to al kinds of work and is not only bound to computer programming.

The discussion of this ethic is compared to the old point of view on working with the example of protestant religion. The religions view emphasized that work was something that had to be done to show vigilance before god, a task without a benefit or prize. Even if a task was considered hard and with now point it should not be questioned but executed humbly. Pursuing something that was considered working for benefits and enjoyment was a seen as work of the devil. People with this attitude would end up in hell and work meaninglessly for eternity.

The comparison of these views is made to shed some light over how modern day society sees the working ethic. That some people work for the sake of accomplishing something that may even not like but se it as a necessity. While other work for passion and consider their work more of a hobby.

Ch. 2 – Time is money?

The discussion in this chapter focuses on the time management in a hacker lifestyle vs. a time-scheduled worker.

Time relation for hackers is working individually and when they want. As a hacker you take responsibility of your own time and work in a pace that allows you be flexible between work and relaxation without the boundaries of what is considered a working day.

This view clashes with the technological age because time has become valuable.
The quick pace of modern day engulfs people and makes them divide their day into a working schedule. To be able to keep up, every minute of the day has to be kept in account. The author discusses hoe people in the fast lane deprive themselves of freedom by making themselves slaves under time. How we implement technology such as phones microwaves to save time and be able to work more.


This chapter worked as a good eye opener for myself, and how I live my life. It got me thinking on how this fast pace of time has stressed me these last couple weeks. Modern times have really made us able to be on the go and available al the time, giving us fewer excuses to slow down and be relaxed.

It’s a good chapter I really recommend everyone reading it.

Assignment Media and economy

Marcus and I decided to produce a bike interest site. Bring the community of hardcore riders to one place. Allowing the user to log in and get up to date information on trails, events and other things related to the cycling scene.

We think that a small income could be generated through sponsorship. This would be made possible as the users increase. Thus making it inviting for companies to advertise there brand ie, Rock Shox, Marzocchi, Red bull.

By collaborating with various bike stores we could offer the users of the site discounts in participating shops.

Money could also be made by charging users a small fee when selling stuff through the site ie, Secondhand bikes or accesssories. The percentage could be as small as 5% to make it inviting for the users to use the built in function rather than selling it elsewhere.

Marketing will be carried out via the users themself, word of mouth and posters in participating stores.

We expect that word of month would be key in generating new users of the site.

Screen shot of the page

Seventh reading

Free as in freedom – Crusade for free software
By: Sam Williams

Ch. 1 - For want of a printer

This chapter is set as a historical novel of Richard Stallmans early days at MIT and explains the early days of hackers. At this time hackers where considered as people who manipulated programs to improve them and Stallman was one of them. The golden rule hackers as he explains it was to always help another out with programming in sharing the code they worked on. This was seen as a community of helping one another out.

The history continues on as Stallman encounters problems with the printer at work and sets of to find the code for it so that he could improve it. When he finally finds himself at the source of the code he needs at Xerox labs he is rejected it. At this point he starts to unravel the truth about how code is starting to gain value and that company’s are starting to harvest this knowledge and people for their private gain and locking it up. This can be seen as starting point of what nowadays is the economical software industry, and its counterpart the open source software which follow the ideology of the hackers.

Ch.2 – 2001: A hacker’s odyssey

The following up chapter takes place 20 years after the incidents at MIT and sums up what the open software community has accomplished until now (well until 2001). The chapter mainly focuses on a speech that Stallman had at the New York university computer-science department discussing the software industry. The main focus is on the GPL and how it works as insurance that software code is made into a communal ownership and copyrighted. This is meant to work as evolving copyright that follows the original source code in whatever it evolves into, thus reassuring that it could never fall into commercial lockup. Even if just a little bit of the source code is used it still falls under the same copyright protection.


I found these readings to be quite fun and interesting and gave me a better insight of the history of open source community. This book seems to be a very relaxed and skips out on the theoretical parts. Just read it if you want some historical facts and easy reading.

Sixth reading

Design for emergence
By: Yanna Vogiazou


Ch. 3 – Design for emergence

This short chapter discusses the means of emergence and how it is used in technology and games.

The purpose of emergence is to cause unintended uses of something so that it manifests itself as a new possible function. The author explains in short the example of SMS and how it found new uses within society and gave way for new means of communicating. Emergence design in games is used to enhance the experience for the player by giving freedom of exploration and motivating game play.

It is explained that emergence can be used in developing purposes where test groups of people get to play with a platform and define uses for it. The developer’s can in their turn through feedback identify needs and functions in a product and implement them.

I think that this is a very good way for developers to design user-friendly products and meet the needs from the crowd. I think this can be seen nowadays when for example programs and games get downloadable content developed for the sake of new functions.

Ch. 4 – Early design sketches for design for emergence

This chapter is hard to make a review of because most of the text is based on illustrations in the book. But in short the author presents different games that she was involved with and how they where designed for the sake to get people involved with each other. The platforms used where Internet and mobile phones.
The purpose of these games where to be easy to use with minimal visual representation and make people make their own meaning out of them. That through playing these games people would experience communication, challenges and emergence.

To be honest this chapter was quite boring to read and I had a hard time making any sense of it. And throughout these two chapters there where a lot of references to other parts of the book which gives the impression that you have to read the whole thing to get a full understanding.

Protesting through hacking websites

IFPI Site Hacked to Protest Pirate Bay Trial.

A hacker group called “The new generation” hacked the Swedish website for International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as a protest against the ongoing trial against the responsible people for pirate bay. The protesters/hackers explain this as a declaration of war against the anti-piracy industry.

Link to article here.

Link to google document.

Fifth reading

The medium is the massage
By: Marshall McLuhan

Pretty interesting book to read through. Feels more poetic than theoretical.

The main focus in this short book seems to be to discuss how the impact of media and, the different mediums it travels through, impose on society. As the author claims, that it is media that shapes the society. That it has entered our lives even if we like it or not and makes us aware of the world.

McLuhan explains throughout the book how the media massages and shapes us. And how different parts of it are considered extensions of us. For example that the book is an extension of the eye, radio is an extension of the ear. In general that al forms of media are somehow extensions of the human being, either physic or physical.

This book really got me thinking and added a whole lot more to my critic thinking about media in society. As we humans create new mediums for information we slowly put ourselves as slaves under them. Who takes control over these mediums and what information do they feed us.

Human and technology blog reactions

I can agree with Mike on the thought of that the next revolutionary phases will be shorter. I’m thinking that the world evolves faster because humans have more information behind them with each coming generation. Information and knowledge is getting easier to store and to harness.

I also agree on the topic about installing a computer under the skin. But if the computer contained some form of AI that can learn, there would maybe be a possibility for it to keep up with the evolution of the brain. Still this is just in theory…

Link to Mikes post

The fourth chapter that I have read

Wiconomics
Chapter 7 – Platforms for participation
By: Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

This chapter focuses on discussing the possibility’s of development when larger companies share the data they have with the community. The way these companies share their data is through an application-programming interface (API), which basically means that it allows users to utilize the data and combine it with some other platform or make something new from it. The term that the author uses to describe this is called mashup.

One of the first examples of a web mashup was when a man named Paul Rademacher combined google maps with an ad service for vacant housing which would be called housemappings. The idea was formed when he was looking for an apartment in Silicon Valley and got tired of looking at different maps for each house that he wanted to see. This application drew data from the ad service and showed the different locations as push pins on the map.

Further on the author explains how mass collaboration has made companies as Amazon flourish with the participation from the community of users.
This was made possible because of the participatory platform that lets different smaller companies connect to them. The function of this open platform is to let people develop affiliate applications that can drive traffic and sales to Amazon. They in turn make money by getting paid commissions when they lead shoppers to Amazon.

The chapter continues on explaining how the government in the state of Rhode Island steps in and utilizes AIP and enable the government agencies to share their data. The idea with sharing this information was to enable people to react and create applications that could reach out to the masses and enable them to interact with the governmental issues such as environmental risks crime rates and so on. In short to get people more involved and aware of local issues.

To sum things up in my own reflection this chapter discusses the important issue of sharing information with each other and with collaboration utilizing it to develop new things. This book seems to be very up to date on collaborative discussions in media society. I really recommend it for those who have interest in the subject.

The mockup

The mockup that we made in our group (consisting of me, Mike and Waqar) was intended for finding bike trails in Stockholm. The idea was to make an easy to use site where you can rapidly locate bike trails both locally and over larger areas. Hera is a link to the mockup it was made in revmedia.

The persona for this site was:

Sex: Male (75%) / Female (25%)
Age: 20 - 45
Income: Middle class
Other hobbies: Other sports / outdoor activities. Probably hiking, camping, road cycling, triathlons, adventure races, winter sports.
Education: High school and above
Ethnicity: All
Has family: Yes (40%) / No (60%)

Human and technology

Digital representation of the world - The digital world model is a revolutionary phase in the human evolution, establishing the species of homo representans digitalis:

I think that this evolutionary phase lets people express themselves to a wider audience. The media technology also gives us the tools to be able to do this in a easier way.


Evolutionism - How homo representans digitalis (the digitally epresenting man) can have developed from earlier species:

I think this species developed when humans started to embrace new media technology and integrated it into their everyday life.


Extended body - Are we cyborgs Is there a difference between cyborgs and the technologically extended body:

The term cyborg is by me still a very philosophical question, some people may se them selves a cyborgs through use and intigration of technology. Others may only see technology as a new kind of tool.


Extended mind - The more the consciousness of man must have changed with digital representation. What would change if we could install a computer under the skin and connect it with the brain:

I think that the human would be able to process more information if one could implant a computer under the skin. The ability to store memory such as thoughts and knowledge and later access them would greatly increase.


Represented body - Will the layer of the brain develops in the future with the media age?:

I think that humans will have to develop the brain to some extent to be able to embrace what media technology provides us with. I think we can se this in older generations who don’t accept technology as we do today.


Represented world - What difference does it make to be able to extend the representation to paper or digital means:

I think that being able represent something to the world in some sort of solid form gives us a chance to leave a mark in time. The things we put down on a paper or a digital format becomes a capsule of information to be shared with the rest of the world in a solid form and unchanged.

Socially extended body - Housing as collective skin:

I think that housing as collective skin may very well be seen as a socially extend of the body because I se my home as an outer shell of myself. And I think that people strive to represent their homes as reflections of themselves.


Holistic view - Opposes the view that mind, body and technology are separate but interact. Holistic view: The body, mind and the technological extensions as one and the same system. What does interaction mean then:

I think that a system on its own interacts with different parts of it self at different times. So in that sense there is still interaction within itself. If I se my body as the complete system of the holistic view my brain still tells the different body parts what to do. And the different parts of my body give information to the brain depending of what they do.

The third chapter that I have read

The Language of new media
Chapter 2 – The interface
By: Lev Manovich

The whole chapter takes the reader through a historical journey and explains the development of the human computer interaction (HCI) with a cultural approach. The author starts of by making some references to the movie Bade runner (1982) and how its view of the future would be taken into account by generations to come and used as a reference. This is explained as how older cultural phenomena have set a standard for the future.

The author then continues by describing three large cultural phenomena’s that in the end get intertwined as the modern day interfaces and substances and that we have in our computers.

I wont go too much into depth about what I have read because the chapter was pretty long and I will just mention some parts that I found interesting.

The first one is the printed word and is explained as the way that we speak with the computer and through it, as well as how we store information in it. In the older days the printed word was a way for humans to store information such as knowledge and memory and served as a link to the art of rhetoric. This is recognized as how for example a writing program looks like. The interface is shaped as a piece of paper. And how the scrolling down of a longer text on a web page is referred to unrolling a scroll. The speaking to the computer part is explained as how for example a programmer tells the computer through different written commands what do.

The second is the cinematic and refers to the way we look on a computer screen, and as how I understood the text, through it. The screen can be described as looking through a lens of a camera or the canvas of a painting. As a the frame of a painting or the rectangular shape of a photograph only shows a part of something larger so does a window in a computer interface. The lens of a camera refers to the way that we ourselves can determine what we want to see by moving around in the window (by scrolling in different directions) or explore three-dimensional space by moving around the viewing point (like in games).

The third one is the human computer interface and explains how different cultural artefacts where transferred to the computer to represent the real world. For example typewriter was made into writing programs, a painting canvas was made into painting programs, icons on the screen represented real world things etc.


This covers most of the chapter in short…


This book seems discuss the historical development of new media, which is interesting to read to get a background of why things are as they are nowadays. But for those that want to read something more hand on which concerns present things I would not recommend this book.