Post on 15-Nov-2014
description
Martin Lindner | ARC Research Studios Austria | Studio eLearning Environments
A Global Digital Climate Change
The Micromedia Web
“We’re already seeing changes.
Circulation of informationis heating up, at a global scale.
Glaciers …
… are melting.
New Deserts …
… are forming,
The number of severe storms is increasing.
Creatures are being forced from their habitat.
Wait a minute …
Isn‘t this Just Another Digital Hype ?
Is there anything real about this?
Where is the shiny new high-tech ?*
Where are the real new big industries ?*
Where is real money made ?*
* apart from Google, of course.
Where is the impact in the real everyday world?
We are living in a World Made of Signs.And the Web 2.0 forms a new,
independent layer of the semiosphere.
It is an ecological phenomenon.Most effects are rather indirect.
Like Global Warming, it points to asilent, creeping, and stealthy change.
In order to adapt and survive, institutions, organizations, individuals.
all will have to understand it:
So what is Web 2.0 ?
David Weinberger, 2002
Small Pieces Loosely Joined
“The Web is a mess, as organized as an orgy.… a collection of ideas, none longer
than can fit on a single screen.… small nuggets pointing to more small nuggets.”
Web 2.0 is a micromedia environment, low-tech, messy, distributed,
based on (nearly) ubiquitous computing, predecessor of an upcoming information
ecology.
made out of microcontent chunks
Web 2.0 is not just aboutnew technologies & applications.
Web 2.0 is not just aboutnew market opportunities.
Web 2.0 is not just aboutnew ways of transmitting new types of media content.
Web 2.0 is not just aboutpeople communicating in new social networks.
A new media experience.
Confessionsof a
Digital Immigrant
From theKAFKA GALAXY
into theGOOGLE DOCUVERSE
1980 – 2000:20 years learning and teaching
German Literature,using the PC as a magic typewriter.
1999 / 2000:A Culture Shock
A media experience.
1999 / 2000: The Beginnings of the
Microcontent Web
GoogleBlogs, Wikis & Wikiblogs
RSSDHTML, XML
Texting on Mobile Phones …
A new subject position.
1990s: medium, not media
… morphing into media
“Media is no longer something we do …
… but something we become part of.”
“Men are suddenlynomadic gatherers of
knowledge, … informed as never before,
free from fragmentary specialism
as never before – but also involved as never
before.”
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media
(1964):
?
The Supermodern Subject
?
In the new digital media environment, the position of the subject
seems paradoxical:
Marc Augé (1994):
Empowered like never before,inflated like never before,
overwhelmed like never before.“
Marc Augé (1994):
“But the Solution for Information Overload …
… is more information, delivered and experienced in different
ways.”
David Weinberger (2005)
Subject Position (last millenium)
MICROSOFT OFFICE
FILES & DOCUMENTS
FIXED-LINE TELEPHONY
DESKTOPAPPLICATIONS
Subject Position (last millenium)
MICROCONTENT
discovered in 2001
GOOGLESHREDDERING
MACROCONTENT
PC GOING MOBILE
MOBILEPHONES
EXPLOSIONOF THE E-
MAIL INBOX
2000/2005: MS Office exploded
MICROCONTENT
discovered in 2001
2000/2005: MS Office exploded
MULTITASKING
ATTENTION DEFICIT TRAIT
LIFE INTER-RUPTED
MICROCONTENT
discovered in 2001
The Microcontent Office
MICROTASKING
CONTINUOUSPARTIAL ATTENTION
A New Subject Position
Continuous Partial Attention & Peripheral View
The Micromedia Web
Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media
Micromedia, Connected Consumption,
and the Snowball Effect
The explosion of digital micromedia
puts an end to Mass Mediaas we know it.
www.bubblegeneration.com
Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media.
Microchunks result from the “unbundling of traditional media goods” like news, albums, books
…
www.bubblegeneration.com
Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media.
www.bubblegeneration.com
“Attention costs dominate production costs, because technology ends
production, distribution, and retail scarcity: The more a microchunk is consumed
the more value is added …”
Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media.
LONG TAIL
Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media
Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media
“Media technologies seem typically to move in one direction: ‘more’. More resolution, better color,
better visual fidelity, morebandwidth, more immersion.”
www.manovich.net
… but why would people then want to play gameson a tiny phone screen? or texting? or moblogging?
Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media
“While some media forms get richer, others stay purposefully 'poorer.' A more minimalist kind of media, characterized by low resolution,
low fidelity, and slow speeds, is born. I call it micro-media.”
www.manovich.net
Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media
And it will not go away:“Given the fact that soon more users worldwide
will access the Internet through cell phones than through computers, it will not only successfully compete with macro-mediabut may even overtake it in popularity.”
www.manovich.net
“Cool Media”:
Low definition media
for casual attention
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media
(1964):
Web 2.0 is made of microcontent
“We've discovered in the last few years thatnavigating the web in meme-sized chunks
is the natural idiom of the Internet.“
Anil Dash, 2002
Introducing the Microcontent Client
… memes: replicating units of cultural
information
self-contained: the smallest unit ofmeaning / communicationthat can stand for itself(in the human mind & attention span)
1
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information
elementary: individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed by human users
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information
2
appropriately formatted … to work as building blocks in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets
3
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information
self-contained: some relation to object oriented programming, as used e.g. in AJAX and Ruby On Rails development …
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information
1
elementaryindividually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed by the application
2
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information
appropriate format: appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services –
„platform-agnostic“
„Microcontent is information set free.“
3
Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information
Microcontent is a complexfeedback phenomenon.
It cannot be reduced – neither to software nor to humans.
Microcontent Ecology Cycle
drops
flowpools
clouds
Web 2.0 is about semantic clouds and lifestreams
In micromedia environments,knowledge takes on the form of clouds.
(Microcontent being something like small drops of vapor.)
“Personal Info Cloud”
Thomas Vander Wal,
2005
www.vanderwal.net
„Web 2.0 is a party.“
„… all kinds of information chunks in our digital life take on the form of
digital lifestreams …“
“… leaving behind a stream-shaped cyberbody,like an aircraft's contrail, as we go.”
David Gelernter, 2000: The Second Coming – A Manifesto
“We’re falling into [processes] that …
imperceptibly deepen, like furrows worn into a stone
hallway by the traffic of slippers.”
David Weinberger, 2002
Small Pieces Loosely Joined
Thank You.