Micromedia: A Global Digital Climate Change

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

…



“Attention costs dominate production costs, because technology ends

production, distribution, and retail scarcity: The more a microchunk is consumed

the more value is added …”


LONG TAIL

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?


“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


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):

TWITTER

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


2

appropriately formatted … to work as building blocks in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

3


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


appropriate format: appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services –

„platform-agnostic“

„Microcontent is information set free.“

3


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.

Micromedia: A Global Digital Climate Change

Technology

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