Micromedia: A Global Digital Climate Change

Slide 1: The Micromedia Web A Global Digital Climate Change Martin Lindner | ARC Research Studios Austria | Studio eLearning Environments

Slide 2: “We’re already seeing changes.

Slide 3: Circulation of information is heating up, at a global scale.

Slide 4: Glaciers …

Slide 5: … are melting.

Slide 6: New Deserts …

Slide 7: … are forming,

Slide 8: The number of severe storms is increasing.

Slide 9: Creatures are being forced from their habitat.

Slide 10: Wait a minute … Isn‘t this Just Another Digital Hype ? Is there anything real about this?

Slide 11: * Where is the shiny new high-tech ? Where are the real new big industries ? * Where is real money made ? * * apart from Google, of course.

Slide 12: Where is the impact in the real everyday world?

Slide 13: We are living in a World Made of Signs. And the Web 2.0 forms a new, independent layer of the semiosphere.

Slide 15: It is an ecological phenomenon. Most effects are rather indirect. Like Global Warming, it points to a silent, creeping, and stealthy change.

Slide 16: In order to adapt and survive, institutions, organizations, individuals. all will have to understand it:

Slide 17: So what is Web 2.0 ?

Slide 20: 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.”

Slide 21: Web 2.0 is a micromedia environment, low-tech, messy, distributed, made out of microcontent chunks based on (nearly) ubiquitous computing, predecessor of an upcoming information ecology.

Slide 22: Web 2.0 is not just about new technologies & applications.

Slide 23: Web 2.0 is not just about new market opportunities.

Slide 24: Web 2.0 is not just about new ways of transmitting new types of media content.

Slide 25: Web 2.0 is not just about people communicating in new social networks.

Slide 26: A new media experience.

Slide 27: Confessions of a Digital Immigrant

Slide 28: From the KAFKA GALAXY into the GOOGLE DOCUVERSE

Slide 29: 1980 – 2000: 20 years learning and teaching German Literature, using the PC as a magic typewriter.

Slide 30: 1999 / 2000: A Culture Shock A media experience.

Slide 31: 1999 / 2000: The Beginnings of the Microcontent Web

Slide 32: Google Blogs, Wikis & Wikiblogs RSS DHTML, XML Texting on Mobile Phones …

Slide 44: A new subject position.

Slide 45: 1990s: medium, not media

Slide 46: … morphing into media

Slide 47: “Media is no longer something we do …

Slide 48: … but something we become part of.”

Slide 49: Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media (1964): “Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, … informed as never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never before – but also involved as never before.”

Slide 50: The Supermodern Subject ?

Slide 51: ?

Slide 52: Marc Augé (1994): In the new digital media environment, the position of the subject seems paradoxical:

Slide 53: Marc Augé (1994): Empowered like never before, inflated like never before, overwhelmed like never before.“

Slide 54: “But the Solution for Information Overload …

Slide 55: … is more information, delivered and experienced in different ways.” David Weinberger (2005)

Slide 56: Subject Position (last millenium)

Slide 57: Subject Position (last millenium) FILES & DESKTOP DOCUMENTS APPLICATIONS MICROSOFT OFFICE FIXED-LINE TELEPHONY

Slide 58: 2000/2005: MS Office exploded EXPLOSION GOOGLE OF THE E-MAIL SHREDDERING INBOX MACROCONTENT MICROCONTENT MOBILE PHONES discovered in 2001 PC GOING MOBILE

Slide 59: 2000/2005: MS Office exploded MULTITASKING MICROCONTENT ATTENTION DEFICIT TRAIT discovered in 2001 LIFE INTER-RUPTED

Slide 60: The Microcontent Office MICROTASKING MICROCONTENT CONTINUOUS discovered in 2001 PARTIAL ATTENTION

Slide 61: A New Subject Position

Slide 62: Continuous Partial Attention & Peripheral View

Slide 63: The Micromedia Web

Slide 64: Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media Micromedia, Connected Consumption, and the Snowball Effect

Slide 65: Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media. The explosion of digital micromedia puts an end to Mass Media as we know it. www.bubblegeneration.com

Slide 66: Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media. Microchunks result from the “unbundling of traditional media goods” like news, albums, books … www.bubblegeneration.com

Slide 67: www.bubblegeneration.com

Slide 68: Umair Haque (2005), The New Economy of Media. “Attention costs dominate production costs, because technology ends production, distribution, and retail scarcity: The more a microchunk is consumed the more value is added …”

Slide 69: LONG TAIL

Slide 71: Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media

Slide 72: Lev Manovich (2000), Macromedia and Micro-media “Media technologies seem typically to move in one direction: ‘more’. More resolution, better color, better visual fidelity, more bandwidth, more immersion.” www.manovich.net

Slide 73: … but why would people then want to play games on a tiny phone screen? or texting? or moblogging?

Slide 74: 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

Slide 75: 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-media but may even overtake it in popularity.” www.manovich.net

Slide 76: Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media (1964): “Cool Media”: Low definition media for casual attention

Slide 77: TWITTER

Slide 80: Web 2.0 is made of microcontent

Slide 81: Anil Dash, 2002 Introducing the Microcontent Client “We've discovered in the last few years that navigating the web in meme-sized chunks is the natural idiom of the Internet.“

Slide 82: … memes: replicating units of cultural information

Slide 83: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information 1 self-contained: the smallest unit of meaning / communication that can stand for itself (in the human mind & attention span)

Slide 84: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information 2 elementary: individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed by human users

Slide 85: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information 3 appropriately formatted … to work as building blocks in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

Slide 86: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information 1 self-contained: some relation to object oriented programming, as used e.g. in AJAX and Ruby On Rails development …

Slide 87: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information 2 elementary individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed by the application

Slide 88: Anil Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information 3 appropriate format: appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services – „platform-agnostic“ „Microcontent is information set free.“

Slide 89: Microcontent is a complex feedback phenomenon. It cannot be reduced – neither to software nor to humans.

Slide 90: Microcontent Ecology Cycle clouds drops pools flow

Slide 91: Web 2.0 is about semantic clouds and lifestreams

Slide 92: Thomas Vander Wal, 2005 “Personal Info Cloud” In micromedia environments, knowledge takes on the form of clouds. (Microcontent being something like small drops of vapor.) www.vanderwal.net

Slide 93: „Web 2.0 is a party.“

Slide 94: David Gelernter, 2000: The Second Coming – A Manifesto „… 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.”

Slide 95: David Weinberger, 2002 Small Pieces Loosely Joined “We’re falling into [processes] that … imperceptibly deepen, like furrows worn into a stone hallway by the traffic of slippers.”

Slide 98: Thank You.

Slideshare.net (beta)