don’t explain

The point was brought up to me by a good friend a short while ago: once we learn all there is to know about the universe, what will be our purpose in life? What will be the point of existence?

While I disagree with his topical point since part of the essence of humanity is creativity, which knows no bounds, the question does bring to light another essence of our being: our progress as a society is driven largely by knowledge. Ever since we became a collective society, we have constantly been pushed, for various reasons, to seek out new knowledge. The core of these reasons is, of course, to make our own lives easier.

However, our research is not conducted by all of humanity at once, but rather by small communities of people. This presents a problem because while personal knowledge will benefit that person, no benefit will come from research and scholarship until it is made part of society as a whole –– until it is made public. Thus, a key component to scholarship and academics is in fact the impartation of the new knowledge to society as a whole.

A different set of problems is associated with this new revelatory goal. The primary method of disseminating knowledge to the public in our modern society is that of the media. The media is remarkably effective at this task, but it is also unfortunately a commercial outfit keen first and foremost on preserving and increasing profit margins –– hence, rather than hearing about topics that the public needs to discuss, or freshly discovered gaps in our knowledge, we learn all about what the latest celebrity gossip is: the kind of material that dumbs the public and brings in money. One incredibly public scholarship issue that has been victimized by the media is the incredibly important topic of global warming. Even a Google search on the topic reveals people on both sides of the issue screaming of media injustice.

This has interesting implications on the research I am attempting to do, given that the focus of my research is on the media. This scenario does, however, bring to mind another situation I have previously written about: Mike Wesch’s Web 2.0 video. The video is actually an excellent example of exactly the sort of public scholarship we need to hear about the [new] media, as it bypasses the normal and conventional means of information dissemination and public discourse, instead leveraging the very mechanisms it means to critique. This is, then, perhaps a model to follow in the months to come.

(Broken record: this is an Amsterdam-related post.)

How primarily do the Dutch interact with their news and commercial media, and how has this shaped the general commercial structures and mediums of the industry?

In general, the most analogous conceptual framework by which this question lives is the synecdoche. The consumption of products in an economic sense drives the development and availability of those products from the supplier, and so in many ways the physical existence and prominence of media reflects synecdochically upon the consumption of media.

Through this observation, we can explore new and indirect methods of studying media consumption among the Dutch. Rather than query directly for the public usage of media, we can take the relative production of each medium as an indirect measure for that same usage data. In this way, we can get a complete picture with hard data with much less variability.

Caution must be taken, however. The premise of our question is that the consumption of media potentially shapes the production and mediums of media - that is, consumer demand drives the industry. Thus, if we simply take the numbers on the production end and infer the consumption numbers, we completely fail to address our research. In this way, it can be seen that in fact our very research question is based on the goal of addressing the extent of the synecdochical relationship between physical media existence and production and consumption.

It’s been a while since a video entitled “Web 2.0 .. The Machine is Us/ing Us” circled around the web. For those of us who live in Web 2.0, who think constantly in its context, the video was nothing new, but simply provided a neat, bundled package summarizing a number of its tenets, potentials, and quandaries.

The core idea presented in the video is that of form and content. Mike Wesch, the author of the video, argues that with the advent of XHTML and RSS/ATOM, effective separation of form and content has been achieved, and information sharing has become not only easier, but a core principle of the Web, vis-à-vis Web 2.0. This is currently arguable, as the quality of code dictates the level of separation afforded in each individual instance. HTML5 is fascinating in that it provides more native mechanisms for determining these separations without sacrificing expression of form.

The point at which this conversation becomes interesting is that at which we turn the argument upon itself: what is the medium of the video? One of Wesch’s more tangential (and thus questionable) assertions is that the separation of form and content has directly led to the influx of the user-generated web. What is inarguable, however, is that without the user-generated web, his video could not have possibly existed in the plane it currently does. It is thus appropriate that a video about the web is in fact a video on the web.

Likewise, Philip Thurtle, in his book The Emergence of Genetic Rationality, focuses on, among many other topics, the necessity of effective information collection, collation, and communication in the rise of certain forms of social consciousness, among them genetic rationality. In fact, in the introduction of the book, he comments on the organization and information principles followed by the book - this bit of meta draws attention to the book as the medium, as the ultimate culmination of a certain process of information processing which is perhaps the most final and arduous of them all.

On the other hand, the media in general filters out instead most commonly over the mediums of print, the web, and television. The most interesting point here is in fact the medium itself - each communicates in an entirely separate way, organizing and shaping both form and content with radically deviant methods. When ground down to these separate considerations of form and content, the concept of the television as a medium seems to become the most bipolar, and the print medium the least. When we consider the effect of the content alone, it seems that given the wealth of content on the Web, to survive in the medium means that content is of absolutely key importance.

These deviations are things to consider when considering other concepts relating to media.

My attempt thus far has been to keep the posts on this blog related to my study abroad in Amsterdam fairly generalizable — anyone should be able to, without prior context, pick up and read any post made on this page. Unfortunately, this has become more and more difficult as time has progressed, and I would like to apologize in advance to my readers for how contextual this post is.

On Monday, we were able to hear about three of the research projects that our group will be collectively executing during our stay in Amsterdam. Here is some commentary on the one I personally found the most interesting, the squatting group.

I must admit that I only had faint shadows of an idea about what exactly “squatting” is prior to hearing their explanation. My impression on the subject was that squatters were very little differentiable from the homeless, an impression which now would seem to be very much incorrect. As it turns out, there is a very definite distinction that squatters have - they own a space. This is not to say that they bought and paid for it, but rather that the Dutch government has enabled anyone to take over any abandoned private or public space a year after it has fallen into disuse. As long as the new occupant “claims” the space by means of populating it with a bed, a desk, and a chair, the space is legally theirs.

This is a fascinating take on a few of the more oblique issues with urbanization, and I certainly wish Isaac and Fiona luck on studying it, as it is a very compelling topic. From what I gathered, Fiona wished to study the aesthetic nature of squatting spaces: how the squatters decorate their squatting space. While this is a good way to investigate perhaps the squatter culture, I am not entirely convinced that a clear pattern will emerge - in my mind, squatters are mostly connected together by virtue of being squatters, and I have doubts as to whether there is indeed a unified culture that will extend as far as aesthetics. Rather, I think a perhaps more directly relatable issue would be perhaps to use the measure of aesthetics (and of course interviews) to determine the squatters’ attitude towards their space. How much do they see the space they occupy as being “theirs?”

Isaac, on the other hand, wished to study something quite a bit broader - whether the practice of allowing squatting makes Amsterdam more habitable. This seems at first glance highly counterintuitive - how would allowing the homeless to just take over spaces make the city more habitable? In fact, however, there are numerous advantages to this practice. First, it gets people off the street, and gives them a means to perhaps get on their feet. Second, it prevents buildings from falling entirely to disuse - squatters usually pay to keep the utilities running, and naturally do what they can to keep their space from falling into disrepair. This is an extremely interesting topic on a societal and a policy level, and learning more in this direction could be extremely illuminating about urbanity and urban planning in general. My only thoughts are that the topic is perhaps too broad; even with a focus on gastronomy, I think that perhaps contextualizing the actual research down to a particular district or even building/block would make it a much more palatable and digestible piece of investigation.

I unfortunately did not catch exactly what Cassie wanted to do with her research, as she was sadly not here in person to explain in depth her topic. However, I wish all three of them luck in their research, as the topic seems extremely interesting and compelling, and should be rather illuminating as urbanity pervades more and more into human culture.

Much has been made out of Windows Vista’s failure, which at this point is rather (and unfortunately) undeniable. One particular topic of debate is the point at which XP will no longer be sold, which may perhaps also be characterized as “the point at which Microsoft starts shoving Vista down their customers’ throats.” That point is currently June 30th, 2008.

The problem, of course, is that no one wants anything to do with Vista. Downgrades are frighteningly common, and the operating system is simply not nearly as refined as XP is, by virtue of having not existed on the market for quite as long. In essence, in the process of waiting so long to release Vista, Microsoft shot itself in the foot by - directly or indirectly - refining Windows XP to the dreaded “good enough” point. Vista’s (lack of) quality, of course, did not help.

So Dell doesn’t want to sell Vista exclusively. People don’t want it yet, and Vista means more support calls, with questions that may not yet have answers.

Microsoft has the answer: sell XP, but we’re counting them as Vista sales.

Yeah, that’s right. When your operating system fails to sell, save face by pretending it sold. Here’s another idea, Microsoft: get it right with Windows 7. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with the highly questionable bookkeeping we’re not facing.

[Via Gizmodo]