Subculture Report

Here is a link to my report

Wall Street Journal's "The Really Smart Phone"

Last weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article titled "The Really Smart Phone." Yes, I still go old school and read newspapers, especially when I want to take a break from the 80+ blogs I read on my Google Reader. Here is a link to the online version of the WSJ as well http://on.wsj.com/gi1pSm.

An MIT researcher states, "Phones can know. People can get this god's eye view of human behavior." Cell phones collect much more data than we are aware. Of course, we know that phone companies keep track of our location based on cell towers so that we can be routed to the closest/optimum one when moving about a city, but there is a wealth of data that our personal devices also collects. Not only is data, text, and voice usage recorded, but at times even our phone's GPS sensors, camera, light sensors, and gyroscopes kick into gear to record your personal movements and behaviors throughout the day. "Researchers are already exploring ways that the information gleaned from mobile phones can improve public health, urban planning and marketing"

Below are a few excerpts from the article of how this data can be used:

"At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users. After analyzing more than 16 million records of call date, time and position, the researchers determined that, taken together, people's movements appeared to follow a mathematical pattern. The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone's future whereabouts with 93.6% accuracy."

"And back at MIT, scientists who tracked student cellphones during the latest presidential election were able to deduce that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers didn't know the content of the conversation. By analyzing changes in movement and communication patterns, researchers could also detect flu symptoms before the students themselves realized they were getting sick."

"Just by watching where you spend time, I can say a lot about the music you like, the car you drive, your financial risk, your risk for diabetes. If you add financial data, you get an even greater insight," said Dr. Pentland. "We are trying to understand the molecules of behavior in this really complete way."

Literacy on Dribbble

Dribbble jargon is quite easy to pick up on. As with any social networking site, Dribbble has it's own set of Web 2.0 words that define actions performed on the site. Twitter has Tweets, Facebook has Pokes, Fourqaure has Mayors, etc. The Dribbble lexicon is based off of basketball terms. For example, when you post a 400x300 screengrab of your work, it is called a 'shot' and people participating on the site are called 'players'. Designers can 'rebound' other players' shots by posting a screengrab of their own in response to another player's shot. Furthermore, shots that have a lot of rebounds become 'playoffs.' There are additional buzzwords that further designate the players on Dribbble. Players who have been on the site for long enough are called 'pros' while new players are labeled 'rookies.' Since you must be invited to participate on the site, a new user can indicate themselves as a 'prospect' to signal that they want to get 'drafted' as  player.

Learning these terms are quite easy, as is with joining any social networking site. However, there are literacies involved with being familiar in graphic, product, and web design to fully understand the discussions on the site. For example, players may comment on the type design in a certain shot, and write about kearning and leading, which are all terms related to typography. They may even go into talking about crossbars, terminals, and apertures, which are again, all terms related to typography and type design. Below, I've included screengrabs of another conversation that utilizes non-colloquial abbreviations:

Here we see players using terms such as UX and UI, which stand for 'user experience' and 'user 'interface' respectively. They are both specializations in graphic design. 

"Check-in" Apps

I know a few people in out class are doing their reports on "check-in" services such as Foursquare or austin-based Gowalla. As a location-based service user myself, I decided to write some of my thoughts on these types of social networks.

From the advent of these networks, it seems that the one of the initial draws of the service was the game mechanic. When you check in on places on Gowalla, you receive a "stamp" of that place in your passport. Players can even receive a pin for competing a trip, such as hitting all the popular BBQ joints in Austin. Each city comes with its own unique set of trips curated by the Gowalla team and its users. People can also pick up and drop off virtual items in a sort of geo-caching-like game. Foursquare exhibits similar game mechanics, but there are also some real-world perks in checking in regularly to a place. The person that checks in the most at a place in a certain time period becomes the Mayor of that place. On Foursquare, some of the benefits of being a mayor of a place include discounts or free things to that place. For example, I think the mayor of Halcyon (a coffee shop in town) gets free daily coffee. Foursquare brings people back to their favorite places as they check-in daily to defend their Mayorship. For what I know, Gowalla doesn't have these discount perks yet. I recall though that during SXSW, where they had a very large presence, they would give away free stuff such as t-shirts and even iPhones for checking in at various venues and SXSW events.

For me, I use Gowalla more as a travel log of sorts ... a new way of documenting the places I go with geo-location, uploading comments, and photos. It's just a new way for me to discover new places. When I go to a new city, I will often check out the Gowalla trips associated with that area. Who knows, maybe I will find a new favorite coffeeshop or best-kept-secret bookstore.

S/R 3: eXistenZ

David Cronenberg’s science fiction film, eXistenZ, tells the story of a near-future dystopian society where video games have become the cultural norm as a recreational pastime. In this world, there is constant tension between gamers and realists who believe that the games are evil. These video games, instead of being played through hand-held controllers and viewed on a screen, connects directly to a person’s nervous system through a “bioport” installed at the base of his or her spine, and players use umbilical-like cords to jack into to the game. The game pods are grown than machined, as they mimic masses of amphibious flesh and organs, rather than artificial electrical components. Allegra Geller, a renowned game designer, conducts a focus group to test her new video game, eXistenZ, using these game pods. However, an assassination attempt by a realist quickly disperses the group and Geller flees to safety with marketing trainee Ted Pikul. Geller fears that the attempt on her life has damaged the only copy of eXistenZ in her game pod. She convinces Pikul to install an illegal bioport so that he may play the game with her. They visit Kiri Vinokur, Allegra's mentor, who installs Pikuls bioport. Pikul and Allegra enter eXistenZ together, and inside the game, they obtain new micropods, which descend their consciousness into a subsequent game layer. They find themselves in a game pod factory, harvesting mutated amphibians to create more game pods. Reality is distorted when Pikul creates an organic gun similar to the one used in the original assassination attempt, and continues to struggle with which setting is the real world versus the game world. Allegra finds a diseased game pod and hooks into it in the hopes that they can destroy Cortical Systematic's game pods. However, Allegra herself becomes infected and Pikul theorizes that they have lost the game. The two wake up and find themselves back at the ski lodge. Reality is further blurred as it seems that the disease from the game has infected Allegra’s game pod in this world. They exit the lodge to find war has broken out as the realists attempt to purge the world of game pods. Pikul reveals to Allegra that he is actually a realist and her assassin, which is the reason why he originally did not have a bioport. Allegra discloses that she had known he was her assassin, and preemptively kills Pikul. The two wake up in a focus group paralleling the first scene. In a twist, it turns out they are part of a focus group to beta test game designer's Yevgeny Nourish’s new game, tranCendenZ. Pikul and Allegra uncover the fact that they are realists, and kill Nourish for distorting reality.

What I found fascinating in eXistenZ was the recurring theme of self-determination and autonomy. As human beings, we assume we have complete free will in our actions and that we have the power to think and act without outside influence or compulsion. In reality, our thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears and shortcomings are all shaped by external influences. I am reminded of Plato's Allegory of a Cave, where individuals chained in a cave are only exposed to shadows projected on the wall. This is their reality, and know little of the outside world. In fact, they assume what they know is reality. Since our experiences all come from the outside, such as from our parents, our friends, our environment, and everything we are exposed to, no decision is made without bias or predisposition. Our world and culture consists of the 6 billion plus human beings that inhabit this world, each one acting as their own autonomous agent. They affect the lives of everyone around them, and we in turn affect the lives of everyone around us. This push-pull system is on constant flux as each individual acts as both sculptures and sculptors in our real-world narrative. eXistenZ/tranCendenZ exemplifies this metaphysical condition through the notion that each player’s existence and presence in the game changes the game world completely. Each person brings with them their own personality and ever-changing sets of variables that collide and intermingle with the other players personalities and variables as well. What results are entirely new and unpredictable experiences. It is up to the players to decide how to handle the various situations. It seems then, what we have is not free will but free choice, a circumstance that not only exists in the game world, but also in reality. We cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose what happens in us. What do we do now with the knowledge of this metaphysical condition and the idea that everyone’s lives are interconnected? Do we let our actions take control over us? Or, do we sculpt our critical consciousness to exercise our own morality and rationality and strive to be the best of humanity?

The Onion's "World of World of Warcraft"

This is an old one, but I wanted to write a blog post about it since we just watched eXistenZ and maybe all needed something a little more light-hearted. The Onion's "World of World of Warcraft" is in itself a parody of role-playing video games that also pokes fun at the ubiquitous and at times seemingly ridiculous presence of avatars and alternate online identities. No description of mine can do the video justice, so I will let you watch it below:


'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality has many uses. In my mind, the most useful aspect of AR is for the presentation of information and graphics in new ways. We have a new layer in which we can experience the world around us. I really like the USPS package size software that as mentioned in the Poynter app, and the restaurant apps even. I can see how AR can be useful for the military purposes. Imagine HUDs (head-over displays) that are so pertinent in video games (such as showing mini-maps, vital stats, ammo supplies) being used to display information on goggles and displays for today's army. 

There are also uses for AR besides for information display or helpful applications for day to day activities. With any new technology, there will also be uses for entertainment. For example, the Inception app (http://inceptiontheapp.com/), records sounds a visuals around the user to present their reality as if it is a dream. Some might say that it is a new technologically assisted method for "tripping out", without the drug-induced consequences of course. The uses for AR are seemingly endless, and I am excited to see how it will integrate into our daily lives. 

SR2

William Gibson’s Neuromancer tells the story of a futuristic dystopian Earth where the boundaries and therefore ethics of cyberspace and reality are increasingly blurred. This world, as Gibson describes it, has a sky that is the “color of television tuned to a dead channel” (3), indicating the technological motifs present throughout the narrative. The protagonist, Case, was a skilled console cowboy who routinely ventured into cyberspace to perform various missions for his employers. Case descends into this cyberspace by “jacking in” his “consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix” (5). He is able to maneuver servers and data landscapes and had become a proficient data thief himself. However, his ability to “jack in” to the matrix had been damaged when a previous employer inoculated Case’s bodily systems with mycotoxins as a punishment for stealing from his contractor. Case had become a degenerate citizen of Chiba City when Molly and Armitage recruited him for his hacking skills. His new employers promised to purge his body of the mycotoxins so that he may once again be free to venture into the global computer network. Case and Molly begin to grow their team, first by stealing a ROM module that saved the consciousness of a deceased McCoy Pauley, also known as Dixie Flatline. The two also decide to investigate Armitage's background. They learn that their employer was once Colonel Corto, a survivor of an unsuccessful operation that attempted to infiltrate Soviet computer systems. They also learn that Armitage is being assisted by Wintermute, one-half of a powerful AI developed by the Tessier-Ashpool family. The Turing Law had forbidden the building of such a powerful AI, prompting the family to split the AI in two, with the other half known as Neuromancer. “What you think of as Wintermute is only part of another, a shall we say, potential entity” (120). Wintermute’s prime directive is to merge with its other half, through the help of Armitage’s team. The team also recruits a criminal known as Riviera, who can project illusions. He uses this ability to obtain the Turing lock password from 3Jane of the Tessier-Ashpool family. Case and Flatline descend into cyberspace and penetrate the Villa Straylight’s cyber-defense systems. Case opens the Turing lock with the password, fusing Neuromancer and Wintermute together to create something new, the “sum total of the works, the whole show” (269) who, after the super-AI's release from the TA prison, becomes the matrix and attempts to find other AIs like itself.

What I find interesting in Gibson’s Neuromancer is his use of urban landscapes and built environments in his representations of cyberspace. Computer data is accessed and understood by computers through zeros and ones, but of course, this is a language not easily decipherable by humans. When Case descends into the matrix, what he experiences are not these binary figures, but rather, “a graphic representation of [abstracted] data ... Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding” (51). Here we see one of Gibson’s early descriptions of cyberspace and its comparison to cities and urban environments. “Program a map to display frequency of data exchange … at a hundred million megabytes per second, [and] you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta” (43). There seems to be synesthetic effect occurring in the perception of a city and spatial information in comparison to the perception of data and cyberspace. As Case jacks into the matrix, he experiences the electronic expanse of weightless information ostensibly mimicking the physical and spatial dimension of tangible urban environment that humans are so accustomed to navigating in their everyday lives. Kevin Lynch, an urban planner, conducted research how individuals cognitively perceive the spatial information of cities. In his book, The Image of the City, Lynch explores how humans organize their awareness of urban environments using five distinct elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. In the previous two excerpts from Neuromancer we begin to see Gibson’s use of these elements, such as paths, edges, and districts, in his descriptions of cyberspace as city lights, blocks, and industrial parks. When our protagonist penetrates the Tessier-Ashpool ice and breaks into the AI, he experiences the TA cores as “an endless neon cityscape, complexity that cut the eye, jewel bright, sharp as razors … [He] dived past the gleaming spires of a dozen identical towers of data, each one a blue neon replica of the Manhattan skyscraper” (256-257). The console cowboy observes a cyber-representation of Manhattan, and specifically, New York’s RCA building. Case is once again utilizing Lynch’s landmark image of a city to understand his surroundings. This method of characterizing cyberspace has been used many times in cultural media, such as the Wachowski’s Matrix franchise, in it’s mimetic depiction of reality; and even Disney’s Tron, with its fantastical glow of neon structures that illustrates the digital expanse of a computer’s grid. How else can we as humans navigate the atomless binary language of weightless information if not simulated in the spatial and physical manner in which we are so accustom to? Gibson offers us but one solution in his imaginative and seemingly tangible digital metroplexes.

Neuromancer: Chapters 1 - 9

THE SPRAWL

"Home.

Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.

Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta..." (43).

This is one of my favorite passages from Neuromancer so far. When I imagine the world they live in, I imagine an endless sea of lights, illuminating a vast expanse of land with no natural features to be seen; the surface of the earth now impervious with concrete and steel. From space, city lights radiate the gray haze in a warm, but seemingly cold glow. 

Even today we are experiencing the advent of the sprawl and of the massive expanses of metropolitan areas: Dallas-Fort Worth, with its hour-long commutes across the region; or even the northeast's Tri-State area, with it's 20 million population encompassing parts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

The image pictured above are city lights from space. The resemblance with Gibson's description of the Sprawl is uncanny. 

FANTASTIC ARCADE PRESENTS DATAPOP 5.0

For those of you interested Fantastic Arcade Presents Datapop 5.0 at the Highball during SXSW. I've been to the previous 4 Datapops and have had a blast every time. Here is a quick description of the event: "ballroom event space that will be transformed into a unique cultural hot-spot featuring sets by 12 international 8-bit artists on a full concert stage with professional light and sound system."

The amalgamation of digital sound, music, lights, and visuals of this event is what I imagine the atmosphere of the arcades in Neuromancer to be like, sans the violence of course. Past datapop events have even featured arcade boxes and game consoles on the sidelines for people to play while taking a break from the laser light dancing and chiptune music that permeates the event space. The utter digital attack on your senses is at times overwhelming, but a unique experience not to be missed.

Brown Blog Post

In the conclusion to his essay, Brown writes, "The very situation of symbolic exchange is an opening to the other regardless of the words that come out. These words may be hateful, dismissive, crude, disgusting. But regardless of content, we can, in some sense, view all discourse as an opening. Such an opening would not reduce Bert and bin Laden to sameness, and it would not proclaim that they have resolved their differences. But it might it start us down a road toward peace."

I agree to Brown to a certain extent. Yes, we can find meaningful discourse in all conversations. These exchanges are what gives us a peak into the state of the world today. The reactions by groups and individuals to content, regardless of its original intent, is reality. You cannot control people's emotions and initial reactions to anything. This is what we fail to understand at times, regardless on what side of the argument we lie. This is also whatI feel Jenkins means as the road towards peace. It is not that we can eventually find a common ground and agree on everything, but rather it is that we acknowledge that these differences exist. We must take our experiences in broadening our individual critical consciousness toward and acceptance of not becoming the same but, as Brown writes "resolving [our] differences."

S/R 1: Convergence Culture - Henry Jenkins

In Convergence Culture, author Henry Jenkins explores the juxtaposition and therefore collision between the worlds of old and new media. This oscillation contributes to a shift in our everyday culture not only in the manner in which we perceive entertainment, but also in the we way communicate, educate, and conduct politics. Jenkins writes, “Convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process” (18). He utilizes examples from entertainment such as the Matrix franchises, American Idol series, and Harry Potter to exemplify the tension between these increasingly converging separate spheres. “What we need to keep in mind here … is that the interests of producers and consumers are not the same. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they conflict” (58). Audience and consumer demands are becoming increasingly important and “producers who fail to make their peace with this new participatory culture will face declining goodwill and diminished revenues” (24). Media convergence allows for the unfiltered and free flow of information and knowledge, resulting in purely synergistic effects and “collective intelligence [which] refers to [the] ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of its members” (27). This new way of experiencing and interacting with the world contributes to a paradigm shift; a shift in which the world is moving towards a participatory democracy, a form of utopia not where information is absolute and at a standstill, but a utopia where knowledge is ever evolving and meaningful discourse shapes and changes the world. The radical transformation in politics, education and communication is but one outcome of a participatory and fully connected society. Jenkins concludes, “Convergence culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more powerful within convergence culture – but only if they recognize and use that power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture” (270).

In Chapter 6, titled “Photoshop for Democracy,” Jenkins discusses the modern interrelations between politics and popular culture. Campaign voices are moving off the street and onto the web at an alarming rate, and advocacy groups are employing new interactive and online strategies to further their agenda. “Those silenced by corporate media have been among the first to transform their computer into a printing press. This opportunity has benefitted third parties, revolutionaries, reactionaries, and racists alike” (221). The unprecedented influence of these virtual voices cannot go ignored. Media literacy is becoming increasingly important in the world of politics, taking somewhat the form of virtual gerrymandering. Having the ability to rally and manipulate online boundaries can have the power to swing the vote in one direction or the other. Those who take advantage of this strategy employ what Jenkins calls the “serious fun” approach, such as parody videos, games, and satirical media pieces. “Educators embrace the informal pedagogy within fan communities as a model for developing literacy skills” (218). The relationship between politics and popular culture also has a drastic effect on our identity and social relations. In today’s world of social networking sites and profiles that accompany registration to effectively every website, participants are increasingly finding their identity as represented by their online persona. Stating one’s political viewpoint on Facebook may spark both online and offline conversations with friends and strangers that would otherwise not occur. Participants shape their online identities by not only choosing a political side on their profiles, but also in the content they share through various virtual outlets. Media pieces, such as parody videos and captioned images, offer a glimpse into the personality of the individual sharing it. These media pieces blur the line between political and pop culture spheres. New and significant discourse emerges as a result. However, these conversations may also be a mere outcome of “fan community” characteristics. Jenkins writes, “few of us simply interact in political communities; most of us also join fan communities on the basis of recreational interests … popular culture allows us to entertain alternative framings in part because the stakes are lower … [and] commitments don’t carry the same weights as our choices at the ballot box” (249). He concludes, “This is in the end another reason why popular culture matters politically – because it doesn’t seem to be about politics at all” (250).

Conclusion (Jenkins)

In the conclusion to Convergence Culture, Jenkins writes, "The emergence of new media technologies supports a democratic urge to allow more people to create and circulate media. Sometime the media are designed to respond to mass content ... The challenge is to rethink our understanding of the First Amendment to recognize this expanded opportunity to participate. We should thus regard those things that block participation ... as important obstacles to route around if we are going to [democratize aspects] of our culture ... [M]ost centrally the challenges surrounding corporate control over intellectual property and the need tor a clearer definition of the kinds of fair-use rights held by amateur artists, writers, journalists, and critics, who want to share work inspired or incited by existing media content" (p269).

As I was reading through this passage, I was reminded of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization that "that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation." Creative Commons is one such organization that aims to solve some of the criticisms that Jenkins has about fair-use and sharing of new media. CC has released licenses aimed at optimizing the ability for people to share their work, build upon others' work, reuse, and remix as well. Sites such as Google, Flickr, and Wikipedia have adopted the CC model, allowing information and media to flow in and out of its networks with ease. It also allows people to adapt upon other's work legally. Al Jazeera, a television network, has even released some of their videos under a CC license so that even rival news networks could use their footage freely (with attribution to Al Jazeera).

This free sharing of information follows a "Some Rights Reserved" model for the original creator, rather than "All Rights Reserved", which allows people to remix and reuse the original creator's intellectual property while still crediting that original creator. CC reinforces the idea of the participatory culture, of the democratization of knowledge. Artists, photographers, and writers can contribute exponentially to our culture. Now, imagine if our textbooks, courses, and lesson plans were released under CC, and the potential it has for reshaping our education system; or even scientific journals, primary data, and research.

"Searching for the Origami Unicorn" (Jenkins CH3)

In the third chapter of Convergence Culture, author Henry Jenkins explores the idea of "transmedia storytelling". He writes

A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole ... a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction (p98)

In this chapter, Jenkins writes about the success of transmedia storytelling through the various mediums in which the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix is told. Fans can enjoy the text through it's original film, but to fully enjoy the the Matrix universe, one must venture through not only the film's sequels, but also experience the Animatrix animated spinoff, and play the online game Enter the Matrix as well. Each text tells the story from a different point of view, augmenting the Matrix universe as a whole and offering new insights to and from each compartmentalized medium. The success of this transmedia experience is attributed to "synergistic storytelling" (p103) and "collaborative authorship" (p110) only possible when a story is told across the various media platforms.

However, Jenkins also writes that "redundancy burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fall" (p98). I disagree with Jenkins to some extent. The Scott Pilgrim franchise, originally a graphic novel series, has been remade into a film starring Michael Cera, and has been released as a video game on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. The graphic novels, film, and game each tell the same story. Nothing new is learned by the reader/player/watcher when experiencing the various mediums. However, the success of each media experience is attributed to fans wanting to experience the same story across these various platforms. They want to explore reinterpretations of the same story as a film and video game, rather than venture into an expanded universe (the transmedia strategy the Matrix franchise takes advantage of). Redundancy may not be the reason in why franchises fall then. Franchises tend to fall when the extended texts and mediums do not live up to the same caliber as the source material. Video games such as Doom, Prince of Persia, and Final Fantasy have been reimagined into film. Ratings indicate that these films do not follow the same popularity and recognition as it's video game source. Many fans will cry fowl at the film adaptation, citing poor and lazy storytelling and exploitation of the franchise for the sole purpose of making more money. That inherently is another negative consequence of the transmedia experience. Franchise integrity is ofter compromised when it's owners become too hasty with releasing new mediums; when it becomes too easy to reuse assets, art, and 3d models from a film and place those assets into a game (or vice versa).

CyberSubculture Communities

Minecraft - http://www.minecraft.net/

"Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens."

Vimeo - http://vimeo.com/

"Vimeo is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. We provide the best tools and highest quality video in the universe."

"Buying Into American Idol" (Jenkins CH2)

Jenkins writes that "Coca-Cola sees itself less as a soft drink bottler and more as an entertainment company that actively shapes as well as sponsors sporting events, concerts, movies, and television series" (69). Coca-Cola sells us not only their products, but also plays a part in shaping the way we think. They are essentially creating a mother culture induced by the trend of media convergence.

I read a BBC News article recently, titled "Six Ads That Changed the Way You Think". The article mentions how Coca-Cola was a key player in creating the fat, jolly, red-suited, and white-bearded Santa we know today. Even Coca-Cola boasts their culture-shaping power on their website with the history of Santa Claus. Many individuals even think that the inspiration for Santa's red suit came from Coca-Cola's reddish drink color. Nonetheless, this image of Santa Claus has become the status quo representation not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world. Media convergence, access to information and entertainment, and market forces permeates our lives today, affecting both, and being affected by culture. 

Another interesting notion of how media affects advertising is the idea of product placements. In the world of TiVo, DVR, and home recorders, viewers are now fast forwarding through the commercials of their taped television programs. However, this new strategy does not come without its criticisms. Jenkins mentions that "viewers are mor accepting of product placement in reality programming than in any other genre (they are least comfortable with product placements in drama, news, and children's programming" (88). The writers of the NBC television series 30 Rock, takes this sentiment and places a humorous spin to it. Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon, who plays a head writer on the show, often pokes fun at product placement. The show may even be the ultimate product placement ad in itself, as it fictionalizes and often satires the it's own network and parent company, General Electric.

30 Rock in a way is a comedic synecdoche, in which the show represents a small humorous part of television network life of the real world. Characters on the show often break the fourth wall and wink at the camera (audience) or even takes not of their own shameless plug of their parent company or products placed on the show. I find it fascinating the writer's creative spin on product placement sentiment, turning it into comedy rather than the generally negative views on such an advertising strategy. It seems to be working for 30 Rock, winning Emmys and Golden Globes year after year, with millions of viewers and product impressions with each airing of an episode. 

Hello World

"do androids dream of electric sheep?"