Tutorial 5 - Week 6

Source: http://magicianbrianglow.com/images/attention.png

How does published material capture and maintain our attention? Who desires this attention and in what form? Who gets to be attentive, and how does this affect the way in which they relate and who they relate to?

Commons have begun to completely change the way in which we interact with published material, as well as changing the ficus and intentions of the audience. As Jay Walljasper argues in the Common Dreams blog, the development of a common place for information sharing has altered the way in which people think and has resulted in a shift in power. This is a shift that has become very pronounced recently with the influx of citizen journalists and bloggers who audiences are turning to for information instead of traditional sources. This does raise questions about the validity of the information passing through these commons, however it has been shown that Wikipedia is more accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica. It would seem that commons provide a greater range of perspectives, include a vaster audience and thus enriches the information being shared as it goes through a greater number of checks, views and expertise. The use of commons eliminates the sort of social hierarchy that existed before commons, as now everyone can give their perspective, rather than a select group of individuals informing a mass population.

The use of commons has changed the format which audiences use. No longer are audiences willing to just sit and read or watch, audiences now want to interact. Audiences also want to personalise the information they get from common information pools, causing websites to provide users with 'personal recommendations' for music or video tastes, personalised weather updates, personalised greetings upon opening a website etc. As highlighted in the "technics of attention" reading, audiences have been divided up depending on their level of technical-literacy. My parents, for example, find it much more difficult to interact with and pay attention to technologically advanced mediums, and often require my brother and I to decipher the 'text speak' or show them how to operate a video online. Their attention, thus, is focused on commons that require limited technological skill and basic levels of interactivity, whereas my brother and I focus our attention on highly-interactive sites where we can have our own input and connect with a greater number of people. I wanted to include this comic strip which shows how to great authors perceived the future world and the concerns they had about the influence of technology. It is really interesting to see how they believed audiences would react and what would entice audiences to access information. The comic is a bit hard to read, a larger copy of it is available at Juxtapoz Magazine.

Source: http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/huxley-vs-orwell-in-graphic-form

The use of commons however does lend itself to the issue of piracy. Ever since the development of a common, the debate about whether the sharing of information in this common is legal. Is a common a vehicle for the illegal spreading of copyrighted content? Or are people enacting their freedom to use and share what they want? As long as those who are sharing the material are not making money from it, does that make it ok? Personally, I feel that if a source is shared online, it is no different to sharing a book or cd in person.