Bunnies, flowers, and glitter. I love these three things. If this wasn’t an academic blog for class, I would probably post numerous articles those very categories.

According to “Posting with Passion:Blogs and the Politics of Gender,” I am just another “female blogger,” with nothing better to talk about. It is somewhat disheartening to discover that I am just another statistic, but it’s true nonetheless. I am a girl, and I happen to like blogs about bunnies and puppies. Therefore, I am no different than any other female blogger.

Evidently, the most important and influential bloggers out there, just so happen to be men. Girls like me, have no hope of achieving any kind prestige in the political world, by simply blogging about kitty cats and baby ducks. However, in the world of cute animals, I could become famous!! It all depends your interests and who your target audience is.

It would be nice to see more female bloggers making their presence known in the political blogsphere, but I’m not going to be the one to do it. I love Cute Overload, TokyoBunnie, and Sanrio Town. I’m not saying that those are the only sites I visit. I am equally addicted to digg, engadet, and techcrunch, I’m just saying that I am not going to stop loving the cute blogs just so I can make a point about feminism.

Boys like bunnies too.

In the chapter Paper or “Me, You Know,” from the book Paper Machines, Derrida explains how paper forms the backbone of our society.  The most clear point of Derrida’s is that the computer screen is still the form of paper. Even though a computer screen is not traditional paper, it still comes in the form of a blank page. When we type using a word processor, we type with the printed version in mind. He also discusses the “paper terminology” that comes along with our computers in the form of the notebook, paragraph options, lines, sheets, and pages. Even though the medium is different, the terminology basically stays the same.

The most confusing part of the chapter is when he talks about Freud and the mystic writing pad. I would probably understand it better if I knew more about Freud and his ideas. I am also a bit confused on page 55 where he discusses “uneven developments,” and “de-paperization of support.”

Overall, I think I understand his general idea, it’s just some of the bits a pieces that have me a little confused.

After watching the video Humanity Lobotomy, I was in shock. I had no idea that internet service providers were trying so hard to interfere with how people use the internet. I know it sounds like I live in a cave; I am generally not aware of anything that is going on in the world, unless someone tells me, or we talk about it in class. My cave comes in the form of a three bedroom apartment, with no television or internet access (my roommates are too cheap to pay for it, and enjoy living in a cave). So once I finally emerged from my cage, came over to UTD, and watched the video, I jumped over to the Save the Internet site to find out a little more about this whole “net neutrality” thing was about.

I found a link that took me to an article from the Associated Press that discusses Comcast and it’s attempts to interfere with people using BitTorrent. Users can download files, but might be denied or delayed if the files are complete. The reason behind their interference…

“appears to be an aggressive way of managing its network to keep file-sharing traffic from swallowing too much bandwidth and affecting the Internet speeds of other subscribers.”

Who is Comcast to decide which user is more important. I understand that it is their company, but when people pay for internet access, they do so with the impression that they will be able to access everything that is available on the web, not just bits and pieces. When people pay for service, they expect good service. The majority of the world functions by the term “the customer is always right;” Comcast is not the exception; their customers pay for service and should receive the best service possible.

By taking away bandwidth from BitTorrent users in order to giver more bandwidth to other users, Comcast is deciding which user is more deserving of that bandwidth. In their eyes, people who share files through the internet are not worthy of full access. It is not their right to decide which user is more important, or what the user should have access to.

Since when is Comcast the authority on who is important in the world. The next question racing through my mind is; who will be the next group to be knocked down the totem pole.

In a nutshell, Foucault’s argument is that the word author is more complex than society thinks it is. In his eyes, the way we view authors is not complicated enough. He is basically saying that the author is not one thing, he is a mixture of several different components.

I understand the example’s Foucault uses to validate his point on the actual name of an author, but I’m not quite sure how that fits into his argument, or the significance of that point.

I am also a bit confused by the middle paragraph on page 119, when he calls for “a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited by the figure of the author.” He says “It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in a absolutely free state, in which fiction would be put at the disposal of everyone, and would develop without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure.” I sounds like what he is calling for is much like the blogsphere, where anyone is free to create content. Even though blog writers are not professional writers, I still consider them authors, because he or she is the author of that blog, so I’m not sure what Foucault is asking for. It is probably because his definition of an author is different from mine and I’m not quite sure what his definition really is. Once I fully understand his argument of what an author actually is, the whole thing will probably make more sense to me.

At first glance, the copyright laws seem like they are working pretty well. I never really gave them a second thought. Copyright laws are simply part of society, integrated into out daily culture. However, after listening to Lawrence Lessig’s lecture about the problems with copyright laws, I began to see the problem.

As I searched through dozens of articles on copyright, I found an article on the NPR site about the controversy around the rights to Marilyn Monroe’s image.  Josh Greene, the son of Monroe’s favorite photographer is about to loose the rights to the photographs that his father took of the starlet. Monroe left her estate to her acting coach, who is now deceased. His widow, Lee Strasberg now controls the image of Marilyn Monroe. Greene is about to loose the photographs that his father took, because of a new bill that Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed.

“The law essentially says that famous people can pass on the rights to their image to anyone they want — and the right exists even if they died decades ago”

Because of this law, Greene could lose some of the most important photographs that his father took. They will be taken from him by a woman who hardly knew Monroe, simply because she controls her image. His father took the pictures. Greene deserves the rights to the photographs. If a photographer took a picture of a tree, the picture would not belong to the tree, it would belong to the photographer.

How do you decide what is more important; the photographer or the person being photographed?

In Everything is Miscellaneous, author David Weinberger makes his technological utopian beliefs clear. Just like Andrew Keen, Weinberger’s bias is shown through the descriptive language that he uses to uphold his arguments. When describing the cons of using paper photographs, he says..

“Things made of atoms tend to be unstable over time–paper yellows and disintegrates, negatives turn to soup–so we have to take measures to sway nature from its course.” 

Instead of simply saying that paper photographs disintegrate over time, he finds it necessary to add that negatives turn to soup. The mental picture of a bowl of “negative soup,” is enough to make me switch to digital. In the same way that Andrew Keen argued against the digital world, Weinberger attempts to uphold its honor. By using such descriptive language, just as Keen did,  he is able to do so. He is arguing in the same manner (the bias is made clear), he’s simply arguing for the other side.

“Digital Narcissism.” I’ve never heard of it. Granted, I haven’t heard of a lot of things, so I took the time to search for it on Wikipedia, because we all know that if something is real it is on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, there is no Wikipedia article for “digital narcissism,” therefore it does not exist (according to Dave..he gives the grades…so he’s the boss). Even though Wikipedia says it’s not real, in The Good, the Bad, and the Web 2.0, Andrew Keen argues that digital narcissism is an epidemic problem that can lead to chaos, anarchy..and possibly the death of our entire culture (*gasp*).

“We’ve lost truth and interest in the objectivity of mainstream media because of our self-infatuation with the subjectivity of our own messages. It’s what, in “Cult of the Amateur,” I call digital narcissism. A flattened media is a personalized, chaotic media without that essential epistemological anchor of truth.”

Ironic isn’t it..that Keen talks about “narcissism” with great a great deal of disdain, yet through out his writing, he is basically placing himself higher on the intellectual pyramid, by continually bashing the lowly amateurs. Because he is a professional, his writing is worthy of praise; anyone who hasn’t reached his status should not even be considered a true writer. Keen’s central message is that the average person is incapable of producing quality content. In other words, professionals (himself included) are the only ones who are competent enough to produce any form of art.

“The impartiality of the authoritative, accountable expert is replaced by murkiness of the anonymous amateur. When everyone claims to be an author, there can be no art, no reliable information, no audience.”

At the heart of Keen’s argument is the need to bad mouth the amateur. The constant belittlement of the general public is a bit repetitive, and gets a little bit aggravating after a while. As a member of the general public, I am somewhat offended by his constant efforts to turn me into another species.

“As I argue in my book, Web 2.0 transforms us into monkeys. That’s the new abundancy, the long tail, if you like. Infinite primates with infinite messages on infinite channels”

Obviously, you and I are not monkeys. I don’t have a tail. His argument is ridiculous. If I had a tail, and was in fact a monkey, his article might have a little bit more credibility. He even goes as far as to compare the general public to cockroaches. I am also quite certain that I am not a cockroach either. So basically, by lowering us to the status of cockroaches and monkeys, Keen is saying that we are not intelligent enough to produce any kind of quality content, and should not be allowed to do so.

Now, if we all start to grow tails and wings, and turn into hybrid-cockroach-monkeys, then I will wholeheartedly agree with Keen’s ideas, and will never touch a computer again. I will stray as far from Web 2.0 as humanly possible. Until that day, I will continue to make a small presence on the web, along with all you other “cockroach-monkeys.” Unlike Andrew Keen, Ralph Waldo Emerson has a different outlook on the artist/amateur relationship.

“Every artist was first an amateur.“

So Mr.Keen, maybe there is hope for the rest of us. We all have to start somewhere.