About Youtube Commenting

Since its release in 2005 YouTube has grown out to become the most popular video sharing web site. Even though there are some companies and organizations that use YouTube to promote their business, still the vast majorities of videos are created and uploaded my common people. (Some media corporations offer some of their material in the site as part of as a YouTube partnership program.) This is the engine and the fuel that keeps YouTube going.

Because YouTube has become so popular I believe it somehow reflects the modern society and its users. There are various ways to communicate and interact with other users in YouTube, however in this post I’m going to concentrate on music video commenting. For every video in YouTube there is possibility to comment about it (unless in some rare cases it has been forbidden) and people can also press thumbs up or down depending whether they liked the video or not. Both of these actions however require the user to create an account.

The most popular videos collect thousands of comments and even more thumbs since that’s less demanding to contribute into; only needs one click from icon when the user is logged in. Usually the sphere and the topics of the discussion are somehow related either to the video, artist behind it or to previous comments. Some people comment to express how much they liked the video and some do the contrary and comment just how bad the video was and what’s flawed in it. Apart from these comments there are many users who simply want to comment something about the video or music and seek attention. It would be interesting to study if certain types of music videos usually contain more intellectual comments, arguments and actual conversation.

Like every medium also Youtube has its typical language and way to use comments. I must admit than from my own personal viewpoint most of the comments aren’t that intelligent. Many people don’t reason or argue properly and justify their opinions with really false logic if none. It also seems quite common just to comment a video to express and indicate disgust. This doesn’t mean studying commenting couldn’t be intriguing. I think still as a medium YouTube represents quite well the thoughts and idea world of the main user groups that are willing make a profile and pay the effort for comment or other interaction. The comments can be seen as reflected image of modern young stereotypical active internet user. The cruelty of human mind is also clearly visible; there are many people who like to mock peoples outlooks, flaws and basically anything that can be turned into a insult. This applies both to amateur and professional videos. Fortunately also genuine support and encouragement alongside with congratulation and praise can be found. In fact the whole spectrum on human emotions can be identified.

Finally noteworthy is that the language and commenting behavior in YouTube transforms and changes constantly. It takes influence from current events, popular phenomenon and also from other mediums. As a example when a famous video game Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim was released, few weeks after thousands of different YouTube videos where filled with a funny comment from the game “.. took arrow to the knee”. Other good example could be the huge number of Kony 2012 references on multiple YouTube videos earlier this spring. Also the different tactics to earn thumbs up for comments and furthermore make them top comments change rapidly. First there were jokes mocking Justin Bieber, but then they went kind of out of fashion and people had to be more inventive. Some guys tried to earn attention by telling their story as a starting artist and begging for thumbs up to get people’s attention and perhaps even the necessary boost for their career to launch off. These kinds of comments were also responded with jokes. Basically every comment can get a response that’s tries to outsmart and deplete the previous one.

Funny YouTube comment quiz round in TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gQrjweCqE8

Ilari Huhtinen

Cyborg: When humans become media

As tools are developed, theories invented, techno sciences elaborated, devices created, do we risk becoming slaves of our progress? Indeed, with all these technologies emerging around us today, everything that appeared fictional seems to become reality and our relation to the media is being radically transformed. Obviously, through external devices, such as iPads or smart phones, it is now possible to be in constant contact with a medium that allows us to receive information, through the web or otherwise, at any time. However, other new or future technologies are very surprising, like internal devices such intra-human chips, since it seems that we may soon become the medium ourselves.

The human space is constantly changing. Of course, we learn to live with these changes and the human adapts to the new operation of smart phones, for example, or other technological advancements never seen before. We tend therefore to this so-called "Intelligent Society", where the spread of knowledge and expertise constantly transform our way of life. However, these changes within the societies, for years, tend to make the human being almost at the service of technologies, and dependent on them.

I will consider three more or less realistic examples of technological innovations that tend to further transform our relationship to the media, the information and thus, the world we live in.

First, in the continuity of smartphones, but with a much higher level of intrusiveness between human and the real world, there would soon be, if we believe Google, glasses allowing us to see the world through a device referring what is seen to Internet. This topic has already been developed on the blog, but I still give the YouTube link that shows how these glasses, almost merging the individual with the medium, seems to isolate the human from the outside world close to him.

A second experiment, first developed in 1998, is to transform the human body into a machine, so merging it with the medium, to enable it to transmit information directly to another human. This is the experience of Kevin Warwick, the first "human cyborg", which consists of inserting a chip into the arms of two people to enable them to communicate with their nervous systems.

Finally, the feats of a certain Sterlac illustrate the third attempt, even more innovative, and therefore less realistic today, to transform man into medium; human cyborg of modern times. He said we are in the heart of a post human generation and we will soon be able to see, hear and connect on the web through the eyes, arms and ears of anyone, and this, through worldwide with phones and integrated chips directly to humans ... He therefore supports that eventually soon, all technologies will be invisible, as they will be inside the human body to make it more efficient. Fact or Fiction? For me, his most recent experience proves one thing: he is not totally wrong. With the collaboration of experts in plastic surgery and the most advanced technology, he had a transplantation of an ear, equipped with a microphone chip, in his left arm. The experiment is a failure, due to an infection that requires him to remove the implant, but it would allow anyone connected to the internet to hear everything that goes around the arm of the artist.

Imagine a few seconds what our life might look like if we had internet access in our arms and a cell chip in our ears constantly, 24 hours a day ... We talk about excess. Everything is good with some moderation right? What would we become if we were necessarily connected with all our technology consistently? We would be like cyborgs. Yes, real cyborgs, humans with real dentures inside their bodies, without the possibility to disconnect whenever they want. Real new organs for the human body, but that would be artificial and would become part of the skin, muscles and even brain...

The concept of the cyborg is then pushed to the limit. We could already define us as a kind of cyborg, because we use all kinds of tools, prosthetics, and sensory extensions known for decades. However, we did not necessarily truly predict this eventual possibility of a technology completely in symbiosis with humans, one not going without the other. Obviously, this is not for tomorrow, but these experiments remain an unequivocal example of the evolution of technology currently incredibly hurried.

But is it really for the better when the current communication we thought only possible by computers threatens to be implemented within an "additional technological bodies" allowing communication entirely "Visceral and sensorial"?

Another major disruptive to society if we were to develop these famous dentures would further accentuate the detachment of humans to the real world. Obviously, the technological advancements are a great wealth in our culture today and the benefits are numerous. However, there are also negative aspects. We already live in a society where reality is somewhat distorted and where all types of interactions are clearly modified. But then, human relationships would be truly affected. Staying connected 24 hours, every day, would probably result in, creating an even larger wall between the cocoon in which we shut ourselves and the world outside us. There might be less immediate interpersonal contacts, because we would be completely separated from the surrounding world and we would be concerned to walk from a cyber-universe to another.

If we continue to transform ourselves in sort of medium for all kind of information, we would be less available for human interactions. Moreover, we would be in constant ubiquity, never in one place at the same time, which is already the case with today's technologies. Maybe these technologies are transcending the acceptable limits?

Music streaming services – a new era of music distribution?

After long judicial proceedings, one of the biggest music streaming services in Europe – Spotify – launched in Germany in March 2012. In the field of music streaming it has to compete with a lot of services with different offers and prices. In general you can say that every service is operating with two different kinds of accounts: a free one where you have to deal with advertising and a premium account without advertising and sometimes additional features.

The still processing shift of the music market from CD stores to the internet is closely connected to the development of the internet. During the late 90s the spread of internet connections and bandwidths increased significantly. Upcoming peer-to-peer networks and other downloading or filesharing platforms allowed the access to millions of data, especially music and videos. The early networks like Kazaa or Napster were indeed illegal and without any backup from the music industry. This resulted in various legal disputes between the music labels and the owners and users of these platforms. The big music labels were not willing to take the losses they had to bear because of people just sharing their music data with everyone else. Some of them still haven´t recovered from the developments of these years.

In 2001, Apple revolutionized the market with its iTunes store. The simple design and handling and also the price of usually one dollar per song made it a big success. Also the industry could recover slightly because the trend shifted again towards getting music legally by buying from a licensed partner of them.

But the trend of decreasing sells of CDs and other sound carriers is still vital. New developments in filesharing software and methods are followed by endless legal disputes over copyrights and distribution rights and so on.

During the last decade a lot of companies came up with new ideas of distributing music. The first attempts were often internet radios where the user can start an own channel with music that´s related to the one he likes to listen to. But then more and more services with an own database of music came up on the market. The first one with an access to a music library via monthly payments was Rhapsody, founded 2001 in the USA. Within the States it´s still the leading service. The biggest one in Europe is Spotify, founded in 2008.

The advantage of these services is very easy to identify: with a monthly payment, comparable to the price of a CD, the user has access to a huge database of different kind of music. The most services operating on the market offer a library containing 7 to 13 million songs. It means the user has no longer to buy a CD to have everyday access to his favourite music (a functioning internet connection given). And also the music industry is satisfied to a certain point, because the provider has to pay them license fees, no matter if a free user is listen to it or a premium one.

Frank Taubert of Myjuke says sooner or later everyone will be using streaming services to listen to music.

So the new technique sounds like the paradise where both music labels and people that want to enjoy music for free.

Well it´s obviously not that easy, as several legal disputes between Spotify and the GEMA in Germany  before their market launch show. Long time it wasn´t clear how high the license fees have to be and of there have to be different fees for business or mobile users.

And there are also some issues concerning the safety of customer data, because for Spotify for example you have to register via a Facebook account and also some of the other services are connected with social networks.

Concerning the existing issues there are some problems that have to be solved but especially the free accounts are a useful extension of everyone´s home collection of music.

But still there will be a coexisting together with the traditional way of purchasing, consuming and collecting music.

Art and Literature in the Digital Age

The digital age has had an incalculable effect on human interaction, communication and creativity. Despite the dangers to privacy, copyright and other potential downfalls to digital new media, it nevertheless opens countless opportunities for artistic enterprises. As Walter Benjamin said in 1935, mechanical reproduction liberates us from the control that others have on how we view art, and from the engineering of consent by those with an agenda that control the media. It provides a medium for people to view and produce art on their own terms, and this is being exploited in many different and creative ways.

Take one of the oldest forms of communication - the art of storytelling is being completely reinvented by media such as video games. They were originally marketed as pure adolescent escapism, and that stigma still attaches itself to them today. But many developers are pushing the boundaries of gaming to incorporate an artistic vision through the narrative, the aesthetics and the gameplay. Some examples are Loved, a very simple-looking platformer that’s beauty lies in its inherent meaning, whatever the player interprets that to be. It encourages the player to question their own actions and the nature of authority. On the other hand, Coma is a very aesthetically-pleasing casual Flash game, but it’s equally clever. This creative artistic vision is not just confined to indie games, however: one of the most popular games of recent years is Portal, ostensibly a first-person shooter science fiction game. But underneath that it’s so much more. There have been many interpretations of this game as a piece of art, including a feminist critique of the game and the FPS genre. And these are just some examples from the vast, diverse and ever-growing repertoire of video games, one of the fastest-growing industries in the world today.

The generativity of PCs that Zittrain writes about is also part of the artistic value of digital media. It means that ordinary people, with a basic grasp of technology, can manipulate it according to their own creative needs. PCs and internet games are open to tinkering and modification (shortened to ‘modding’ in the gaming world). Games such as Minecraft are being modified to mimic other pop culture phenomena (like Pokemon, below) and redistributed for free. Another example of this type of activity is Machinima, whereby ‘Machinimists’ use video material from games to create films.

But digital art isn’t confined to video games. The potential uses of new media as a creative medium are virtually endless. Take poetry, for example. Firefly is an example of an interactive poem, as strange as that sounds. It begins as a simple six-line poem, but each line can be interchanged with six other lines that either change, contort or enrich the meaning. Again, the interpretation is subjective.

If you were a fan of Goosebumps books when you were younger (or maybe you still are…) might remember the ‘Give Yourself Goosebumps’ range. The books gave readers the option to dictate the actions of the protagonists in certain situations, sending them to a different page and on a different narrative depending on what choices they made.

This type of interactive narrative has been developed into something rather more sophisticated on the Web. Interactive fiction is becoming a genre all of its own and lends itself particularly well to the thriller or mystery literary genre. It gives the reader a deeper sense of immersion and an agency to influence the course of the narrative.

All in all, the internet and other digital new media harbour a diverse range of creative art that take advantage of its unique capabilities. But the material we can observe today is just the tip of the iceberg, as there is much more potential in these media for innovation and creativity, which hopefully we will see realized in the future. These media are extensions of ourselves, and the ways in which we enhance and exploit them for artistic purposes will probably also prove that, as Marshall McLuhan said, ‘the medium is the message’.

Right wing extremists – the pioneers of the Internet agitation?

In the end of August 2010, two months before the parliamentary election, sudden and
widespread panic overcame the Polish media system. “If the Internet users decided, KNP
[marginal right wing libertarian party] would win the incoming election” – this statement
was made the headline of the day in many radio stations, internet portals, newspapers
and television news-channels. This exaggerated headline carved for the vacation-season
obviously cannot be taken as a serious material for analysis of the voting preferences in the
country but it shows how efficient can be the activity of many small parties and marginal
movements in the Internet.

The final conclusion of this piece was made after comparing the fan bases of the party-leaders
on Facebook. Janusz Korwin-Mikke, the controversial leader of KNP, is the unquestionable
winner of this contest with 81 thousands of fans – just to compare: the second popular
politician is left-wing populist Janusz Palikot (popular among young voters – supporter
of cannabis use and gay marriages legalization) with 30 thousands. The governing Prime
Minister Donald Tusk gathered only around 8500 followers (which is still better than the
opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński with 18.000 likes for “I DON”T WANT HIM AS A
PRIME MINISTER”).

What is curious, Janusz Korwin Mikke, appearing to be the most popular Polish politician
(as far as facebook is concerned), unsuccessfully tries to get elected since 1992 – starting in
every election: parliamentary, presidential, to the European parliament and even for mayor of
Warsaw. He is a strong supporter of ultraliberal economical policy based on thought of Hayek
or von Mises and a natural-born showman good in public appearances: always wearing his
bow-tie and fancy suit, often compares Obama to Hitler, insults homosexuals or proves that
women are genetically less intelligent than men. His consequence and controversial, vivid
articles as well as speeches are things to admire, but he fails as a real politician and is simply
unelectable.

He still managed to gather a huge group of committed supporters that are active (many
would say overactive) in almost every social network, discussion list or portal concerning
politics. “Dzieci Korwina” (Children of Korwin), as they are often called tend to post a
massive amount of spam before every election – the most visible example of their activity
was the situation on wykop.pl (which can be described as a Polish version of reddit) – the
administration had to create a filter allowing users to get rid of the political content because it
became impossible to enjoy the site in a normal way.

There is no doubt that thanks to the loudest, most active and numerous group of fans (or even
fanatics), Janusz Korwin-Mikke has become the most visible Polish politician in the Internet
(“The President of the Internet” – as one headline calls him). Despite the huge effort of the
party members and other supporters, he can’t compete with the other politicians in the real
world - he never crossed the border of 2%.

The activity of the unpopular, marginal and sometimes extreme movements in the Polish
Internet is much bigger than this one party. It can even be said that all these groups form
a different medial reality – with new heroes, topics, trends and discourse absent in the mainstream media. Tens of websites, such as rebelya.pl , autonom.pl (“modern nationalism”),
nacjonalista.pl, blogging platforms (salon24.pl and blogpress.pl), discussion forums, groups
on facebook etc – all these sites talk about ultraliberal economical ideas, threat of Islamic
expansion, international governmental plots against our freedom, fight against progressive
ideas, protest against abortion, gay rights etc. The whole community is well-organized and,
for instance, played an important role in anti-ACTA protests in Poland. However, there are
also dark sides of the whole process – the most known is so called “redwatch” – website
created by some neo-Nazis which is a huge database of left-wing activists and supporters
with their names, addresses and pictures. The authors blatantly encourage viewers to insult
and even physically assault those people. There were many attempts of the authorities to
block this website, but it has been moved to a server in some exotic country where it exists till
today.

The Internet is also a chance for professional journalists engaged in promoting just one party
and therefore having troubles with finding a work in traditional media. Some of them run the
portal wpolityce.pl – consisting simple pieces of news from agencies and in more important
part – opinions of different authors (both journalists and politicians). The content of those
differs strongly from every other medium on the market – the main themes and topics are
presented from the point of view of the main opposition, catholic-conservative party. The
tests mostly concern the Christianity being threatened by the secularist government and
European Union and alleged assassination of Polish president during the plane crash in 2010.
The website had some financial problems but managed to overcome it in quite original way:
there was an online shop created, where the most committed supporters can buy bags, cups or
calendars with the logo.

Growing popularity of all these websites proves that the Internet is a unique opportunity for
various niche movements and groups to gain publicity and popularize their ideas without
expensive campaigns or favorable opinion of the main media enterprises. Web 2.0 and social
networks have a huge marketing potential and above examples show it’s really easy to gain
attention. The question is how to use it in gaining votes of the users, and why the other,
mainstream parties don’t even try to seize this opportunity?

Jakub Iglewski

Hacker: a popular business

 

Hacker : A popular business.

Businesses and gouvernements do not hesitate to recruit pirates to deal with cyber attacks . A nonconformist spirit, a obsessive personality and good computer skills will be an advantage for candidates.

Its not necessary to embark on this career if you plan to develop illegal activities. ZDNet, american webzine specialized in new technologies, remind you that "you will eventually be arrested and you go to jail or pay for damage you caused to your target."Its will be better at the time when states are investing heavily in cyber security, to choose a career on the right side of the law. However the demand for talent explodes. From  gouvernment agengy or military, especially since the discovery in June 2010 Stuxnet virus on Iran's nuclear program.

The United States leader in this race are in the process of developing cyberindustry. In the Washington area, home of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Cyber ​​Command established in 2009, development of hundreds of companies specializing bringing the number of jobs related to information technology to "over 280,000," reports the Financial Times. "It's more than in Silicon Valley or New York."

According to one of the companies interviewed by the business newspaper, the U.S. government would spend "$ 10 billion annually for cybersecurity" and "this number may well increase by 9% per year." Furthermore, "the Obama administration has pledged to invest $ 500 million to develop technologies to improve network security and defense technologies."At these amounts are add annual expenditure of private enterprises: the "U.S. market cyberarmes weighs 100 billion on its own," reports the Financial Times.

How do you become a hacker?

 

 Rest assured: he doesn’t need to sell his soul to the devil for success. But rather to be dedicated  and intellegent :You must have love for resolving problems and to have a gift for verbal and written communication and be able to find a  new ways when the known solutions doesn’t  work. “

Obsessive personalities often make good hackers,to become proficient it may take a several years and requires a lot of personal investment.

In terms of technological qualities, the webzine said that one must obviously "be passionate about computers, their operation and communication mode. If you do not program, you will learn a few languages​​, starting with Python, C/C++, Java, Perl et Lisp. You must be also interesting in open source operating systems like Linux or FreeBSD wich will allow you to improve your talents.

It then remains to be known and for that to be involved in a project. ZDNet recommends to mobilize you in the area of open source, always in search of reinforcements. This is, for example, to participate in the "debug  applications or help in drafting the documentation."

Participation in such projects is a plus in terms of credibility, essential for the rest of your career. Another useful curriculum: a university training in ethical hacking and cyber security.

Romain Vrignon