An easy way to learn a new language!

Learning new languages develops human beings. It is a kind of a bridge to fantastic opportunities of the 21st century. By knowing a foreign language we can entertain ourselves in much more interesting way. We can read new and fresh media, books, watch films in original languages. It is very helpful and useful to know as much languages as possible for our career too. Every company needs to have at least a few workers who speak different languages. If you know a foreign language you are able to get access to much more information in the internet space, to play an active role in various trainings and also to lead business correspondences. You can meet interesting people. In other words, you open new opportunities for your business development and you get a chance to experience a new culture and heritage. Do not forget about travelling! Any foreign language will help to: buy food or book a table in a restaurant, find your way or some place, buy tickets, and again to meet and communicate with new different people.

There are traditionally several methods of learning foreign languages. Among the most well-known is the teacher-student method where there is a lecturer teaching one person or a group of people. Today due to new technologies and mainly the Internet we can witness the rise of new methods and approaches. Not so long ago a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago has developed a so-called Community leanguage learning (CLL) method.[1] Generally the idea of CLL is that students (those who want to learn a new language) work together during the whole process of learning. They decide together which part of the language to learn and revise. In CLL the teacher plays a role just of an adviser or a councellor. In other words, the students contribute to language learning of everybody, while the teacher simply observs them and time to time steps into the process and helps if necessary. The most interesting thing about this method is that the students are becoming «co-authors» during the learning process. They work together and finally form a product which all of them benefit from and this expirience could be used by other people too.

There are several companies that provide us with the CLL method of language learning. Some of the most famouse are: Babbel, English Portal, Language Kompis, Penal Parade, Fluent Future, Livemocha, Language for Exchange, and others…

The leader in community language learning is Livemocha (www.livemocha.com). Here what the official site of Livemocha says about itself: «Livemocha is the world’s largest online language learning community, offering free and paid online language courses in 35 languages to more than 9 million members from 195 countries around the world».[2] Already the numbers tell us that Livemocha is really popular among language learners. The following languages are avialable at present: American English, Spanish (Castellano), Persian, French, Hindi, German, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin, Icelandic, Korean, Arabic, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, European Portuguese, Greek, Dutch, Estonian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Urdu, Catalan, Swedish, Hebrew and Esperanto. And also, it is possible to vote for new languages to be introduced, which makes Livemocha flexible for changes and modernization.

Generally, Livemocha offers grammar instructions, reading comprehension exercises, interactive role playing and both live and asynchronous interaction with other native speakers within the Livemocha community. When learners submit coursework for peer review, native speakers in that language can provide feedback on how that learner is progressing. Users can aid others in learning the languages that they are proficient in while learning other languages themselves.[3] There are usually four types of exercises in each lesson. You first learn new vocabulary by reading and listening to new words. By the way, all recordings are made by the average users as us. After that you are offered to check whether you remember new vocabulary by a short quiz. Then there is usually a writing part where you are working only with those words that you have learned so far. And finally, and here is probably the most interesting thing about Livemocha, there is a talking exercise. You simply have to record yourself reading a few sentences (possibly adding a few words in some places). It is interesting because after you are done with all four exercises a native speaker will check your work.

Also, the Livemocha web-site tells us: «Global interest in language learning is exploding. Trade, immigration and travel are conducted across countries and continents like never before in human history. The result is a powerful desire shared by people around the world to communicate with one another and understand different cultures. Not surprisingly, the size of the language learning market is estimated at a staggering $50 billion USD. In a world hungry for new language skills, and increasing broadband Internet access and VOIP adoption, our mission is to provide a more accessible, affordable, and engaging way to learn a language. Livemocha allows people around the world to help each other with language learning, and provides our community with opportunities to learn and practice new languages together».[4]

The last two paragraphs shows us some of the elements of collective intelligence. I do not think that all CLL method based establishments are part of collective intelligence, but I believe that Livemocha is defenetely one of them. There are almost 10 million users of Livemocha. They all contribute to language learning both in the interests of themselves and in the interests of others. Together they (we) build a huge platform which is avialable for everybody.

I also believe that another concept is used in Livemocha. With the internet growth and the boom of social networking technologies Livemocha is able to take advantage of the Web 2.0 concept of information sharing and collaboration tools, for which users can help other users to learn languages by direct communication or mutual correction of proposed exercises.[5]

Livemocha partly takes after popular social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It allows its users to create profiles so as to communicate with others on the website. You can edit you profile, add images and add friends, which is again a very useful tool to practice a language.

Livemocha is partly connected to the transmedia storytelling concept. It uses many ways to attract people who search for learning languages. It is fully connectable with Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Youtube, and others… There are many articles about Livemocha written in newspapers, blogs, forums. Also, if you will search on Youtube, you would find many videos both official made by Livemocha's team and also amateur made by its users. The result of such work and such «transmedia storytelling» is that when you search (or simply google) information about language learning then Livemocha is in the top of the list. That means that Livemocha is highly popular and that search engines view Livemocha as a reliable sourche of information.

In addition to that, the official web-site says: «Livemocha is proud to have two of the world’s leading language publishers as partners. With unsurpassed educational publishing expertise, our partners provide Livemocha with world-class language learning content. The first is Pearson Education – the international media company. The second is Collins – the leading brand for bilingual dictionaries in the UK and Europe».[6]

To conclude with, there was a recent scholar research regarding studying new languages. The research has shown that language learning changes the brain density the same way as physical exercises develops your muscles.

I encourage you all to learn new languages bucause due to foreign languages you can easily travel in the ocean of information, opening new continents and islands, meeting and communicating with new people. It is up to you whether you will use Livemocha or something else.

Written by Bulat K.

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[1] Richards, Jack C. (1986:113) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching

[2] http://www.livemocha.com/pages/about

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livemocha

[4] http://www.livemocha.com/pages/about

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_language_learning#cite_note-0

[6] http://www.livemocha.com/pages/about

Jun, where E-democracy is possible

In the last 13 years, a little town in the south of Spain has been at the top of the cybernetic innovation. Jun, which is its name, and its city council have become an example of optimization of resources due to the efficiency of the administration: the 4328 inhabitants of Jun have said goodbye to the bureaucracy years ago.

-E-democracy in Jun

This story started when José Antonio Rodriguez Salas (the future major of Jun) met an American girl while he was a councilor. That girl was Virginia Johnson, the future assessor of Al Gore. During that period he learn a lot about new technologies and he came back to his town with the purpose of develop some ideas. The first step was to introduce Jun people into the new technologies and Internet, especially the older generations. Furthermore the city council gave some money to buy computers and other kind of hardware.

In December 1999, Rodriguez Salas (at this time major of Jun) declared Internet as a Universal Right and the free access for all the citizens, since that moment everyone in Jun could enjoy the new possibilities that the new tool brought them. It was the first town in the world that did it. Ten years later, pioneer countries in technological innovation, such as Finland, did it. It has to take into account that in 1999 Internet was not so develop as it is now and it was something unusual for the society, at least in Spain.

Two years after, in 2001, it was held the first interactive plenary session in the world. Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission declared Jun the birthplace of e-democracy and Rodriguez Salas its “father”.

Although its idea could not carry out in a completely way. There is a European Policy that does not allow competing with the telecommunication operators. To enforce this policy, National Commission of the Telecommunication Market prohibits offer Internet free.

-Goodbye Bureaucracy

Nowadays, due to the new tools that Internet offers us, the plenary sessions of Jun are more participative, the citizens just need a computer, a webcam and software that is facilitated by the town hall. Every inhabitant of Jun can give his/her opinion via twitter or sending an e-mail before, during or after the councils. All the complains are reviewed and must be answered in 24 hours.

In the elections of 2004 Jun’s citizens voted by SMS or using an electronic signature which was completely private. After the great results of participation in this municipality, some other countries tried to do it, like Switzerland and France that applied this new way of voting in five Parisian districts.

Another idea of Jose Antonio Rodriguez Salas was to apply the information technology to everyday life. That is why some of the usual things that we do daily or weekly have been “disappeared” for the inhabitants of Jun. For example, the patients that need a regular medication do not have to go to the doctor to take a prescription. Each one has its information digitized and it updates automatically. The people that go to the health centre have been reduced in 40%, the queues are shorter and there is more space and time to attend the emergencies. This kind of “electronic prescription” has been demanding in the rest of Europe.

The last idea was to create an application to allow the citizens of Jun access to all its information and to contact with the city council via mobile devices. This project has the name of “M administración” and it was subsidized (as other projects, such as the installation of the network) by big telecommunication companies like Telefónica, for being the first town that did it.

This new application has allowed people to enjoy more leisure and concerned less about the bureaucratic document. Jun’s citizens can complain directly and instantaneously to the major, so it’s easier for them to make known their problems and concerns. In many cases people do not complain because “it is a waste of time”. But in this little town everyone has his/her own opinion and they share with their neighbors and with the city council.

-Curiosities

The statistics support these ideas. According to municipal information the major of Jun, José Antonio Rodriguez Salas answered 27000 e-mails in 2007. The last year he answered 47000 (129 per day).

Rodriguez Salas is not only an active user of Internet (he has a blog, a channel in Youtube, a Twitter account and he is in Facebook too) but also has a lot of followers. He is the most followed major in Spain (Twitter 9.315 and Facebook 8.821), the third Spanish politician in Twitter and he is in the Top Ten in Facebook. Recently he has announced that his campaign for the next election will be made exclusively via Internet.

The Flag of this town is very curious. It is the only municipal flag in the world that has an encrypted message. As Rodriguez Salas says: “If you transform “0” into a “.” and “1” into a “-” you will have a message in Morse code”. The code was chosen by the citizens and it means “Love”.

Although being a small town it has appeared in many international media. In 1999, after declaring Internet Universal Right, Jun appeared in newspapers all over the world, from The New York Times to Sidney Morning Herald. In 2009 the Major of Jun was interviewed by BBC World and after that he appeared i the front page of Microsoft France (It is in French only).

Jun has held a lot of meetings about new technologies in which has participated politicians of the entire world. Recently there was a course for Latin American majors to learn about the possibilities that new technologies offer to them and its towns or cities.

This little town (4328 inhabitants) is known as “the town of Internet” and his major is commonly known as “the portable major”. Now we have seen that e-democracy is possible if the politicians want it to be. But maybe they are afraid of being so close to the citizens because they could be directly judged by the people who are representing.

Sources

An interview to the major of Jun in a Spanish Talk Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42dF4kbyAOc

Webpage of Jun: http://www.ayuntamientojun.org/

An article about Jun in Público (Spanish Neswpaper): http://www.publico.es/espana/43152/teledemocracia-desde-un-pueblo-andaluz

E-democracy in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

Jun in Wikipedia: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun

An article in Cafebabel.com: http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/26830/jun-granada-town-internet-savvy.html

Ranking of the Spanish politicians in Social Networks: http://www.granadablogs.com/joseantoniorodriguezsalas/?p=4750

María Lalinde

WE NEED JUST A BIT OF FANTASY

Thanks to new media we can expand our knowledge,on Internet we can find everything,young people with a great originality could be found fortune and wealth as well. This the case of the website “ The Million Dollar Homepage”. The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, a student from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; the image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a URL to which the images were linked, and a slogan to be displayed when hovering a cursor over the link. The aim of the website was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the site inspired other websites that sell pixels. Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon. The Alex ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; as of 18 December 2009, it is 35,983. On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross income. During the January 2006 auction, the website was subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack and ransom demand, which left it inaccessible to visitors for a week while its security system was upgraded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Wiltshire Constabulary investigated the attack and extortion attempt.

"From the outset I knew the idea had potential, but it was one of those things that could have gone either way. My thinking was I had nothing to lose (apart from the 50 Euros or so it cost to register the domain and setup the hosting). I knew that the idea was quirky enough to create interest ... The Internet is a very powerful medium."

Alex Tew, 22 February 2006.

There are other examples that we could cite, not so much in wealth but to exploit its own originality and attention to new media in their favor. Perhaps the best example we can cite is the video "Where The Hell Is Matt?" . Matt Harding has filmed a video in a few months has been seen by millions of people and is famous enough to merit an article in The New York Times. Matt one day decided to give up work, commitment, comfort, in short, everything to go around the world. Matt Harding, has done something more, however, decided to make it public on the internet its a little celebratory ritual which originated tribal dance. Matt has not underestimate the fact that the dance even though dilapidated and not comparable to any style is contagious as yawns. The dance, as they know the dance clubs around the world and even the Yanomami, a society of hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists living in the north of the Amazon rainforest, is a highly social activity.Matt has created a small video originally published on Vimeo, and then on YouTube. Some well-informed music video was commissioned by the same Matt. In addition, Matt was also found a sponsor Stride, a company that makes chewing gum.Summing up what we have? A good example of user-generated content, which uses a Social Media is able in order to make a viral video. The viral video was spotted by a brand that has finally decided to follow in the footsteps of Matt sponsoring the trip. So we can say that:

a) the User Generated Content is alive and well and can produce quality results especially if you have some form of cooperation between the authors as has happened in this case.

b) The Socia Media are essential for viral videos. This blog is a social media, less powerful than others, but still a Social Media.

c) The most effective viral videos are full of spontaneous passion. Building a table a viral video is very difficult because you need a good dose of creativity and spontaneity.

d) Brand intelligent people know that we must monitor the network for phenomena funny,interesting and that may in any way exploit, appreciate and understand. Stride has not made the video but has only put his hat on the journey of Matt before they do others. What is the effect of this choice? I did not even know existed Stride brand of tires and I think even you. Now you know. Pierre Levy in the "Collective Intelligence" said that when we are on-line, we want to learn, play and communicate with one another rather than to make money. Above all, we want to participate within the "collective intelligence" and i think this is the case of Matt.

And now that the dance begin!

   

 The World Wide Web is an inexhaustible source of discoveries,we can find anything and it is thanks to this incredible media that people could create stories true or false and see how people believe and help to expand these stories in the web. An example of this could be the story of John Titor. I knew about this argument thanks to online encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia. Vannevar Bush in "As May We Think" believed people would create links between related articles, thus mapping the thought process and path of each user and saving it for others to experience. Wikipedia is one example of how this vision has been realized, allowing users to link words to other related topics, while browser user history maps the trails of the various possible paths of interaction.

"Time Traveller" ... in a forum or a chat might well seem a common nickname of a fan of science fiction and time travel. Actually this nickname with a man named John Titor came in precisely on November 2, 2000, in a U.S. forum claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036 and coming back in time to the distant 1975 in order to retrieve an IBM 5100. He said that this particular computer was important because of special skills unknown to all but the same engineers at IBM. In practice it would be able to translate languages, UNIX, APL and BASIC with each other. This particular model would be indispensable to the people of his time since around 2036, the year of its origin, a bug should hit the UNIX rendering useless many machines working with the old IBM technology. Of course no one believed him initially believing that his were just the ravings of a madman or a prankster who only wanted to joke a bit . But as the days passed, noting that discussions were supported by Titor quite interesting and detailed above, many were convinced that this mysterious person came in earnest from 2036. As happens in such cases, however, discussions of John Titor divided public opinion into two distinct and separate, we call them "believers" and "non-believers", if possible, and skeptics.

Who of us has not dreamed of traveling through time? However, discussions of Titor were not devoid of logic or scientific rigor, I would say that was very plausible. Before you take one side or the other should analyze different points on John Titor. First, the name John Titor is, according to his statements, his real name. He says he was born in Florida, exactly in the city of Tampa, in 1998. But after careful research demonstrates that Titor was living in Tampa at the time and this detail might lead one to believe that it was only a joke. Many other details instead fueled the idea that his story was true. One of these details is the precise and accurate description of how his time machine, that Titor called C204,course description with photo and leave on the same projects Titor and deemed authentic by several experts.

He said that the means used to mount the time machine was a '66 Corvette, I retrieved a photo of that model to compare with the one representing the laser beam from left Titorand matches. John Titor said that within 18 months the CERN ( European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva will undertake some studies on electromagnetic fields and also the holes on gravitational blacks, experiments conducted to assess the possibility of faster transport. While some of these experiments, he said, scientists accidentally create a small black hole. Differently than you might imagine, this small black hole will not absorb all the matter in its vicinity (in this case the entire solar system) but on the contrary, scientists at CERN using an electromagnetic field ( in the center there is the largest particle accelerator in the world) will help curb the size and, over time, creating holes blacks voluntarily, and even larger sizes. This will make it possible to time travel.

"Project of John Titor's time machine"

 At the end of 2001, after about a year from what he had said Titor, CERN officially confirmed the possibility of creating artificially  of mini blacks holes. Titor also said what should happen in the near future. Talk about a civil war that would erupt in the United States (war in December 2005 but not yet the case), its role as a "partisan" at age 14 in 2011 and many other events that will occur between now and 2036 . Another point in its favor would be the real capacity, described by Titor, IBM 5100. Capacity confirmed by the engineers of IBM. At that time, certainly before the current war in Iraq, said that a war will be waged under the pretext of removing alleged weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein ever ... This should lead us to believe that Titor was telling the truth, would never have known ifshe had not experienced first hand, since the year before that happens he says seriously.

"Pictures of John Titor's time machine"

 In the spring of 2001 John Titor greeted all to return in the year 2036 and he never heard from again.

The end point is its perfect preparation in physics, it exhibits very complex topics with such mastery that it seems incredible. Now will be the events to confirm whether or not what he said is the truth or just another hoax of the century (remember that on theinternet have been many cases of practical jokes, take for example the case "Ianezna",the alleged alien). What we are left in the hands of the various documents that are only Titor left as evidence of what he said.

Reffering to Transemedia Story Telling by Henry Jenkins we can said that transmedia stories are based not on individual characters (John Titor) or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters (all the people who read and commented Titor's blog) and their stories. This process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers. We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which always expands beyond our grasp (In this case could be the future world). This is a very different pleasure than we associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives, where we expect to leave the theatre knowing everything that is required to make sense of a particular story.

The Not So Impossible Project

With the advent of cheap and accessible digital photography in recent years analogue photography has tended to fall by the wayside. After all, why pay for expensive film and development for every roll of film taken when you can pick up a digital camera for as little as 1500Kč (roughly €60), allowing you to take as many photos as you like, deleting and editing as you document and share. The accessibility of this technology has revolutionised home photography, according to a study from 2007 77% of American households owned at least one digital camera₁. Besides the increasing ease of use and availability of digital cameras is now almost impossible to purchase a mobile phone without some sort of digital photography application. These advances have been hailed as transforming how we see photography . However these same advances have resulted in some casualties, namely analogue photography. One of the most lamented losses being the Polaroid camera and film. The Polaroid had become synonymous with analogue instant photography, most instant photos were referred to as Polaroids, despite the particular brand of film or camera used.Their brand of camera and style of film was recognised worldwide having first entered the camera market in the 1940s. Following the development of integral film in the 1970s, instant photography was used for work and play worldwide.

Andy Warhol's Polaroids, see more here

That is, until the advent of personal digital cameras. In February 2008 Polaroid announced it would cease all production of Polaroid cameras and film. A move brought about both by the increasing popularity and dominance of digital cameras and in part due to an investment fraud scandal involving the Petters group, the company who had been running Polaroid since 2005₂

So where did this leave the lovers of instant photography? Following the announcement there was a rush on the limited amount of film still available, fans of the film began to stockpile, preparing for the inevitability that there would one day be no more₃. Prices on eBay rose as people scrambled to get their hands on the remaining film before it was no more. However, for some aficionados it was not enough to accept the medium’s demise and move on.

Boseman and Kaps.

The demise of the Polaroid company brought about The Impossible Project, a company run by Polaroid and analogue photography fans who were not content to let the demise of the Polaroid company’s film production mean the demise of instant photography altogether. An Austrian Polaroid lover and entrepreneur, Florian Kaps and André Bosman, an employee of the Polaroid corporation for over 20 years and an integral player in the creation of many types of film during his time with the company met at the closing event of the Polaroid factory in The Netherlands. Following much discussion they decided to join forces in an effort to resurrect Polaroid cameras and film. Their idea was borne out of their love of analogue photography, Kaps had previously been a leading member of the Lomographic Society, ‘a magazine, a shop and a community dedicated to analogue photography.’ as well as this he also organised the web gallery Polanoid, an online gallery of Polaroids, and the growing online fan communities and campaigns to save the Polaroid, one facebook group alone has over 49, 000 members and this is by no means the only group of its kind. Initially their focus was the storage and sale of the remaining stock of Polaroid film, this was done through the unsaleable and polapremium websites. However, their eventual aim was to produce and sell working Polaroid cameras and film. This goal was eventually reached following their purchase of the former Polaroid factory in Enschede, The Netherlands. Though a simple restart of production was not possible as the dyes originally used in the production of negatives for the integral film pack were no longer available and would have taken 2 years to develop they utilised the knowledge of former employees to 'reverse engineer' a new version of the film. Not only this, there was also a web campaign to rally support, whether through the sharing of knowledge from around the globe or simply raising both awareness and finance for the production of film through the sale of t-shirts and other merchandise.

But how does this relate to the concepts of Produsage, Collective Intelligence and Transmedia Storytelling? Many aspects of the Impossible Project and it’s precursors (unsaleable and polapremium) demonstrate Produsage through the use of their website and associated side-projects. Produsage involves the creation of shared content through ‘collaborative and continuous building’₄ between Consumers and Producers. This is demonstrated both through the online communities and campaigns to save the Polaroid right down to the curation of online galleries of Polaroid photographs both on Flickr and Polanoid. And this collaborative curation is encouraged by those running The Impossible Project, the website offers a €5 voucher off any product in their shop to those who upload at least 3 Polaroids to the Polanoid website. This curation is one of the aspects of Produsage mentioned in Axel Bruns’ The Art of Produsage ‘in such streams we can see collaborative community efforts to curate it’s content’₅.

Collective intelligence is manifest throughout many aspects of the project, the online campaigns and networking of those involved in the project led to a pooling of knowledge related to the production of the film as it was a complex process. Former employees of the Polaroid company were hired and those who had knowledge and skill in the area were tapped for their contribution. Without this ‘shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals’ the highly complex process involved in recreating working film for Polaroid cameras is unlikely to have happened due to the high skill necessary to operate and modify the lasting machinery in the Polaroid factory.

The Impossible Project's success is a Web 2.0 one, without the collaborative aspects of Produsage and Collective Intelligence I think it is unlikely that they would be producing and selling Polaroid film today, at the very least without the popularity and success they now enjoy. The internet allowed a niche market to make themselves and their demands known. The utilisation of 'long tail demand'₆ i.e. selling a smaller amount of unique products rather than mass sales of popular products has proven that one doesn’t need to cater to a mass audience in order to accomplish success in today’s world of online commerce and community .

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1- Digital Imaging: A Focus on Sharing, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), 2007

2- ‘Polaroid files for bankruptcy protection’ Andrew Clark, The Guardian, 19-12-2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/19/chapter-11-corporate-bankruptcies-corporatefraud?INTCMP=SRCH)

3- http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2008/02/14/polaroid-film.html

4- http://produsage.org/produsage

5- Axel Bruns: The Art of Produsage, p.235

6- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

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Human stupidity 2.0

»Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the the universe.«

Albert Einstein

A couple of days ago various media could tell the story about two robbers being arrested after bragging about their newly achieved money on Facebook. The story is, though pretty entertaining, not very surprising compared to what other stupid human Internet behavior the new media has documented during the last couple of years. The new media gave us new possibilities to make fools of ourselves and news ways to destroy our careers, relationships and remaining dignity. With Web 2.0 came Human stupidity 2.0.

The expansion of the public sphere

Human stupidity has without any doubt existed for just as long as human beings on earth. Through thousands of years humans have thought, said and done stupid things and even though some of it has been kept for further generations to experience, most historical stupidity will remain undocumented.

With the arrival of the new media came new possibilities for storing stupidity. During the last couple of decades the borders between private and public spheres have gradually moved in the western world. One of the first indications of this trend was the emergence of TV reality shows that recorded and broadcasted human interaction and behavior of non-media trained humans in a way that only fiction could previously have predicted.

The big difference between these reality shows and the later development was the presence of media cooperations editing and angling the material before publication. With the arrival of the new media this was taken to a new level. Now people could record and post videos of themselves doing and saying stupid things on YouTube or post stupid pictures or status updates on Facebook. And the only thing keeping these stupidities from being published was the creators themselves or the regulations of the new media platforms.

Human stupidity as material for new media produsage

With Web 2.0 the users became producers. People around the world shared material for others to use, respond to and further develop through YouTube, Flickr, Ourband etc. and with Wikipedia this developed into more structural cooperation build on collective intelligence. Along with this development came also produsage build on critical approaches to the new media and the way people are using them. One of the best examples of users sharing experiences of human stupidity on the Internet is Lamebook.com.

The concept of the page is pretty simple. It relies on user participation in shape of people capturing and sending screen shots of Facebook members posting stupid pictures, status updates or comments which are then anonymized and published on the blog for other users to share and comment. The typical examples of the captured human stupidity on Lamebook are people posting private informations on their walls which are usually followed by consequences in form of reactions from other Facebook members. Among these kinds of stupidities is public fighting on private matters, people dissing their employers (with whom they of course share Facebook friendship) or people revealing extremely private informations or pictures without any awareness of the possible consequences.

With about 400 million native English speaking world citizens, of which a great part with a profile on Facebook, the material of the blog is being constantly produced and prodused and in such an amount that there´s material for everyday publication.

YouTube: Not a playground for (stupid) kids

One of the new media that gave users the possibility to create, share and recreate material is YouTube. The website is stuffed with videos of people spreading stupid statements or doing stupid (and sometimes dangerous) things. Some of these videos becomes viral Internet phenomena that quickly spreads and leads to new produsaged material in shape of responses and different kinds of remixes.

When I was kid I had a great time recording stupid conversations, ideas and even songs with my friends on my tape recorder. Even though this was surely pretty harmless I would never want any of these recordings to be published today. Luckily we had no possibilities for publishing our recordings at the time and our play with the medium therefore stayed as entertaining and educational experiences for only us to know about.

Today it´s different. An example of this is The Food Reviewer; a welfed child posting videos of himself eating and reviewing varous types of candy and fastfood on his Youtube channel. These harmless videos did not only lead to responding videos and parodies, but also inappropriate comments, suggestions and even threads which shows that the new media are not just innocent playgrounds of creative produsers sharing and developing material in constructive ways.

Another example is the story of an 11 years old girl who became an Internet phenomenon after her (pretty stupid) reply to the negative reactions on her YouTube videos. During 4 days the girl fought a viral video battle against her YouTube enemies which escalated with a video of the crying girl assisted by her angry father threatening with Cyber police.

Who is responsible for the new media stupidity

Even though these examples can be seen as priceless entertainment even better than the most well produced TV reality shows on the market they still leave some unanswered questions. Were people really ready for the new media and all the possibilities they gave for exposing stupid behavior? Is it fair that children are being humiliated on the Internet for just exploring and playing with the new technologies? And who is responsible for educating people in proper ways of dealing with the potential consequences of inappropriate behavior on the new media platforms?

And how will future generations look at these years and the emergence of Web 2.0? Will people in 100 years see it as an example of technology developing faster than human beings being able to fully understand and adapt to them in comprehensive ways. Or will it just be seen as the first natural step of the total dissolve of private spheres; an old fashion way of dividing human behavior and interaction that modern technology had to destroy?

No matter what human stupidity will most likely continue to exist for just as long as human beings on earth. Whether it will transform into 3.0, 8.0 or 120.0.