I. What is New Media

The hallmark of new media is behind the principle of “many to many”, and that is the reason behind the change is who has the power to “define reality ” with media. Ever since the invention of the medium that is the internet, it really has change the way that media can be consumed by people, and how people deliverer these media too. Unlike past forms of communication there are no locked down ways of how contents can be delivered and received. Its all free formed, and can be chosen by the user, and it creator at the same time. Which is what makes new media so different.

In the past there was two forms of media, the interpersonal, and mass media. They are are good, and still present to this day, but new media really changes the way how contents are being processed now a days. The interpersonal medium was how people communicate between each other, and the advantage behind that way of communicating is that they can control the amount of information to send and receive, but the downside of that is the more people that are communicating, the less individualized that content will be. With the introduction of the mass medium, it overcomes the downside of interpersonal medium in where the creator will be able to deliverer its content to as much people as it can, but the downside to that is, the content is no longer individualized. New media changes all of that, there are no downside to that medium in the traditional way.

New media changes how contents can be deliver and received. With the introduction of new media, it creates a way for many people to deliverer content to many people at the same time. This medium has overcome the two disadvantage that the past two mediums have. It is now possible for contents to be personalized and be delivered to many people at the same time. Which is what makes it so amazing. Now there are no one person or company that can define reality, now the people can define reality in the way that they choose it to be.

II. New Media Strategies

Exercise 1: Which is the New Media Solution

Problem A: A Disappearing Language

Ian Larson wanted to help preserve the Passamaquoddy language from extinction.

• Solution A  Create a taskforce from a select group of Native American language experts, and ask them to write down a dictionary of words and their definitions. Enter these definitions into a database and build a Web site that allows anyone to search for terms and hear their pronunciation. Hire a high-profile Web designer and marketing firm to ensure that as many people as possible learn about this resource.
• Solution B  Distribute laptops with video cameras to schoolkids in the Passamaquoddy community, and ask them to record their grandparents telling stories in Passamaquoddy. Upload these to a Web site along with the grandparents’ definitions of particular words used in the story, and make these words searchable via a tag cloud.

Solution B is the right way the preserver the Passamaquoddy language from extinction in the new media. It follows the principle of new media which is the many to many principle, unlike solution A, there are no tied down definition to each word, on a website, which is just an extension of mass media, contents that created by one person or company delivered to many people. With these recorded stories of the past, and each grandparents own definition of each word going along with it, now the content thats being delivered is personalized to each consumers liking and it is being delivered by many people too.

PROBLEM: NEGLECTED RUINS

Evan Habeeb wanted to make people aware of the beauty of abandoned buildings.

• Solution A  Assemble a film crew and visit abandoned homes, factories, and other buildings. Bring lights to illuminate these spaces dramatically, and record ambient sounds like dripping water. Edit the footage onto a DVD to create a compelling account that documents these relics for posterity, and distribute copies to historical societies across the state for their collections.
• Solution B  Build a Web site that allows adventurers to print stickers they can leave behind in abandoned buildings they explore. Create the stickers so they can be scanned by a mobile phone to reveal a Web site built to feature photographs taken by those explorers.

The solution that embodies the many to many principle that is behind new media is B, because unlike making a DVD, which is a one way communication device, it only allows one way for these ruins to be presented. With pictures takes by tourists and explorers uploaded to a web site, now it is possible for these ruins to be presented in as many ways as possible, and now the visitors to these websites, can choose to see what ever pictures they like.

PROBLEM: MISUNDERSTANDING COMPUTER ANIMATION

Ryan Schaller and Jason Walker wanted to help people understand the many layers required to create a computer-animated film, including wireframe, textures, and light effects. As a case study, they created an animation depicting a cartoon archeologist digging for ancient artifacts.

• Solution A Design and build a touch-screen interface that allows viewers to “rub” away layers of the film with their hands to reveal previous stages of the animation as it plays.
• Solution B  Create an iPad application that documents each stage of the animation process, using stills from the archeologist film as illustrations. Explain techniques such as ray tracing, motion capture, and morphing. Include links to companies that create animation software such as Autodesk.

Solution A is how New media should present a way to teach creating animations in a digital way. With the user rubbing away at layers of the film themselves, makes it seem like they are working at the animation at the same time, while they are learning, and they can learn in the way that makes it seem the most comfortable, and it is personalized the the learner, while solution B is just a book on an app.

PROBLEM: A BROKEN FOUNTAIN

Danielle Gagner wanted to renovate the waterfall fountain under the skylight in the middle of the University Union, which had fallen into disrepair.

• Solution A  Repurpose the existing plumbing to irrigate a garden planted in the former fountain. Research the types of plants that would grow well together at different levels of the fountain, and meet with dining hall staff to find out what herbs or vegetables they might add to salads and other offerings. Then plant these in collaboration with the sustainable agriculture club on campus, and invite students to pick the resulting parsley, strawberries, and other fare from the garden for their lunch.
• Solution B  Use Google Image Search to download photographs of natural bodies of water such as streams, rivers, and the ocean. Combine these with nature footage from sources like National Geographic and the Discovery Channel to create a multichannel video installation that projects images of flowing water and rippling waves onto the fountain, which has been covered with theatrical screening. Supplement the moving images with the sound of a babbling brook emanating from surround-sound speakers mounted on the ceiling.

Solution B is not the right way to implement new media into the fountain, it is just adding technology into the fountain. While Solution B may not be using any technology, it is using the many to many principle, and it is cooperating the pole that sees and use the fountain on a day to day basis, and personalizes the experience for them. That is what makes it so cool and useful.

EXERCISE 2: INVENT YOUR OWN MANY-TO-MANY SOLUTIONS

EDUCATIONAL BOOKS ARE BORING

How can you help educational writers make use of appealing formats like comic books?

While educational books are inherently boring in a mundane way that just keeps piling on information to  the reader, there may be some ways for educational writers to make use of appealing formats like comic books to make educational books more appealing to readers. Some of the core concepts of comic books are segmented spaces and the interesting characters. If the educational writers take advantage of these characteristics of comic books to make their books more appealing while using new media to help them write these books.

The great selling point of comic books are the colorful characters, thats so full of life and filled with adventures in their life, is what makes comic books so appealing to so many people. With that in mind, the writers can create a poll on a website that’s already created for their product, and have readers, vote on a character, as a mascot of some kind for their books, that will create some interest in their book, and maybe even have the voters, create characters of their own too, that they can vote on to see who will make it on to their books. This way the readers will be personalizing these education books in their own way, still receiving the contents that they really paid for, while making the experience less boring and more interesting.

III. Theater of the Oppressed

1.The media oppressed people not only physically but mentally, during the times that Augusto Goal was active performing. Boal is an interactive performer, working to to help oppressed people face their problems, he worked the most with the oppressed people of South America, using a technique call Theater of the Oppressed. During the mid 1980s, he worked with a therapeutic aim, in his performances. The media at the time oppresses the people by not giving the the freedom to expressive themselves, and so, not only did he help them fight back successfully, but he also brought laughter back into the minds of these oppressed people.

The theater of the oppressed is a interactive technique that is meant to help people with their problems, whether it is some small mundane thing, or a big problem concerning their jobs, or government. These interactive techniques proved to be very useful for their users, they would act out these problems that they have whether it is in a theater, or in the real world, just to see what would happen, and thus find out the solution to their problems. This technique proved to be very powerful, and in the end helped so many people, that when he returned to Brazil, he was elected as a political officer to his surprise, but not to the people, since he help them out so much.

2. New media can accomplish a similar goal of interacting with its viewers and solving their problems. Since Augusto Boal has used New Media’s central principal of many to many concept to help during his time. With the many new advancements in technology, we can also accomplish the same thing with much less time. Since the concept of new media, and Boal’s interactive performances have the same principles behind it, new media can bring many more brand new ways for the audience to interact with it’s performers in the same way that the audience  has in the theater of the oppressed.

New media and Boal’s theater of the oppressed operates on the same principle, so with that in mind, new media can help people in the same way that Boal has in the past. In the present with all the technology available to us, there are many ways for interactive therapy to work. There can be ideas or problems that can be helped by being crowdsourced to many people, or outlets in the world. In many ways, new media, is Boal’s theater of the oppressed, but now on a much larger scale, in the ways that it can be used to help solve people’s problems.

RESPONSE 1B

A social issue that has really troubled not just me, but also the everyone recently is the repeal of Net neutrality by the FCC. They have removed what is in its core, the most important part of the internet. What net neutrality is, is the protection of the concept of freedom on the internet, and that is being protected by the law. With the removal of net neutrality, an important part of the country itself is being removed, the concept of freedom. The FCC has removed the concept of freedom from the internet, by the repeal of net neutrality. This should not just make users of the intent angry, but also citizens of the United States, and even people in other countries, because as a leader in the world economy, if this idea passes through, other countries will also try to copy that concept.

The tactics that I was to use is Identity correction, the FCC has gone through with the repeal of Net neutrality by falsely advertising their true intent. They masked it with the attempt to truly remove the intervention of the government from the internet, and thus bringing back a natural ground in the internet, like the world before net neutrality is there to protect that, but the fact that the government is not there to do anything means that other companies will be able to incorporate anything they want to destroy that freedom that already exist in the net. With the identity correction tactic, it will expose the true intent of the FCC by making websites that truly advertise the intent of the FCC, and use various social media, creating a hashtag that everyone will use, and thus exposing the truth of what the repeal of net neutrality means to us.

The target audience of the this tactic, is to make sure that people that are unaware of this issue understands what net neutrality is, and most importantly the people that misunderstand what it is, to truly realize the consequences of what the repeal of net neutrality means to the world. This tactic will make use of the internet and social medias, itself which is the how we can express the freedom of the net, by using hashtags, and various websites that will truly tell others what the repeal of net neutrality means. Hoping that eventually this reveal of the truth will create a movement that deeply moves the common people and will be remembered as what makes net neutrality important to people.