JOURNAL : PRODUCTION PROCESSES

POSTINGS - MOST RECENT ON TOP
This blog contains:
1. Month-by-month research notes (most recent on top)
2. Schedule/timeline/planner

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FEBRUARY
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Interview: Robin Moore
Write up report
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JANUARY
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RESEARCH NOTES:

SOMETHING OF NOTE:
Link: Elaine England and Andy Finney Course, 8 Mar 2007: Product Management Training: Interactive Media
http://www.atsf.co.uk/atsf/pmtrain.html

NB: VERY GOOD WEBSITE - ENABLES USER TO GO THROUGH PRODUCTION CYCLE OF 'VIRTUAL' COMPANY:

http://www.skillset.org/interactive/overview/
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DECEMBER
RESEARCH: BBC - STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES:

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13 DECEMBER: PRESENTATION
Feedback - see London & Finney - apply to BBC processes

NOTES: INTERVIEW WITH ANDY ROBERTS, PRODUCER WHERE I LIVE (BBC SE WALES)
(BASIS OF PRESENTATION, 6 DECEMBER '06)

BBC WHERE I LIVE WEBSITE/BBC WEBSITE GENERAL
Different sites:
bbc.co.uk /news
bbc.co.uk /sport
bbc.co.uk/weather
bbc.co.uk

HISTORY
Information from Andy Roberts, Producer, Where I Live (Southeast Wales) site. Joined in 1996 from Radio 1. (Web design was totally new area for Corporation with decades of experience in radio and TV. Initially envisaged as educational tool (BBC has huge education division). Now seen as service site.
1997: Limited news site to coincide with election
98: Wales – European Summit of Ministers in Cardiff
Andy included section “Cool Cymru” – unusual, in terms of larger BBC picture.
99: Expansion – World Cup in Wales, National Assembly
2001: Where I Live launched as three-year project initially
FIRST HAND STUDY OF PRODUCTION PROCESSES
Initially hand-coded (HTML) and later Dreamweaver – therefore a centralised IT function – copy handed over to technicians.
Boosted by News website technology – News Content Production System
2000/1: “All Wales” site. WIPS (Wales Interactive Production System) – system of templates set up by technicians to allow non-technical staff to use site – template-based system > led to decentralised production. Wales divided into 5 areas: SE, SW, Mid, NE, NW.
“A lot more people creating a lot more content” (Andy Roberts)

DEFINITION AND PLANNING
Each area has Producer and Researcher; and Journalist – but s/he reports to news dept in Cardiff
Make day to day decisions and oversee input
Community generated content – mostly by email (also comment boxes)
Clearly, problem for central management/ joint projects – result: weekly telephone conference – producers five regions plus Robin Moore (executive producer New Media (?) and assistant producer
With Agenda.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Public broadcaster with brief “To inform, educate and entertain”.

INFORMATION AND SERVICE
Travel, entertainment, local history
Wealth of information - challenge is to make it accessible and easy to use. Users all over the world. Template system – simplicity, standardisation, accommodates lots of information, simple and predictable.

DESIGN
Template based and very limited number of designs. Essentially-Index page (with thumbnail links and index), main page (onemain image with content) and galleries (enables photo galleries)

CONSTRUCTION
Centrally planned but locally constructed.

MARKETING
BBC is public broadcaster and cannot promote itself at expense of other media companies (already in trouble in Midlands – local TV stations). Also not permitted to take advertising. Board is trying to introduce advertising – being opposed by staff. Marketing is through community events, community studios, buses, etc.

TRACKING, EVALUATION AND MAINTENENANCE
Centrally evaluated – every week get rundown (see Agenda) – evaluated in terms of updates.


RECOMMENDATION/ CONCLUSION:
FUTURE: SPECIFIC PROJECT - As it is an established site, most project are ongoing. For web blog, will pursue specific project to be able to track BBC production process from start to finish, that is,
Abolition of Slavery project
Just launched (end Nov) – will follow this as case study.

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NOVEMBER
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SCHEDULE/TIMELINE

http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dcv3fqr6_0dk3kvg&revision=_latest

Production Process Schedule


TECHNICAL PROBLEM POSTING TABLE (SCHEDULE)

PRODUCTION PROCESS SCHEDULE

Week one: 21st & 22nd Nov (10am)
Briefing
Analysis

Week two: 28th & 29th Nov (10am)
Project Lifecycles
Project Manager’s Responsibilities
Make contacts

Week three: 5th, 6th Dec (10am)
Production Company meetings & preparation for presentation. (5th & 6th Dec)
Consider ‘real life’ brief.
Live Brief workshop (Wednesday 6th Dec) (10am)

Week four: 12th, 13th Dec (10am)
Presentations (group) (12th Dec)
Development

Week five: 16th, 17th Jan (10am)
Development

Week six: 23th, 24th Jan (10am)
Development

Week seven: 30th, 31st Jan (10am)
Development
Deadline Reports 2nd Feb

Week eight: 6th, 7th Feb (10am)
Development
Deadline Practicals 9th Feb

CCS - PART 2 : ICT/ TECHNICAL ISSUES

CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTUAL STUDIES
BY VIVIEN VAN DER SANDT
STUDENT NO: 06003781
Email address: viviensandt@yahoo.co.uk

SECTION 2: TECHNOLOGY/ICT

IN THIS SECTION:

1. VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCAL (VoIP)
2. FREE, OPEN WIRELESS NETWORKS
3. PEER-TO-PEER
4. LOCATIVE MEDIA

1. VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCAL (VoIP)

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network (other terms for this include IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone, and Voice-over Broadband). VoIP allows users to call other VoIP users over the internet at no cost (or call at a reduced cost, people with a land line phone).

Companies providing VoIP service are the Providers, and protocols carrying voice signals over the IP network are VoIP Protocols.

BT Broadband Voice, Dock.net www.dock.net, Google Talk, Internet Phone Company, Intervivo, Skype 1.4, Voip Net www.voip.net, Voipcheap VOIP Service, VoIPtalk www.voiptalk.org and Vonage are some of these Providers. These are all listed – and reviewed on the Review Centre website. [http://www.reviewcentre.com/products3907.html]
Another site, VoIP Providers List is a directory of providers all over the world (it also records how many there are in each country – for instance, one provider in Niger and Oman, amongst others, 625 in the USA - the UK has 146). [http://www.voipproviderslist.com/]

VoIP “may be viewed as commercial realisations of the experimental Network Voice Protocol (1973) invented for the US Defense Dept’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or Arpanet) providers” (Wikipedia).

Some cost savings are due to the utilisation of a single network to carry voice and data. VoIP-to-VoIP phone calls are sometimes free, while VoIP to PSTN* may have a cost that’s borne by the VoIP user. Access numbers are usually charged as a local call to the caller and free to the VoIP user while DID usually has a monthly fee. There are also DIDs that are free to the VoIP user but chargeable to the caller. There are two types of PSTN to VoIP services: DID (Direct Inward Dialing) and access numbers. DID will connect the caller directly to the VoIP user while access numbers require the caller to input the extension number of the VoIP user. [From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSTN]. (PSTN=The public switched telephone network – the world’s public circuit-switched telephone networks).

Millions of people globally have signed up to the service. Users can also rent land line telephone numbers to use with VoIP so they can still be contactable by non-VoIP callers using a regular phone.

VoIP is challenging the telecommunications monopolies of the past and making communication technologies freely available to everyone (provided, of course, they have basic equipment such as a PC and handsets/headphones – some laptops have built-in microphones to enable talk without these attachments).

VoIP is a global communication service, which requires an interconnected planet, and is a concrete manifestation of both technological advances and the linked-up, global village which we now inhabit.

2. FREE, OPEN WIRELESS NETWORKS

“Wi-Fi is a brand originally licensed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to describe the underlying technology of wireless local area networks (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802.11 specifications. It was developed to be used for mobile computing devices, such as laptops, in LANs, but is now increasingly used for more services, including Internet and VoIP phone access, gaming, and basic connectivity of consumer electronics such as televisions and DVD players, or digital cameras”.

[Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi]

Initially, there was a problem with compatibility between devices. The Wi-Fi Alliance began as a community to solve this issue and created the branding Wi-Fi Certified to show what products are interoperable.

Anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled device can connect to the Internet when they are within range of an access point. The area covered by access points is called a hotspot and can range from a single room to many square miles. Arguably, as usage increases, whole cities or suburbs may in the future be hotspots.

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:
“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." [http://nocat.net/]

My understanding is that Wi-Fi is an interesting marriage between old radio/broadcast technology and digital technology, since it uses the same spectrum as broadcast systems to deliver information to digital devices. Wi-Fi is a system connecting digital devices via wireless technology. (Wi-Fi uses the spectrum near 2.4 GHz, which is standardized and unlicensed by international agreement, although this varies slightly in different parts of the world). “You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cable.

Wi-Fi is a great egalitarian, open communication tool. Since a wave by its very nature is not easily cut off at a determined boundary point, the use of Wi-Fi by users other than the subscriber is a given. One drawback: ‘Since Wi-Fi transmits in the air, it has the same properties as a non-switched wired Ethernet network, and therefore collisions can occur’. (Wikipedia).

Wi-Fi is a cheap telecommunications tools as it does away for the need to lay cabling. Wi-Fi has opened up telecommunications, cheaply and easily, to a greater number of people. Groups and individuals have lobbied to keep it this way. The monopolies in the telecommunicating industry – made possible by being able to control access to their product/service - have been seriously challenged by this technology.

“Wireless – in tandem with other technological advances – has changed the way we do business. ‘Employees are no longer reporting to an office every day and logging onto a desktop computer. Companies are now spending their IT dollars on mobile equipment to meet the needs of this highly productive mobile workforce. More employers today are providing workers with cell phones and laptops, and wireless LANs are becoming increasingly common in businesses. ” [http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1107459255_613.html?psrc=RWI]

Some gaming consoles (for instance, the Nintendo-DS, the PlayStation Portable/ Playstation 3 and the Wii) , the Xox-360 and handhelds make use of Wi-Fi technology to enhance the gaming experience. The Microsoft Zune uses Wi-Fi for trading of music between users in a close radius.

Bluetooth:
Bluetooth is an example of one Wi-Fi system – it allows digital devices to communicate with each other when they are in range. This system is often the preferred choice for clearly demarcated areas with a given community, such as university campuses.
“Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). It connects devices (such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles) via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.
“Bluetooth is a radio standard and communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range (power class dependent: 10 metres, 100 metres) based around low-cost transceiver microchips in each device.’
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth]

The broader campaign to fight for open access to Wi-Fi networks has given us ‘warchalking’ – the drawing of symbols in public spaces to advertise accessible Wi-Fi wireless networks (these was inspired by hobo symbols). Unfortunately, the underlying philosophy was compromised, as the symbols were almost immediately taken over by commercial enterprises which used the symbols as advertising logos.

3. PEER-TO-PEER (P2P)

Wi-Fi also allows connectivity in peer-to-peer (wireless ad-hoc network) mode, which enables devices to connect directly with each other. This connectivity mode is useful in consumer electronics and gaming applications.
Wikipedia offers the following classification of peer-to-peer networks. (It is a classification according to degree of centralisation):
Pure peer-to-peer:
- Peers act as equals, merging the roles of clients and server
- There is no central server managing the network
- There is no central router
Hybrid peer-to-peer:
- Has a central server that keeps information on peers and responds to requests for that information.
- Peers are responsible for hosting available resources (as the central server does not have them), for letting the central server know what resources they want to share, and for making its shareable resources available to peers that request it.
- Route terminals are used addresses, which are referenced by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address.
Some examples of ‘pure’ peer-to-peer application layer networks designed for file sharing are Gnutella and Freenet.
Some scholars may apply different methodologies, to divide P2P network into:
Centralized P2P network such as Napster
Decentralized P2P network such as KaZaA
Structured P2P network such as CAN
Unstructured P2P network such as Gnutella
Or it might be divided into:
1st Generation P2P
2nd Generation P2P

4. LOCATIVE MEDIA

Locative media (a term first coined by Karlis Kalnins) is in essence a form of communication bound to a location. It is digital media applied to real places and able to trigger real social interactions.

“Locative media concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology. Hence, many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal (memory) background…The technology used in locative media projects is for example. Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), Google Maps. ” (Wikipedia) [Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locative_Media]

GPS allows a person to detect his/her specific location, mobile devices allow interactive media to be linked to this place. The GIS feeds the data about the location.

Locative media can be applied to a wide range of uses - in tourism, advertising, community projects and art projects. Commercially too, locative technology can be used to track consumer goods through their life cycle from shop to landfill (that is, for marketing data), to track passengers’ luggage, and so on.

Locative Media is a broad term which has broad applications. A few examples where Locative Media technologies have been applied are:

Geographical:
Google Maps
The urge to find your home on a map is, of course, irresistible. Mine is:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=UK+NP26+3BG&sll=55.012934,-3.446869&sspn=14.070173,51.855469&ie=UTF8&z=16&om=1&iwloc=addr
Similarly,
Google Earth
Combines Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to deliver geographic information. (Although a friend claims images are up to a year old – he claims the image Google Earth presented of his house was clearly old, as he had sold the cars which were still shown in the driveway!)

Community art projects:
Field Works
http://www.field-works.net/
Launched by artist Masaki Fujihata in 1992, Field-Works is ‘a series of projects which reconstruct collective memories into cyberspace as a kind of video archive by using position data captured by GPS and moving image captured by video’.
Project Mersea Circle (2003-2005) was done with people in Mersea Island (near Colchester, Essex). Visitors are invited to walk on the edge of the island with a video camera and GPS to record data that will be reconstructed in the cyber-archive. The results were put together for a public exhibition. The piece is now permanently installed in the Martello Tower media centre in Jaywick, Essex.

The first locative media narrative:
34 North 188 West
http://www.34n118w.net/
“A generative narrative that relies on outdoor wireless internet connection to tell a story specific to user location. Weather conditions, the physical environment, nearby locales, historic events specific to the current location and time are retrieved from online sources and fed into a scripted story structure. ”

Commercial/RFID
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags – which, as the name suggests, harness radio wave technology - can be incorporated into a product, animal, or person. They store data which can be remotely retrieved. Chip-based RFID tags contain silicon chips and antennae.
It is already used in passports animal identification and product tracking.
Future Store in Japan and Germany (Metro stores) already use the technology to manage, track and market products. In Japan, government and business in late 2004 launched a group called Miraigata Tenpo Saabisuwo Kangaeru Kenkyukai (Research Group to Think about Future Retail Services). Future Store, that is, futuristic retailing and shopping environments, aim to exploit new technologies such as RFID, sensors, ambient displays, and mobile devices.

CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTUAL STUDIES

CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTUAL STUDIES (CCS)
BY VIVIEN VAN DER SANDT
STUDENT NO: 06003781
email: viviensandt@yahoo.co.uk

IN THIS BLOG:
INTRODUCTION TO NEW MEDIA AND CCS
1. SUSTAINABILITY
2. DOUGLAS ENGELBART AND TED NELSON
3. PARTICIPATION

New media is a term that describes traditional forms of media that have been transformed by advancements in digital technology and digital computing…
The term new media gained currency in the early-mid 1990s as part of the marketing pitch for the CD-ROM Revolution...
What is classed as new media?
• Web Sites including Blogs and Wikis
• Email
• CD/DVD
• Electronic kiosks
• Virtual worlds
• Interactive Television
• Internet Telephony
• Mobile
• Podcast
• Hypertext fiction
[From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media]

The module Contemporary Contextual Studies looks at broad issues around new media/interactive media, discussing new developments, analysing trends and exploring issues. In that, it underpins all/most of the pursuits of students on the Design for Interactive Media course. In format, it comprises lecturers and discussion periods.

The importance of this field of study could be highlighted by my personal story: When I qualified as a journalist in the late '70s, newspapers emerged from the composition of metal type - 'slugs' of type were literally sorted by hand into printers' trays. In the last 30 years, I have seen printing and publishing become the domain of everyman, as the wordprocessor, the personal computer, an inestimable amount of software and - latterly but most importantly - the internet, revolutonised communication and access to information. Keeping up with the technology sometimes seems impossible; analysing the trends/consequences perhaps more so. But I consider it a great privilege to be a witness to this revolution, and to have the opportunity to upgrade my media skills. This module has made a valuable contribution to that. For these reasons, the concerns and contents of the CCS module are of great interest to me. Some of the subjects covered in this module are discussed below.

1. SUSTAINABILITY

“Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet”. Wikipedia

Everything that sustains life, everything we use, comes from Mother Earth: The houses we build, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, even the appliances and machines we use … all came from the Earth in the form of natural resources, vegetable and mineral (or animal, also sustained by the earth).
For centuries now, since the Industrial Revolution, the prevailing thought has been that science/technology and economic development would provide all human needs - food, clothing and shelter; jobs, education and healthcare. Little attention was paid to the depletion of resources required to provide increasingly comfortable, even affluent, lifestyles for the world’s burgeoning population.
Although the term sustainability can be traced as far back as in 1712 (first used by the German forester and mining scientist Hans Carl von Carlowitz in his book Sylvicultura Oeconomica) it was only in the 1960s, with the blossoming of the modern environmental movement, that a critical mass of people began to think about their impact on Planet Earth. Unavoidably, the economic/technology model was put under the spotlight.

In 1974, the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth. – a report that predicted dire consequences as a result of humans depleting the Earth's resources. It advocated as one solution the abandonment of economic development – most amazing, bearing in mind that the Club (founded the previous year) comprised a group of economists and scientists (the two disciplines, as is explained above, at the forefront of resource exploitation) Needless to say, they were heavily criticized - not least of all by economists and scientists!

The conventional wisdom has been that the Earth’s resources fall into two categories: renewable and non-renewable. Renewable resources such as forests, crops, fishery, were for a long time considered almost inexhaustible. But now conventional wisdom is changing, and it is accepted that every resource has its limits.

Global consumption now threatens almost every resource on which we depend for our very existence. We are now warned that we will need four/five more planets like ours, to sustain our current levels of consumption. (This finding comes from studies on the ecological footprint - a formula used to determine the amount of land and water area a human population would need to provide the resources required to support itself and to absorb its wastes, given prevailing technology. The term was first coined in 1992 by Canadian ecologist and professor, William Rees).
“Footprinting is now widely used around the globe as an indicator of environmental sustainability. It can be used to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy. It is commonly used to explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organisations, industry sectors, regions and nations.” (Wikipedia)

Many believe that we are now past the point of no return. The measures that need to be taken to reduce consumption and restore natural resources need to be deeply, deeply radical – and there is no sign that any government is prepared to introduce these measures. One wonders if you can blame them when local councils have an uphill struggle getting all households to even recycle – an easy step that makes a big difference to ‘stretching’ resources - a sign of how ignorant and uncaring a large part of the populace remains. (A recycling target of 40% is considered a good result, and only a few councils in the UK achieve that). But another explanation is that government is so locked into big business, that it will not impose the consumption-reducing measures that are urgently needed.

Meanwhile, ountries like China are consuming resources like there is no tomorrow … and, of course, for many there well may not be (more about that later). In addition, corporations/big business are pulling out the stops to drive consumption. Some governments – and here the US government of George Bush is a prime culprit – still propagate the myth that technology will come to our rescue (he repeated this corporate/government propaganda in his State of the Nation speech this month).

I am more inclined to take the view of James Lovelock, a writer and environmentalist whose views I respect. In his latest book, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity (2006), he takes a grim view of the future. He sees a world devastated by climate change, leaving much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming.

Writing in the Independent in January 2006, he said “we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can".

Lovelock has a poor prognosis for mankind’s future and takes the view that small communities of people who have made their way of life sustainable (in terms of goegrahical location, energy sources, food production and so on) may survive.
With all these considerations put together, I have over recent years changed my personal definition of the term 'sustainable'. I do not believe this planet as a whole will be sustainable in the future, but it may be possible for smaller communities of people to create sustainable environments. Ironically in the age of globalisation, that means creating an existence independent of national grids and governmental services. It seems it’s a matter of ‘head for a commune’ for anyone with any common sense/survival instinct. Apparently, the hippies were right all along.



2. DOUGLAS ENGELBART AND TED NELSON

Although it may not seem obvious at first sight, the closing comments in the Sustainability section connect fairly seamlessly to this next topic.

1968. The assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy rock America. Abroad, the Viet Cong launch the Tet offensive, an unexpected attack on 30 cities and US bases. The hippy movement is in full swing; the quintessential 60s novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, is published. But, amid the social upheaval, technological advances march on - it is the year before the moon landing (for those who believe it actually happened, that is): Kodak’s cheap, compact instamatic camera hits the shops and, at a Conference in San Francisco, electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart addresses delegates via a TV set, and announces the beginnings of 'the Online System'.

At academic institutions, these two strands of American life - that is, the social upheavel and the technological developments - co-exist uneasily, as the values of the hippy movement clash with those of the Establishment. (This is to culminate two years later, when the Ohio National Guard opens fire on demonstrating students, killing four and wounding nine. In its wake, hundreds of academic institutions are closed as eight million students strike).

This is the environment that nurtured two very different pioneers in IT development, the aforementioned Englebart and another, Ted Nelson.

Dr Douglas C. Engelbart, best known as co-inventor of the computer mouse (with Bill English) was a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world's increasingly more urgent and complex. He and his team at the Augmentation Research Center (the lab he founded) developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, groupware, hypertext and precursors to the graphical user interface. ARC was founded to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line System, better known by its odd abbreviation, NLS.

Nelson (who had obtained a Bachelor's degree in philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1959 and a Master's degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1963)founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. He envisaged Xanadu as a world-wide electronic publishing system that would create a universal library open to all. He coined the term 'hypertext' in 1963 and published it in 1965. His concrete contributions are harder to quantify and his Xanadu project has been criticised for failing to deliver. He revels in his reputation as a 'contrarian' and probably does make a valuable contribtion to debate. His attempts to keep IT developments open and accessible to all are admirable.

The two men have two very different approaches and philosophies but both have, in their different ways, added to the sum of Information Technology. And the two strands of influence outlined above - broadly, Corporate/Government America vs freedom-loving America, still underpins much of IT development.




3. PARTICIPATION

And, as further proof that all things are connected, that could take us again fairly seamlessly into the subject of participation.

It is a wise adage that 'communication is not what is imparted, communication is what is received'. All communication becomes meaningless without a receptor. To make communication meaningful, the receptor has to participate. This essential requirement for a viewer/audience is summed up by the often-asked question: “If a tree falls, unobserved, in a forest – did it happen? (Alternatively, if a tree falls unobserved in a forest, did it make a sound?)

Until only a few decades ago, the mass media offered only a few opportunities for audiences to participate, such as phone-in talk shows or (for the print press) letters to the editor. Now technology (new media/ electronic media) has made possible participation to a much larger degree than previously, such as:
Press: Readers can vote on editorials
Television: Interactive polls ask for the opinions.
Websites allow immediate electronic responses.

Most of these are driven not only by technological advances but also by the underlying philosophy that humans are not passive receptacles for information, but participants who can add to the medium and the message.

At extreme reach, citizen journalism is a manifestation of participation. In this case, laymen have control over input – previously the realm of only paid professionals.

Participation is also happening on another level. In the past, viewers/listeners had to make an appointment with the programmes they wanted to receive (barring of course, if they recorded them) but now programmes are being presented as downloadable items available to watch as and when we wish. Online news allows us to select only the stories we want to read (as opposed to a newspaper one has to page through, thereby scanning most of it), some digital stations (such as Sky Plus) allow the viewer to pause or fast forward through programmes.

The BBC are developing an Interactive Media Player (iMP) - a broadband service that allows audiences to use the internet to download and watch programmes from BBC TV and Radio. Users can also set iMP to download programmes that they'll miss, which are coming up over the next seven days. iMP is similar to the bbc.co.uk RadioPlayer which allows one to listen to any BBC radio programme from the last seven days. The main difference with iMP is that audiences will be able to access TV programmes as well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/askbruce/articles/bbc.co.uk/imp_1.shtml

Channel 4 has just launched C4OD (Channel 4 On Demand).

The art world – being essentially media, and quick to exploit new trends and technology, and try to give meaning to them – have integrated the principles of participation and interactivity. The work of Installation artist Claire Bishop and Helio Oiticica's participatory environments are two examples of this.

Technological developments are changing the nature of art, journalism and media journalism by enabling greater participation. It is perhaps too early to quantify and analyse the ultimate impact on society. The current obsession with triviality, celebrity and popular culture does not suggest that new media is automatically going to create more educated and informed individuals.