~ Eric Knutson, Life is a journey...

Coming home from a long journey (kind of a Walkabout) I visited Lori and Fam. in her Antioch home last summer. It was a fine warm sunny afternoon, kids playing on the swing and swimming in the water. It was Jacqui's (the friend across the street) birthday and Eric, her husband, had planned for friends to just start showing up until she figured it out that this was all for her special day.
Eric cooked burgers on the BB-Q, girls gabbed about this and that, kids ran around in their crazy frenzy - the way kids are when they're gathered as a pack. I had to get on the road just before sunset to make it home by dark.
That was the happy family picture that I left, and will always remember.
It was just about a half an hour before sunset when I had to go. Seems like moments after being on the road... Eric manned the swing that arced out over the water. We didn't know it, but the wheels of fate were already in motion.
Soon came an accident that transformed everything - It was a bad choice. Eric's destiny would reorder that day.
Weird and freaky things happen - we say 'Why me?' -
The fickle finger chooses... we know not who or why.
It then becomes our mystery until we die.
His intentions were for a happy day and he had done a great job.
Now, everything is different.
There are new priorities on the horizon.
The paths, the lessons, the experiences, the love of family and friends will all take on deeper meanings. It will be a harder life; paths turned by fate need more attention and study. But, come the trail's end the work done could become clearer as to what it was really all about.

This is a note in a bottle tossed into the vast Cyber-ocean

and if it reaches you, it was a fated thing.

Check out Eric's web. Help out if you can.

"Everyone for Eric"

Change and the Information Age

There was one last task to be performed in our 'Emerging Media Practices' class.
Three from nine Final Essay questions needed thought, attention, and responses.
These were the lucky ones I decided on.

Q#1 I chose was: “Lessig (reading 11-3) claims that digital tools ‘dramatically change the horizon of opportunity for those who could create something new.” Do you agree? If so, in what way do you believe your horizons may have changed because of the ideas and tools you have acquired in this class?

The Changing Media Producer

“…Changing the horizon for opportunity…” now there’s a meaty piece of statement. That can be defined by a Grand Canyon of choices given. We as people sometimes have difficulty with too many choices. As young people (little ones), if the choices are limited, we can be guided to which ones suit and define our levels of interest. Yet we have no (or very little) experience on what to base that final decision on other than simple pleasure. As we grow, the knowledge base grows, comfort levels fluctuate, interests become focused, and hopefully we move toward choices that motivate us for reasons of skill, participation and social acceptance. Or, at the very least acknowledgment…and then we grow some more. Soon the thing called ‘priority’ comes higher in to play. Rational thinking argues about ‘Cost and Benefit’ and they also become part of the deciding factors.
It might have been Einstein who said, “The knock of opportunity is not often answered because it sounds like too much work.” To some, “…changing the horizon of opportunity…” may cause one kind of person to spin on their heels and head completely in another direction. Those are not the kind of people that will be discussed here. They are mostly boring anyway; their parts in any continuing story will most likely end long before the tail gets interesting. Change is usually not on the side of the past. It’s actually the leading cause of extinction. What existed before ‘the change’ will without a doubt be dramatically effected by ‘the change.’ So, depending on what side of the ‘change’ fence you stand on, will influence your opinion of it. The impact can be a small, a simple alteration…or, all encompassing, dramatic and metamorphic. Speaking to the latter, the Internet is not just a series of events leading to a new outcome; the digital age has ascended down like the book of Genesis. The apple has been divvied up. All who nosh on the quanta, all who have shared and contributed to this now infinite range in information - are changing (threatening) facts and tradition with each new digital erudition.
I have found the first bite to taste quite good actually, in a “Vegetables are good for you.”

kind of way.
The digital age arrived a short while ago. Whether this is a good or bad occurrence is debatable. The past speaks from wise old eyes. The hereafter is right now enjoying its moment in the on-deck circle, swinging a weighted bat. What’s to come it is not incapable of falling to this simple fact, (the future will also be ‘changed’ by its heirs) it is simply getting ready to catch the wave. Courageous and free, enjoying its autonomy, the ‘Entity Internet’ is the new fate.
In speaking earlier about tradition; restrictions, control, regulation; these kinds of standards successfully structured society as we know it today. The big Q is, if we stand on the backs of any of those values, could we see over the fence, or would the back break under the stress? This commentator simply worries about the quality of out-put. It’s only as good as the in-put. Pray for a balance. Crap, and quality, misleading, and meaningful, genuine, and junk, specious and substantial, in hopes that the artistic and creative cream will always rise to the top. Cultural systems are not supposed to be creative, it’s habitual practice, but it can set a standard to things that want to venture above and below the line. Then, we ask, “What is the line?” Is it intellectual, is it chronological? Is it political? Is it a line of process and examination? And who but I think these lines have more value than other lines? And how would the ‘Masters’ feel about it?
Returning to the original consideration, “…digital tools changing opportunity for those who could create something new.” To disagree, would be fall in line with one of those boring people I alluded to at the beginning of the story – and highly resistant to a relocation of values. Therefore, I agree.
I polled a few kids I know (not really enough to place in the annals of Gallop poll history) but enough to be surprised by the commonality of the answers.
Mainly, ‘That would be cool!”
They would say to the idea that the net could figure out the kind of music they like and not bother them with other junk tunes not of interest. To that I say; “Exposure kiddies!”
Perspective is what rounds you out, deepens your appreciation, and rewards you with more information. In my time, we called it “Food for thought.”
Creativity in its purest form is a very large unit of our total essence - in my growingly humble opinion. It is in harmony with evolution. To look at something new and see opportunity, to listen quietly and hear an idea, this is what lights up this writer’s human spirit.
In viewing creativity for the sake of its ‘bottom-line, embracing these new
‘digi-techno-tools’ will be exciting. They also will be numerous, complicated, aggravating, frustrating, as well as, joyful and accomplishing, (kind of like math.) And Viva the choices!

They will continue to delight and confuse me - well into the future.

Change And The Information Age

Q2 that I chose ~ Conventional wisdom assumes that media audiences are generally passive. What is the evidence that members of the media audience are, in fact, quite active?

The Changing Media Consumer

Conventional wisdom was correct in its day – a viewing audience may not have had a voice – however, they were indeed listening. Advertising told that story. So, given the opportunity to share in the headlines, to grab the limelight, to pop up onto the podium…what human wouldn’t spring at the chance to be heard? No matter how little they may have to say!

A residue of voices now smear across millions of ‘My Space’ pages. Billions of blogs have grayed the line between professional, journalistic and armchair observer – who happen to have a knack for entertainingly writing what they happen to see or think. And how many faces flood the U-Tube server hourly? We’re drowning in insecurity. The need for attention, to shock the nation, to win the ‘Outrageous’ competition, this is a force to be recognized and somehow dealt with. Though that’s not why I speak today.

The media audience has become not the audience of the past, it is quite active today and the evidence is in the above examples. Added to those are the gabby chat-rooms and the endless e-mails. “The longer you sit on them, the higher they pop.” Dauntingly we have a lot to say, and the platform is the whole planet.

We, the evolutionary children of mass-communication, like a restless youth, would grow weary of non-participation, suspicious of limited content, and anxious to play a bigger role. These irritants were bound to grow as an audience evolved. As technology developed, we asked more out of our youth, out of ourselves, and more from our entertainment. This kind of ‘reaching’ will cause restlessness to passive involvement.

Eventually.

That mark has been met. Applied science is the proverbial serpent in the garden. From the Telegraph to T-ivo, we feed the curious spirit. And now, it has come into its own, as the fated “Information Age.” So, what’s the media doing about that? It does what it has always done, try to control it, own it, and direct it. It conducts studies. Whole institutions have evolved from thoughtful examination on the posture of the media audience. Scholars have made their life’s work out of surveys, research, polls, even incubators of controlled environments. How fascinating it is to study how we tick, and what floats our boats.

Media is a wonder wheel, a voluptuous vehicle, which is transporting human kind as a species through the stretch of time.

If the item creates pleasure – well then by all means, and quickly, patent it, bottle it, and market it. If the monkey brain decides it cannot live without it – whatever ‘it’ is at that time, it will be acquired. New Item: ‘E-bay!’ another example of your average consumer getting a charge out of interactivity.

The evidence is all around, depending on your ‘POV’ (point of view.) Our special needs and interests are about as different as our opinions. Whether personal or social, passive or interactive, the media or the market, the audience or the anchors, the viewer or the viewed, they are all symbiotic in their very nature. If we listen we can learn. If we learn we can grow. If we’ve grown, then it’s been a good day.

Change And The Information Age

Q3 that I chose ~ Why is the fact that the Web is “profoundly unmanageable,” in Weinberger’s view, so crucial to its success as a communication and information medium?

The Changing Media Industry

The human experience parallels our wild childhood. The parental influence is simply our past. But when that child has come to young adulthood, when that mind has ideas of its own, which differ from the parent, it is useless to quarrel or oppose. It ultimately means it is time to release the grip. The parent must be confident that the best job was done. Question your work only once, cross your fingers, close your eyes, hold your heart and let go. For all the differences we possess, religious and political, from cultural to artistic, our destinies lay in the hands of how well we raise the child.

‘The unmanageable Web’…with babies at the helm poses questions of our eventual course. The navigation tools have been investigated, but they are new, and still out gathering information on this maiden voyage into ‘Absolute Connectivity.’ These tools also hold a reflective quality. Because of the need to put behaviors so openly into Cyberspace, if the earth could collectively mirror human kind as a united image, as a whole, what would the universe see?

I wonder.

What conclusion would the universe draw from our collection of voices and actions? Much of the identities spread on the Web are untrue. The anonymity factor is another human failing, though the core of us hasn’t changed very much at all from aught-one. I remember many moons ago asking a cute guy at a bar who he was and what he did. Eight out of ten times I did that, their responses were, at best, misleading.

So, this guy and this girl at a bar reached only a tiny piece of space around them. Put that load of malarkey on the net and you get some far-reaching potential. The basic premise remains: to have a platform that allows us to be bigger than we are, and infinitely more attractive.

So, what’s the up-shot? Now that the web is here, and here to stay, what will its contribution be? Creativity without control, imagination minus restriction, free speech, free thinkers, no fences, no borders. My God, that sounds like heresy! That is the age-old reason why conflicts abound.

To leave the Net unleashed, to allow its activity to remain limitless, and to keep it liberated is a fight for all people. What about the crazy ones? There have always been nuts, psychos and lunatics out in the world, as well as thieves and cons. Our world population was very tiny, comparatively, in days past. There are far more zeros in our population number today than in days of yore. Hence, per capita, the numbers of insane neurotics only rises proportionately.

Concurrently, there has always been war, poverty, and greed . . . controlling the Net, harnessing its direction would be a waist of time and money, and would not solve any of the above world issues.

In the words of a Beatle, “Let it be.” The net may be the largest collection of people and writings in the history of the world. So, how’s the quality of the content?

To say there is enough to keep an individual entertained, informed and educated, I’d say that particular quality is monitored well enough. What’s mind blowing is the fact that no ‘One’ person owns it, OUTRIGHT. The ‘Entity Internet’ has no ‘One’ boss, no ‘One’ owner, yet it’s monolithic as a unit. To control the content, monitor its copywriting material, and track the stealing of songs and ideas, these issues will get their day in (and out of) court. But, to lose the creative flow that every individual wants to share in, would truly be a crime.