Summary

This entire chapter was about selfies. Most of it was about the history of selfies, how they have evolved, the ways they have been taken, the ways they have been displayed. One really good example of how selfies were displayed was Szucs display of selfies. She had been taking selfies since 1996, and had continued taking these selfies for 15 years with a polaroid camera. She took one selfies every single day, no matter what. Sometimes there was a scribble of something or a description of the photo in the white space at the bottom of a polaroid film. Some of her photos were silly, some were blurry, some were just very ordinary photos of her having drinks with friends or going on a walk in the park. Her art was displayed in the Elmhurst Art Gallery. Her photos make people think of Instagram, and the millions of selfies are posted everyday in social media. Today, many people are sharing their photographs on social media versus in an art gallery. As more and more ways different types of media become available, more and more ways to share your selfies has also become available. Other way of sharing selfies that was talked about in the article was in time-lapse video. These are videos of a collection of photos that have been taken over time. Something very similar to time-lapse videos is a photo booth. These booths take a series of pictures within a matter of seconds. Since the time is so limited, many times people natural reactions are captured. I think the idea of a photo booth may have been in mind when time-lapse videos were created.

Main Idea & Key Terms

I think that the main idea of Chapter 3 was to discuss the different ways people took selfies many years ago and how they expressed themselves with their selfies. The author also discussed the differences between the selfies that were taken 50+ years ago, to the selfies that are taken today.

Polaroid Camera: Small film camera that takes, develops, and prints photos in just seconds.

Hyper-textual: A link that contains information texts with related information.

Time-Lapse Photos: A video that is put together with a large amount of pictures to show a change overtime.

Photo Booth: A “vending machine” that takes a couple pictures in a matter of seconds to produce a film of photos.

Gallery Room: An area of a building that is used to display art. Usually long and narrow.

Profile Pictures: An image on a social media account that represents the account holder.

Commentary

One thing that really stood out to me in this article was the difference between the two time-lapse videos that were created. Ahree Lee uploaded a video of herself to YouTube, titled Me. It was a time-lapse video of photos she had taken on herself for the last three years. A few days later, Noah Kalina uploaded a similar video to YouTube, titled Everyday. He had also been taking pictures of himself everyday, but he had been taking photos for nearly six years. He thought of making the video after he has seen Lee’s video. For whatever reason, Kalina’s video became a lot more popular that Lee’s video. Kalina also has a wikipedia page, Lee does not. I see a problem with this because, even through they are very similar videos, the males video received a lot more praise than the females video. I think that gender and race may have a lot to do with this situation. Personally, I think that is ridiculous. Lee is an Asian women, and a lot of the comments on her video were very racist and sexist. While there were still nasty comments on Kalina’s video as well, it seems that Lee’s video received a lot more of the nasty comments. I think in this day and age, we can all agree that many people get way too out of hand with their comments. Many try to be funny but instead insult someone. I think that it is also time that people grow up, and instead of bashing others, they appreciate the beautiful art they have created.

Summary

This article talked a lot about the filters that are used throughout social media, and how the effect our daily lives. There are 2 main types of filters: technological and cultural. Technological filters allow us to express ourselves in certain ways, but not in others. For example, when we post pictures on social media, some we can post with a filter and some we cannot post with a filter. Some social media sites like Twitter limit our word count on a post. We don’t really think of these as filters, but we are using them almost everyday! Cultural filters are just as important. Cultural filters would include the rules that guide us to making choices. These change over time and are different in different cultures. One example the author gave was about a parent putting together a baby book. Things we include would be baby’s first smile, first tooth, first time crawling, first steps, etc. Things we would leave out would be baby screaming, the endless nights of trying to get baby to go back to sleep, baby with spit up all over the onesie he/she has been wearing for only an hour, etc. We are using filters like these everyday, and we probably don’t consider them filters!

One last thing she talked about that I found interesting was how picture filters have altered how we look at the world. Apply filters to photos allows us to become unfamiliar of the world we live in. Instagram’s filters make our selfies and pictures of our everyday lives look different, but the filter itself is used so often that instead of making us unfamiliar of the photo, it makes it become more cliché. This is something I had never thought about, probably because I don’t edit my photos much, but it really made me wonder.

Main Idea & Key Terms

The main idea of this article was to tell us about the filters there are throughout society. There are technological and cultural filters, genres to filters, and ways that these filter cause us “defamiliarize” ourselves. There are many different types of filters, but this article focused mainly on the filters we can use through technology.

Filter: Removal of unwanted content or impurities.

Terministic Screens: The terms in our language through which our understanding of the world is filtered.

Ethnography: The scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.

Defamiliarization: A theory or technique in which an artistic or literary work presents familiar objects or situations in unfamiliar ways prolonging the perceptive process.

Shirley cards: Images of a pale skinned women with dark hair against a white background.

Technological determinism: The belief that technology drives cultural change.

Commentary

Throughout the article, the author talked about all different types of filters. She started by talking about literal filters: a coffee filter, a piece of felt or paper that filters out dust and dirt, a cigarette filter stops some of the harmful substances from getting into the smokers lungs, and even a screen filtering out different colors. She also talked about real life filters: word counts, boosting the colors, adding borders, or even blurring the image. But one thing she didn’t talk much about are the filters we put on ourselves. I know I’ve said this a couple times now, but it is so important to realize this. We are filtering ourselves everyday, by deciding what to wear, how to act, how to do our hair, etc. But think about this, how many times a day do we filter ourselves? Do you think we have used filters too much, and we have now changed who we are completely? It isn’t something we think about everyday, but it should be. We shouldn’t have to change who we are just so people think that we are nicer people, or happier people. We shouldn’t be afraid to be who we are. So, stop filtering yourself so much that you are completely changing who you are! Be you, and I promise it will change your life.

One thing that really stood out to me while reading Chapter 2 of Seeing Ourselves Through Technology was the skin tone bias of photography. Throughout the last few pages of Chapter 2, the author talked a lot about this issue. A lot of the issue was from families of color, and they were not happy with the way that Kodak was improving their film. Keep in mind, this is from the 1950’s, when film was common. The problem was that early camera film was make to provide good detail for white faces, but the light sensitivity was so narrow that faces with darker skin were shown with hardly an detail. Often times, teeth and eyes were the only discernable features. You see how this can create a problem?

The skin tone bias of photography is a technological filter that distorts the photographic representations of many people, but it isn’t all about technology. In the mid-twentieth century, the common sterotypical drawings of African-Americans showed that is was not just camera technology causing the distortion, but it was also a cultural filter. The skin tone bias is, in some ways, similar to an Instagram filter, bot not a flattering one. Instead of making the person sparkle and shine, it dehumanizes them. One common reason for the beginning of selfies was instead of being the subject of other peoples photographs, you can be the subject of your own photographs.

Photographer McFadden said that one of the biggest reasons she began taking self-portraits and becoming a professional photographer was her horror at seeing photographs of herself. She never saw herself in the photos people took of her. For her, taking selfies was a way of avoiding the cultural and technological filters that you do not like or that do not represent you in a way that makes you feel like you.

Although this was not mentioned in the article,  I feel like another common issue is the amount of filters we put on ourselves. When most of us think of a filter, we think of filters that we put on our photographs that we post to social media, but what about the filters that we put on ourselves?

When we wake up in the morning, before we walk out the front door to start our day, we are applying filters to ourselves. For example, we filter our attitude for the day. We choose if we are going to be happy and outgoing, angry and rude, or quiet and relaxed. We decide if we are going to have a pleasant smile on our face or if we are going to have a blank stare. We decide if we are going to put makeup on or not. We decide what clothes are going to wear, and how we are going to present ourselves for the day. We decide all of these things, not even thinking that we are “filtering” ourselves. We just do our daily routine and get on with our day.

I want to leave you with this thought though. When you think about the person you were two years ago, do you think you have changed? It could be a lot, it could be a little. It could be a good change, but it could also be a bad change. Do you think that these changes were caused by too much filtering on yourself?

Summary

The Mechanical Bride was a confusing article for me to read, but I think the overall main concept was that when people pick up an article and decide they are going to read it, they don’t actually read it. Instead, they are scanning the article. While they are scanning, they may come across something that interests them and just focus on that. Many times they just come across the interesting part and say, “Oh, I didn’t know about that.” They might share it with a person or two, but then they move on. They aren’t really thinking about what it really means. I think the reason this article may be so confusing is because the author of the article wants you to figure out and really think about what the article is ACTUALLY about! This article also focused on the difference between modern technology, and the technology they had 50 years ago. The cover of a newspaper has changed from a page filled with 15 different topics to read, to a page with about three or four main articles on it that are continued onto other pages of the newspaper. The newspapers today really crystalizes what the author wants you to focus on and the front page shows what the author thinks is most important to read.

Main Idea & Key Terms

I think that the main idea of the article The Mechanical Bride is that people are not reading to take in the information. When they are reading an article, they are simply scanning. The author of this article wanted people to really focus on what the article really means.

Quantum: a particular amount or quantity.

Intolerable: unable to endure something; excessive.

Potentialities: a chance or possibility that something will happen or exist in the future.

Incorrigible: not able to be corrected, improved, or reformed.

Notoriously: used to emphasize that a quality or fact, typically a bad one, is well known.

Commentary

One thing that this article really made me think about was the natural habits of a reader. When someone picks up an article that they intend to read, they expect the author to have structured the article. This means that introduction paragraph comes first, and it includes the main idea and the thesis statement clearly. The three supporting paragraphs come next, and these supporting paragraphs really give us a bigger picture of the main idea. Lastly, the closing paragraph and this wraps up the whole article and by the end, we understand. Readers expect to be “fed” the main idea of the article. When we aren’t “fed” the information we want, we get confused. We wonder what the heck we just read! When the author of The Mechanical Bride wrote this article, this was his intention. He wanted to make it confusing for us to read so that we really have to think and dig deep to find the main idea. The authors intentions worked for me! I was extremely confused, and even after reading the article three or four times, I was still a little bit confused. For the people who read this article for pleasure, they might have understood it better, but I won’t lie, I don’t read anything for pleasure. That might have made it a bit more difficult for me to comprehend.

I want to start by defining the term “folklore.” Folklore is defined as the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth. Let this sink in and think about a time you heard a story about a past generation. Maybe it was a story from your grandma or your grandpa, or maybe even your mom.

When I think about the folklore that I am creating, I am left speechless. This isn’t something I think about everyday. When I am posting on Instagram or Facebook, I am not left thinking about my digital footprint that I am leaving by posting. I don’t think that my digital footprint is “monumental” or anything of the sort. However, I do think that if my kids were to come across one of my Instagram posts, they would really see who I was when I was a teenager or adult. While I have deleted many of the photos I used to have, I’m sure there is a way for them to still see them. My digital footprint consists of constant pictures of me, smiling and laughing, out with friends having a great time, making memories with my parents and siblings, and exploring. They would see their “mom” who really did her best to have the best life she could under the circumstances. If someone who knew nothing about me came across one of my Instagram posts, I think that they would see that I am an overall happy person who loves to vacation, spend time with her significant other, and has a never-ending love for her family and friends. They might see someone who has been torn down and built herself back up, they might see someone who looks like a spoiled brat. It’s all about perspective. But no matter how they see me, it doesn’t matter. I’m not creating my digital footprint to impress or interest anyone.

If someone really wanted to find more information about me and my personal life, they would probably have the best luck on Facebook. Here, I am constantly posting pictures, sharing meals I want to make, sharing posts from other people that mean something to me, and occasionally changing my personal information about myself. If someone were to come across my Facebook, they would probably think the same thing they thought when they came across my Instagram photos. They would also see that I share a lot of personal things on my Facebook, such as other peoples stories about their experience with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. They would also see that I share a lot of posts about foods I want to make, and 90% of them I have forgotten about and will never make anyways.

In conclusion, I feel that if a person were to come across my social media and try to decipher who I am today, they would be able to do a pretty good job. They could find out my friends, family, hobbies, and I’m sure a couple other things. All of my different social media sites say something different about me, but overall, they all have the same big picture. I’m not ashamed of my digital footprint.

After reading “Into the Blogosphere,” I learned many new things about blogging and the blogosphere. Throughout the article, the author talked about many different ideas and discussed so many facts that I never had a clue about.

One key idea that the author discussed that really interested me was the filtering between blogs and media outlets. When it comes to blogging, we are aloud to post about anything we want and say whatever we want without having to worry about the audience. We still have the fear of criticism floating around in the back of our minds, but when it comes to releasing our opinion, that trumps fear. Now, I do not mean that bloggers do not think about their audience. By saying this, I mean that blogging is not a public platform that has to sugarcoat what they say for their audience, whereas a media platform, such as CNN or KTTC, have to be careful with what they cover due to laws and democracy. Media is extremely democratizing, and everything that is posted in the media is posted with the publics best interest in mind. Blogs are posted with the audiences best interest in mind, but the blogger also feels that is the audience does not like what the post about, they can just simply stop reading. We have a lot for freedom when it comes to blogging,  whereas a media outlet does not. You cannot just “unsubscribe” to a media outlet like you can with a personal blog. I think this concept is amazing, and I feel that blogging will become a main way that the public finds out about the “bigger picture” of a main event that a media outlet is covering.

Another concept in this article that interested me was the theory of the iceberg. The author stated that two thirds of blogs have not been updated in two months and are considered “abandoned.” 1.09 million of these blogs have been deemed “one-day wonders.” The remainder of these abandoned blogs only lasted roughly four months. Of the 1.4 million active blogs, 80.8% contained external links, and only 9.9% contained a current link to a traditional news source. Perseus Development Company conducted this study, and at the end of the study, they concluded that the blogosphere takes on the form of an iceberg. When a blog is abandoned, it is like a large bulk of the iceberg that floats away, and is considered “out of sight, out of mind.” Blogs that are frequently updated, are read by a wide variety of people, and have consistent links are considered “blogs above the waterline.” This concept is fascinating, but also saddening to me. When I think of someone becoming a blogger, I think of all the time, motivation, and effort they put into it. Blogging is not easy, and seeing such a large number of blogs that have gone abandoned is saddening because it shows that people just ran out of motivation for blogging. While I am not a blogger fanatic, I can imagine how hard it would be to realize you no longer have the motivation to blog, especially if you thought it would become a big part of your life. Of the active blogs, it is amazing to see such a high number. To know that people are being seen, their opinions are being heard, and people are responding to them is wonderful.

I feel that someday, the “blogosphere” will expand and it will become a new way for the public to find out the bigger picture of the big news stories that are being covered. The public will be able to read blogs about things that the media does not talk about, they will discover new opinions for people who would otherwise not be heard, and they will maybe find a passion for writing something on their own. The blogosphere will expand, and the expansion will be life changing. The article was eye-opening to me.

Summary

This article had many main points that stood out to me. One in particular would be the reference of icebergs and the blogosphere. The author stated that the inactive blogs are like an iceberg that floats away, “out of sight out of mind.” When blogs are more active, they are considered the icebergs that made it “above the waterline.” Their blogs are updated more often, read by many people, and have consistent links. This stood out to me because I feel like if I were to create a blog on my own, I would maybe pay attention to it for a week before I forgot about it or ran out of ideas, you know, out of sight out of mind. But there are definitely other bloggers that really pay attention to their blogs for a couple months to a year, and their blogs are the ones that are going to make an appearance in the future.

Another thing that is different between bloggers is the way a blogosphere exists to the blogger. The blogosphere exists more for the people who use their blogs more frequently. It resides in the mind of the blogger as an online, “imagined community” resulting from the shared experience of instant publishing. There are different ideas of a blogosphere, but it still largely depends upon traditional media sources for breaking news and for costly investigative reporting. The blogosphere has been said to form a unique relationship between blogs and the global media outlets. Blogs cover stories in ways that the mainstream media could not or would not do. Bloggers are not afraid to share the ugly truth about events, and this can evoke feelings of shared experiences among readers and other bloggers. One example that the article gave was the events on September 11, 2001. The media covered the story in a PG rated way, where as personal bloggers shared the ugly truth about what the event meant to them. Some may have shared vivid vision of the events, others may have shared their feelings on the event, and other may have lost a loved one in the tragedy. The media covered the story is a political way, and bloggers covered the story in a personal way.

The last thing I wanted to point out was about the empowerment of a blog. A blog allows the author to have greater freedom to provide radiant, personal, and political commentary that would not be possible within the framework of a traditional media outlet. A blogger can share whatever they want, whenever they want, with whomever they want, and I think this is amazing. A blog is almost like a personal diary, expect you are clicking from link to link instead of flipping from page to page. The imagined community of blogging allows users to both experience the shared base of knowledge and contribute directly to the culture consciousness.

Main Idea and Key Terms

The main idea of this article was the the blogosphere is expanding in ways we never thought it would. There are many different types of blogs that are out there and have yet to be discovered. Blogs are very different from media outlets.

Blogosphere: The community in which a blogger enters when they begin blogging. “The community of all the bloggers.”

Imagined Community: All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact, and maybe even the blogosphere, are imagined.

Nano-audiences: Blogs that are rarely linked to by other blogs, are closely related to personal diaries rather than the common link-commentary blogs, and usually have an audience that consists of family and friends.

Mass Ceremony: Individuals receive information relevant to their lives within the national community. An example would be the daily newspaper.

Blogdom: a single blog, composed of distinct, short chunks of information that is published in reverse chronological order

Commentary

I know this was already covered in my notes, but this part of the article really stood out to me. On the second page of the article, the author talks about how the blogosphere still largely depends on media outlets for breaking news and investigative reports and findings, but the blogosphere has added another global mediascape for people to refer to. They gave the example of the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. When it comes to media outlets covering, they are all getting the same information about the same topic. When events like these are covered on blogs, they information is all different. The blogs that were posted on or about the events on September 11th are all different. Some shared about their loses, some shared about their experience, and others shared their feelings toward the event. I think that it is important for blogs to stay active so that the public can get the raw story of the event.

For me, this article was a little hard to comprehend. I felt that some of the details that the author used were unnecessary, and made it harder to understand. The details the author used did make the article more interesting though. I really liked that he had information from previous decades, as well as information from today. When the author began describing information about present day, I started to understand it better and become more interested.

One thing that really stood out to me in this article was on page 13, when they started talking about lurkers. Markham wrote: ‘through conversations, self and reality are co-created and sustained.’ We ‘write self into being,’ but to ‘recognize our own existence in a meaningful way, we must be responded to.’ I think this is something that really pertains to todays world. Many people are not satisfied with their number of followers on Instagram, or the amount of replies the receive on Twitter. This makes some people feel meaningless. Although this may seem like a silly concept, it is something that goes on in todays society.

Overall, I found this article very interesting, although it was hard to comprehend at times. There was a lot of information with a lot of facts behind each topic.

I have never had a blog, therefore I have never had to choose a copyright for a blog, so coming into this I didn’t know much. After reading through the options for copyrights, I found that creativecommons.org/share-your-work seemed to be the best option. One of the main reasons I chose this was because it is easy to use and it’s free. What’s better than that? It gives you step by step instructions, and for a first-timer, there isn’t anything easier than that.

Also, as a first time blogger choosing a copyright, I didn’t really care much about it. Who cares if someone uses a picture you posted on your blog without your permission? It’s just a picture, right? I thought that too, and after thinking more about it, I realized that if they are using an incredible picture that you posted and someday makes a million dollars off of it, I would want credit for that picture!

Overall, these are the main reasons I chose this copyright. There are many great copyright options out there, but I feel that this one is the best one for me.