Strategically Communicating

Cracking open Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, a book about the impact of the internet on our brains and culture, I got nostalgic to be holding a book and turning its pages to find out what would come next. It’s not that I don’t read books. I just read them in pieces. It’s as though I’m reading online content — in small, digestible pieces. This habit has rendered every flat surface in my home littered with stacks of books “in progress,” and my memory somewhat incapable of recalling which bit of knowledge came from what source. My nostalgia grew out of knowing that I’m going to read this book, cover to cover, in a span of time that will allow the introduction to still be fresh in my mind by the time I reach the conclusion. Honestly, I keep struggling to accept that that’s even possible anymore.

And, for some of us, it might not be.

Studies of neurophysiological processes have found that the human brain is very “plastic.” Our brains evolve to adapt to new experiences. Thanks to internet-based technology, our attention spans are suffering as we become accustomed to bite-size information. The infographic below, itself a form of bite-size communication, illustrates this trend. Unless we deliberately exercise our brains to read long passages, that skill could die out. The issue of weakened memory and attention span is so prevalent in our culture that today I saw an ad for lumosity.com, a website dedicated to “brain training.”

QUESTION: Do you feel like you’re losing your mind? Or, in this internet age, are we simply repurposing our minds to function differently? How much effort are you willing to invest in brain maintenance?

There were several times while reading the first half of The Shallows, What the Internet is doing to our Brains when I encountered new information. Many forms of media were discussed and I was surprised to learn so much about the creation of the book for example. Here is an item that I use daily and greatly enjoyed, however, I felt so ignorant about its conception. I guess I was taking this great tool for granted.

Carr explains that books were first only read out loud and he described Saint Augustin’s amazement when he saw Ambrose reading silently. Carr expresses how in cultures that use letter-based-alphabets “no spaces separated the words in early writing … words ran together without any break across every line on every page.” He goes on to say that “the lack of word separation reflected language’s origins in speech.” (Carr, 2011: 61) People would read out loud to facilitate the understanding of the book, further highlighting the oral component of the first books.

Carr also points out how a lot of people do not read much anymore. He explains that they lose focus or interest after reading a couple of paragraphs online. Many internet content producers are keeping this fact in mind when they publish work. Newspapers agencies for example often accompany text with video to keep their audience engaged.

I feel that there is an interesting connection that can be made between the fact that books were first transcriptions of oral speech and the new tendency of internet consumers to stay away from text but devour video and audio content. Could it be that this technology has come full circle, from oral speech to written content, back to verbal communication?

Text is often used to explore very complex issues, using many words. Knowing that less and less people read, as journalists how to we keep highlighting the complexity of things while producing something that people will be engaged with?

“The need for tighter scheduling and synchronization of work, transport, devotion, and even leisure provided the impetus for rapid progress in clock technology,” writes (Nicholas Carr, 2010) about 18^th century Europe in The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brain.  Social mores were affected by the technology of the day.

So what’s up today? Our social mores are still being influenced by technology (for better or worse.) A Sunday, Oct. 28, New York Times article by Carolyn Tell talks about how not long ago, the only way to break a social engagement was to call or in-person create a white lie along with a profuse apology. But disturbingly in these modern times, she says, “When our fingers type our way out of social obligations, the barriers to canceling have been lowered. Not feeling up for going out? Have better plans? Just type a note on the fly and hit send.”

She terms this “digital flakiness” and states that the face-to-face-consequences of having to disappoint have all but disappeared.

Question: Have you pushed the boundaries of social engagement by a last-minute change in plans, that if you had had to call the person or face them, you would have thought twice about doing so? Sociologists call these last-minute change of plans micro-coordination. Do you see this “indeterminacy” as a force in your life?

It feels wrong to be this close to my computer screen directly after being informed, in great detail, that the Internet has been sneaking into my brain and rewiring my neurological functions throughout my web-connected life. It didn’t exactly come as a surprise, but now I feel like I need to wrap tinfoil around my cranium.

The act of reading this book in itself has proven to be a strange, revelatory experience. As I sat on my couch, The Shallows in hand, I felt a tight spot buried somewhere deep inside my brain slowly loosen, as though my mind was delighting in consuming knowledge from a surface that wasn’t electronically lit from within. It must have been something like relaxing.

It’s significant that Carr chose to deliver his narrative in the form of a book, after explicitly stating that even literature scholars have trouble sitting through more than a few paragraphs these days, but it was a smart choice. I immediately recognized the effects of constant internet use reflected in my own struggle to concentrate – that ugly “permanent state of distractedness” Carr talks about in Chapter 6 – and was sad to find myself brimming with nostalgia for a medium that I just don’t enjoy the same way I once did.

In the prologue, Carr echoes that McCluhan quote we keep hearing: “The medium is the message.” Imagine The Shallows as a film or online article. How would its message be altered? What would be lost?

Here’s the link to the Onion video I mentioned in class.

Having worked for a small newspaper as a writer and one of its first bloggers, I empathized with the journalists in “Copyright, fair speech, and the public’s right to know” who expressed confusion and anxiety about copyright and fair trade laws on the web. As a relatively new medium, the Internet raises questions about fair use that don’t always apply to print laws. It’s also not always possible to look to a large, reputable online news source for guidance.

The Huffington Post is one of the most prominent examples of this. As “Copyright” states,

“Their biggest concern was with the Huffington Post, a site described by one journalist as ‘brilliantly evil.’ Most interviewees said the Huffington Post seizes the core of their stories and buries the link, leaving viewers without a reason to read the original work.”

Still, The Huffington Post won a Pulitzer prize last year, and it doesn’t seem as if anyone is threatening HuffPo’s power. And now a new app, titled “Summly,” is making headlines for its ability to compress articles into concise 200-word statements better than any app before it. Huffington Post recently reported on this, ironically posing the question: “Therein lies the rub to Summly. Why go to news websites (and see their ads) if all of the most relevant information is on the app?”

Will online copyright law finally make headlines as companies threaten powerful blogs (and their click rates) like the Huffington Post?

As a designer, copyright awareness is often a daily reality for me. Whether the concern is about protecting my own original work or taking care to properly reference someone else’s pattern, design, or image, copyright can be a very murky area when it comes to creative endeavors. According to a University of Rhode Island music video, copyright exists to promote creativity and Metropolis magazine offers that, “it protects the manner in which an idea is expressed.” For creatives with completed, original works, copyright is a very good thing.

But what about sources of inspiration?

The creative process relies on inspiration and/or the learning of new techniques, before a work can be made. Unfortunately, there is a fine line between inspiration and outright copying. According to conversations on various design blogs (e.g. papernstitch, benzie, decor8), simple ignorance of that distinction perpetuates copyright infringement. The consensus among designers seems to be that if the work is for personal use, it’s okay to replicate. But if it will garner a profit, it’s infringing on copyright.

Much of the responsibility of following the rules and educating the public rests on designers. One commenter, Jen, said, “I’ve had clients who will tell me they want ‘that exact flower’ and I just have to talk to them about the process of creating illustrations and graphics.” The reality of intellectual property in today’s internet-saturated culture is easily overlooked. Just because creative work is easy to access, doesn’t mean it’s available to copy.

How can creatives better educate ourselves, our clients, and each other to be better stewards of intellectual property?

Napster, Rapidshare, and other file sharing services have threatened the role of copyrights in our society in the past, but the biggest challenge is yet to come. Some tech writers believe that the next attack on our current understanding of copyrights will be three-dimensional.

If you follow the thought of Chris Anderson (Wired magazine, issue Oct. 2012), desktop-sized 3-D printers that are easy to operate might change current business models and turn all of us from consumers into makers! But Anderson doesn’t stop there. He argues that 3-D printers will launch the next industrial revolution. The digital on-demand and customization culture that has revamped the face of our media landscape might change the way products are made too.

Anderson’s idea raises plenty of questions and red flags regarding copyrights and fair use. But consider, that since the Copyright Act of 1976, the legislation has evolved and nowadays “more of the world around us is copyrighted than ever before” (Aufderheide & Jaszi, 2012, p.3). So it seems likely that our perception of what should be copyrighted and what should be part of the public domain may change again.

Will the role of copyright and fair use change with technological innovation, like the media did? What if the biggest asset to an economically competitive market won’t be its natural and human resources anymore, but its liberal copyright law?

Reading about copyright and fair use laws this week got me thinking about the role of bloggers and the new media paradigm in general. The new media landscape is one in which ideas and information are more widely shared and appropriated than ever before, but the media topics that are being appropriated by the endless supply of “content creators” are much less voluminous than the  “transformative” works that flood the marketplace of ideas, making it much more difficult for media producers who invest capital in actual traditional reporting to place a high monetary value on their service/products.

I point this out because, although I’m both a photographer and a writer, I’m highly averse to republishing photos on my blog without either gaining permission or paying a subscription fee while I will readily copy paragraphs of text from articles. My personal feelings on this issue seem to be reflected in this article from the Center for Social Media: “Photo editors were less likely than other editors to intuitively employ fair use rights. They showed great sensitivity to the concerns of photographers, who generally asserted that photographs they or their photographer peers created should not be reused without licensing.”

Why is it so commonplace to appropriate a journalist’s written reporting under “fair use” but the cultural stigma (within the journalistic media) related to republishing copyrighted photos remains in place? How can we accurately judge the value of these services if this disparity in fair use standards exists within the mass media?

Every time we press the share button in Facebook or retweet something we like, we could violate copyright law.

We find ourselves sharing pictures that have lost their connection to the original photographer. Sometimes we don’t ask for permission to do so, but we share them anyway. Social media applications have changed our view of copyrights, they made people works seem public.

Programs like Instagram allow us to share and download pictures without even acknowledging copyrights. It’s not only pictures that suffer from copyright violation, but the creativity behind them too. I can’t count how many photos I saw of people jumping and their picture taking while they are still on the air. Who is the original photographer that introduced this idea? We don’t know.

In commercials, fashion and many other industries it is the same thing. Ideas are almost all the same, but with different products. I’m wondering, do they all have the same copyrights or do they share the same thoughts? Who is following who?

Although there are many regulations and laws that protect copyrights, I believe it should start within us. We shouldn’t be challenging and jeopardizing our ethics and morals.

Recently, case of plagiarism was all over the press in Saudi Arabia.  A famous Islamic scholar thought it would be okay to steal a young woman’s original work, but gladly the government stepped in:

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20120125116308

How do you protect yourself from violation of copyrights laws in social media? How can we implement copyright laws in social media, especially among teenagers?