The 3-Dimensional 2-Dimensional

Can 2-D be 3-D?

Blogging is fun, easy, instant, accessible, fast, and many other simple adjectives (not all good, either, particularly depending on who you ask). But it's much more complicated than these simple adjectives - it's changed the way companies market and advertise, the definitions of entertainment and journalism, geographic borders. And perhaps, most importantly, it's changed the way people communicate, socialize and interact with one another.

Blogging is meant to be interactive - 3D rather than 2D. Although when looking at a computer you see a flat object, the fun part of blogging (and the difference between a blog and a website) is that it is a two-way interaction, creating a three-dimensional feel. Can you have a conversation with your computer? Still up for debate, but blogging has taken this concept one step closer.

What is Web 2.0 and what does it mean for me?

What is social media? What is Web 2.0 and what does it mean for me?

I'll start with a quote from one of our readings, from A New Literacies Sampler (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies): "The logic is of use rather than participation; of reception and/or consumption rather than interactivity and agency."* The authors are describing the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0, although I think this definition can be used in a broader sense to cover the entire evolution of the internet to where it exists today. It's now open for a two-way conversation (or three, or four, or infinite!); an interactive experience, a democratic one in which your voice is 'heard'.

Social media describes those interactive sites, particularly the ones built around the concept of socializing. I would also say, however, that because of the interactivity of most sites today, that the definition of social media widens to include sites not only created specifically for social interaction (like Facebook and MySpace) but also any that encourage collaboration, as collaboration is inherently social in nature. As the article in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year (that was You, i.e. anyone reading/posting a blog right now) read, this is "a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before."** A community and collaboration that is instant and borderless (both in the traditional definition of space and also in medium - audio, video, text, etc..). But it's social because the computer isn't 2006's Person of the Year, You are; behind all of this communication and collaboration are people, socially interacting (not your mom's social interaction!).
It is worth noting here, that when googing 'social media' the first definition that comes up is wikipedia's...

So what does it mean for me? Or for You? I expect to learn in this class how to utilize the opportunities presented in Web 2.0 for collaboration and communication. My area of study is arts administration, and my specific area of interest is arts marketing, so I approach this subject of social media from a slightly different background than those in education.

I've included this quote below, because of the phrase "democratic notion." I'm intrigued, maybe not so much in reference to us all as stars (or People Magazine's Person of the Year), but to the idea that online the playing field is leveled. Can you truly be whatever you want to be? Online you can. On YouTube you can, or MySpace or Facebook, and that is a very democratic, and American, notion. And that's the lure...

"There's something admirable and uniquely American in the act of self-creation— but it helps if you actually create something. In a conceptual artist, cultivating emptiness falls within the acceptable bounds of shtick. (Even Warhol's originals were reproductions.) But Warhol also put his blankness behind a series of conspicuous velvet ropes, turning a democratic notion— we're all stars, or at least we all could be— into something slightly toxic."
Essay: Andy Was Right by Josh Tyrangiel (Time Magazine, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006)

References

*Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear (Editor): A New Literacies Sampler (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies). Peter Lang Publishing, 2007.
**Time's Person of the Year: You by Lev Grossman (Time Magazine, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006)