Slow Living

The presentation in class on the topic of slow living was rather intriguing and revitalizing in a sense. The progress that one town can develop and the recognition as being a slow-life area is something that could alter the outlooks on life for years to come. The point that I found to be questionable was when the presenter asked whether or not it is somewhat of a disturbance to the lifestyle of those in the town when people from out of town visit and are looking for the quick, economically budget-fitting deals that a Walmart can offer. Not everyone can be aware of the ways in which each town operates, and a lifestyle that is far more noticeable is often favoured by the government and diplomats when implementing business and when efforts and opportunities to make money are at stake.

Will slow living trend into something greater across not just the nation, but grow throughout the world, even greater than the examples brought to attention such as the centre in Japan? In other words, is such a lifestyle feasible?

Wikipedia's Spanish Fork Labour Strike

Throughout the course and throughout the semester of studying imaginaries and materialities, the discussion of free labour and our own personal objectifications and oppositions to shared free media has been underlined as being quite central to the themes of the course. This is not the first time Gehl has been considered as having profound impacts on the ways in which we legitimize our behaviours and actions in the public sphere as well as online. In the article, Gehl’s main points are centred on a few main topics. First and foremost, he speaks most specifically on the idea of free labour, and in this article’s case, the case of Wikipedia and the Spanish Fork Labour Strike is most pervasive. As well, his points are fixated quite dominantly on Marxist theories, and the design of class structure in society, and in particular the political economy of communication and social media. Much of what he discusses in regards to social media is incredibly, “…pervasive and endemic to late capitalism…” (Gehl, 118) Meaning there are those operating and performing the labour, and those managing, owning, and reaping the benefits of the means of production (a bourgeoisie – proletariat distinction). The most salient threads and framing issues of this text are: networked capitalism, labour strikes, and essentially labour rights. In the article, Gehl states, “…historical and sociological studies have shown that class consciousness does not inevitably arise as capitalism polarizes people into the two grand competing groups, owners and workers” (Gehl, 124). People are aware of their stance in society, and people are often attempting to make themselves more stable and fortunate, however, I believe that an altercation to one's rights and ownership of information is far more pervasive than the fact that one is living in a two bedroom or seven bedroom house.

Do you agree that is was right for the worker in Spain to stand forth and present his objections, diminishing the outlook on the entire enterprise, established by the owners and founders of Wikipedia?

The Debate on Privacy

The idea of Privacy vs. Publicity comes up a few times throughout the book Status Update. The internet has created a breach between the two through the constant monitoring of people through social media. We feel connected to the people we follow and therefore there can be a disconnect in what is considered private and public. When someone chooses to live their life publicly online, they get the side effect of having less of a private life.

When do you think following a person on social media goes too far?

Social media stars have made YouTube videos and posed tweets and so on about a breach in their privacy such as a fan showing up to their front door when they never disclosed their address and so on. A lot of the time we see this in the Hollywood world when celebrities have private photographs leaked or when emails get hacked and shared on the Internet. We can look at the huge Ashley Madison hack that exposed all of the sites users. These are all examples of a breach in privacy.

See here a video of the popular YouTuber TheSyndicateProject who talks about fans showing up to wherever he is staying and simply asks for privacy.

Can someone who has chosen to live their life publicly ever truly have a private life?

When someone publicizes something they are wanting the whole world to see. Whereas when someone posts to their private Facebook they have in mind that that post will stay between them and their friends list. But since we are posting things onto a public platform, is everything fair game for anyone to post or share?

Holistic Health as means of Control - A critique of Sharma's Reading

I would  like to use this blog post to comment on Erika Ymana’s blog post The sedentary lifestyle of the desk worker. I would like to point out this post as I would like to offer a different critique of Sharma’s chapter, “Dharma at the Desk: Recalibrating the sedentary worker”. After reading this chapter I could not help but focus on how holistic wellness approaches to sedentary life may be regarded as a means of control. By such I mean, if workers are never encouraged to question the state of their workplace, they continue to work and comply with the ruling elite’s systems of capitalist power. Although holistic means of control may be more ideal than those of the past, none the less they still act as a means of keeping sedentary bodies from rising up and questioning the conditions in which they work.

Do we not gain more as citizens if we are constantly questioning the state of our being? Must we not always critique the systems of power which shape our daily lives in oder to maintain equality and fairness within such? I have to agree that holistic approaches to control are better than those of the past, but would still argue that as citizens we must not get too comfortable in our sedentary lives as this comfort is exactly what may lead to sites such as social media abusing our sedentary labour.

The Commodification of Identity

After reading Andrew Herman’s article “Production, Consumption and Labor in the Social Media Mode of Communication and Production” one my note that audiences have come to rely social media not only as means of display and purpose, but to serve as an outlet for personal expression. It seems that sites such as Youtube have found their success after encouraging users to “Broadcast yourself”. In the social media age, a person’s ‘brand’ is no longer a way to communicate one’s personal identity traits online, but have become a lucrative way to make money in the social media age. Today, Youtube ‘star’ or ‘vloggers" (video bloggers) can make upwards of 15 million dollars a year, and such is based off of how they use their personal ‘brand’ to sell an advertisers product.

For example, Youtube star Tyler Oakley went from a  popular youtube blogger, to a star of Ellen Degeneres’ own Youtube platform Ellentube. Today Tyler Oakley has created his own accessory line and has made the Forbes list Highest-Earning YouTubers of 2016.

What could a Youtube personality tell us about how capitalist systems have come to seemingly ‘take over’ the identity which social media has allowed users to create?

Audiences in the Digital Marketing Age

As discussed in "Who says Facebook friends aren’t your real friends” by Kylie Jarrett, the value of an audience in the information and digital age has become indispensable to media creators. This is because audiences of the web now have a mutually beneficial relationships with their social media platforms.

What one must consider though is how may this relationship grow with the ever changing internet, and will it eventually result in a relationship that is less beneficial for the user and more exploitative for the social media creator. I ask this question after stumbling upon the article “Save Time and Effort With Facebook Saved Audiences” from Social Times. Not knowing what a ‘saved audience’ was, research into the subject showed that it is a facebook tool for advertisers to use in order to narrow down the exact audience they wish to market too. ‘Save Audiences are “pre-made audience targeting that you can simply insert into your ad sets in the future” (Social Times, 2016). Once you have created this target audience you may narrow such down by choosing the age and gender, interests, behaviours, purchasing habits, income, etc (Social Times, 2016). This pre-made audience setting is now averrable for future use.

I have attached the link to this article below, and urge my classmates to read it. I then ask, what do you think this marketing specific facebook setting tells us about the new relationship between audience and social media?

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/jackson-salzman-elite-sem-guest-post-facebook-saved-audiences/647826

Venture Labour

       Gina Neff discusses the course that new business ventures typically take from their acquisition point to their adjourning or failure. She says that network diversity is important because it how fresh, new and different information travels and passes from one node or part to another in order to complete tasks or continue productivity of work. She talks about silicon alley in her article and stated that majority of the companies emerged because the changes in society were becoming very clear; new economic, technology and media values shaped the way the new economy would be defined. Silicon alleys perceived promising future came from 3 beliefs, those were 1. the idea that the internet industry had a certain and positive future, 2. that existing market metrics used to measure market growth were insufficient and 3. That workers had control and autonomy over their work and their choices in the industry. A lot of the reasons why ventures fail and partly the reason why silicon alley faced so many problems and failures of companies in the dot-com bubble, was that businesses in the industry were getting more and more homophilous, meaning they are similar to one another. If these companies are offering the same services, then how do they expect to get ahead and beat their competitors? They need to provide something extra or try something new to propel themselves forward within the market and industry. The problem with this although is that many organizations do not want to make the risk of trying something new only to risk it all and lose the position that they held before.

       The most important point or assertion I found, that Neff makes in this chapter of her book is that “risk is like a choice, it is framed freedom rather than being trapped” the way I understand this is that although risk, in any situation, is looked at as a trap that will only require increased effort and struggle to get out of, it has the ability to be freeing in the sense, when a risk that has been taken proves itself to be beneficial to the interest of the company.