éléphant

I took an old stamp and made it new! Here are two versions, one with a rose and one without. I liked the rose, but my professor didn't...

Original: 
                                                    
My Stamp:

                                              

Interview With Walaa

An interview done with Walaa about family, life, and being Sudanese.

Definitely took some cues from my favorite podcasts, but I think that helped me create a story I'm proud of.  Give it a listen! 

Newspapers Beware, Bloggers Are Here!

A major shift is occurring in our world and it’s being assisted, like the Protestant Revolution, by technology. The power and control that a few huge companies have held over the heads of the general public is slowly coming to an end with the help of the World Wide Web. Clay Shirky presents to us “mass amateurization,” the idea that our ability as the public has changed from just being consumers, who receive messages and goods from a few huge companies, to being our own producers, no longer leaving publishing to be a thing for only a select group of “professionals."

The Internet has greatly cut down on the costs that have been attached to publishing for so long, one of the most important aspects of “mass amateurization.” Today anyone can go make a video (maybe on their phone), edit it in iMovie, and then upload it to Youtube, which can then be viewed by anyone with access to Youtube. The new age of the general public publishing their own content means that a lot more people that have views will actually voice their opinions, because it is so simple. There are a plethora of examples of “mass amateurization” today, but one that I particularly like is Etsy.com, a site that has become increasingly popular since its start in 2005. Etsy allows users to sell their handmade goods to consumers through the website. Their mission statement is something that I believe more people are beginning to value today.

“Our mission is to empower people to change the way the global economy works. We see a world in which very-very small businesses have much-much more sway in shaping the economy, local living economies are thriving everywhere, and people value authorship and provenance as much as price and convenience. We are bringing heart to commerce and making the world more fair, more sustainable, and more fun.” 

Another example of “mass amateurization” is blogs about celebrity gossip, such as Dlisted, Perezhilton, TheFrisky, and Jezebel. These blogs, that say essentially the same things as the weekly celebrity tabloid magazines, and way more, are free to read, use no paper, and can be updated all the time, meaning the stream of gossip and information is never ending. Shirky explains it as, “the individual webblogs are not merely alternate sites of publishing; they are alternatives to publishing itself, in the sense of publishers as a minority and professional class (pg. 66)." I used to buy a tabloid magazine most times I went to the supermarket, but now I just rely on blogs to get my embarrassing celebrity information. I am not saying that blogs are ready to take over for all magazines yet, I still occasionally will buy a tabloid because I like, and miss, the familiarity of having the magazine to look at, and, I think, a lot of people still feel that way.

There will always be respect to people that are professionals in their fields. They will always be the people (in most cases) that graduated, or were specially trained in that field; there’s something there that makes them stand out from the rest, it could be their style of writing or their technique with photography. Although the line is now blurred where professionals start and amateurs begin, it still exists. The media now has to change to accommodate to their viewers for example, NPRhas many informative blogs available on their website that are written by professionals, but in an informal style. The blogs can be on a wide range of topics that can catch the interest of more readers than some of NPR's radio broadcasts, and it allows readers to comment on the story. The biggest difference I see occurring in the future for media professionals, besides less demand for them, will be media professionals listening to the public, because we will have more say in what’s important.

A lot is about to change and it’s exciting, but at the same time, there’s a chance that it could be chaotic, which has happened with new technology throughout history. Shirky explains “…because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an orderly transition…( pg. 68)." I don’t think that this new technology will create as large a change as the printing press, TVs will not become obsolete and people aren't throwing out their radios, but it will change some aspects of our culture. The London Riots could be looked at as the “social effects lag” to technology. I’m not fully educated in what caused the riots, but it is a way of rationalizing it. 

Sources: Shirky, Clay. "Everyone Is a Media Outlet." Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008. 55-80.

image: http://www.markevanstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/social-media-consultant.jpg

Reflection: Scandal, Samantha Powers- sexism in politics

http://jezebel.com/new-un-ambassador-interviewed-about-diplomacy-diapers-1440666837
http://jezebel.com/scandal-lisa-kudrow-goes-ham-in-an-epic-speech-on-sexi-1460876002

      I came across these two pages on Jezebel about the problems women in politics face. They are completely relevant to our conversation the other day, and hopefully mean that sexism in politics is ready to be discussed in a serious way. It's a conversation that needs to happen on a national level, and especially a conversation for politicians to have on a public platform. The statements Lisa Kudrow's character makes remain true for most female politicians, and makes it a powerful statement for a primetime show. The conversation about sexism in politics also ties nicely into the recent mayoral elections which Bill de Blasio won. 

       There have been over 100 mayors in NYC and not one of them has been a woman. While this trend is true of many political positions in our country, a city as progressive and diverse as NYC almost makes the lack of a female mayor worse. Also, "There are nearly 400,000 more women than men in New York (NYC dept of planning)." I wonder if there could be some energy and organization between women (and men) of NYC to advocate for a female mayor. Regarding the Samantha Powers segment by the Today Show, it's so sad (but not surprising) that our own UN ambassador's interview was belittled with the word diaper appearing on the screen. This is a woman who has an incredibly important and powerful job, yet there is such a focus on her ability to balance her children and work. The author raised the point would the word diaper have appeared on screen if the ambassador was a man, the answer is most likely, "no." Maybe there will be an ability to separate the fact that a woman has a powerful job and children and we can focus on her job, the aspect of her life which should truly concern us, the public.

Reflection

There's a lot I could mention while reflecting on this class, but I'll try and keep it fairly brief. I struggled in this class and felt behind some of the time which might have been, at least partially, due to my lack of ANY experience in using programs such as Photoshop and being new to HTML (which by the way still looks a lot like gibberish to me). 

I think that the class could almost do without the lecture portion and could be done entirely in labs. The lectures were interesting, but i think that this is the type of subject that is hard to be lectured on and you kind of have to figure out how things work for yourself. no offense, but watching someone do Photoshop on a projector without having any real knowledge of Photoshop is a hard way to actually learn it and seems like time that could be better used. At least that's true for me because nothing made sense until i sat in front of a computer for at least an hour.  I didn't completely understand why we didn't get more time with the camera exercises, sometimes it felt like we were just rushing through and i wasn't really thinking about how I'd be graded and I there was a lot I felt could be changed.  at the same time i also understand that the time limitations were to keep the class moving and made the assignments more challenging, but if there was maybe 2 labs instead of a really long lecture and lab then maybe we would have had the time to do better in class assignments. just expressing my overall thoughts while thinking back on the class...

OK well I didn't want to just talk about what could have been better because in the end I really did enjoy the class, especially the lab. And I really want to get Photoshop and continue to work with it because now that I have the basics I would love to continue and become more advanced. This course really challenged me in a lot of ways especially with the photoshop project and I enjoyed it because I was able to be artistic and work with colors, which isn't the case in any of my other classes... the HTML project on the other hand, working with colors was nice, but there was far too much grief and anxiety for me to ever have any interest in going at it again. I definitely feel that I put a lot of effort into all of my assignments and I hope that it has reflected in the quality of my work.

Anyways Makia thanks for being a great TA and helping me with my website and thanks to those who sat next to me and helped me out when I wasn't getting stuff!

Site!

Here's my site, it works.. http://fmundergrad.hunter.cuny.edu/~fratkinm/

Design

I decided to choose a website created by a group of my friends from Massachusetts. The website is for the record label they started themselves called Rooftop Shout. What I think is cool about the website is that they created it themselves with little HTML knowledge. The website is definitely different then most you see browsing the web which is partly a reflection of the uniqueness of the music they are working with, and their beginning web design abilities. Something I really like about it is the lack of constraint on each page. Most websites you look at today are very organized into boxes and sort of takes away from the interactive aspects of the website, their website definitely isn't constrained and it makes it more interesting. Movement between the pages of the website is another aspect that was well done and fairly simple. When you go over one of the links to another page the text flips upside down and turns becomes white.


Things I think could be better: the text, some of it is really cool and funky but some of the text for the info could be better. I don't think the informative text on the opening page should be white, or if it needs some sort of darker background because the picture makes it harder to read. Also, I have a pretty small computer screen and the website is definitely designed with a big computer monitor in mind. I want to be able to see the pictures, but I can't because they go too far to the left.
Check it out! http://www.rooftopshout.org/index.htm