I started a new job on Monday, and have been consequently avoiding Facebook; I logged on tonight to change my work information and maybe friend some of my new coworkers. However, I accidentally activated the horrid new feature that links to things. My first activity, the highlighted one: “graffiti.”

Clearly, it had parsed some word or phrase incorrectly– I don’t go around tagging buildings, and it seems obvious to me that I do not support defacing property with spray paint. But it may not be obvious to others. My new boss is a social media guy– what if he had viewed my profile and passed judgment on me without my realizing? Because when Facebook made my #1 activity graffiti, they also removed my privacy settings so that everyone could see my interests.

This is what happens when you take the social out of social media and let the machines do the thinking. The functions of a well-designed website are never so poorly hidden– such as how to undo the linking– that they hinder the user’s ability to actually use the site. However, Facebook doesn’t care. Their customer service is notoriously poor, and it can afford to be– we are going to tolerate a lot of crap from Facebook because it is so ingrained in our lives. However, on a site any smaller than Facebook, this sort of authoritarianism would not be tolerated.

Finding Valhalla, the first short film by beer lover Helen Pitlick, examines the Viking Spirit that makes Seattle’s Odin Brewing stand apart from its peers.

[My final project for Multimedia Storytelling]

The “Social Aspects of New Media Technologies” by Williams, Strover and Grant brings up interesting parallels between that era’s “new media,” such as cable television and VCRs, and modern internet-based communication tools. This article is similar to Paul Haridakis and Gary Hanson’s 2009 “Social Interaction and Co-Viewing With YouTube: Blending Mass Communication Reception and Social Connection,” which I covered as a discussion leader. It would appear that the two articles use several similar sources, most notably Katz, Bumler et al.’s “Utilization of mass communication by the individual,” which defines the Uses and Gratifications principle that both articles mention.

The Haridakis and Hanson article brings up the interesting point that YouTube has an extra social dimension because people can share both the video and their thoughts on it by either linking to the video in an email or blog post or leaving a comment on the page. This makes me wonder what other unique uses for internet-based media might exist.

Many aspects of old media, the new media of 1994, and the internet are the same: researchers are still concerned with who uses what and why. We always need to know the demographics of our users to provide insight into what they want, as well as what we might change to court new users.

The idea that audiences are “fluid consistencies” is relevant across all media. Audiences play different social roles depending on the setting, the time of day, and their emotional state. Someone might read the front page of the New York Times with his morning coffee, then take the crossword puzzle with him on the bus. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook started as fun ways to connect with friends, but have proven to be powerful marketing tools; how someone uses Twitter at work may be dramatically different from how he or she uses it at home. The internet, however, opens up many more possibilities, as users can search for whatever their heart desires rather than rely on the limited scheduled availability of print, TV or radio.

Some forms of internet-based media allow us to simultaneously fulfill our desire for the four major gratifications: entertainment, surveillance, personal relationships, and personal identity. Take Twitter; in the span of a few short seconds, I can get timely updates from my local neighborhood blog on the car crash down the street (surveillance), learn that my friend just became mayor of Sushiville (personal relationships), read an article linked by my favorite cause-driven blogger about why our cause is so great (personal identity), and laugh at the hilarious sh*t Justin’s dad says (entertainment). It can be a little schizophrenic, but we generally pick out what we feel is most relevant from that stream depending on our current situation and mood. As Clay Shirky says, publish and then filter.

Another difference between new media and older media is “ritualized” use, where the medium becomes background noise rather than the center of attention. Streaming radio can have this effect, but one rarely turns on Hulu for background noise; appointment television means control, and one does not tune out what one has hand-picked to watch.

Because most current innovation is happening through an already established medium– the Internet– we are not faced with a scenario like the VCR; no one needs to convince consumers to buy anything, as the innovation is already readily available through something they already own and are familiar with. The knowledge, persuasion, decision, confirmation cycle becomes easier to enter, since the only investment is time. However, with some many innovations to chose from, time can sometimes be more valuable than money.

image by ChrisL_AK

My first reaction to Garrett Hardin’s 1968 article “Tragedy of the Commons” was that Hardin must be some sort of pinko commie fascist hippie. Arguing in favor of coercion? Advocating human breeding limits? Stating that private property and inheritance is unjust? My second reaction was that the article must be a joke, some satire along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Isn’t limiting the freedom to breed about as ridiculous as eating one’s children?

Communist, prankster or not, Hardin’s points are backed by sound logic. Ecosystems are limited in the size of population they can support. Poor parents with many children may actually end up with less decedents than poor parents with fewer children, as the families with fewer children are better able to care for the ones they have and thus ensure their survival.  By giving people all of the freedom of ownership and none of the agency, they are less inclined to treat things right– look at how customers treat rental cars.

The parallels between this article and the internet are many. Biology is the study of the beings in an ecosystem, a network of all the life on Earth. The internet is an ecosystem as well, a network of humans and computers. It is interesting that the article was written by a biology professor, as this fact reiterates the sense of digital media’s evolution.

Growth can only happen until the point that a population becomes greater than its environment is capable of handling; then the size of the population must either stagnate or decrease. We see this all the time in digital media. Technology is growing at a rapid rate, but there will come a point where broadband can’t get any faster or servers just can’t get any more powerful. The number of IP addresses is finite, and many people are asking whether the internet is running out of space. Twitter shows the Fail Whale when more people are on in than the servers can manage.

The family analogy is also apt. A poorly designed, poorly managed website runs the same risk as the poor family; it is often better to provide a good experience for a small number of users than a poor experience for a large number of users. The well-treated users will tell their friends, while the undershot users will look for alternatives.

With these parallels, the internet seems capable of falling victim to the Tragedy of the Commons. If it belongs to everyone, no one will take care of it– right?  Wikipedia seems to have proven this statement wrong. As Margaret Mead so eloquently stated,  ”Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” Small amounts of passionate individuals frequently take over projects as their own, even though they receive no physical reward from doing so. Benkler writes of Wikipedia in The Wealth of Networks,

Wikipedia does not include elaborate software-controlled access and editing capabilities. It is generally open for anyone to edit the materials, delete another’s changes, delete the desirable contents, survey archives for prior changes, and so forth. It depends on self-conscious use of open discourse, usually aimed at consensus. (p. 72)

The classic Tragedy of the Commons scenario involves shepherds. If one shepherd allows his sheep to graze on a few extra blades of grass, everyone suffers in the long run. However, were this Commons run in the same manner as Wikipedia, a dedicated evangelist would swoop in and plant more grass immediately upon discovery of this additional ovine munching. Were the grazing to get out of control, the dedicated evangelists would take measures to ensure it was stopped. And they would do this all for personal satisfaction, not monetary gain.

One cannot argue with the limitations of nature, but the conscience that Hardin so derides may be what sets the Internet apart from the Commons. There is a greater motivation involved than just money, one that cannot easily be regulated or taxed.

Berg, P., & Jones, R. (2003). Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information, 5(4), 69-75.

• This article discusses the Historic American Cookbook Project, Michigan State University’s attempt to digitize cookbooks from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries; these efforts will make hundreds of public domain recipes searchable on the project’s website, as well as preserve the books for future generations of cooks.

Brown, L. K., & Mussell, K. (1984). Ethnic and regional foodways in the United States: The performance of group identity. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

• The authors explore the role of ethnic and regional food in American cooking. They propose that cookbooks are a way to preserve cultural heritage, and for cooks to reconnect with their roots.

Brownlie, D., Hewer, P., & Horne, S. (2005). Culinary Tourism: An Exploratory Reading of Contemporary Representations of Cooking. Consumption, Markets & Culture, 8(1), 7-26. doi:10.1080/10253860500068937.

• This article claims that cookbooks are cultural artifacts rather than mere collections of recipes, and reflect the era in which they were published. While often overlooked by researchers, cookbooks actually contain a wealth of historic and social information.

Field, M. (2007). Making Food History. Gastronomica, 7 (1), 20-24. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The article makes the interesting point that recipe writers use Google to search for obscure foods, a practice that competes with using the Oxford Companion to Food, itself only a recent contribution. While the book has been successful, the author argues that the only hope for future success of similar academic culinary tomes is if the author allows their personality to come out in their writing. This information will be helpful in the present and future portion of the paper, as it discusses using online technology as opposed to print.

Gabaccia, D. R. (1998). We are what we eat: Ethnic food and the making of Americans. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

• This book touches upon the differences between community cookbooks and commercial cookbooks among people of certain ethnic backgrounds living in the US. The author proposes that commercial cookbooks present ethnic cuisines through traditional, yet simplified, eyes, while community cookbooks represent a more authentic view of what people in ethnic communities actually eat.

Garland S. (2009). A cook book to be read. What about it?’: Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein and the language of the kitchen. Comparative American Studies. 7 (1), 34-56.

• Through the interactions between Alice B. Toklas and Gerturde Stein, the article paints a portrait of cookbooks have evolved through American history. Legitimacy is a point echoed throughout the paper; 18th and 19th century recipes often had testimonials stating the quality of the recipe, while tone of writing conveyed some form of authority.

Levenstein, H. A. (1993). Paradox of plenty: A social history of eating in modern America. New York: Oxford University Press.

• The author discusses the social and culinary factors that have shaped Americans’ view of eating since 1930. He makes the point that while America has always had enough to eat, its culinary decisions have not always been rational or wise.

Keller-Cohen, D. (1994). The Web of Literacy: Speaking, Reading, and Writing in 17th- and 18th-Century America. Literacy: Interdisciplinary conversations. Written language series. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press.

• The author (also the editor of this tome) states that many people in 17th and 18th century America were illiterate. This poses the hypothesis that colonial cooks did not use cookbooks because they could not read them.

(2009, January). The Virtual Roundtable: Food Blogging as Citizen Journalism. World Literature Today, pp. 42-46. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The author discusses trends in food blogging. She makes the point that home cooks once clipped recipes from newspapers, yet today watch videos, and that online communities have taken the place of food critics. This information will be useful in second portion of the paper, as it discusses motivations for creating and reading food blogs.

Non-scholarly references

Wajda, S. (2008). Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Winterthur Portfolio,42(1), 77-82. Retrieved from America: History & Life database.

• The author writes that cookbooks served as diaries or journals of women’s lives; they would include notes and clippings to take on an almost diary-like form. This parallels modern food blogging.

(2004, August 28). Julia Child. Economist, p. 78. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

• The Economist discusses Julia Child’s contribution to modern home cooking in her obituary; the most telling point is that she herself was not a classic gourmet.