Jenkins, Part 1

HIVE MIND

The hive-mind spell from card-based RPG, Magic.

In the introduction to Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins makes mention of three concepts that are the focus of the text: media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence. Media convergence is the phenomenon of multiple forms of media interacting and crossing. This includes the migration of media users across the multiple platforms. Jenkins points to the "Bert is Evil" images that American student Dino Ignacio posted to his homepage in the fall of 2001. Various medias and platforms converged around these images. Sesame Street, Photoshop, the internet, a print shop, and a news channel. Multiple people participated in the movement of these images. This brings in Jenkins' second concept, participatory culture.


Consumers used to approach media through "passive media spectatorship" (3), but that is no longer the case these days. Consumers are increasingly engaging and interacting with media. Blogs, video clips uploaded to the internet, live streaming video applications on smartphones--these are all examples of a new culture that creates some of the media that is then distributed and utilized by others. I frequently receive links from friends who post on my Facebook wall; many of these links are user-created images and videos that express varying amounts of knowledge and/or entertainment. These various forms of user-created media are most often purely for entertainment, but it is not uncommon for me to learn something previously unknown to me when I receive such links. This is where Jenkins' third concept, collective intelligence, comes into play.

An artist's rendition of Collective Intelligence

I'm very intrigued by the concept of collective intelligence. Take a number of people from various backgrounds and appropriate all of their individual experiences and knowledge...what do you end up with? A massive amount of intelligence. I'm no genius, but I'd like to think that I'm smarter than the average person. However, I am fully aware of the limits of my personal knowledge. Despite the finite amount of personal knowledge at my disposal, I know a number of people who could potentially provide me with any information that I personally lack. Even if I didn't know someone personally to provide me with whatever knowledge I needed, I could turn to the dispersed knowledge found in libraries or the World Wide Web. In a way, when we share our individual knowledge and access the knowledge of others, we are operating as a hive-mind. We can become aware of extraneous information within a very short period of time, sometimes as little as a few seconds.


THE BLACK BOX FALLACY


I remember when the Xbox 360 launched in November of 2005. It promised to be the center of your home entertainment needs. I could play high-end games with amazing visuals, connect to the internet and play games online with friends, and play DVDs. Almost exactly one year later in 2006, Sony made a similar promise with the launch of the Playstation 3. This device was even more powerful on paper than the Xbox 360 and it supported a media platform (Blu-ray discs) that the 360 did not. It even boasted a built in web browser. I clearly recall reading that the PS3 was, for all intents and purposes, a powerful computer with a game console form factor. Both the PS3 and the 360 fell short in their promise to be the end-all, be-all device for entertainment in my household. Jenkins quotes Cheskin Research who says that the main reason for the fallacy of the black box is that, depending on your location or your particular needs when accessing technology, you require a specific form factor. 

Just some of my various "black boxes."

I love my PS3 for gaming, but it absolutely under-performs as a viable means of accessing the Word Wide Web. The built in browser is surprisingly slow, and the default method of input--the PS3 controller--is not particularly efficient for putting in URLs or searches. When I need to access the internet and I'm in my house, I default to either my desktop or my notebook. However, whenever I need to play video games, I default to one of my two game consoles. They all have overlapping features, but they perform better at certain features than they do at others. And then there's my smartphone, a Samsung Captivate which runs on version 2.2 of the Android OS. It, too, purports to be a black box. I can make calls, send texts, watch and record videos, take pictures, upload to the internet, download various content, play games, plan my schedule, set memos, etc. Despite this, even it fails as the end-all, be-all device in my life. While media may be converging more and more, the devices through which we access our increasingly converging media are diverging more and more. 

QUESTIONS

1) How much desire do you personally have for the proverbial black-box?


2) Despite the many pros of our converging culture, do you see any cons?


3) In a world where we are increasingly hi-tech yet low-touch, do you think we will become so dependent on our technology that we will lose very basic abilities and skills?


photos:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ftl/45
http://www.collaborationideas.com/2011/03/collective-intelligence-and-collaboration/