Are we passive audiences?

There's always the argument of whether media platforms audiences are passive or actively engaging in or within the media sphere. For instance, the discourse of television studies argues that tv audiences are passive, where they just receive the informations on tv without any degree of interactivity.

But the thing is, with new media platform such as the internet, the argument seems to change for a little bit. We can now argue that new media platform users are no longer passive dolls that sit in front of a computer or ipad and just receiving without contributing, or interacting with it. My perspective on this particular argument is quite simple: i do agree that we are not as passive as many many studies suggested we were as an audience.

Internet itself is an interactive media platform. Unlike most of the media platforms such as the print media and the traditional broadcasting media platforms, where the audience are provided with every information that they might need to know and the discourse of agency seems to be absence in such traditional media platforms. For instance, you can't choose specifically what you want to watch on tv, although we do get the limited choices of few channels with different programs, but it is not tailored to cater every individuals.

I would definitely see internet as a new media platform with more agency, and in other words, more choices and more things to choose from that actually might cater to different crowds. And by that, it sort of transform us from the audience that will just sit in our tv room watching the pre-selected programs that might not cater to us at all, to an active participant where we search for what we want to watch or do specifically.

We are more interactive on internet platform, providing that we are able to construct our personal viewing or using experience in an individual way. Internet are a celebration of individualism, and it does not really urges anyone to conform in one way or another. In contradiction to this, traditional media platforms assumes that there is this imaginary household(argues by John Bignell, 2004) that they are cater to, where they assume every audiences that they are catering to are somehow collective individuals that shares the same interest. The way that they are assuming their audience to be somehow collective and sharing the same interest has transform the audience themselves into passive receiver that does not have distinguishable interests.

Internet as a new media platform is way complicated than just assuming us to be all the same. We are no longer passive audiences that get fed by loads of informations, but instead, we search online for informations or things that will entertain or educate us, and we no longer rely on spoon-fed information. And internet audiences or users are now seen as prosumer than just passive audiences because we produce and consume at the same time. For instance, sites like youtube or twitter generates their content from user-produced materials, and it is also the user themselves who consumes these materials for their own entertainment purposes. We are not passive audiences or users if we are actively producing and interact with the internet.

I would say that the discourse of media audiences being passive will only be applicable if the audiences are just merely being a spectator. But in the internet, we are not just spectators, but we actually construct and interact on this virtual space.

Einstein's Infinite Playlist (Or the Theory of Facebook Relativity)

Einstein's Theory of Relativity posits that time passes more slowly the closer you are to the centre of a massive object. Replace the word 'massive' with 'dull' and it also describes half the classes we've all invariably taken at some point. This means that classes with fat lecturers are going to be extremely boring.

Einstein would have been fascinated with our current technological state. The world has seemingly been kicked into ever-higher gears over the last few years. All new stuff is speedier than the last lot of... stuff. Small dense things like iPhones seem to suck all our time into them, just like a black hole. Steve Jobs sticks everything but the kitchen sink into a post-it sized lump and calls a press conference to announce his latest masterpiece that will revolutionise the way we live. Though in saying that I'm sure he'll put in a kitchen sink app in the iPhone 5.

The thing is, the faster technology gets, the more impatient the world seems to become. We are hungry for speed! It has affected our perception of time. Having movie take 2 hours to download seems like a vast expanse of time bridged only by the little green progress bar that taunts you with its inching green evil. Ahem. Rationally speaking the speed should be irrelevant - the movie will download eventually. But I want it all, and I want it now!

Queen reference? Sweet.

Every new generation of laptops, cell phones, toasters, whatever, all promise to be faster! And they are. Why have a perfectly good toaster that makes your bread crunchy and brown in 30 seconds when you can have the new iToast from Apple that does it in 25 seconds AND you can play Tetris while you wait! Our perception of the toasting would be altered and those extra 5 seconds with the old toaster would turn into an unbuttered Hell. Everything gets faster and the more technology we use, the slower everything else seems to get. Right?

So Adam, I hear you say, what is your point? And what's Einstein got to do with this?

What Einstein basically said is that the faster you go, the slower everything else seems relative to you. This is a social application of that theory but I'm sure you get the idea.

Speed does not necessarily denote a better product or experience. You will not fit more into your day simply because your new phone can do more stuff, more quickly. You will not become more efficient because your processor is 8 Ghz instead of just 4. Faster processors do have their place, I agree. Perception of time is not altered solely by technology. It is also a social thing and always has been. But technology is an important factor. Faster stuff has meant that society as a whole has seemingly sped up, and social conventions have changed. In the 21st century, faster must mean better. Digital must be better than analogue. We must all do more with our time and still make it for coffee at 4.30! Lies! An old-fashioned mix CD you make from scratch will always be more romantic than simply assembling a playlist and saying to your lover: "Hey download these." Efficiency does not a relationship make.

Perception of time changes as we age. But I wonder if the evolution of our perception will be different to that of previous generations because we grew up in a more rapidly changing world?

Before I confuse myself any further, I will end with an amusing factoid.

The humble pigeon would die of boredom while watching the Matrix. Not because Keanu Reeves has less acting talent than Megan Fox, but because pigeons perceive the world at a much higher frame-rate, so to speak. So while we see a continual moving image, the pigeon would see a slide show. Thus Einstein's Theory of Relativity is embodied by the common pigeon. And that's what he has to do with it all.

Feel free to comment! Maybe you'll make more sense of it than I have.

Land of the Long White Fibre-optic Cable

Auckland is famous for a sprawling transportation network that every government seems determined to add to in order to solve the car-clog crisis. If John Key has his way, the entire nation will sport a jolly nice shiny new fibre-optic-cable-to-your-door communications network. And then we'll all have internet so fast our desktops will burst into flames. Cue fireextinguisher.exe

But will this really improve things? Who will use all that data? Does New Zealand need to be the Land of Milk, Honey and Bit-torrents?

I am a high-data user. I can personally chomp through 30GB of data in a fortnight. 60 in a month if I'm particularly bad. I've seen the American advertisements. for 100GB per month. Relatively cheap too. Personally I am in favour of high data caps. But in our society it would be like having a Ferrari with only 1 km of straight road nearby. Nice to have and shiny too, but you simply never use it. Those in favour of high speed, high data internet say it will benefit all New Zealanders and open up technological avenues that we otherwise never conceived of. Rubbish, says I. Unless you are particularly data-heavy, playing a lot of MMO's, downloading movies and endless YouTube clips and everything else at www.etc.com, having internet so fast that it makes the download box explode won't be of much benefit to you.

Prioritised download plans is an idea that our wonderful lecturer posited. You would pay for certain kinds of data to be prioritised and thus they would download quickly. So, for example, you could pay for a Movies Package and those files such as avi, mpg, mp4 etc, would all download at top speed whereas surfing TradeMe would be comparatively pedestrian. High-speed internet would allow for more dynamic pricing schemes and (God willing) cheaper internet access.

There is a point where the speed and amount of data available would become irrelevant. It would be effectively limitless data at nigh-instantaneous speeds. I think what we want is more fast data. And I think what we need is high media download speeds.

I want my movie downloaded in under 20 minutes. But I don't give a toss about how fast Facebook loads.