Blog Post 5

The introduction to Jenkins describes what convergence culture is and how it is effecting our lives. From the individual to the corporate level, circulation of media "depends heavily on consumers' active participants." Convergence culture is where old and new media collide and the power of the consumer and producer converge and create viral or general content.

"Convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content." (p.3)

"When people take media into their own hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all involved" (p.17)
So what?

Convergence is a large part of DTC. It demonstrates the potential for an individual to make a large impact on the internet community, versus a large production company or corporation. This is demonstrated in the story told at the beginning of the introduction about Dino Ignacio's photoshoped image.

This introduction connects to Weinburger in the sense that the organization of the internet (the third order of order) made it possible for this image to be found.

Blog Post #4

In summary, Everything is Miscellaneous is about the new way of organization in the digital age. Like in the physical world, everything has its place. As metadata is created, organized and re-organized the organization of the Internet becomes more and more advanced. However, the Internet is ever expanding and will never be a fully organized place, it will always be somewhat miscellaneous. There is no such thing as to much information. As the third order of order effects the organization of more and more content, the Internet will become significantly more navigatable.

This is important to me as a DTC major in the sense that it is important to stay ahead of the curve. To know where the web has been and where it is going is crucial to understanding the desired content and design it requires. It is important have the ability to anticipate what the next demand online could and will be.

Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8: Chapter 8, "What Nothing Says," is all about the absence of words and how that affects metadata and the third order-of order. However, data can be organized in an implicit and explicit manner. Implicit can imply what something may contain, non-specifically and ambiguously. Explicit refers to the generalization of the subject or subject matter which can lead to inaccurate or out dated information.

So What? This is important and relevant to me as a DTC major because it is important to know how to place your content and metadata in the web in a way that it doesn't necessarily take words to understand what the subject matter is. The content and relevance needs to speak for itself and be clear without the use of words.

I think it is also important to take into consideration something that the book mentions, it is more important to tag things that are relevant to you then what you think others will find relevant. I think that this is important when it comes to marketing a company through blogging and Twitter because tagging things creates a network or landmarks for a company, landmarks that represent values, interests, company culture and beliefs. It is important to understand how this metadata will be received and the effects it will have on the viewer, but tagging should not only occur for the audience reaction.


Chapter 9: Chapter nine, "Messiness as a Virtue," discusses the value of the internet being some what of a disorganized place, constantly undergoing organization. However, if no organization exists, it is likely that information will be hidden or lost in the vast amount of information available on the Internet. As information become more relevant or important to people, it becomes more organized.

So What? As a DTC major, this is relevant to me because of the need for me to organize and sort through large amounts of information and metadata in my day-to-day life and analyze that data accordingly.