Being transparent
15 years ago
Hi everyone !
- Second, Anglais Facile. I know, it's in French, but this way everyone is sure to understand the grammar explanations, ect... The website is quite ugly and too old, but the contents are great, very complete. For example, you can find many grammar sheets. I also use the Spanish version.
- And last but not least, Apprendre l'Anglais, it's a blog about the difficulty to learn english, helping french people to perfect their skills. What I like about it is that it's not a teacher who is talking to you, but somene like you, trying to find origial ways to learn the language, like for example watchinf movies and seeries in English.
It's not because I write in English that my English is perfect, not at all. But this is something I really want to improve. So this week, we are going back to the basis.
I took an English test Online. This one was veryyyy easy ! All my answers were correct. But that was just a warm up.
So I found my own English language online learning resource. Well, in fact, ressources. Just like Belbin says "Nobody's perfect, but a team can be". So I made my own team to improve my English. Here are my team-mates :
- First, English learner. This website has very nice tests ! I like it because there are many tests so you can challenge yourself quite often, and also because there are different levels. Plus, the quizzes are really simple to do:
And my result was... 96% ! Not that bad !
- Second, Anglais Facile. I know, it's in French, but this way everyone is sure to understand the grammar explanations, ect... The website is quite ugly and too old, but the contents are great, very complete. For example, you can find many grammar sheets. I also use the Spanish version.
- And last but not least, Apprendre l'Anglais, it's a blog about the difficulty to learn english, helping french people to perfect their skills. What I like about it is that it's not a teacher who is talking to you, but somene like you, trying to find origial ways to learn the language, like for example watchinf movies and seeries in English.
Enough chatting, it's now time to get to work, English Oral exams are on Friday ! Wish me good luck !
This week it's going to be all about contributing to the Internet. But not only contributing, also sharing my point of view on my experience of e-contribution. So this week I'm making an intelligent contribution, meaning no videos of my cat or of myself looking for myself all around Paris. I'm done with Youtube, this week I'm contributing to...
So this week I wrote an article on the Encycopedia about Pink the series, which is a webseries. There was no article about it online so I took the opportunity to create one. Truth is, I started a war with Wikipedia !
First, I met my adversary. I created an account and the website. So far, things were going OK, the target seemed to welcome me on the battle field.
But then, finally arriving there, I realized that Wikipedia is far from being simple ! The enemy, I've gotta tell you, is very complex ! Writing an article took me hours !
I arrived on the home page, and couldn't find anything there about starting to write an article. So I spread my net over, check every corner of the battle field, without success. I finally decide to be strategic. I enter the name of the article I want to write about in the search field and the enemy finally asks me, as there is no article existing, if I want to write one. So I thought great, let's start contributing to this great community of democratisation of knowledge, but then no...
The enemy is acting strange. He is not telling me the rules I should follow, neither is he clear about how we should fight. I really don't know how to use this page. The enemy attracts me to "the Wikipedia:Your first article" page.
Oh my god ! It was a trap ! I am now in the quagmire, sinking in the stream of informations ! See how long their explication pages are ! Same for the footnotes explanation page ! It's gonna take me hours to escape from this situation !
But I'm not the type of person who gives up like that. My troops are counting on me ! I have to fight to release the information I have ! So I hang on, and finally get some reinforcement. I found a secret passage, a pre-written page with codes so I just have to fill the blanks.
With some intuition and after quite a lot of time, I finally fulfil the mission !
Here is the proof I infiltrated the enemy field and conquered it !
Dear survivors, welcome to the Internet land. I am going to teach you 10 rules to survive on the I-Land.
1 - Get lost. The I-land is full of incredible resources. You need to explore it to find its wonderful treasures.
2 - However, the jungle is dense and vast. You have to get marks to be able to find what you need everyday to survive. You should use the tab "My favorites" for example.
3 - Before you venture in the I-land, you have to be well equiped. Download a good antivirus software to insure against the fierce creatures of the I-land.
4 - Speaking of creatures, be careful with who or what you can meet in the jungle. Nice-looking creatures might turn out to be dangerous. Only trust yourself and your instinct.
5 - Be careful with the ressources the I-land produces. You can reach incredible fruits but don't eat anything you find. You may actually not be allowed to eat those, they may be someone else's property.
6 - Socialize. The I-land inhabitants can be really helpful and nice. No one can survive all alone, you need connexions. You will be more than welcome to the Facebook or Twitter tribes.
7 - Watch the fire ! If it goes out, you will loose your stock. (Meaning watch the battery)
8 - Put your things in a safe place, to never loose it. (Save, order, save)
9 - Be up to date on what's hapenning on the I-land. It keeps changing all the times, so you need to be aware to survive.
10 - Don't forget to take some rest. Life on the I-land is fascinating but physically and mentally exhausting. Take a nap, disconnect.
As far as I remember, I’ve ever loved books. I even have some kind of a fascination for them. As a kid, I wanted to become a librarian. I spent a lot of time in libraries libraries when I was in “classes préparatoires”, especially in Beaubourg and the BNF (Bibliothèque Nationale Française François Mitterrand). I also love to go to second had books stores like Gibert Jeune and come back home with plenty of old classic books – treasures that had only cost me few euros. To me, books have an aura, they force your respect ! In a library, you feel so good and so impressed by all these knowledge receptacles.
Here is the dream I’ve ever had :
So you would have understood, books have all my respect and even more. But at the same I try to move with the times. Guess what I’ve been willing to have for few weeks ? An eBook ! They are so useful and handy ! Everywhere you go you have your journal and your favorite books, all in one thin screen. Plus, carrying books in my bag really spoil them.
I would never stop buying and reading books though. To me, it’s a question of time and place. Nothing can replace a nice afternoon reading in the shadow of a tree in a garden or a park. But in the subway for example, or at work, I would totally go for an eBook. I just hope this media won’t “eat” the books and be convergent. I must admit I’m a romantic !
However I think that unfortunately people have lost interest for reading, being all the time in front of a screen, so this is a good way to bring back culture under our square eyes.
If I had money of if Santa Clauss spoiled me, I would get an eBook soon !
When it comes to the one I would choose, if you had asked me last week, I would have told you I want an Amazon Kindle. But this week I want the brand new eBook by Barnes and Nobles ! This one is the most developed. It has an LCD touch-sensitive screen, and it has a double screen, of which on is in color ! The Nook is a little bit bigger than the Kindle, measuring 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches and weighs 11.2 ounces. WiFi (802.11b/g) and AT&T 3G is included, not to mention 2GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, MP3 player, built-in mono speaker, 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, a micro USB port and support for EPUB, PDF and MP3. The nook also supports bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages, and the 'LendMe' feature allows users to lend books for up to a fortnight at a time to other e-readers, cellphones or computers. To know more about it, go here.
And you, would you buy a Kindle or a Nook ?
Here is the dream I’ve ever had :
So you would have understood, books have all my respect and even more. But at the same I try to move with the times. Guess what I’ve been willing to have for few weeks ? An eBook ! They are so useful and handy ! Everywhere you go you have your journal and your favorite books, all in one thin screen. Plus, carrying books in my bag really spoil them.
I would never stop buying and reading books though. To me, it’s a question of time and place. Nothing can replace a nice afternoon reading in the shadow of a tree in a garden or a park. But in the subway for example, or at work, I would totally go for an eBook. I just hope this media won’t “eat” the books and be convergent. I must admit I’m a romantic !
However I think that unfortunately people have lost interest for reading, being all the time in front of a screen, so this is a good way to bring back culture under our square eyes.
If I had money of if Santa Clauss spoiled me, I would get an eBook soon !
When it comes to the one I would choose, if you had asked me last week, I would have told you I want an Amazon Kindle. But this week I want the brand new eBook by Barnes and Nobles ! This one is the most developed. It has an LCD touch-sensitive screen, and it has a double screen, of which on is in color ! The Nook is a little bit bigger than the Kindle, measuring 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches and weighs 11.2 ounces. WiFi (802.11b/g) and AT&T 3G is included, not to mention 2GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, MP3 player, built-in mono speaker, 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, a micro USB port and support for EPUB, PDF and MP3. The nook also supports bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages, and the 'LendMe' feature allows users to lend books for up to a fortnight at a time to other e-readers, cellphones or computers. To know more about it, go here.
And you, would you buy a Kindle or a Nook ?
Here is my video resume !
This is the special edition of television news. We're in 2011 and Laetitia is missing. Elisabeth and Mary -in reality those are my second names - two journalists, are trying to find her.
You can also watch my classmates' video resume. I really think they're great !
This is the special edition of television news. We're in 2011 and Laetitia is missing. Elisabeth and Mary -in reality those are my second names - two journalists, are trying to find her.
You can also watch my classmates' video resume. I really think they're great !
Learning about...
On Tuesday this week, a teacher told us about social bookmarking. He referred to a website I was really curious about, and had trouble to find the name : Diigo. After a little research, I discovered that it means “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”.
What is social bookmarking by the way? All I knew was that I wanted to learn about it and do it. So let’s !
Social bookmarking is a tool for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. People can comment on websites, tag, or evaluate websites, which create a folksonomy.
But Diigo seems to be way more than that, at least that’s what they say on the website.
With Diigo, you have several potential uses to organize the contents, like listing or tagging.
The basis is that you can highlight text entirely or partly in multiple colors and put “sticky” notes on web pages. When you come back to the page, they remain. You can archive the pages, annotate them and organize them. Once you’ve done that you can access from anywhere – the iPhone application is coming soon ! Now what about the “social” aspect? Well you can create a group, for company, class or teams. Then, you can share your pages and annotations with others, and even interact with people on the web page or in the group. No more copy/paste, only few clicks and you’re done.
Ok I’m convinced, I’m joining Diigo. I create my account and activate it, nothing special. Except I could have wait forever - the mail arrived directly in my junk email box !
I now have a library.
I have to download the Diigo Toolbar. It’s a plug-in compatible with Firefox or Internet explorer. Really simple and quick !
Let’s see now ! I’m going to my favourite news website, Washingtonpost.com, then to an article.
I just highlighted a paragraph ! It’s really easy to do and to remove, plus I can choose 4 colours or highlighting.
On Tuesday this week, a teacher told us about social bookmarking. He referred to a website I was really curious about, and had trouble to find the name : Diigo. After a little research, I discovered that it means “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”.What is social bookmarking by the way? All I knew was that I wanted to learn about it and do it. So let’s !
Social bookmarking is a tool for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. People can comment on websites, tag, or evaluate websites, which create a folksonomy.
But Diigo seems to be way more than that, at least that’s what they say on the website.
With Diigo, you have several potential uses to organize the contents, like listing or tagging.
The basis is that you can highlight text entirely or partly in multiple colors and put “sticky” notes on web pages. When you come back to the page, they remain. You can archive the pages, annotate them and organize them. Once you’ve done that you can access from anywhere – the iPhone application is coming soon ! Now what about the “social” aspect? Well you can create a group, for company, class or teams. Then, you can share your pages and annotations with others, and even interact with people on the web page or in the group. No more copy/paste, only few clicks and you’re done.
Ok I’m convinced, I’m joining Diigo. I create my account and activate it, nothing special. Except I could have wait forever - the mail arrived directly in my junk email box !
I now have a library.
I have to download the Diigo Toolbar. It’s a plug-in compatible with Firefox or Internet explorer. Really simple and quick !
Let’s see now ! I’m going to my favourite news website, Washingtonpost.com, then to an article.
I just highlighted a paragraph ! It’s really easy to do and to remove, plus I can choose 4 colours or highlighting.
And see I can “Bookmark” the page and edit bookmark on Diigo, which I did.
I just have to open the Diigo Sidebar to access to this article again. I can also go to my library on Diigo website.
Ouch ! Problem here !
See, the highlights can be public, then people can highlight anything and moreover they write stupid things on the sticky notes. Now everytime I open a web page some parts are underlined and commented, it really disturb my visit.
See, the highlights can be public, then people can highlight anything and moreover they write stupid things on the sticky notes. Now everytime I open a web page some parts are underlined and commented, it really disturb my visit.
Conclusion : Diigo is a great collective work tool but I definitely will use the website for the research I do for my memoir. The only cons I see for the moment is that first I have another toolbar. I don’t like how websites or antivirus software try to appear in our toolbar. At the end the toolbar is so big you don’t even see the website ! Secondly, all these highlights and comments are driving me crazy, I have to find a way to make them disappear.
Learning about...
This year, at the Celsa, our English classes don't look like any other classes we've ever had. No more blackboard, no more chalk, no more sheet, no more pen, no more power point... no more teacher ! Well, at least, no more physical presence of our teacher. Bob Spaulding is teaching us English from his desk which actually is thousands kilometers far from us. Bob is doing class from the south of France, behind his computer, and doesn't have to see our tired faces for hours. It's called e-learning. Doesn't it sound great ? Yes it does, but in fact it's not that simple ! Let's see how we could help Bob improving his long distance teaching.
This year, at the Celsa, our English classes don't look like any other classes we've ever had. No more blackboard, no more chalk, no more sheet, no more pen, no more power point... no more teacher ! Well, at least, no more physical presence of our teacher. Bob Spaulding is teaching us English from his desk which actually is thousands kilometers far from us. Bob is doing class from the south of France, behind his computer, and doesn't have to see our tired faces for hours. It's called e-learning. Doesn't it sound great ? Yes it does, but in fact it's not that simple ! Let's see how we could help Bob improving his long distance teaching.How is this possible for Bob to be there not being here ? Good question. Well we use MSN Live. It works quite well and allows us to see and talk with Bob. Yet, sometimes we have some troubles with it, for example Bob can't see us move or can't hear us very well. I wonder if Skype would be better . We certainly lack of a adapted software and I think the Ministry of Education is a bit late on that one.
Bob asked us to create a Blog - this one for me - and to post articles on several issues and questions every week. I use Blogger but we could use Wordpress too, like my friend Camille did. I think our e-learning class could use many other websites or applications the web offers, like for example Diigo (for more information see my article below). We also use Netvibes for the RSS feeds of our blogs. Bob also created a wiki we will use soon. Youtube is also great for posting videos. The thing I like about the wiki is that all our work can be found in one place. I would like it even more if we created a website together, learning how to make nice pages with various contents.
I also think we lack of real lessons. It would be nice if we had some videos, like video tutorials, teaching us stuff. And to check if we actually payed attention, there could be on-line assessments. The classroom could be represented by a website where we could find all these stuffs and even more.
I also really like the fact that we had to discover new websites this week. I think we should be given more missions on the web. Like Bob, you could tell us to discover websites you found interested and tell us to learn how to use it and write about it in our blogs. I don't know all the resources the Internet offers but there must be plenty things to discover that could actually be used to teach.
E-learning is a surprising and interesting way to teach, although I still don't think it will replace our traditional school. And for one simple reason : it's already hard to catch the attention of kids when you are physically present, so on distance I think it's mission impossible. If the class happens that well it's also because we are grown ups.
Learning about… 
Well I have to admit I’m a bit ashamed because there is something I really don’t know how to do whereas millions of teenagers do : uploading a video on Youtube. Being myself a regular watcher, I never posted anything on this website because I simply never had to. I actually already am in a video on the web, you can find it here, but I’m not the one who posted it. As Bob asked us to make a video resume and post it, I definitely have to learn how to do it. So let’s go !
Step 1 : going on Youtube.com and trying not to be attracted by all these videos. Not this time, come on.
Step 2 : creating an account.
Well for the moment nothing differs from what we usually do in any website.
Nice ! my username is not available. They suggest me "MrLaetitiaarnold" - how am supposed to react to that ?
Well it’s really simple, 2 or 3 questions and voila.
Oh actually no. I still have to give them my email address so they can spam me. My mistake.
Well I have to admit I’m a bit ashamed because there is something I really don’t know how to do whereas millions of teenagers do : uploading a video on Youtube. Being myself a regular watcher, I never posted anything on this website because I simply never had to. I actually already am in a video on the web, you can find it here, but I’m not the one who posted it. As Bob asked us to make a video resume and post it, I definitely have to learn how to do it. So let’s go !Step 1 : going on Youtube.com and trying not to be attracted by all these videos. Not this time, come on.
Step 2 : creating an account.
Well for the moment nothing differs from what we usually do in any website.
Nice ! my username is not available. They suggest me "MrLaetitiaarnold" - how am supposed to react to that ?
Well it’s really simple, 2 or 3 questions and voila.
Oh actually no. I still have to give them my email address so they can spam me. My mistake.
I activate my account after checking my mails… Great, I’ve just joined the Youtube community !
Step 3 : getting down to business - uploading a video. Well I guess I have to click on this yellow “upload” logo.
Step 3 : getting down to business - uploading a video. Well I guess I have to click on this yellow “upload” logo.
I can’t help laughing when I see this : “Important: Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts, or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself.” If people did the website would certainly not have so much success.
Since my video resume isn’t finished yet, the only little video I have in my computer is one of my fat lazy cat on her hind legs eating cream I give her. Wow Bob what wouldn’t I do for you ?
So I just look for my video in my files, put a title and some tags. Wow that was SO simple !
Here you go !
Enjoy because this one won’t stay long !
Conclusion : that was sooo easy even more than I had imagined. No wonder why Youtube is such a great success. Too bad the quality isn’t great and the videos can’t be more than 2 GB in size and last more than 10 minutes.
Here you go !
Enjoy because this one won’t stay long !
Conclusion : that was sooo easy even more than I had imagined. No wonder why Youtube is such a great success. Too bad the quality isn’t great and the videos can’t be more than 2 GB in size and last more than 10 minutes.
A cyber crime is a criminal activity on the internet. It can be illegal access, illegal interception, data interference, systems interference, or electronic fraud. The computer crimes we most talk about are child pornography and confidential information interception (credit card pass codes for instance). Cyber crime seems to be a growing trend.
But when it come to cybercrime I instantly think about… well me. I’ve got to plead guilty, I am an addict of peer-to-peer. I download many American TV shows. In peer-to-peer distributed network people make a portion of their resources (such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth) directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances.
Peer to peer isn’t illegal, what’s illegal is that people share files and documents that are the property of someone else.
Peer to peer is associated with some values we give to the Internet, like sharing freely.
Authorities try to stop these practices. The webmasters and the users of these P2P websites are sometimes hard to find and punish. Law varies from country to country. Plus, when a website is closed, it can be re-opened under another adress. Let’s focus on the particular case of Guiks.net. This French P2P website has been infiltrated by the ALPA. Its administrator, Meskalyn, was summoned to the gendarmerie last week. He was told to either close the website or be prosecuted for counterfeit. Meskalyn chose the first option. The community already got organized to take over and open a new private website.
Foreign authorities didn’t get the same answer. Do you know The Pirate Bay ? It is another Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The website was recently raided from Sweden but the famous community moved to the Ukraine, where the threatens of the BREIN made them move again. To France ? Of course no ! They settled in a fallout shelter in a Dutch forest. How exotic !
But when it come to cybercrime I instantly think about… well me. I’ve got to plead guilty, I am an addict of peer-to-peer. I download many American TV shows. In peer-to-peer distributed network people make a portion of their resources (such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth) directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances.Peer to peer isn’t illegal, what’s illegal is that people share files and documents that are the property of someone else.
Peer to peer is associated with some values we give to the Internet, like sharing freely.
Authorities try to stop these practices. The webmasters and the users of these P2P websites are sometimes hard to find and punish. Law varies from country to country. Plus, when a website is closed, it can be re-opened under another adress. Let’s focus on the particular case of Guiks.net. This French P2P website has been infiltrated by the ALPA. Its administrator, Meskalyn, was summoned to the gendarmerie last week. He was told to either close the website or be prosecuted for counterfeit. Meskalyn chose the first option. The community already got organized to take over and open a new private website.
Foreign authorities didn’t get the same answer. Do you know The Pirate Bay ? It is another Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The website was recently raided from Sweden but the famous community moved to the Ukraine, where the threatens of the BREIN made them move again. To France ? Of course no ! They settled in a fallout shelter in a Dutch forest. How exotic ! An endless tag ? I don’t think so. In the USA the repression is way more active than in France, and way more dissuasive. What is to be done against peer-to-peer ? I don't have the solution and I'm not shure I want to find one but France seems to have chosen the path of repression too. The government hired a new team of specialists to infiltrate P2P websites.
I do think that the internet content is ephemeral, even if paradoxically it remains on the web during years. When you created a website or post a commentary on a blog it remains there, month after month, year after year. Even when it’s deleted, there will always remain traces of it that we can’t see.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
To go on with the story of the website I made in high school, it’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the notion of impermanence on the internet. I worked so hard on this website, I spend so many hours thinking about it and developing it, and one day, it was gone, it had disappeared from the web. Why is that ? Because of my hosting services provider. When a webmaster didn’t log in during six months, the website was automatically deleted. Growing up, my passion dramatically fading away, I just let my website die. I did not want it to happen, not at all, and believe me it’s a strange feeling to lose something that represents so much but is only virtual. Few months of inattention and the death sentence was decided. I wish I could go back and at least copy few pages. That’s what’s so different with the internet. I have this bad habit to keep everything. I try to treat myself thank you but I still have many boxes filled with old stuff, the oldest must be my first drawings, that is to say... I couldn’t live without a attic. But no attic on the internet. I wasn’t able to save my cute little website from its digital death. I’ve been told every website leaves traces, that some people can have access to it, so I wonder where this cemetery is, how it looks like. All those obsolete websites… I just hope mine doesn’t rest next to some star sex tape withdrawn immediately from the web.
Anyway, my point is that people tend to think that the internet is more reliable than paper, that it can overcome time. But the internet is not another dimension. It’s just servers, wires, computers and systems. Material things that can fail.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations." - Charles R. Swindoll
An opportunity is a favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances. But the problem with this definition is that we can’t see the importance of acting on it. See, an opportunity isn’t something that happens to you and brings you fortune. An opportunity is nothing without somebody deciding to grab it at a particular moment. For an opportunity to become actually one, someone has to see it, to detect its potential. Then, he has to act, to make it real. Nothing is in itself an opportunity. Back to the sixties, when few American students started creating a network, nobody could have predicted that the system would become such a powerful mass media. But some people, one after the other, saw the opportunity and acted on it.
I’m not going to say that it’s a great opportunity for companies to go to the internet and make a website. I will spare you the scoop of the century. The highest opportunity the internet offers, is that it’s not fixed. This media is self developing. To me, the precious opportunity is for one to see how he will use and herewith shape the media. This week is the 11th anniversary of Google and it’s creeping me out when I see what they became – and the money they made - in a decade ! Google never stopped exploiting the media, changing it, making it more useful, making it do everything and even more. They developed advertisement services, an electronic mail service, desktop applications, a cartography application, the OS mobile Android… Well you all know the story. All this was possible because the company never stopped reconsidering their role and dared to take new directions. Of course, Google is far to be the only one making the internet become what it is today, and thinking about what it will be tomorrow.
In the end, an opportunity is only one after having been proved right. Before being grabbed, it’s just a possibility. We never know what can happen. So the advice I would give is not being afraid of creating, testing or trying new things, they can fail, but they can also become a precious opportunity.
Before the apparition of the internet, when someone had information about somebody or something, it was not always easy to be heard. Especially when the information referred to people who had political and/or financial influence. I’m not saying liberty of opinion and speech appeared with the internet but the web seems to give it no limit. Stars and politicians have to be way more cautious than they were before. Gutter press already generated scandals but couldn’t reveal everything because of pressures and lack of space in their pages. They couldn’t either know everything because they had few investigators. Today, if anyone sees anything, he can report it on the web. And everyone can see it and talk about it. In a way, this is a good thing because people have to behave and try to look nice and clean.However, the information we get on the web is way less reliable. On the web, a rumor can spread in an blink of an eye on without having been checked. As internet users we have to be careful with what we read or see.
Moreover, is transparency that good ? I mean, do we have to know everything about everyone ? It’s a tricky path. On the one hand, we deserve to know the man we are giving our vote to, or the people we trust – especially when he is building his campaign on certain values. But on the other hand, that is not really our business ! We are not voting for a good husband and a good father, we are voting for a president, a person who has to have politics experience and who knows the job. Same for a future employee, some pictures of him on Facebook having fun at a party should not be discriminatory. In my opinion, when it come to politics or work, people should not be judged according to their lifestyles but according to their skills.
Politics and companies tend to use this wave of “transparency” as a communication tool.
Using networks like Obama does with Twitter make them look real, nice and trustworthy. But when they tell little details about their lives it does not mean we get to know everything about them EVEN the more personal details. It only means we know what they wanted to show us. Let’s not be fooled by this illusion of proximity.I use the term “illusion” because even if these personal details are real, it does not mean we get to know the person. Transparency does not mean reality. The image we get of someone on the internet is just a part of what they really are. It’s been created by others, by pieces of information.
To conclude, let’s not forget that the internet is a media, a bias, a filter. Transparency is another recurrent myth of the internet.
The internet didn't only changed our lives, it completely influenced a new generation.
My father being a computer scientist, I've always had a computer. But I really felt a change in my life the day I started to get the internet. I remember, I was in Junior high school. My brother had driven my mother crazy to have the internet so one day she came back with a modem and a 10 hours/month connection with Club Internet. I swear these 3 hours a month they gave me totally changed my life !
The sound of the connection was totally surreal and access to a website page took forever but it was working. I associate this time to the transition from childhood to teenage hood. I started to open myself to the world. So many websites, so many information were there, I suddenly couldn’t remember how I had done before. I had a passion for the Olsen twins, but they were quite unknown in
So here is how internet broke my habits. I began to share more, to know more people, to speak and write in English, to focus on a project. My website actually worked very well, I had many visitors - still girls - and was even referenced in magazines. This made me realize how much I loved the media. Without the internet I wouldn’t be here, at the CELSA today. The internet did not only broke my little girl’s habits, it also lead my life right were I am.
Since then, I've always tried include the internet in my habits. I don't do the queue anymore, I buy train tickets on the internet. I don't let myself fooled by a shop, I compare prices on several websites. I don't buy news things all the time, I buy secondhand stuff on eBay or Priceminister. I don't go over the limit on my cell phone plan, I chat on Facebook. I don't copy-paste what I find on Encarta for work anymore, I look all over the web and compare the results. I could go on forever like that but I'm gonna stop. It seems that the only thing the internet didn't change is me being a chatterbox !
When the internet shuffles music industry - The impact of the internet on the world of music, musicians, and so on
Many myths are linked to the internet. Freedom, border crossing, connection between people, sharing…. Isn’t there characteristics the Internet has in common with music ? Indeed, these two should get along quite well. But today, music also means “intellectual property” and “market” . Here comes trouble. Since 2000, we’ve been talking about the crisis of music industry. Peer to peer practices seems to be the ones to blame. But what is the real impact of the internet on the music world ?
You rock my world
At first, the internet was only considered as an opportunity for musicians seeking fame. Free, simple visibility is given by websites such as Myspace. Thanks to those, musicians, beginners as experienced, can show what they do and who they are. Myspace being also a social network, these musicians began to enlarge their audience. Many artists were discovered on the internet, such as Lily Allen. It became a parallel way to know fame. By using the internet some acquired a reputation, a public, and stood out. Musicians communicate about their new songs and their concerts without passing by other expensive mass media.
What’s also great with the web is that you can find all types of music, coming from all over the world. In the past, I would only buy a CD knowing that I would like it, not testing it before. The Internet is free, there are no risks taken. Streaming really opens your mind to songs you wouldn’t hear on the radio or buy in stores. I discovered Sigur Rós, an Icelandic post-rock band on the internet, I don’t think I could have done it otherwise.
Moreover, according to the majors, paying online downloading has more and more success. Put forward as a legal alternative to peer to peer, million songs has already been sold all over the world this way. Isn’t it great not to have to go out, look for a CD, do the queue and go back home to finally listen to new songs ?! I sit there, behind my computer, and I get everything I want almost instantly.
Rock & Roll Suicide
Internet, as great as it can be, is also a very tricky media. Visibility can paradoxically lead to invisibility. The web is open so everyone can post anything, anytime. Everyone can call himself a musician and the most talented and creative artist can be easily lost in this sea. For instance, Myspace isn’t anymore for musicians only, teenagers also rushed at it.
Peer to peer is also a problem, regarding the fact that musician is a real job. Music, this way, is stolen from the person who worked for it. I’m bad, I’m bad, you know it… This lead to a record industry crisis. Records departments tend to disappear from the malls, even specialized stores such as Virgin or Fnac foretell the end of it. Some artists even consider twice the idea of starting a career, knowing it will be harder than it already was. According to the Syndicat national de l’édition phonographique in the first trimester of 2009, music CD and DVD sales went down 18,5% in a year. the music market in general went down 16,4%.
Songs also loose value : as soon as a song is being recorded, it is to be found instantly on the web . Radios and TV don’t even have time to broadcast them. They are overwhelmed.
Here comes the sun
Nobel price Paul Krugman said recently in a New York Times article : “Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.” This strategy seeks to take back music downloads and transform them into paying downloads. But hacking is hard to fight, especially when techniques such as DRM are not that reliable.
The Hadopi law is a French law that punish peer to peer as an offence to copyright. This law has been reinforced and adopted but the French senate today. I personally don’t know if repression is the solution. Some say it worked quite well in the USA but I am skeptic. Can’t we find another solution ? I don’t feel I have a particular legitimity to say what we should do however I think there should be discussions between music industry, musicians and economists. Something isn’t working with today’s system. Would awareness campaign be efficient ? I have to admit I may be naïve. Should music be free ? How ? By allocating a budget to musicians ? By paying them with advertisement ?
I do think other ways to download should be offered, but I also think it is a matter of time. Aren’t we just facing a simple change of format like another ? I mean, I look at my Spice Girls CD the way my father looks at his David Bowie vinyl disc : both are relics of the past ! It reminds us of another time and we feel nostalgic about it. To me, we are living a transition. What makes this change more difficult is that not only the “format” has changed, but also the “materiality” of music. Music went from material to immaterial. As for every change, society has to adapt. Here is a theme I will talk about a lot in this blog : how does media influence society, and how do we go from one media to another. Record sales are in crisis, but it won’t lead to the death of music industry.
To conclude, we have to stop blaming the internet for everything that changes today. Some announced the end of press, however we observe that newspapers can’t survive without an electronic edition but web newspapers need their printed edition to live, too. In my opinion, we should not talk about cannibalism but about convergence. Music industry will live forever, but not without the internet.
