Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of controversial technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to control the use of digital content and devices after sale; there are, however, many competing definitions. When the internet was new, different and less commercial, it seemed avant-garde. Computer games sometimes use DRM technologies to limit the number of systems the game can be installed on by requiring authentication with an online server. Most games with this restriction allow three or five installs, although some allow an installation to be 'recovered' when the game is uninstalled. www.wikipedia.co.uk/digitalrightsmanagement What is Intellectual property? Intellectual Property is created when an idea takes some tangible form. IP can mean a brand, invention, design or other kind of creation and it can be legally owned. Copyright Copyright as a right that exists only by government decree,created for the public good, and which must be regulated by the government to ensure that the public purpose is fulfilled.

Towards Ubiquity

Towards Ubiquity? In the richer parts of the world, peoples lives surrounded by a range of digital technologies. There is technology in our homes, In urban spaces (CCTV), in Financial Transactions – Chip & Pin, in our hands (Our mobiles) and even in our heads. This has given rise to renewed concerns about issues such as Surveillance, Privacy, and a condition that has been described as Ubiquitous Computing or everywhere! What does Ubiquity mean? Ubiquity is “used to describe the diffusion of computing technologies throughout our environment through increasing miniaturization and the development of ‘smart’ (i.e. predictive) computing applications. Which means, it gives us an idea that computers for example will soon be an embedded function of our physical environments. Ubiquity of Technology • GPS and Sat Nav – cars and phones • Reward cards and bar codes • Oyster Card- links information to your account online • Wireless internet and 3G data networks There is technology used everywhere by humans and is expanding a vast amount. It is taking over and has become a huge part of society.

Post Digital

What is Post Digital? Post digital is a term which has recently come into use in the discourse of digital artistic practice. This term points significantly to our changed and changing relationships with digital technologies that is rapidly changing and forming. It reflects to an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being digital. Which means that it is more or less taking over our human minds. Its the new beginning some can say or its the end. Post Digital is the new era of where new technologies are being formed and created. Post-digital to mean the condition of being fully reconciled to the disruption brought about by digital technology, and in particular the Web. It is much the same, in that sense, as ‘Postmodernism’, which really means the condition of having overcome the ‘shock of the new’, the culture of high modernism, and having absorbed its lessons. Being post-digital, we are, to repeat my previous post, through the future-shock and over the nostalgia (largely – we can still be nostalgic, in increasingly kitsch ways, for modernism and for ‘digital’). Being ‘post’ anything usually leads to a period of self-reflexivity and a prevailing irony about ‘progress’ that undercuts conscious artistic ambition.http://www.howtothinkaboutthefuture.com/?p=81

Contemporary Culture

Contemporary culture refers to the period of time that is current. Contemporary culture to an individual may refer to anything that has happened during their time. It includes the social, political and the economical climate. What people are engaging in today and the values they have today all relate to the contemporary culture. This doesn’t have to reflect on the technology or the social media in society or anything involved with post digital. It can refer to anything that is current and is happening now. Post digital and technology are two examples of what is current and what can refer to contemporary culture. Post digital is an example as it is what the social is engaging in today and what is new and what is being invented daily.

Nicholas Negroponte Ideas

Nicholas Negroponte is a Greek American architect best known as the founder of Messachetts institute of technologies media lab. I created an essay describing what his ideas of post digital culture are and how it helps us to understand contemporary culture. His ideas have a huge impact on post digital as he argues if post digital will come to an end or if its just the beginning. Negroponte believed, and was convinced that Post digital will come to an end. This is because technology has been injected into people’s minds and took over human society. Negroponte, nevertheless understood that whilst digital technology was busy disrupting every facet of human life, it would soon become so banal as to disappear. Nicholas stated, ‘Computers as we know them today will a) be boring, and b) disappear into things that are first and foremost something else’.

Hacker Culture: Will Wikileaks and/or the Geeks Inherit the Earth?

This blog post is going to show how Digital technology have impacted upon our concepts of contemporary culture. In September 1938 PM Neville Chamberlain made a speech concerning the Munich Agreement. Less than a year after the agreement Europe was plunged into World War II. Wikileaks Wikilieaks is an online international organisation which publishes information and classified media. Julian Assange was one of the early members of the WikiLeaks staff and is credited as the website's founder.   There were many reports that a government inquiry prompted us to not serve Wikileaks any longer because its not accurate. There was also a large number of attacks but they were successfully defended. It wasnt following the 'Human Rights' as it was putting people in jeapoardy. Documents that were relased in Wikileaks that were published could have been carefully redacted in a way which wasnt putting innocent people in danger. Will the geeks inherit? A 'geek' is quite a stereotypical word. It is known to be a person wearing glasses and who is very smart and is good with technology and gadgets. It can also be referred as, A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept. The InnerGeek Website challenges this dismissive definition and argues that that a geek “is a person who is talented in an area outside the boundaries of social normality.”

Digital Media Systems: Paratexts Franchises, Fandom etc.

This blog post is going to focus on how digital media have impacted upon our concepts of the media text. Media theorists have recognized that our understanding a particular text is based on its relationships to other texts. Genre and Genre conventions These involve a close relationship through concepts of producer, IPR, medium, and audience. Paratexts It involves a close relationship through marketing and other non- narrative material called 'Paratexts'. Paratexts take a text and 'surround it and extend it'. -Ownership and Control: Paratextual Analysis Paratexts surround, shape, support and provide contexts for texts'. They may change the meaning of texts, it enhances meaning and provide sedimated meanings. There are different forms of paratexts, such as Digital Paratext. . The Gameboy 'Pokemon is an example. It has a beginning and an end but it repeats, it doesnt mean the game is necessarily over. - This is a closed product the credits keep rolling. An Open product or paratext It involves story rights, story franchise, merchandising and fandom. Alternate Reality Gaming This is not really a game. ARG players are characterised by a willingness to seek out new challenges across the world wide web and beyond, it is to find anagrams in names, coded IP addresses in numbers, and to theorize about the ARG with a wider community on a forum. Gamification It involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.