Convergence Culture – Henry Jenkins − 12 March, 2007
[Author's Note: I wrote this from the airport the night I left South by Southwest. I was tired. And I had a full notebook of notes I wanted to transcribe at the time. So if it's too brief or too scatterbrained, you are officially warned.]
My very first SXSW experience was the opening keynote address in 2002. Lawrence Lessig was the speaker and he gave a one-hour slideshow on Rip-Mix-And-Burn-Culture in a legal and historical context. It turns out to be the same premise of his book, The Future of Ideas, where perpetual copyright and the interests of large corporate entertainment institutions prevent artists from creating art in a “lawyer-free zone.” My first hour of my first SXSW was therefore infused with politics, art, history and debate. It was a religious experience for me. You could say I was baptized by Lessig and converted fully to the religion of online arts at that very moment. The rest of the festival was a blur. I’ve written about it before, so I wont go into those details.
Flash forward to March 12, 2007 (SXSW 2007, that is) and I’m sitting in the front row of a smaller panel session – only the panel is not a panel at all. It’s Henry Jenkins – whose beard and receding hair are disheveled and white, the very stereotype of a mad professor – a MacArthur Foundation Genious Grantee and Director of the Comparative Studies department at MIT. He’s in front of one microphone. In front of another is his protégé, a young, pierced, grad student from USC Annenberg School for Communication named Danah Boyd. I recognized Danah from the 8-bit party a few nights before. She was wearing a fuzzy hat with two points, like horns on both occasions. Funny-looking in any other time and place; a sight for sore eyes for this traveler. The effect was a strange mix of beast and beauty – her blond hair and pale face cherubs and slight under a myth-inducing, horned-ape cap. She looked like a character from a rave epic.
Danah began the exchange with the premise that she was very excited to have the opportunity to present the person who made her believe she had a future in the academics of media studies instead of computer science degree she had previously been pursuing under at MIT as an undergrad. It had the air of religiousness.
Here I am two days later and I find myself inspired still. I have always marked my digital epicenter with the Lessig keynote of 2002. Now I feel as if I’ve undergone not so much an after-shock but another quake having heard what Jenkins has to say about social media. I cannot do justice to the experience here. Thought I took many notes, it would be impossible to describe with any accuracy the pure improvisational effect of his meanderings. The Q&A format lent itself to the feel of a coffee house debate. Only instead of eavesdropping on an effete scholar and his bohemian converts, it felt instead like a loving fireside chat between a genius and his biographer – where the biographer was the audience itself.
Update: Jenkins has since posted some links from his talk here.
My very first SXSW experience was the opening keynote address in 2002. Lawrence Lessig was the speaker and he gave a one-hour slideshow on Rip-Mix-And-Burn-Culture in a legal and historical context. It turns out to be the same premise of his book, The Future of Ideas, where perpetual copyright and the interests of large corporate entertainment institutions prevent artists from creating art in a “lawyer-free zone.” My first hour of my first SXSW was therefore infused with politics, art, history and debate. It was a religious experience for me. You could say I was baptized by Lessig and converted fully to the religion of online arts at that very moment. The rest of the festival was a blur. I’ve written about it before, so I wont go into those details.
Flash forward to March 12, 2007 (SXSW 2007, that is) and I’m sitting in the front row of a smaller panel session – only the panel is not a panel at all. It’s Henry Jenkins – whose beard and receding hair are disheveled and white, the very stereotype of a mad professor – a MacArthur Foundation Genious Grantee and Director of the Comparative Studies department at MIT. He’s in front of one microphone. In front of another is his protégé, a young, pierced, grad student from USC Annenberg School for Communication named Danah Boyd. I recognized Danah from the 8-bit party a few nights before. She was wearing a fuzzy hat with two points, like horns on both occasions. Funny-looking in any other time and place; a sight for sore eyes for this traveler. The effect was a strange mix of beast and beauty – her blond hair and pale face cherubs and slight under a myth-inducing, horned-ape cap. She looked like a character from a rave epic.
Danah began the exchange with the premise that she was very excited to have the opportunity to present the person who made her believe she had a future in the academics of media studies instead of computer science degree she had previously been pursuing under at MIT as an undergrad. It had the air of religiousness.
Here I am two days later and I find myself inspired still. I have always marked my digital epicenter with the Lessig keynote of 2002. Now I feel as if I’ve undergone not so much an after-shock but another quake having heard what Jenkins has to say about social media. I cannot do justice to the experience here. Thought I took many notes, it would be impossible to describe with any accuracy the pure improvisational effect of his meanderings. The Q&A format lent itself to the feel of a coffee house debate. Only instead of eavesdropping on an effete scholar and his bohemian converts, it felt instead like a loving fireside chat between a genius and his biographer – where the biographer was the audience itself.
- Jenkins described thoughts that can be found in his many posts on his blog. I recommend adding it to your daily feeds. He also mentioned an upcoming book about social media. I have a feeling I will be working back through his catalog in 2007.
- Some of the things he mentioned, which I wanted to note if fr no other reason than to remember to look up later on his blog and in his books are:
- Fan Culture of old is “Web 2.0 without the Stigma”
- “Today more people are finding fandom”
- “Collective intelligence [of] talking and watching in real time.’’ And how the people watching Twin Peaks together online were wanting more complexity from their story than those simply consuming the show passively.
- Suggested reading “everything bad is good for you.”
- Lamented that kids can remember 250 pokemon characters but our schools are afraid to make then remember the Greek gods of mythology because they think it would be too difficult. How kids are smarter than we give them credit for and are often presented with entertainment as an alternative to education. Also lamented at length how kids are prevented from learning digital literacy because of the filtering of content being enforced at the district level in school and public libraries ad by doing so we’re forcing them to become truly digitally literate in paces where they may not have access to educational resources. A paradox.
- He mentioned that media produces have already lost control – meaning that fans have more control over the outcome of entertainment sagas now than they ever did. Mentioned the Firefly movie Browncoats who promoted the movie without the permission of the studio. At first the studio sent a bill to the Browncoats (I’m not exactly sure why) by the studio which was countered by another bill sent to the studio by the Browncoats for the value of the publicity that they were able to create for the film.
- Mentioned the success of the opening weekend of the film 300, which forced studios to re-think what an epic blockbuster budget should be like. (the film only cost $70M to produce and made as much in its opening weekend)
- That said, while fans have a lot of say today, government, intellectual property law and technology vices are pressing fan culture in ways that are steadily making it more difficult to be an individual fan culture content creator. Cited the example of the Brokeback Mountain author’s publishing company issuing a cease and desist for a woman who had extended the story of Brokeback Mountain as fan fiction. The threat of legal action forced her to shut down her blog even though she was not profiting from the effort. Cited Harry Potter fan fiction as well. Asked, “who’s protecting participatory media?” The answer is not many people. [My note, perhaps an EFF-type organization should be set up to do exactly that.]
- The Participatory Gap – 57% of children in American households have produced media for the web. (Pew Internet in American Life). The other 43% cannot due to restrictions on access to tools to do so. Not a digital divide because they have access, but a participatory divide due to bans on blogging sites and social networks. Cited DOPA (American Act to prevent exploitation of minors). Said that this has a ripple effect (my words, not his) where media is beginning to look a lot like democracy where participation in democracy is a patronization of democracy, not true participation. “We need democracy to be a lifestyle.” While we’re more comfortable with adding our own voice to media, with fan culture as the prime example, we have no such equivalent in democracy. Voting is a token effort and not truly participatory. “Democratic entertainment” and called for a need for a “photoshop for democracy” in current political discourse. Cited example of “Left, Right and Center” website eliciting political cartoons from a community. It sometimes looks ugly as a result and made sure to point out that “just because [LR&C] is democratic it doesn’t make it pretty.”
- Middlebury College history department banned wikipedia.
- The English Language wikipedia is actually more culturally diverse since it takes into account many different culture’s points of view in the creation and management of it.
- Danah Boyd mentioned the UNC Breakup Video in the context of people feeling betrayed by the hoax which brought up the topic that it’s good to feel betrayed because people feel what they see on the web is either true or somehow belongs to them as well – because they are participating in its results. “People want things to be real.”
- “Did you hear lonelygirl 15 is a hoax?”
- “Well that’s bad for lonelyboy15 isn’t it?”
- Cited “humbug” PT Barnum example “the status of this is in dispute. Come see for yourself” happening at the same time as the duck-billed platypus discovery in Australia. Hoax actually fueled an interest and further collective understanding of a real discovery. Called that a “productive moment” in history.
- That hoaxes help us interpret and discern information thus learning the valuable skills of critical thinking.
- Compared Second Life to medieval Carnivale where people were used to dressing up in character on a single day of the year and act out things they would not otherwise be permitted. Cited example of husband who would beat his wife only to be beaten on Carnivale by may of the wife’s supporters. It was permitted in the context of Carnivale. Also mentioned the Boston Tea Party as a manifestation of what settlers were witnessing in Native American behavior for political upheaval. I’m not sure what he meant by that.
- Cited how kids with Asperger’s Syndrome are using second life to practice social skills and how Macedonia is creating a more Utopian version of itself in in second life. Pondered what it would be like to re-imagine Palestine in second life as well. Noted that this phenomenon was accomplishing exactly the opposite of what people fear about second life. Which is it’s not escapist at all, but is used in a way that helps us learn how to deal with the real world effectively. We learn skills in a virtual world we can take back into the real world.
- “We need to create low-budget politics that will have big-budget appeal (a la 300).” [my parens]
- Made the observation that there is a myth that “customized media” where you can choose what you want to subscribe to is not “social media” or “participatory media.” But that we are moving media back into a communal space.
- Mentioned on a recent trip to Australia with his son, his son wanted to visit because he had seen Australia on “Survivor.” Called it teletourism. And how that is a kind of participatory media effect. When pressed he discovered that the other members of their party were also teletourists given that they watched the discovery channel instead. Called participatory media: “we have different theme songs in our heads as we traipse through the real world.”
- Mark Twain on the telegraph. “What would anyone in Boston have to say to someone in San Francisco?”
- Compared our tendency to blame media for shooting death on reservation as sensationalist fear-mongering and lamented the democrats participating in the blame on media. The drunk looking for his keys – “the lights’ better here.”
Update: Jenkins has since posted some links from his talk here.
