Results tagged “internet culture”

Paul Downey

This poster by Paul Downey just totally made my morning: The Web is Agreement and how did I miss the Osmosoft thing?

Just saw this item on Slashdot. A classic example of a big corporation not getting the new consumer.

In a nutshell, in the guise of protecting its intellectual property (IP) against illegal merchandisers, Universal is throwing out a lot of babies with the bath-water. The whole Joss Weedon, Firefly etc. type-thing is the foundation for huge amounts of high-quality fan-art and the fans that create, buy and wear it want a stake in the outcome. They promote the TV show and want nothing more than to be a small part of the magic.

Except that nowadays, the fanart IS the magic. Without this degree of customer participation, films like Serenity and shows like Firefly just wouldn't have the same reach, nor the same staying power (the stuff that sells season X DVDs long after the closing titles have rolled).

The core of the problem is simple. Traditional IP owners think of the IP as being the primary source of value for them. In essence, they pay guards to surround the mine and miners to extract the value. The whole idea that the consumer could be adding equivalent value is alien to them and their infrastructure doesn't allow for flexibility or evolution (they are frozen in time by legal agreements and the lawyers that protect them).

The punch-line of this particular piece is that the fans are sending Universal an invoice for their services (more details here). You go girl:-)

Glad to see Iain Tait is experimenting (and, in the process has found a place to buy genitals).

I just read quite an interesting report by Elizabeth Coverdale called Cyberculture and Gender Identification in Online Chat Communities. She looks at role-play, gender reassignment and in particular digs a little deeper into the language people use when "inworld" (be that in full 3d environments like Second Life or simply chatting over an IM client).

It turns out that men and women have subtle differences in the way they structure a conversation. According to Coverdale, women pepper their conversation with meta-messages design to create a mood, they use phrases like giggles or "lol" more frequently than men with an aim of creating a cocoon of aproval and friendship around the conversation. Men will just say what they want in shorter phrases with little or no introduction.

I can't say this has been my experience. I find myself often drifting into a world of emoticons when I chat...

My Second Life avatar is currently a young Korean woman and while I'm still just roaming around figuring out the various inworld dynamics I can imagine things could get a little wierd. (If you take a look at Iain's post and are confused by the pictures, a Google search should give you a clue... and cheesh, I'm reminded I never did find out what the three shells do in Demolition Man)