My attempted Lit. Review about new media ecologies (Twitter, Digg, etc.)

This research attempts to uncover the biases inherent in new electronic media and then to explore how those biases are exploited by groups such as Anonymous to make their message heard above the rest. Over the last ten years, the internet has been beset by tens of new forms of media, new ways of communicating. Ambient intimacy has been heightened through the use of Twitter and the Facebook Newsfeed, not to mention blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and any of the other new media sites. Each of these new forms of communication essentially has created new media ecology, with unique sensory biases and loopholes written into their code. Anonymous, as a whole, has learned the ins-and-outs of most of the common media and has used this knowledge to increase the exposure of what they deem important. I hope to learn how each media platform functions, the biases written into the code, and then how Anonymous has learned to manipulate these loopholes.
As of this moment, there is not much formal research on platforms such as Twitter, et al. The media themselves are too new. However, there has been much written in the field of media ecology. As Casey Man Kong Lum mentions in his research on the history of media ecologies, new media change our sensorium; the manner in which we comprehend and construct our world and the internet is a multi-media environment that has different languages emerging, pictures, videos, music, vlogging, blogging, fanfiction, and hundreds of different ways of expressing oneself. Authors like McLuhan, Meyrowitz, and de Zengotita have looked at the effects of media (television in particular) on society and then how the media shape and become the message. As de Zengotita states in his book Mediated, "what counts is the code - digital or DNA, both are susceptible (and subject) to mediation, to human control of what it expresses". The message truly is in the medium.
Continuing on in the realm of published academics, authors such as Lawrence Lessig have written extensively on the future of code and its legalities. He details how to develop credibility and identity on the internet as well as exploring some of the new opportunities that internet code affords people in terms of expression. Lessig’s book Code is one of the newer published sources on code and new media; it will serve as a good reference for my exploration on exactly how the new media function. C-SPAN also recently interviewed the co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, quizzing him about many of the complaints of Twitter’s biases and the accusations that Twitter is used by terrorists; this interview gives an insiders description of one of the central new media that is being used.
The published literature is limited by the very newness of the media that I wish to explore. The media have not been in existence long enough to have a wealth of scholarly articles written about them; ergo I will be using the work of media ecologists like McLuhan, Lum, Meyrowitz, de Zengotita, Spitulnik and others to learn the theories of media ecology and sensory biases and effects of the various media. It then turns to academes such as Lessig to discover the finer points of code and biases. All of this will serve as grounding and a baseline research for a further exploration into the new media. The C-SPAN interview with Twitter’s co-founder Evan Williams (http://cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15634) and research into complaints about Twitter, Digg, and other media sources will become the key pieces of my research. I am looking at understanding the ecology of these new media and how they can be exploited, specifically the medium and NOT the message that Anonymous broadcasts. To confirm the validity of my research and understanding, I might then experiment with getting my own information publicized in the same ways as Anonymous (using my knowledge of how the code and biases function to boost the visibility of a message). This topic is fairly under-researched simply because of its novelty, but it has lots of resources available for study and past academic work to refer to concerning other media.


C-SPAN interview with Evan Williams http://cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15634

Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: the Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. http://books.google.com/books?id=0Xx5Hm8M5g8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=no+sense+of+place#PPP1,M1

Lum, Casey Man Kong. “Overview of Media Ecology.” http://www.scribd.com/doc/12284025/Overview-of-Media-Ecology-by-Lum?secret_password=1gb0osm8bchhw52a43sq

McLuhan, Marshall -> collected works concerning media

De Zengotita, Alexander. Mediated. http://books.google.com/books?id=XqAyGwAACAAJ&dq=de+zengotita+mediated

Spitulnik, Debra. “The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of Communities”

Lessig, Lawrence. Code. http://books.google.com/books?id=xTyn4Zt3AKEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lessig+code

New Topic! Media Biases and Context...

So for those of you who read the previous posts and had a vague idea of my project, forget that entirely. I am shifting in a new direction and will be studying the various platforms that anonymous people use and, more specifically, how groups like Anonymous manipulate the biases and loopholes in media like Twitter, Digg, etc. to make their videos/ideas viral and extremely widespread and publicized. This will involve understanding how the media themselves work; learning about the code and what inherent sensory biases the platforms hold. I will not need an extremely thorough understanding of the code itself, because Anonymous and anonymous users don't actually write the code; they exploit the weaknesses and strengths of each pre-fabricated communication system (context) to maximize the strength of their particular message. My goal is to understand what they understand and then to explain how/why they do it. *nod*

So far, the readings that we have used will actually be very helpful to me. The readings on media ecology and media biases will be very helpful to me. I am going to be re-reading my notes on those articles (see older posts), as well as researching more into both media ecology, communication theory, code, and context (linguistic anthropological papers and communication systems research should be coming in handy).

(Un)fortunately, since I had already begun researching for my previous topic, I now have a fairly decent grounding in the gradual evolution of the 'mediated self'. I have finished the first half of No Sense of Place by Meyrowitz (see below post) as well as the complete Mediated by de Zengotita. The essence of Mediated was a continuation of Meyrowitz' book, but much more contemporary. His basic argument was that "you are completely free to choose because it doesn't matter what you choose. That's why you are so free. Because it doesn't matter."

De Zengotita's book is an argument that we have become so comfortable with dealing with reality through something else that essentially everything is a performance and there are infinite OPTIONS available at all times (and reality's opposite=options). Where my new focus comes into play is in his statement: "what counts is the code - digital or DNA, both are susceptible (and subject) to mediation, to human control of what it expresses". That is my new project in a nutshell. Looking at how Anonymous, etc. look at all of the codes for the media on the internet and manipulate them to CONTROL what is expressed, what is advertised, what becomes viral.

So why do we study this? De Zengotita quotes Bezos as saying, "the physical world is a wonderful medium, and it's not going to go away." The 'real' world has become another type of media and, for many, control of the internet communication media can control enormous parts of culture. Look at memes, at pop culture, the meaning of 'cool', and myriad other culture-shaping tidbits. The internet pervades our lives and the ability to manipulate the media of the internet gives enormous power and sway to the ones who hold the ability (e.g. Anonymous - why else would Fox News, etc. cover them??).

Now, I get to outline a further plan of research - I hope to research more about the history of media ecology, the effects new media have had on culture (see McLuhan, Meyrowitz, etc.), and then try to find whatever I can on current media phenomena like Twitter, Digg, Diigo, etc. I watched part of an interview with the founder of Twitter on C-SPAN the other night, and it was obvious to me that not even he truly knows of the future of his company and of his code. It's all new, and it's all different. As De Zengotita said, "this whole technology thing has just started, but it's accelerating at a tremendous rate."

I could not agree more. We are on the tip of the iceberg. As Dr. Wesch mentioned in his Web 2.0 video, we have to reconsider a LOT of things. We no longer think purely linearly if we are trying to be rational. The electronic age is here and it has opened up new doorways for expressing thought, communication, and community. How do the media that have begun to develop shape these new ideas, how are they forming, how are they evolving, and how are people using them?

Tim Finan et al. wrote an article entitled "The information ecology of social media and online communities" which was published this past fall in AI Magazine. He and his cohorts specifically looked at blogging, which is not truly what I am interested in, but he did have a great poing: "As the web continues to evolve, we expect that the ways people interact with it, as content consumers as well as content providers, will also change. The result, however, will continue to represent an interesting and extravagant mixture of underlying networks--networks of individuals, groups, documents, opinions, beliefs, advertisements, and scams. These interwoven networks present new opportunities and challenges for extracting information and knowledge from them."

http://find.galegroup.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/itx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en%2C%2C)%3AFQE%3D(KE%2CNone%2C13)media+ecology%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&searchId=R1¤tPosition=1&userGroupName=ksu&docId=A186225627&docType=IAC


Lance Strate wrote a short review of McLuhan's work http://find.galegroup.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/itx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en%2C%2C)%3AFQE%3D(KE%2CNone%2C13)media+ecology%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&searchId=R1¤tPosition=16&userGroupName=ksu&docId=A130975645&docType=IAC
He wrote: "And it is here that McLuhan introduces his famous aphorism, which is generally considered axial in media ecology: "the medium is the message" (pp. 17 ff.). Simply put, it is the idea that the media or technologies that we use play a leading role in how and what we communicate, how we think, feel, and use our senses, and in our social organization, way of life, and world view."

So, books to read/finish and authors to peruse:
Marshall McLuhan
Innis
Meyrowitz
Michael Silverstein
Debra Spitulnik
De Zengotita
Lawrence Lessig (specifically "Code")
etc.
And watch the full C-SPAN interview with Twitter founder...

Any further suggestions, comments, help would (as always) be appreciated... Good Night!!!!

Context Collapse and the New Mediated Self

For this lovely reflection post, the first few chapters of Joshua Meyrowitz' book "No Sense of Place" and Dr. Mike Wesch's article "YouTube and You: Experiences of Self-Awareness and Context Collapse of the Recording Webcam" were read.

Following the ideas presented in the media ecology articles, Meyrowitz' book reflects on the impacts of new media on societies and especially electronic media. "No Sense of Place" was published in the 1980s and was meant to address the social impacts of television. Meyrowitz points out that, at the time of publication, almost all work concerning television and new media were not about the medium but about the message that it conveyed. The "medium is viewed as a neutral delivery system", which is not true. Each medium has its own biases concerning the significance of space, time, and physical barriers as communication barriers. They create new social environments that reshape behavior in ways that go beyond the specific products or messages delivered.

The "medium is the message", to quote McLuhan. The changes in media as electronic media have evolved have enabled new ways of communication, the possibility to move away from linear rationality as enforced by pure text, and new types of self-awareness and reflection. The new e-media have changed both social environments with things like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other media that encourage "ambient intimacy". There is also a visible "cultural lag", wherein some parts of society and culture embrace the new media and are thus "ahead of the rest". Therein lies the underlying suspicion and distrust of the internet. Some might argue that only some people are using the internet and the new media evolving electronically. For certain, not everyone uses/posts to YouTube, /b/, 4chan, fanfiction.net, twitter, or facebook and the fact that not everyone has become acculturated to these new-fangled gadgets is quite possibly one reason for all of the skepticism and dislike that is aired about such things - people fear what they do not know/understand... somewhat understandably.

Dr. Wesch's article emphasized one particular new medium, that of YouTube and the vlog. The message sent by the medium was one of context collapse and then the embracing of the new black-hole of context. The vlogs allow for new ways to reflect on who/what you are, while others can watch you free of other's expectations to react or respond. Wesch mentions a perceived loss of community with this networked individualization, and I'm sure that that is true. However, what I got out of both articles is that the internet and all of the possibilities it affords people in terms of new modes of expression, reflection, and culture are still very much so in infancy and waiting to grow/evolve. These new media reshape culture and institutions (see Wesch's video Web 2.0), but new media are constantly being introduced.

Does this new media and the context collapse under the weight of infinitely possible types of context foster Anonymous/anonymity? I think that one could argue that the new media have provided for a context collapse and a major shift in the form of new media; the social structures, mores, and culture are still evolving and attempting to "catch up" with the conundrums that these new media of communication are presenting to the world, mostly free of charge. I think that it will be interesting to see what happens with the internet and the various NEW media that will be introduced; what institutions and cultural modifications come into existence because of them. This is a whole new world. Electronic media are allowing for new ways of thought and more possibilities for contexts, self-reflection, organization, et al.

Who knows what will happen next?

Is the internet the new small town? Two articles concerning Media Ecology and the internet

The two articles that I read for this blogpost, pgs 28-39 of "Notes Toward and Intellectual History of Media Ecology" by Casey Man Kong Lum and "Web ushers in age of ambient intimacy" by Clive Thompson both treated the internet as a new forum, a new place, a new ecology for social interactions.

The first article, the excerpt from Lum's book, tries to give a brief history of the study of media as environments or environments as media (one definition of media ecology). How environments affect people, language used changes interactions, and how communication changes when the media of communicating changes. New media change our sensorium; the manner in which we comprehend and construct our world and the internet is a multi-media environment that has different languages emerging, pictures,videos, music, vlogging, blogging, fanfiction, and hundreds of different ways of expressing oneself. Each different physical/symbolic characteristic of a medium of communication has its own bias and those biases and media change society. For example, the introduction of literacy diminishes the importance of the elder and that elder's experience of knowledge; they no longer have a monopoly on knowledge and that has a profound social impact. The internet has accelerated the changes that have occurred. Interestingly enough, the segment we read did not really hypothesize on how the internet media would change the society. That was found in Thompson's article.

"Web ushers in age of ambient intimacy" by Thompson talks specifically about the use of Facebook newsfeed, Twitter, and Flickr. The idea of microblogging that creates and "ambient awareness" wherein "little snippets [of information] coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of friends' and family's lives... a pointillist painting." This was then related to how text messages sometimes feel more intimate than a phone call, in the same way that sitting next to someone yet not particularly talking can be more intimate than forcing a conversation (living together = intimacy). I definitely understood that. Ambient messages presented by Facebook Newsfeed and Twitter are ignorable; they aren't as cognitively demanding as emails and do not demand any response and merely are read at the leisure and want of the reader. It allows for people to have many more "loose ties" to people, while not expanding the number of "deep ties" a person might have. The article essentially argues that the Newsfeeds and Twitters of the internet have caused a return of small town life, of an era wherein everyone knows everyone else's business (at least in their social circle). They have destroyed/diminished the 'anomie' that many feared would form in people with the internet. It's merely another media change.

The Int'l Herald Tribune article argues that Twitter and Newsfeeds eliminated the ability to create one's own identity on the internet. Perhaps this is why groups like Anonymous have formed and anonymity seems to be growing in prevalence and popularity/attention in newsfeeds in recent years.

Thoughts...

A brief history of cyber-culutre analysis?

So, I just finished reading David Silver's article "Looking Backwards, Looking Forward: Cyberculture Studies 1990-2000" (http://www.scribd.com/doc/9525177/Silver?secret_password=2kj8wcye7gt62iokofhh). It basically gave a very brief overview on the evolution of ethnographic/cultural research that has taken place in the 90s to 2000. Read with Neil Whitehead's more contemporary piece, it is interesting to see the threads evolving and continuing betwixt the works.

In terms of gender relations, it is interesting that both Silver and Whitehead mention the freedom that cyberspace allows women (no physical fear/boundaries/body image). Silver mentions a woman who learned to accept a recent limb amputation through creating a one-legged RPG character and entering into a cyber relationship whereas Whitehead explicitly mentions sex/sexuality without danger of rape or "toxic" relations. It also is interesting that Silver's article and Whitehead's both mark the internet as being predominantly male.

Speaking solely on Silver's article and the brief history of cyberculture research it gave, I wonder how applicable it is to the modern internet. He mentions Howard Rheingold's work on community building in the internet, Sherry Turkle's study of identity, and several other scholars' works on gender issues, feminism, identity, etc. but there seems to be a distinct lack of information/research mentioned concerning violence, abusive language, or anything remotely like "trolling". I wonder if the internet was too nascent for the researchers to have noticed this phenomenon, or if perhaps the author merely looked at the more 'positive' aspects and had not read much on the negative side...

The most valuable thing (the MVT, if you will), that I gleaned from this article is a sense of what has already been studied. What kinds of topics can I expect to find at least preliminary research and what topics have been covered thoroughly, but perhaps are worthy of having new research-life breathed into them due to the evolution of cyberspace. I seem to be gravitating towards the creation of identity anonymously and then what people choose to do with their anonymity... Sherry Turkle has already written an entire book on the topic of cyber identity and I know that others have covered it as well, but the article was excellent in giving a broad overview of what people studied in the internet's first decade as a truly public-accessed communication medium.

I feel like I should go find Turkle's book and at least skim parts of it as well as to search for more research on identity, anonymity, et al. because now I know that someone has already laid the foundation and created the groundwork to make this project both academically valid and publicly appealing...

oi.

the fig-leaf of “scientific observation” - reflection on Neil Whitehead's "Post-Human Anthropology"

"the fig-leaf of “scientific observation” can no longer cover the phallus of ethnographic desire"

Perhaps my favorite quotation from the entire piece. "Post-Human Anthropology" is a paper by Neil Whitehead explaining the reasoning behind his decision to do participant-observation/observing-participant ethnographic research on how sex and violence are approached in cyberspace. He recognizes that, like Hine in her article, the old/traditional methods of doing ethnographic research no longer work. The traditional subjects have disappeared; how does one approach a culture that is "both geographically unlocated and by definition uncannily disembedded or distinct from localized cultures?"

Whitehead decided to form a band, Blood Jewel, with the express purpose of generating aural/visual content to post on the internet and elicit responses to the work - essentially becoming his own subject in an 'autoethnography' focusing on violence/sex as represented in the fairly anonymous realm of cyberspace. Whitehead had noted that "in the realm of cyberspace it is only through active participation that there is anything to observe at all. In short, in order to understand
desire we must become desiring subjects ourselves."

Whitehead had done research on sexuality and violence in the cultures of French Guiana and Brazil, recognizing the dearth of research on these topics as well as their evolving role in "western" and cyber society. "Western sexuality itself has necessarily become more disembodied and immaterial in a sexually toxic and physically dangerous social world. The explosion of on-line sex sites, ranging from commercialized pornography and camera chat rooms to person-to-person dating and “swinger” sites, all represent a new realm of sexual experience and subjective engagement. Highly visual, masturbatory, and anonymous the possibilities for safe-sex make such cyber-sexuality, or “outercourse,” a credible alternative to dangerous intercourse with “real” people. Nor is this just a framework for desire; it is also enacted on a massive scale, suggesting myriad ways in which sexual experience has become radically detached from the physical...
cyber-life and its digital subjectivities seems to stimulate and offer opportunities for the expression of both sexual and violent desires. As Freud notes, the “uncanny” occurs where the accepted structure of a world is violated, “when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred” (Freud 2003: 150), and so to challenge the “accepted structure of the world,” which clearly has no adequate narrative for either contemporary violence or the sexual, the realm of cyberspace becomes a particularly fruitful context in which to blur such boundaries and perhaps stimulate better intellectual understanding."

This is particularly intriguing for our research on anonymity because Anonymous and anonymous persons on the internet do tend to gravitate towards hyper-sexual and hyper-violent content. The posts and identities presented seem to be more steeped in a language and culture reflecting a more violent sexuality than is the norm in "real" life. Cyber life has allowed for "safe" sex and expression - Whitehead notes that his Blood Jewel site has more female fans than male, hypothesizing that the freedom from physical bounds allows women to be more expressive and free with both sexual and violent ideas without fear of rape or other retribution. Which is intriguing because the prototypical image of an "anonymous" user or member of Anonymous is that of a hetero, white male. A friend pointed out that our supposedly neutral, unmarked or anonymous cyberspace is in fact heavily, wearyingly normed as white (male, straight) able-bodied and middle class; what does that mean for people who aren't those things?(online I can be whoever I want to be, so long as I'm just like you).

In regards to our research on anonymity on the internet, this article is a good starting point to look at perhaps why the anonymous posts tend toward violence and sexually suggestive/explicit content. It also poses some interesting questions in terms of our research ethics. As Whitehead remarked, "ethnographically my actions are
ethically acceptable because they are based on that authentic artistic goal. Nor are such transgressive artistic acts undertaken as a means of experimenting with others lives, because it is my own experience of this project that is the auto-ethnographic subject of study. If I were to attempt to research individual users as “informants” on the processes and dynamics of MySpace, then the relation between on-line identity
and off-line social identity would be all important and lead directly to the ethically fraught issues of how much masking of identity and purpose could be legitimate for the ethnographer."

So, how should we move forward with researching people who are only united by their anonymity? Can we become "anonymous" ourselves and elicit information, ethically, for our own work? Where do we draw the line.

Just some thoughts to leave this post with:

- "the concept of identity has become highly problematic in anthropology, for in asking the question “who is what?”, if we have not been greeted with a recalcitrant silence,25 then we have received the reply that “we are not who you think we are!”" Whitehead

- The pornography industry generates $12 billion dollars in annual revenue—larger than the combined annual revenues of ABC, NBC, and CBS. Of that, the Internet pornography industry generates $2.5 billion dollars in annual revenue.

- "power-relations of technological competence and ownership become a form of neo-colonial dominance embedded in the social and cultural life of the post-colony."

- "violence is always more than its material appearance, that part of the instrumentality of violence could be its endemic and persistent affects on imagination and subjectivity"

- "Making sense of other people is never easy, and making sense of how other people make sense can be very difficult indeed." Keith Basso (1979)

Readings... reflections?

On Christine Hine's Virtual Ethnography -

This was a good starting point for me to read. I knew that we were attempting to create an 'ethnography', but I had not thought to critically analyze how ethnographies were collated previously. I feel like this chapter of Ms. Hine's book was written in a similar vein as Prof. Wesch's Web 2.0 video. He said that we would have to rethink a lot of things, and that is essentially what Ms. Hine is saying in reference to ethographic work. The internet is a completely new form of media that allows more static forms of text to exist as well as more fluid text (chat rooms, message boards, etc.), videos, and file sharing. New communities are formed based on shared interest and are in no way, shape, or form bound or constrained by geographic location. Language is not even a barrier overly much because of instant translators that can be installed as "plug-in"s. Ms. Hine's examples are a bit dated (her book was published in 2000 - before the advent of YouTube, for example), but still remain true.

For our project, it made me think of how exactly are we to go about this. For my project, I find it entirely too easy to see myself falling into the role of an "armchair anthropologist" and perhaps not thoroughly embracing/participating/observing anonymity on the internet. But perhaps I already am by being a "lurker". It makes me wonder how we are going to be able to get "informants", or if we should mostly throw that idea away and rely on message-boards and publicly posted interactions amongst anonymous people on the internet - or should we try to become our own informants? A lot of the questions that I though of while reading this chapter were the same, or at least similar, questions that I had when we completed the IRB training. It's one of those conundrums where we have to figure out not only what applies to us, but how or even if we should attempt to follow the semi-standardized form of ethnographic research? Ms. Hines final 10 points touch on this, but I think #10 is the most relevant - we are doing a "virtual" ethnography (meaning a pseudo, not-real-world, or some other definition type of ethnography). interesting points...

Yochai Benkler The wealth of networks

Definitely sensing a theme here. This article, I believe, is defending the internet as merely a medium. It is not a community/social destroyer or creator. It is what it is and a lot of the negative reactions to its use are similar to the ones raised every time in the last hundred plus years when new connective media has been introduced. The printing press, telegrams, morse code, telephones, television, and now the many forms of the internet are met with fear because they do/have destroyed society as it was known. To quote R.E.M., "it's the end of the world as we know it" and then to quote the TV show Life, "it's like living in the future". Each new technology has quite literally changed the world, how people organize, and how communication and communities are created. Benkler seems to be pointing out that there may be negative aspects, but his overall argument is that the internet is majority positive. I think that it's too early and too simple to call it one thing or the other. It simply is.

With regard to our research, the Anonymous group and anonymity seems to feed into the 'anomie', social deconstruction argument presented in Benkler's chapter 10. At least, it does at first. Yet as Howard Rheingold points out, even those without names or explicit identities seeked to form a community on the internet. They do things for the lulz, they lurk, they protest; the Anons are part civic activist and part bullying thrill-seeker anarchist. It's fun because, as Hine pointed out, it is a virtual reality with different rules, different social mores, and a different society. I think what Benkler did not point out is that the internet is not merely an extension of a community's day-to-day life; the internet forms its own reality with different "ethnic groups", communities, religious ideas, social mores, ideas of justice, humor, language... everything.

Video flim-flammery (second embedded video magic)

Anonymity, Morality, and Identity


This is the entirely new project trailer. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it... of the music...
hmm...

The remake of the original is:

Anonymous changes to morality...



on a side note, I do believe that I actually like the name of this video better. Perhaps I will rework the name of the previous vid., along with its music...

2nd Draft of the Video...

So, remaking a video is surprisingly difficult. I wasn't sure where to go with the first video I posted, so I played with that one for a while and then created another video entirely from scratch. I don't know how I feel about either one. I don't know if either truly touched on what I wanted to say - both had elements that were there, but I am unsure... In any case, both are uploaded to YouTube and see the next post (above) for the links.

The completely new one has more talking and different clips in it. It, perhaps, has more of the actual ideas that I want to touch on in it, but I think the video quality is not as good as the original trailer (or the remake of the original...).

My brain feels a bit fried, so I shall leave the post here. Feel free to comment on anything... or not?