Week 5- The Adventures of Art (Or lack thereof)

If you've read anything I've done in this class so far, you probably have heard me go on about how I am not an artist. And I stand by that point, I can not draw, paint, sketch, or whatever verb you can come up with a picture or anything. It's weird considering my Mom draws with colored pencils for a living, but obviously none of that talent was bestowed on to me. No, I get to toil around drawing stick figures for the rest of time, woe is me.

Combine that with the fact that I only got myself a iPhone (or any variant of a smartphone) around two weeks ago, and I can say I haven't done any sort of art on The Cloud.

Of course, that can change depending on your definition of art.

While I do not draw anything, I do sometimes write. It's never anything professional or super profound, but I have written small pieces on the internet. Heck, in one case I accidentally started a giant continuity for a community because I got bored and decided to write.

For the last week I've been watching a streaming site called Twitch attempt to play a simple game of Pokemon Red. With 80,000 people playing, it's been taking a while, but due to the chaotic nature of everything, a lot of injokes have sprouted up. And just last night, I wrote a small humorous piece on the reaction of one character to seeing all the madness going on around him. It was short, but I do end up writing things here and there. And I'm being told it's generally well written (Even if I make a stupid grammatical mistake because I wrote it at 11:45 PM...) so when it comes to writing, that has escaped out onto the Cloud in some ways.

As for our third category, photography. This is something I just can't get into, which is weird because, once again, my mom has taken it up in the last 6 years and is pretty good at what she does. Even though I have the iPhone now, I won't start taking a ton of pictures. As I said before, I do make videos, but that seems to be a totally different realm entirely.

To sum it up, my experience with art really comes down to writing (and music but hey, that is a different area) and not much else. I can't say for sure, but that's just the way it is.

Week 4- Creative Commons

The whole idea of Creative Commons feels like a relief of sorts when we go back and think about all the things concerning copyright we previously talked about.

The simple fact that there are simpler alternatives to the never-ending struggle that is copyright laws is always a nice thing to see. The copyright laws are so confusing on their own that this is a saving grace of sorts for us. It's also incredibly helpful that there are a wide variety of options that are all thoroughly explained, so trying to figure out what you're allowed to use and what you're not allowed to use is made slightly easier.

I do agree when the article states that creative commons helps expose whatever it is that is copyrighted to the public. After all, if you make something that other people have permission to use, generally it's going to get more attention than things that don't have any use at all. So what really matters is that Creative Commons is helpful for not only the consumer, as it is helpful to the artist as well. All in all, everyone wins! So that's pretty great.

Overall, Creative Commons just makes the copyright law a little easier to deal with, and considering how confusing it can be in the first place, it's a welcome change.

Multimedia Week Three

It sure is a weird feeling having someone tell you that the internet is only 5000 days old (Well, a little more at this given time, but my point still stands) because it feels like it's been so much longer than that. Kevin Kelly's talk about the next 5000 days in the lifespan of the internet was really an interesting one. It's clear that this guy knows what he's talking about, and even though it was made back in 2007, some points still stand.

I think what I found to be the most interesting from his video was the talk of how everything will eventually be part of the web. It sounds like such an unnerving topic when it's worded like that. It's some horror movie where the internet slowly assimilates everything in the world. Not a super fun topic. Of course, that's just crazy talk on my end. The actual claims were a lot more tame and all jokes aside, it sounds incredibly likely that in the next couple of years, everything will be more and more attached to the web. The quote I found the most interesting was saying that the web is like a black hole. And he is absolutely right. If you look around more and more at everything, you'll probably notice that more things are somehow connected to the internet. Some more than others. It could be something as simple as a nearby company advertising it's Facebook page, or something bigger like a new product that is connected online for whatever reason. As time passes, more and more things will be brought to the web.

Seriously though, the way it's worded here makes it sound a lot more negative than it could be. There are always consequences to connecting more things to the internet, but generally there are good things to come out of it too. It's really hard for me to say right now if it's a positive or negative thing, but I guess we'll just have to find out during the next 5000 days. And hope we don't all die or something by some internet apocalypse in the meantime.