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valleylist(sm) v225 r.1 – – popular culture was my thesis – – 10.17.2012
high tech products companies consumers
NEWS
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POPULAR CULTURE WAS MY THESIS in graduate school. way back when it was just aol vs.compuserve (an h&r block company that became #1 with only 600,000 subscribers). newspapers went into the home with information services on television – – it was viewtron (knight ridder) vs. gateway (a times mirror company). then trintex. if anybody can figure out how to build usage and make money it should be trintex the joint venture between cbs ibm and sears. the unholy trinity cracked under the strain of real competition and maxed out with their online service prodigy in 1990 at around 465,000 subscribers. arpanet (advanced research projects agency network) was funded to launch an academic information service linking universities. voila. years later the internet. the big winner with 2 billion subscribers or users world wide.
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some thought it was the universal library. i thought it was popular culture. these days wiki says “popular culture is the entirety of ideas perspectives attitudes memes images and other phenomena that are preferred by an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture. especially western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society“. basically it’s everyday media like newspapers posters movies television live theatre music and entertainment.
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most famous is marshall mccluhan. perhaps the first to approach mass media with rigorous analysis. certainly the first to come up with visionary theories like the “global village”. content analysis is a specific set of rules for deconstructing a specific piece of popular culture such as an article or television program. the objective is defining it’s true meaning. for example umberto eco claude levi-strauss noam chomski and michel foucault are the leading visionaries in developing intellectual and academic tools for really understanding if the popular culture item is really worth sending out over the mass media and determining what meaning is being communicated to the millions of readers and viewers out there. reading these analyses is also often very entertaining. nicholas negroponte pioneered new media and popular culture with actual research at the mit media lab and with michael naimark has defined new media technologies and programs with input from artists and media experts. greg mckenna studied under arthur asa berger who’s favorite puzzle is “the prisoner” an impossible to comprehend britsh thriller starring patrick macgoohan that aired on the bbc in 1967 for only 17 episodes. the six gun mystique outlines berger’s thrilling conclusion that popular culture as experienced in the mass media can be reduced to a few simple rules or success factors. for example a successful television program is often formulaic and relies on repetition of certain themes to gain and retain viewers.
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greg mckenna’s concept is that consumer information services like the internet should function like other mass media and should have the same characteristics as television and newspapers. i used the six gun mistique as a guide to define the factors that make popular culture successful with mass audiences.
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here’s another famous thesis that revolutionized consumer information services.
– – – – marc andreesen’s mosaic web browser is a university of illinois thesis project. the result was an actual first. a graphical user interface to the arpanet internet project. based on mosaic andreesen and partner clark went on to found the world’s first internet startup netscape.
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top 10 popular culture experts and their theories
1.marshall mccluhan – – the medium is the message
2.uberto eco – – content analysis
3.claude levi strauss – – content analysis
4.noam chomski – – linguistic analysis of popular culture
5.michel foucault – – content analysis
6.nicolas negroponte – – media lab projects popular culture and new technology
7.michael naimark – – high technology popular culture and the creative arts
8.stewart brand – – whole earth catalogue popular culture and consumerism
9.greg mckenna – – high tech popular culture content and design reach mass market
10.arthur asa berger – – structural analysis of popular culture and mass media
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source: yahoo san francisco state university
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the top 10 links for the latest “valleylist” are included in the youtube playlist and all playlists are included in “valleylist” videos. also new for “valleylist” is the new publishing calendar 10.02.2012 to 01.10.2013. also new the “valleyist” bad calendar project on flickr. its possible to find lots of information on almost anything on the internet.
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next week – – startling new internet content.
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publishing and regulatory. “valleylist” 2012 adds a weekly focus on publishing and regulatory including the real time “valleylist” newsfeed. a few rounds of content analysis or code writing and you come to appreciate the fcc’s insistence on protecting everybody’s proprietary internet content. cases are far and few between. most people know where to stop.
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conclusion. i actually believe that popular culture content has ensured the success of the internet. a future development is applying popular culture structure to internet services like search or email or social groups or even live television on the internet. most promising is new forms of high tech content designed specifically to exploit the internet’s high tech infrastructure and processing power. another first.
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