Mobile phones taking over credit cards!

Mobiles phones are very hand for number of reasons. They are also becoming a new method of payment. I often travel to places by subway back home and the option of payment rather amused me. I hadn’t been back home for a couple of years and travelling on the bus and subway by myself made me nervous. When I went to the ticket booth to ask for tickets I realised that they no longer sold the paper tickets they used to. We could either purchase a one-time use card by pay with our phones. I was amazed to find a little chip which almost looked like a sim card inside my phone. This apparently was the new method of paying. I soon realised that the chip was linked directly to by dad’s credit card and if you placed them on top of the ticket machines, they automatically charge you.

I soon realised that it was not only subway and bus tickets that you could pay for. People could use them to buy things out of vending machines or even go shopping with them. For those of younger age without credit cards, this was a fast and easy method of payment. When going to through high ways you can also place your phone by the front window. When you drive through at slow speed, the bill is also automatically charged to your phones.
I have noticed that New Zealand is beginning to change to. I notice that majority of the car park ticket machines also have a new option of paying by text. This makes me wonder how far mobile phones will go in the future, and will they replace our everyday items?

In the Future

It funny where you learn things, I was driven to posing this final blog after reading this article on the popular internet comedy site cracked.com. The article in particular was about "forced artificial scarcity", the notion that in the future we will literally be paying for things we can get for free, in fact the author David Wong picks up that we have already begun behaving like this. For example bottled water, why do we pay for it? In Wong's opinion we pay for it because big corporations with their advertising tell us too, he draws comparison with the 2008 poisoned baby milk formula scandal, saying the reason people continued to use the formula even though it was poisonous is because they felt they had to. Now this might be a simplistic view but it still has some merits. Why else would we pay $3.00 for a powerade when water does the same job and its free? its also one way of identifying which consumer goods are fetish items, apple products for example rides the brand image to the death. 

This problem is something we should all be concerned about, however the point of this article which really caught my eye in terms of this paper is the implications forced artificial scarcity on web culture. The development of the web seems to be becoming more packaged, that is, companies are learning how to best assert themselves online and with the growth of such companies we are having to pay for services which previously would've been free. An example of this is music sharing, at the inception of web 2.0 music sharing was free and very loose, however as we've progressed people are starting to pay more and more money for the same products. This has less to do with intellectual property copyright laws and more to do with the fact that the marketplace for music online has grown exponentially since the napster days. iTunes, beatport and the like all offer what is considered the most high quality mp3's and once again draws on the consumer characteristic of wanting nice things. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference in quality between free downloads on rapidshare or limewire and the same tracks on iTunes, however the idea that you are getting a better product is actually more important to consumers than actually getting a good product.

Another interesting point of debate brought up in the article is the status of ebook's in libraries, Wong gives a very funny and logical account of the problem which is basically that with eBook's consumers no longer need the libraries or the publishers to create hard-copy's of the book, all they need is one copy of an eBook and literally everyone can get a copy of it. You get the same feeling from most intellectual properties, the ability to duplicate existing materials exists in so many ways it seems as if capitalism is collapsing on itself. If everyone can literally get all these things for free it seems that even more hardline copyright laws are required or that businesses need to convince the consumer that they need to pay for their product. 

Now I know that this is an article from a comedy website and understandably people would be fast to laugh off the issues raised. However hard I tried I could not separate what was a hilarious painting of the future from the underlying social implications Wong was trying to draw. It seems the internet is destined to become even more packaged, even more regulated in the future, and maybe in the future it won't be such a swell place?

Stalk Me

And so the last lecture for this paper has ended. Time to do a quick blog post on what we have been through the past couple of months.

I believe FTVMS 203 helped me decide on which particular scope of media I would like to focus on. When we started last July, I was just an Internet enthusiast, eager to learn more about technoculture and this 'new' media. There is this cool and hip sound to the paper, 'Technoculture and New Media', which enticed me to do it. I admit, I'm a social media geek that loves to try out new sites. I go online for fun, to procrastinate, and to keep contact with my friends around the world. But forward October, I have realised how interesting new media is and how I suddenly discovered my interest on it.

Okay, this won't get any cheesier. Kidding aside, I have learned how important new media is and its growing potential. Now I'm regretting on not taking this paper on a Stage 3 level.

Anyhow... Let's talk about Foursquare.

A few weeks ago we talked about privacy issues. I believe, Foursquare is definitely one of the most controversial social networks yet. It is not as big here in New Zealand when you compare it abroad, but it is slowly catching more victims...err, users.

Pros? Definitely for the businesses and marketers. Who would not want to join in the bandwagon and sell their products to techno geeks. Don't forget to add a dash of glamor to your business by appointing someone a 'Mayorship'. Also, good news to stalkers and those who love the feeling of being stalked.

Cons? Privacy. On the one hand, is there anything we have right now that doesn't infringe our privacy? I guess, it all falls down to how you use it and how much information you would give out. Moderation and balance is the key, I guess.

Like what we have learned from this course, online society is constantly evolving. Who knows what's up ahead in 2011. We may even have a new concept of privacy and public sphere in a couple of years. Who knows? That's what makes new media a very interesting field to study.

Alliv, signing out.

Why Txt? Lets Kakao Talk!

Android phones are selling like crazy in Korea! Along with the iPhone craze android phones put out in the market to compete with the iPhones are creating big excitement between 'gadget freaks'. Some 'gadget freaks' go as far as changing their phone once every two weeks to experiment with every phone possible. Mobile phones are a must have for people of any age from primary school children to the elderly. However, having a mobile phone can often cause problems. Although the bills are fairly cheap compared to New Zealand I have still experienced monthly bills up to about $200.

However, new applications such as Kakako is the ultimate solution to expensive bills！This completely free application allows android phone users to send instant messages to each other at no cost. For this reason more and more people are shifting to android phones sand business men are said to be also benefiting from such applications as they are able to have instant group meetings on the go. Korean search engines dedicate a small proportion of the page to Kakao Talk. This allows users to see the instant messages being posted up. Kakao Talk allows users to enjoy both public and private aspects of social networking. Although about two week ago users were extremely upset at personal information such as credit card details being released through Kakao talk the new contract tends to be attracting more and more users. Experts have stated that the popularity of Kakao Talk tends to show similar trends to the Cyworld boom the most popular social networking site in Korea which over 92% of teens use in Korea. The big question here now is if txting costs money and Kakao Talk doesn't why txt when Kakao Talk serves the exact same function?

Generation i

Just few thoughts inspired by the posts The iPad. and Reinventing the Square Wheel, and Why It Doesn't Work, related to the Apple's new "magical and revolutionary product" iPad. 

The popularity of the new device isn't really at question here, as it's directly proportional to Apple's multi-million advertising budget. Neither is novelty. What more interesting is the iPad's determinant power regarding the format and design, that now dominate the market. 

Just a few interesting examples of the followers: 

ExoPC

The JooJoo

Adam Tablet

HP Slate

ViewPad

...among thousands of others.

piracy of comics

The piracy has been a big issue today.
There are more than 90 million internet users in Japan now, and there is an increase in piracy through the Internet. The phenomena of crime using the Internet are derived from its anonymity, widespread cyber crimes and those crimes tend to be committed by people at lower age. Most of those crimes are sales of illegal copy and upload without the permission. Now, uploading popular manga (comics) and anime (cartoons) on Youtube has become considerably harmful influence with Japanese youth. There is a significant increase in young people who involve with illegal upload those works.

14th of June this year in Japan, 14 years old boy has been arrested due to upload more than 30 titles and 120 works of popular manga such as Onepiece, Naruto and Gintama etc. This disclosure of piracy through Youtube is the first case in Japan. According to the report, those manga he uploaded have been played more than 8 million times and the amount of damage is worth 20 million yen (NZ$310000). Even the publishers offer a deletion of his upload, but he kept uploading those.

Manga or anime illegal uploading has rapidly increased since 2007. Japanese youth who upload works without permission do not realise that they break a law. Therefore, education that relates to copyright and piracy is required not only at school but also within a family and the society now.

Pixel Art: Cultural artifact of technological age

From the late 80s pixel based graphics formed an integral part of popular culture, and surprisingly up until today it still echoes in media and digital arts.

The era of mass popularisation of pixel graphics came in 1980’s when the technology was quick adopted by the video game industry. Early video games consoles featured a slow image processing capacity and worked within a very small screen resolution. For example The Atari 2600 had a screen resolution of 192x160 pixels and The Nintendo Entertainment System - 256x240. In comparison, today’s HD television features a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. For such technical constrains, early video games could not be visually complex and featured limited 8bit colour palette, which posed a real challenge for game developers to produce minimalist yet representational and visually appealing graphics in the early video games. There is a classic story of Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of The Legends of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. video games, who had to gave Mario big nose and a moustache to get around the lack of facial details of the character.

In the modern era of fast computers and High Definition screens, the role of pixel as technological device significantly diminished, yet the use of old pixel graphics as tool of artistic expression in the course of past decade escalated enormously. Today pixel art can be easily found both in and beyond computer screen. 8-bit images present in modern advertising, street graffiti art, music album and magazine covers, digital and print artwork, tattoos and so on. This raises a curious question: how such an old and limited technology enjoys a tremendous degree of popularity in the modern “hi-tech” world.

I think we can partially find an answer if look back into the history of arts. For, in it’s nature, pixel graphics is in many ways similar to various traditional art forms, such as embroidery (cross-stitch), mosaic, stained glass, beadwork, and many others types of art where image is constructed out of multiple small coloured elements. Even in the last century’s expressionistic paintings could be discovered the essence of pixel art.

Paul Klee - Southern (Tunisian) Gardens – 1919

Syosa, a pixel artist from Japan, explains in the interview: “When I pixel, I do not only use my artistic sensibilities. I have to beat my brain to develop the most efficient palette, due to colour and size restrictions. I find pixel art is very similar to Japanese Haiku. I've worked with 2 to 5 colour palette challenges, size restricted challenges and downsizing challenges in Japanese pixel art forums. Pixel art looks best when there’s no wasted colour.”

http://www.pixeljoint.com/2009/10/03/2938/Pixel_Artist_-_Syosa.htm

Pixel artist Jason Rory, in 2007 designed an 8-bit video game “Passage” featuring 2 characters, only 8 pixels tall each. In the documentary short called “Pixel” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU) he explains that the beauty of pixel graphics is that it is representational and abstract at the same time, it’s expressive power lies in its ambiguity and simplicity. Also, nowadays many people find 8-bit graphics a creative answer to the modern 3D graphic industry with it’s strive for complexity and photorealism.

Most importantly, it is undeniable that the golden age of console games left a significant cultural imprint on the society and peoples past. As childhood experience generally plays an important part in any artists work, many graphic designers tend to nostalgically return to that retro image of 80s to recapture the spirit of “good old times.”