Sociedad de la información

Friends, Followers and the Future
How Social Media are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, and Killing Traditional Media
Rory O'Connor

There's a revolution going on, as ever-accelerating developments in digital information technologies change nearly every aspect of how we live, work, play, do business, and engage in politics. Share and share alike—the numbers say it all as billions of people worldwide flock to online media and use social networks to discover and spread news and information.

In the process, ever-growing networks of "ordinary people" are using these powerful new tools to trim the influence long held by Big Business, Big Government, and Big Media. No longer just passive recipients, participants in social networks now regularly make and break news while organizing civic and political actions that bypass censors, outpace traditional media, attract massive audiences, and influence the rise and fall of brands, industries, politicians, and even governments.

In this insider's look at how social media are transforming our world, Rory O'Connor explains the trends and explores what tech visionaries, media makers, political advisers, and businesspeople are saying about the meteoric rise of the various social networks of friends and followers, and what they bode for our future.

"Rory O'Connor is one of the smartest media guys around. He knows who's spinning, who's pandering, and who's putting money in his own pocket at the expense of logic, reason, and the public good."—Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair media critic

Praise for Rory O'Connor's Friends, Followers and the Future:

"This is a timely book about a vital subject: How do we get information and is it reliable? With a 'cold eye,' author Rory O'Connor shows how traditional journalism cheapened its value by sabotaging its trust, and how the digital revolution wonderfully democratizes information yet often removes the journalistic curator, creating more noise, more ME and less WE news. If you want to understand the future of news, its opportunities and its pitfalls, read this book." — Ken Auletta, author and New Yorker media writer

"Anyone who cares about the impact of the digital information revolution on democracy and culture can't afford to miss FRIENDS, FOLLOWERS AND THE FUTURE — a story that moves as swiftly as the dizzying pace of change itself. Rory O'Connor combines journalistic integrity with a passionate belief in the power of ordinary people to change the world. Depending on your stake in the outcome, you will find this book inspiring, scary, or perhaps a bit of both." — Andrew Heyward, Former President of CBS News

"This book is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and fair-minded survey of how social media are conveying — and perhaps transforming — what we want to know." — Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education and author, most recently, of Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed

"With laser-like accuracy Rory O'Connor spotlights the key challenges and opportunities in the world of news and information, where technology has upended the old rules of how media is created and consumed. O'Connor's wise, savvy Friends, Followers and the Future is an essential examination of how social media is transforming the lives of individuals and society at large. Read it and share it." — J. Max Robins, Vice President/Executive Director, The Paley Center for Media

"Before Rory O'Connor writes, he researches, ask questions, and asks them again before calling the the insiders who are the targets of his inquiry. He is persistent, even relentless, as a hard-charging reporter, which is why his blogs, columns and this new book Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, And Killing Traditional Media (City Lights, 2112) leaves you questioning your own assumptions and often superficial take on the issue at hand. Personally, he is a refugee from old media and as a multi-media man (films, books, blogs, websites, etc) , an early adopter to the new. But he didn't stop there: he is a practitioner who wants to know where all this is headed and how the digital innovators and entrepreneurs think about what they do. This is a book in the know with ideas that we will all need to know as we navigate our personal and collective futures." — Danny Schechter, News Dissector.com

"… el Interpretante no puede ser otra cosa que político. En la medida en que el dispositivo de la Red permite a cualquier usuario producir contenidos y teniendo en cuenta además que, por primera vez, el usuario tiene el control del 'switch' entre lo privado y lo público, podemos empezar a hacernos una idea de la complejidad y la profundidad de los cambios en curso. Los procesos de la circulación son el nuevo gran campo de batalla, y esa guerra apenas ha comenzado.

Los dispositivos técnicos son en sí mismos inertes: todo depende de lo que las sociedades, en definitiva, hacen con ellos. En el caso de Internet, estamos todavía en lo que yo llamo el momento o, momento intensamente utópico. Cómo la Red marcará el siglo XXI es una pregunta abierta, que todavía no puede tener respuesta. Generar reflexión y polémica es lo que hoy podemos y debemos hacer. Ese es, me parece, el objetivo de este libro."

Elíseo Verón

Os textos aqui reunidos abordam o impacto das novas mídias nas paisagens midiáticas; a web 2.1 nas especulações de McLuhan; o software cultural e a tecnocultura audiovisual na perspectiva das mudanças no estatuto da imagem na contemporaneidade.
A produção reflete o espectro largo, díspar e heterogêneo dos protagonismos assinalados na produção e distribuição de conteúdos audiovisuais. Ou seja, também na produção e distribuição de conhecimento acerca do fenômeno há que se considerar o impacto das novas mídias na dissolução das fronteiras da competência científica homológica anterior. É assim que gostaríamos que os textos fossem entendidos pelo leitor.

Autores: Mauricio Lissovsky, Carla Schneider, Cybeli Moraes, Michael Abrantes Kerr, Sonia Montaño, Celso Candido de Azambuja, Anderson David G. dos Santos, João Vitor dos Santos, Brett Stalbaum, Cicero Inacio da Silva, Gustavo Fischer, William Mayer, Massimo Canevacci, Marcelo Salcedo Gomes, Luciano Gallas, Regina Mota, Suzana Kilpp

A conversação em rede: comunicação mediada pelo computador e redes sociais na Internet é o novo livro de Recuero que, com acuidade acadêmica, demonstra que as ferramentas computacionais há muito deixaram de ser apenas isso: ferramentas. Elas evoluíram para serem “espaços conversacionais” importantes, já que os usos que fazemos delas reelaboram a conversa, e esta passa a ter outras feições. Este livro tem mérito acadêmico por ser muito bem escrito e reunir elementos que certamente despertarão o interesse amplo de pesquisadores da área de Linguística Aplicada, da Comunicação Social, da Educação e de outras áreas afins. Isso se justifica na medida em que a autora oferece contribuições teóricas, metodológicas e empíricas para que se entenda melhor a conversa em rede à luz da Pragmática Linguística e da Análise de Redes Sociais. Graças aos distintos fios teóricos que o tecem, o livro mostra com lucidez que a conversação em rede não é somente aquela conversa tão antiga quanto a linguagem, mas, no contexto das ferramentas digitais, ela é uma “conversação emergente” que, em função dos usos das ferramentas computacionais, passa por vários processos de reelaborações. Como bem conclui Recuero, “o ponto fundamental é aquele onde essa conversação reconstrói práticas do dia a dia, mas que, no impacto da mediação, amplifica-se e traz novos desafios para a compreensão de seus impactos nos atores sociais”.

“How do we think?” N. Katherine Hayles poses this question at the beginning of this bracing exploration of the idea that we think through, with, and alongside media. As the age of print passes and new technologies appear every day, this proposition has become far more complicated, particularly for the traditionally print-based disciplines in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. With a rift growing between digital scholarship and its print-based counterpart, Hayles argues for contemporary technogenesis—the belief that humans and technics are coevolving—and advocates for what she calls comparative media studies, a new approach to locating digital work within print traditions and vice versa.

Hayles examines the evolution of the field from the traditional humanities and how the digital humanities are changing academic scholarship, research, teaching, and publication. She goes on to depict the neurological consequences of working in digital media, where skimming and scanning, or “hyper reading,” and analysis through machine algorithms are forms of reading as valid as close reading once was. Hayles contends that we must recognize all three types of reading and understand the limitations and possibilities of each. In addition to illustrating what a comparative media perspective entails, Hayles explores the technogenesis spiral in its full complexity. She considers the effects of early databases such as telegraph code books and confronts our changing perceptions of time and space in the digital age, illustrating this through three innovative digital productions—Steve Tomasula’s electronic novel, TOC; Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts; and Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions.

Deepening our understanding of the extraordinary transformative powers digital technologies have placed in the hands of humanists, How We Think presents a cogent rationale for tackling the challenges facing the humanities today.

Este manual expone cómo es y cómo utilizar Wikipedia para aquellos que quieran iniciarse en una de las principales comunidades colaborativas de la red.

Un manual que trata sobre una de las herramientas digitales más utilizadas en nuestro día a día, sin reparar en que se trata de uno de los mayores fenómenos de la última década. El lector encontrará un manual de uso para la lectura y edición de la más extensa comunidad colaborativa de Internet: qué contiene la enciclopedia, quiénes la elaboran, cómo se utiliza y cómo podemos convertirnos en editores de sus contenidos y miembros de la wikicomunidad. Encontrará, además, los principales argumentos a favor y en contra de su uso y los planes de futuro que guarda dicha enciclopedia. Este libro está dirigido a todos aquellos lectores que quieran acercarse al fenómeno Wikipedia, dar una vuelta a vista de pájaro para conocer qué es y qué se ha dicho de la mayor enciclopedia online de la historia.
Explicado de manera sencilla y breve.
Aporta las ideas básicas para conocer qué es Wikipedia, cómo funciona y cuáles son los principales argumentos que han hecho posible su éxito y los que han motivado críticas al respecto.

Sinopsis

Hemos entrado de lleno en la revolución digital y aún así, la mayoría seguimos perdidos entre neologismos inteligibles, aplicaciones incomprensibles y tecnología efímera. Entender qué está sucediendo y hacia dónde evoluciona la cultura y la comunicación es de imperiosa necesidad.

Este libro te introduce en los principales conceptos e ideas que vertebran el mundo digital. Desde los más fundamentales y conocidos como la World Wide Web o el email, hasta los que condicionarán la economía y la ciencia del futuro, como el Crowdsourcing o el Cloud Computing.

Marketing online, analítica web, comercio digital, eGobiernos, web semántica… Saber qué significa cada uno de estos términos es imprescindible para tener una noción mínima de los cambios sociales, económicos y culturales que se ciernen sobre nosotros.

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El autor

Tom Chatfield
Tom Chartfiel es un experto en mundo digital. Ha trabajado como consultor para empresas como Google y colabora en medios de gran prestigio como el Observer, Independent y Sunday Times. Se doctoró por el St. John’s College de Oxford y es autor del libro Fun, Inc.

The iPhone has revolutionized not only how people communicate but also how we consume and produce culture. Combining traditional and social media with mobile connectivity, smartphones have redefined and expanded the dimensions of everyday life, allowing individuals to personalize media as they move and process constant flows of data. Today, millions of consumers love and live by their iPhones, but what are the implications of its special technology on society, media, and culture?

Featuring an eclectic mix of original essays, Moving Data explores the iPhone as technological prototype, lifestyle gadget, and platform for media creativity. Media experts, cultural critics, and scholars consider the device’s newness and usability—even its “lickability”—and its “biographical” story. The book illuminates patterns of consumption; the fate of solitude against smartphone ubiquity; the economy of the App Store and its perceived “crisis of choice”; and the distance between the accessibility of digital information and the protocols governing its use. Alternating between critical and conceptual analyses, essays link the design of participatory media to the iPhone’s technological features and sharing routines, and they follow the extent to which the pleasures of gesture-based interfaces are redefining media use and sensory experience. They also consider how user-led innovations, collaborative mapping, and creative empowerment are understood and reconciled through changes in mobile surveillance, personal rights, and prescriptive social software. Presenting a range of perspectives and arguments, this book reorients the practice and study of media critique.

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking.

Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of “networked individualism” liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.

Rainie and Wellman outline the “triple revolution” that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals.

About the Authors

Lee Rainie is Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and former managing editor of U.S. News and World Report.

Barry Wellman is the S. D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where he directs NetLab.

Wikipedia es una realidad que funciona, aunque en teoría pueda parecer un sueño irrealizable. Un puñado de entusiastas ha redefinido desde la nada el concepto clásico de enciclopedia y ha construido la fuente de referencia más usada de la historia. ¿Tiene suficiente calidad? La respuesta es afirmativa, y para justificarlo hay que profundizar en los mecanismos de los que está dotada, que le permiten alcanzar el nivel de calidad que se desee, combinando el esfuerzo de miles de editores voluntarios autoorganizados. Wikipedia es al mismo tiempo contenido y personas. Es el momento de conocerla por dentro y de potenciar su apuesta por el conocimiento abierto desde las instituciones culturales, científicas y educativas. Participar en Wikipedia permite aprender de este increíble laboratorio global de construcción social de información organizada.