Born digital????

What does born digital means? It means babies are no longer coming out of their mothers’ belly? Or the stork got tired of flying around the world delivering babies to parents who are in love and ready to have a family?

Well, born digital does not mean any of this, however it means that new generations are born in a digitalized world, in which everything is different than the one in which the author of this text grew up.

This reading reminds me a lot of a book in ethics class back in high school, which is called “Ethics for Amador" and it is written by a Spanish philosopher named Fernando Savater. In this book, written almost 40 years ago, the author gives a lot of recommendations to his son about ethics and how he should live ethics in the constant changing world. The same with this text, the author manifest to the reader how the generational change is causing changes in the society which is going completely digital, and it uses the term “born digital” to make reference to kids who are being born in this digital era. I won’t go again in the author examples of how everything has changed, but I want to mention that I grew up in a total different environment than the author describes, even though I grew up in the 90’s, I consider I went digital until I was 13 years old and this was with the guidance of my parents and this may be because I grew up in a different country than the one the author wrote this piece.  

I don’t quite like this reading, because it is focused in a nostalgia of past being better than digital era.  After the long comparison between the times the author grew up and the author makes a good point, in which she mentions that digital born are exposed due to the information they share in the web may make them embarrassed in the future and they give to many details of themselves, in Mexico this excessive information sharing has led to kidnaping and murderers, so this point is the only one that is worth in the reading, at least for my perspective.

Of to Indianapolis, to sweat Black and Gold….. GO HUSKIES

Pulso

San Luis Potosi, México. It is Monday morning and Mr. Torres is going late for work. He slept over because Carlitos, his younger son had fiber all night, so he had to stay up most of the time. Once in the office the day goes slow. Mr. Torres boss is asking him for an urgent report, also one of his colleagues is stuck with some work due to the afternoon, so Mr. Torres offers some help; in top of that he forgot to pick up the dry-cleaning. All that Mr. Torres wants is to get out and check for Carlitos health. By the end of the day he managed to finish all of his duty in the office. As soon as his turn ends, he goes back to his house and fortunately Carlitos is much better and he’s playing with his older sister. With a day like this, Mr. Torres forgot to but his favorite newspaper, El Pulso, but this is not a bad thing, because all he has to do in order to have access to the information in the pages of this newspaper is go to his laptop, open a browser and go to http://www.pulsoslp.com.mx which the official website of this newspaper.

This story if fictional (any resemblance to reality is a mere coincidence), but what it is real is the Pulso website, which is the digital media I’ll be analyzing.

This digital media artifact was created to allow Pulso to enter digital media era. With the digitalization of journalism almost every newspaper had to go digital to keep alive in the race for information, because the competition in journalism is now about who has the information faster and was closer to the event that generated the news. Even though the next phrase was written almost 50 years ago, it is completely valid for the digital media, because now more than ever information is being disputed in real time. “…Total war has become information war. It is being fought by subtle electric informational media –under cold conditions and constantly.” (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967) In this war between different platforms offerings information in real time, Pulso had to go to battle.

Pulso.com.mx is a simple website, in which hyperlinks are visible to get you to the article you want to go, they have images for every article and it includes the columns that are printed in the principal newspaper across the nation. They also have hyperlinks to other news websites, some of which are of national circulation, it is worth to mention that Pulso newspaper is only for a state and it doesn’t have impact outside the region in which is printed. This website has other digital features, the one I find most impressive is the option in which you can check the printed version as if you were reading it, simulating changing pages and going trough different section, the problem is this feature not always works properly, but the next phrase says much about this application of the digital version of the printed one. “There is, after all, something simply irreplaceable about reading a piece of writing at length on paper, in a chair or on a couch or in bed.” (Sullivan 2008) And this completely true, it is a matter of time to see if newspaper will be replaced by news websites and applications similar to this one.

The website for the newspaper was created by Juan Antonio de Santiago (Domain Tools 2012), who is a member of an editorial group called MIVAL (Pulso 1998), specialized in digital media. They took care of all the legal implications that digital media brings along, such as validity if the information shown and the archive of older editions.

pulso.slp.mx was created is to offer people who may not have access to the printed version, as Mr. Torres in the story; but also might be said it came due to need of going digital, especially in the journalism industry which is highly affected with the information that is traveling for free in the internet. Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to match up with the website, in order to share the information faster and to more people through these social networks. It is worth mentioning again that Pulso is a local newspaper that only circulates in the state of San Luis Potosí and this newspaper has a really good reputation in matters of reliability. This media is design for people who won’t have access to a printed copy, for whatever the reason may be. The intended audience is the same that for any newspaper, adults who are interested in keeping up with the information offered in this newspaper. By being a digital media it may also be intended to younger people who have access to Internet. I came to this site a couple of years ago when I was looking for news in my hometown while I was away from home for college. At first I just began to follow the twitter account, so I could be able to follow news in real time, but as I started to get more interested in journalism I began to follow closely this website, and now in September 2012, I try to check this site every day.

The pressure of going digital comes because the race of websites, which is more competitive each day; the following phrase can explain a bit more.  “The World Wide Web is more consistently a text than a market and the continual, continuous present tense of web publication in this respect must be described with care.” (Gitelman 2006) With this I’m trying to say that World Wide Web is constantly changing, so you have to carefully with what you’re publishing and when, to look for proper sources, so you can have good reputation in the competitive environment.

The only problem with the website is that it has a few errors and it is not always working properly, but understanding the concept of error using a Gitelman approach to an error in a website “ (An error) Implies a dizzying potential for mistakes – more than for hundred different kind – but stops short of laying any blame” (Gitelman 2006) Identifying the error that is causing the problem might be problematic. But in my opinion, pulso.com.mx fulfills its purpose of giving a digital version of the news printed in the everyday edition. One thing I don’t like about the website is that it tries to imitate the printed version, and this may not be as useful. I highly think the website should adopt a proper identity and not try to emulate the printed version. Applying the concept of simulation, this citation fits perfect in the way I see the website  “Representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.” (Baudrillard, 2008) According to this, pulso.com.mx should stop being a digital representation and become a simulation of the newspaper, trying to produce the same effect of reading the notes in printed as in digital media.

Digital media is the present for many branches of communication; it allows the user to share information in real time and is making the world smaller by communicating people even though they are in different continents. Journalism is going digital and pulso.com.mx is the proof, Journalism going digital may be good because it avoids wasting tons of paper and ink per year, however people who are in the media are struggling to keep up with the economical demands that the world require; a financial model that works for digital journalism is needed and once it is found digital journalism and websites like the one just analyzed will be the only ways to get access to information, and newspaper will be a topic in history class.

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra And Simulations." The European Graduate School. 2008. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations/ (accessed September 14, 2012).

Domain Tools . PulsosLp.com.mx Whois Record. 2012. http://whois.domaintools.com/pulsoslp.com.mx (accessed September 24, 2012).

Gitelman, Lisa. "New Media </ Body>." In Always already new: Media, History and the data of culture, 123-150. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology , 2006.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The medium is the MASSAGE an inventory of effects . Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 1967.

Pulso . Aviso Legal . December 17, 1998. http://pulsoslp.com.mx/aviso-legal/ (accessed September 25, 2012).

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog." The Atlantic . November 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/11/why-i-blog/307060/ (accessed September 05, 2012).

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra And Simulations." The European Graduate School. 2008. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations/ (accessed September 14, 2012).

Domain Tools . PulsosLp.com.mx Whois Record. 2012. http://whois.domaintools.com/pulsoslp.com.mx (accessed September 24, 2012).

Gitelman, Lisa. "New Media </ Body>." In Always already new: Media, History and the data of culture, 123-150. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology , 2006.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The medium is the MASSAGE an inventory of effects . Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 1967.

Pulso . Aviso Legal . December 17, 1998. http://pulsoslp.com.mx/aviso-legal/ (accessed September 25, 2012).

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog." The Atlantic . November 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/11/why-i-blog/307060/ (accessed September 05, 2012).

Medium = Massage ?

The medium is the massage

After reading this book, two main ideas are dancing in my mind, the first is Woody Allen movie “midnight in Paris” and the second is my mother.

I’ll begin with the second. I think of my mother because she always told me that my generation is completely different from hers, she was born in 1956, she tells me about how wonderful was to grow up in this time because you can go all the afternoon to play with other kids in the block, you could play soccer and other games we have in Mexico (I don’t know the translations for this games but we have quemados (like dodge ball), la traes (a game with no sense in which you have to run from the person “who has it” if he/she touch you no “you have it” and you have to touch somebody else to get rid of it). What does this has to do with the book? That this book was written in 1967, when my mother was 9 years old, and in its pages is written that the generation growing up in that time was being completely different from the previous one due to constant impact to the media, the author of the book is saying the exact same thing that my mother told me 10 years ago when I was a kid, and this argument takes me straight to the relation with “Midnight in Paris” because in this film [SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE STOP, GO AND WATCH IT, THEN COME BACK] people have this nostalgia for the past in which they always want to live in a different era than the one in which they live, this happens with media; because Media, as mentioned in the book, is constantly changing and with this it affects the audience making it different, there will always be this nostalgia of a better time in which media was not has advanced as in the present day and when media was not as influential in people lives. I’m sure someday when I’m a father (hopefully in many years) I’ll complain about the same thing as my mother and the author, because I’ll think my kids are overexposed to media and this may change the way in which they grow up.

Media does affect life. And affects life because affect your environment, the way you think, the way the person sitting next to you in a restaurant thinks. These changes are everywhere, television, radio books, art and not mention internet which is already a huge change from my generation to my parents.

Technology is making the world a better, smaller and in equitative place to live, because life is easier we just have to push a couple of buttons to make some things that would have required much more time and effort to do. I come from Mexico, my family, my friends are two thousand miles away, but I can talk with them every day. My home is physically in another country, but I can communicate with them as if we were in the same city, just in two different places, that is the effect of a global village.

Personally, media is no longer a massage, Media is the spa, in 50 years has grown to be a pillar for our lives and our societies. Thinking as media a massage in 1967 as something you need to relax, to get loose for a moment and forget about other concerning is no longer valid.

Simulating a birthday

Before to dig deep into the reading, let me tell you it was awful to read it in a birthday weekend, but this does not mean I did not enjoy reading it.

Jean Baudrillard writes about simulacra and simulations. While reading the firsts examples about the patients who pretend to be sick and the one who pretends to be sick and develop the symptoms, realized that I did not totally understanding what I was reading, I called my personal doctor, friend and who is also my father, to ask him about this, he gave me the example of Placebos, but I'll explain this later. These firsts examples got me in a lot of trouble with my girlfriend, because I was telling her about the reading and the examples, but all she was telling me was that examples did not make any sense, so I had to come with the same example of the placebo effect.

After this small intro, I have not mention anything about the reading, so here it comes. Primarily is necessary to understand what is a simulation and what is feigning, and once more I'll come to placebo example. If you don't know what this is, here is a link that will explain briefly about it:  PLACEBO ; so what a placebo does is that it simulates the effect of medicine, but it is your own body the one which is taking care of curing itself, that is a simulation. On the other hand a feign needs would be a fake medicine that tries to cure some symptoms, but it wont work because it has no ingredients to do it.

Ok, but if my class is about digital media, what do I have to do with simulations? As I understood, everyday we see images in the Internet, in newspapers, magazines or you have photography or paintings, but these images are not the real images, these images that you see are mere simulations of an original image that the creator of the image had in his/her mind, and tried to record in canvas that may be called paper, notepad or camera.

As the lecture keeps going more examples come to explain simulations, Disney example is quite accurate, but I wont talk about it because I’ve never been there and makes me sad to write about it. 

When the author mentions the simulation of power and government, make me think about ideologies and revolutions, because they are all simulations of a feeling of being more powerful than the other, and for me this is bullshit and useless, but this how the world is been working since society begun.

By the end of the reading I got completely lost, the part in which is mention that we may be living a simulation of another reality made the paper go down, but still, I really like this and hopefully my conclusions about simulations and media is right.

U.C  

Gitelman

Where is the word Internet from? Who was the first person to mention it? When was the first time that somebody spoke about Internet? These and few other questions are answered in Lisa Gitelmans text, "always already new", in which small story about what is Internet is narrated. In the first part of this text Gitelman makes reference to a investigation of a website about the search for the word internet in previous editions of the new york times, editions that go more than one hundred years ago, you may be wondering what the word internet was doing in those newspapers so long ago? Sorry to disappoint you, but that was an orthographic mistake, the firsts references to the word internet date about twenty years ago, in 1990, when the first web page was edited in the CERN. (Curiosity: currently the CERN is trying to prove the existence of "Gods Particle" which is supposed to be a force that holds atoms together.)

The following part is focused in the history of websites; about the duration theses sites may have in the World Wide Web. There is also a fun fact in the paper, because the author mentions a brief story about the annoying and hateful error 404, which may happen when one of 404 principal functions of a web site is not working properly and the code 404 comes automatic.

Another point, which is important in this brief introduction to the history of Internet, is the apparition of bibliographic and citation styles, which had to be initiated from scratch and must be constantly actualized due to the constant changes in the web.

For someone who had never been in touch with digital media academically speaking, like me, this text may turn tedious and difficult to read, but after a few tries the text flows again.

Once done with the reading, I had to check again the main ideas of the text, to be sure I did understand what I reading due to the image what was not very clear.

It is so amazing learning where does the internet come from, because we are so used to it that we barely stop to think about it and how it works. 

My first K-day

Good news I heard the day before Friday: “school will over by noon”, but why? Well the reason may not sound as fancy as it should be, in order to cancel classes after midday, but Friday September 9^th was K-day.

For you, my kind reader, if you don’t know what is K-day here is a short explanation: K-day is  day in which we celebrate our home, the Keweenaw peninsula, which is a small portion of land surrounded by the majesty of the Superior Lake; so in this day we celebrate every activity that yoopers do up here, (Yooper: a native from the Keweenaw peninsula, careful when first interact with this specie, they lover beer, food and snow, but most of all, they love their hometown.) these activities go from hockey played with brooms, to the competition of tossing bags of sand to a small hole located 20 ft. away from you, Frisbee golf  and food, everything that may make a yooper happy (beer is not allowed in the park in which the K-day festivities takes place, but later in KBC a massive tribute to beer is held).

For reasons of time I can’t get in details of what K-day makes me fell, but the only thing I’m sure of is that lifestyle in the Keweenaw is one of the things I’m so happy that have come to my life, I’ll enjoy this way of living for the next  two years, and hopefully , someday, I’ll share this lifestyle with my family and when I say my family I mean my wife and my kids, at least for a few days, but in the mean time I’ll spend K-day with the family  I found in Keweenaw, a family that makes me feel like I never left San Luis, Rancho de las Tunas, Minas del Potosi. 

Bugs?

When I came to study in MTU, so many things were in my mind: the beach, the snow, KBC, DT, pizza studio, pasties and all other stuff, but certainly I can assure you that the last thing going in my mind was bugs. And you may wonder, what do bugs have to do with Houghton and MTU? I will try to be brief, but this does not mean I will be:It's been a week since the family left their home, a small city in a country  famous for its way of partying, its food, its drink, the warmth of the people, the beach, the arqueological sites, but not for the place in which the family lived. Driving through day and night, with wind, sun, rain, even a moose on the road, and over two thousand miles they finally reached their destination. This is the story of my driving from Mexico to Houghton.Unable to live in the dorms (for whatever the reason may be) I found a place a few blocks from campus, the pictures seemed pretty nice, the landlord was so kind, we exchanged emails for a couple of months and when he sent me pictures of the one which would be my room I felt like that place would be my home someday.  
When the family got into the house, especially in the room, their faces showed nothing but fear…but fear of what? This house seems nice, even though it is dirty now (the previous inquiline was not as neat as I would have liked) but after a few hours cleaning with a vacuum cleaner and some spray to eliminate the bad smell that is in the air, the room seems nice. Once the cleaning is done, photos all over my wall remind me my dreams, my past, my future and my love, I think I will able to live here.  Still wondering about the bugs? You'll have to wait a little bit longer....

This is a project for my first class in MTU, I'm excited about this opportunity that life and my parents are giving me, hopefully in this brief space I’ll share my experiences, thoughts and funny stories to tell, welcome