trees are people too

When we talk about new media, we talk a lot about collaboration, about sharing and building together. It’s a new creative space, one that lends itself to remix culture. It is democratisation of the media, creating a whole new world offering the opportunity to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of others. With new media, the increasing ubiquity of the network, the chance to share, to rework and to collaborate ideas and visions is no longer limited by cost, space and time.

Online creations can be shared immediately, instantaneously, and their digital format allows such data to be presented, copied, modified and transmitted with just the click of a mouse button. The network capabilities of the internet allow for vast accessibility, leading to vast involvement and, if we were to be idealistic, vast synergy – an environment where the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. With such a resource at our fingertips, such a complex relationship developing between previously unknown parties, it seems inevitable that at best synergy will occur, and at the least we will see an emergence of the finest media. It is like the whole world is having a conversation, and not only are you having a say in it, but you can choose which bits you think are most deserving of your attention.

The very nature of the internet, its conversational qualities and huge web of networks, lends itself beautifully to an environment of collaboration – of sharing, copying, remixxing, reworking. While this creates a nightmare for copyrighters, it also signifies a new era for media production. We are no longer just consumers of media, we are prosumers – consumers who also produce media – and we are demanding to be heard. And we are not the rich, the elite, the trained and the qualified. We are the public, the average, the unskilled but the passionate, and we are creating the media of tomorrow.

Second Life is one example of our attempts at collaboration – the idea of a world created and modified by all those who exist within it. ‘Existing’ in Second Life has offered us the opportunity to explore some of the benefits, and the disadvantages, that online collaboration offers. Together we have built far more than any of us could have on our own, and in addition we have learnt from each others work and have been inspired by others’ creations. The space (as I have mentioned before) is a safe one, one in which we can explore the possibilities of collaborating in an online environment, with the freedom to do it in our own time, in our own space, from anywhere. But it can also be threatening….surrendering your Second Life-long work to the mercy of others can leave you feeling slightly vulnerable.

Using the web to collaborate can work in a variety of different ways, but its power is undeniable. You might want to arrange a public event or spectacle, and can use the power of the internet to organise, orchestrate and then record and distribute, such as these outstanding flash mobs. More technically, you can use the combined power of your resources. Projects that utilise distributed computing, such as Folding@home, use the network to access the collective computing power of thousands of computers all over the world, which they can then use to calculate anything from a cure to Alzheimer’s disease to the whereabouts of extra terrestrial beings. Then there is online media collaboration, which can range from collaborative blogs and wikis, such as lolcats or wikipedia, through to the more serious and sophisticated productions, such as open source programing and new and revolutionary collaborative media productions, such as swarm of angels, an outstanding exercise in remixing cinema.

Now this is where it starts getting interesting… where we start to see media created, used and shared in ways we have never seen before. The amount of information out there is vast and ever-increasing, and as a result, from online collaboration so too has spawned an environment of emergence. With so many parties involved in creating, selecting, sharing and choosing the media available, we begin to see an emergent media culture arise – one in which the best quality productions, those with the most currency, the most influence, will emerge on top. The organic spread of viral videos and the continuing ability of wikipedia to remain astoundingly accurate are both examples of emergent media – the ability for the highest quality media to rise to the top of the heap.

There are many tributes to this, to the amazing changes the net has brought about in collaborating. This video puts it quite nicely…

Courtesy of McLeang1 via youtube.

Now, in this new creative space, it’s time to start seriously considering copyleft, a new concept in sharing, developing and producing our ideas.

People [and their productions] can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism.

Think about it. It’s an exciting time to start sharing. And this is what’s so exciting about new media, and the collaboration it brings.