mediaspace potentials / open video conference / 19.6.2009

Mediaspace Potentials / Kari-Hans Kommonen / Arki · Media Lab TAIK / 19.6.2009 1

Mediaspace Potentials Kari-Hans Kommonen Arki / Media Lab University of Art and Design Helsinki TAIK [email protected] • http://arki.uiah.fi 19.6.2009 • Open Video Conference


Context for Open Video

- digitalization of society - emergence of the Mediaspace - characteristics of the Mediaspace - Mediaspace potentials - designability and the openness of the Mediaspace


Evolution of the digital dimension


Computer as Metamedium

Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg: Personal Dynamic Media “Although digital computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the ability to simulate the details of any descriptive model means that the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided. Moreover, this new “metamedium” is active—it can respond to queries and experiments—so that the messages may involve the learner in a two-way conversation.”


Foundation of the Networked Information Economy

- networked, ubiquitous, compatible metamedia - infinitely flexible, continuously evolving, individually

customized, zero material cost, global, shared design platform


Driven by pragmatic economics and efficiency

Digital technology brings dramatic increases in efficiency. Most systems and structures in society will eventually take advantage of this. It becomes expensive and solitary to not go digital. The convergence of all kinds of activities and applications in the same equipment, and the special characteristics of software, make this development fast and pervasive. Digitalization influences all people and all areas of life; also those who want to choose not to get involved. Strong dependencies are created; opportunities and competitiveness are at stake. People need to be able to make a living and take advantage of the digital potential and design their own digital lives.


Digitalization of the Media Environment

Digitalization and the global, ubiquitous network bring about fundamental structural transformations also for the media environment. The rigid hardware based channels of the past turn into flexible software structures in the digital dimension, a global metamedium. -> From channels to a space – the Mediaspace


Key characteristics of the Mediaspace

hard boundaries soft boundaries

one-to-many many-to-many consumer/receiver creator/distributor

mass media diverse media


Media is where society thinks

The society negotiates its beliefs and designs in the various media that its members share. Redesign of the media environment leads to redesign of the societal thinking process.


Mediaspace potentials

Open Unbounded Available Addressable Structured Semantic

Changing Reconfigurable Redistributable Interconnected Navigable Organizable

Individual Shareable Software


Potentials 1

Open Everyone has access to the Mediaspace as user and creator, as editor and distributor

Unbounded Due to digital flexibility, media is freed from its containers and packaging

Available The Mediaspace is a memory system that keeps media available if we can identify it, either with identity or metadata


Potentials 2

Addressable Media of interest can be identified with an address that makes it available and linkable.

Structured Media entities have internal structures that make it possible to address and refer to their parts.

Semantic Metadata describes media content and meaning in machine-readable way, either within it or externally linked to its structures. Makes media findable, searchable, organizable.


Potentials 3

Changing Programs can change and evolve dynamically; creators and communities can design their media for managing and exploiting such change.

Reconfigurable Media can be reconfigured by anyone at any time to create new versions.

Redistributable Media can be redistributed by anyone.


Potentials 4

Interconnected Any program or fragment of media can be connected in unlimited ways, and using multiple strategies, to any other media; connections are designed, random, or software created.

Navigable Media is not constrained to linear formats, it can be designed as a navigable space where directions of movement can be offered by multiple strategies.

Organizable Media can be organized by anyone, by giving it new layers of metadata, and these organizations can be selectively connected to the media and shared.


Potentials 5

Individual Digital flexibility makes it possible for everyone to configure their view of the Mediaspace – the Personal Mediascape – in a completely individual way.

Shareable Media can be shared with anyone who is connected to the Mediaspace. Software based sharing strategies form powerful tools for evolving communities.

Designable As a new form of digital software, media is now designable in content, form and function. Software powered media can be designed to support and facilitate complex practices.


Examples

Digital television - None of these potentials, expect when media is captured and

moved to the Mediaspace P2P file sharing

- availability, semantic at a file level – files can be found based on their names, that have a semantic encoding

YouTube - provides universal availability and addressability and semantic

support with tags - no internal structure – the clip is the limit of granularity – no

support for reconfigurability


Examples

Sharing Media I watch news and see something I want to share with my friend. I should be able to simply send him a link with the address of the pre-structured and pre-annotated news program. Anyone in any social media (Twitter etc.) should be able to quote and comment with such a link and also get access to the original media.


Examples

Collection management I should be able to easily manage my media collections, both video that I create myself and the video I see. Metadata could be attached to any video when it is made, and my systems of viewing video could maintain a personal metadata history of what I have seen – according to my preferences, of course.

Access management I need sophisticated control of who can access my personal videos and the metadata I connect to media. Some of these I want to share with anyone, some with various groups, and some

with no-one.


Concerns of closedness

Centralized servers What happens to my media, my community, my history, my social network (substitute any X), if the service Y

- does something with my material that I do not like? - goes out of business? - changes its terms of service? - stops supporting a feature I rely on? - is bought and moves its servers and data into a country whose

laws do not protect me?


Software Powered Media

- media is increasingly media data, dynamic metadata and software functionality combined – not just static data files

- e.g. software combines videos or songs based on tags and recommendations into individually customized program streams

- the digital flexibility of software powered media makes it possible for new design to be applied externally without touching the original design (e.g. mashups, social enrichment) – the more so the more open the original design is


Designability as Openness

- increasingly, software powered media are embedded in everyday life and its practices

- increasing sophistication and importance of practices creates increasing need and interest for custom design

- design moves closer to users - designability becomes increasingly important - designability depends on designs, capabilities, and skills - open modifiable designs, toolkits, metadata driven software - designability is a good measure of openness – openness is

design potential


Key Potentials for Openness

Structured - internal structures that address also fragments of media

Semantic - ways to describe meaningful media and fragments

Addressable - universal addressing across applications and systems

Designable - tools for building software powered media applications that

can take advantage of these potentials and can reconfigure media according to strategies designed by users, to support the practices they invent


Concrete wishes for the Open Mediaspace

- most popular video formats and editing software infrastructures and platforms are not open and ubiquitous enough and have constraints for realizing the key potentials (e.g. QuickTime, Flash, MPEG-4, YouTube)

- open developments and standards hopefully recruit enough developer and user community to provide more open and sustainable designable alternatives

- design for designability – facilitate design by others - challenge large institutions (broadcasters, publishers etc.) to

consider the potentials, upgrade their media and environments


Thank you! Kari-Hans Kommonen, Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki TAIK [email protected]

mediaspace potentials / open video conference / 19.6.2009

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