John and I went out for "Valentine's Day" tonight. We hate crowded restaurants so no matter what, we would not have gone out for the real Valentine's Day anyway. We went to Rincon Spain in Wharton... lots of paella and sangria...mmmm. I made the foolish choice of ordering rice pudding for desert-- John laughed. Of all the things to order in a Spanish restaurant, I chose something that most likely came out of a Kozy Shack plastic container.
Our dinner conversation actually involved the readings for this week. I was telling John about the PEW/Internet survey and the fanfiction article. The Internet survey results did not really surprise me that much.There were two facts that most interested me: how much students are blogging and how much percentages of students in urban populations have self-created content online.
According to the findings, 27% of teens who use the Internet daily also have their own blogs (p. ii). To me, this is astonishing because this is a large part of the teen population. I imagine that most teens who have Internet use at home go on daily anyway; the fact that they are blogging shows that although they may be less engaged with conventional literacy practices (i.e. reading in books), they are still engaged with other literacy practices. It's almost like teens are having their own mini-writing workshops at home. According to the findings, bloggers are also more likely to have self-created content (either their own original work or their work "meshed" with someone else's). This is not hard for me to believe. For instance, as a Myspace user I have found myself intrigued by the ability to change profile layouts, profile songs, images, etc. Being that I blog on the site quite often, I feel this need to figure out how to do these new things.
The amazing thing about "Web 2.0" and this concept of "collective intelligence" is that, many times, even if you have no clue about how to do html or layouts, you can Google the information and find tutorials. In this respect, the Internet seems to be making users more self-reliant. Instead of merely saying, "Oh, I have no idea how to do layout," users can search online and figure out things for themselves. They can get as much information they want about a topic, or as little information they want. I am on the latter side of the tech scale. When I want a new layout, I simply paste in html codes from sites like freeweblayouts.net. Still though, there is some aspect of independence to what I am doing.
Secondly, in regard to the PEW findings, I was interested in the fact that "articistic content creators are slightly more likely to report living in urban areas...40%" (p. 2). For me, this fact raises the fact that although there is a digital divide (access/Internet speed that a majority of users have), teens in urban areas are still using the Web to express themselves, even moreso than teens in suburban and rural areas. The fact that urban teens are turning to online resources to express themselves makes the Web a source of empowerment for them.
I was not surprised at teens' views on copyright/sharing of music. I actually One aspect of the findings that interested me were the comments by two particular teens about when they will buy music CDs vs. when they will simply download songs. For example, one teen commented that she will BUY music from artists that she truly enjoys, however she will download songs of artists whose only songs she likes are the major hits (p. 15). This kind of reminded me of myself and music downloading. I don't use Kazaa or other programs because I am worried about viruses (one of the concerns some teens mentioned in relation to using peer-to-peer networks), but I will get CDs from the library and download songs of artists who I don't think are "worthy" of spending the 15 bucks for a CD (um... my most recent example would be American Idol winner Chris Daughtry). However, if an artist is "worthy (in my mind), then I will spend the money and buy the CD. My students have told me, "Why don't you just buy and download the CD?" I respond by saying that I am a tactile person and like holding the CD, case, and liner notes in my hands. They look at me like I am crazy.
It's nice to know that some of the teens in the survey share the same "belief system" that I do.
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