CCT109 Final

Knowledge/Post-Industrial Economy

Knowledge/Post-Industrial Economy

An economy where the buying and selling of knowledge takes place, as ideas + immaterial assets are more valuable than material ones.

Eg. Online courses, subscriptions

Surveillance & Privacy

Surveillance - Routine attention to personal details for the purposes of gathering data to find ways to influence, manage, protect or direct. Some surveillance is intentional while others are a byproduct of other features.

Privacy - The ability to seclude information, only sharing select info.

Eg. How all aspects of an automated industry have build-in surveillance for efficiency, like paying wages on time, having things delivered. Privacy-enhancing technology includes encryption, while privacy-eroding technology includes face ID.

Or how companies gather data about their users with them having no awareness of such.

Free-to-Play/Freemium

Companies let a basic version be accessed for free in hopes people will pay for premium features. Eg. Sims4, AnimalJam (older game), Roblox

Global Games Industry

Classified as a creative industry (which is growing) because it profits from primary purchases, additional in-game features, and subscriptions/memberships. It profits from middleware (falls between hardware & software, can enhance user’s game quality, eg. Engines and renderware)

eg. Companies who have shifted their distribution from retail to digital like on XBox, Steam..etc.

Globalization

When markets, tech, cultures and businesses homogenize and become accessible. Also refers to the process of having jobs be moved to higher or lower paying places.

Eg. Amazon distributes their products to a wide demographic of customers. Those who have access to the internet have access to the company’s service.

Critical Political Economy

An approach that questions the policymaking organizations’ ability to distance themselves from private interests enough to act in public interest. Also assumes that media is highly influenced by large corporations who have ties to the policymaking organizations.

Regulatory Capture

When a political entity is undercut (weakened) by the forces it is trying to regulate.

It assumes influence and control from a regulatory body, asking: who has the power if the regulatory body doesn’t have the public’s best interest at heart?

Eg. The creative industry controls what ‘art‘ is, placing more economic value on certain types of art than others, thus commodifying it.

Eg. Also the pharmaceutical industry that approves what drugs are valued.

Eg. Also social media corporations that control what their audience will see.

Creative Commons

A global project that aims to make copyright material more accessible within the digital environment.

Eg. How sites offer free images, audio..etc.

Astroturfing

A practice of using algorithms and machines to create the support or opposition human discourse generates.

Eg. Machine comments on online forums and platforms that support or oppose a topic, when no such support/opposition exists.

Digital Platform

Digital spaces where discourse takes place, commonly relying on social production and user-generated content. Digital platforms enable users to interact with and monetize all types of content.

Cyber-Libertarian

The belief that if new media is given to people, they will likely use it to do good. However, it fails to address questions about corporate power on the internet. An opposing belief is governance.

Governance

The belief that the internet should be controled with laws and policies in order for it to be sustainable. It recognizes the link between public and private sections, or between market and state sections, and how they control the internet.

Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

Canadian Radio Broadcasting Corporation (CRBC), was once created because of demand for a publicly funded radio broadcasting in Canada. CRBC became CRTC, which is now the administrative tribunal that supervises telecomms and broadcasting for public interest.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Technical and legal regulations applied to control access to and distribution of protected material in the digital environment.

(Eg. Netflix not enabling users to access same accounts on multipule devices, or the pirating of University textbooks)

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Passed in 1998, it extends the term of copyright protection for: (life of author + 50 yrs) to (life of author + 70 yrs).

Eg. Ensured Mickey Mouse would not pass into public domain until 2023.

Metadata/Behavioural Data

Mass info collected through mass monitoring user behaviour patterns on electronic device. It translate experience into statistics, which is then fed to intelligent machines. The machines fabricate that data into prediction products that anticipate consumer behaviour.

Panopticon

The effect when prison inmates would police themselves because they feel watched by an unseen guard. A society under surveillance would mirror that effect in a macrocosm.

Creative Industries

Industries that deliberately produce culture as a product or service, place importance on intellectual property. Puts heavy emphasis on creativity (Eg. Architecture, filmmaking, fashion, music, theatre...etc.) There is growing recognition of the influence these industries have onver tech in society.

Intellectual Property

Intangible assets that are afforded same legal protection as physical products. However, this surpresses creativity.

Eg. GUI (graphic user interafaces)

Value Chain

Relationship between different tasks in the process of creating a product. Where companies and users add value to an article, which includes production, marketing, and buying-selling.

Gig Economy

Platform-enables workforce of people hiring themselves out through platforms such as uber. They usually work in short-term, make up a large portion of modern labour market, and don’t have the additional perks (health, insurance, wage gaurantees) that come with working for companies.

Military-Industrial Complex

Network of individuals within a large institution that are involved with military tech. It defines a country’s relationship with it’s military, and the types of tech available. The birthplace of the internet and interactive games.

Affordance

Opportunities avilable to the user, made possible by technolgoies. Refers also how new tech opens social possibilities and how they change people’s worldviews. Design and architecture play into affordance.

Eg. A player being able to affect outcome of story because of how the game is built.

Four attributes of affordance shaped by social media include:

1. Searchability

2. Persistence

3. Visibility

4. Spreadability

Open-Source Movement

Pioneered decentralized, networked, initiatives to develop new forms of software licensed through ‘non-proprietorial general public licenses‘. That means susers can acquire the software it’s source code w/o cost.