Ijustine and the Fake Steve Jobs
The fake Steve Jobs linked to this video before writing a short commentary.
 “Phone Bill Girl and one of her fellow Ph.D. candidates are discussing the work of Roland Barthes and narrative theory in the context of Derrida and Chomsky, with a deftly handled digression into the recurring sexism of Norman Mailer’s work”
I have no idea where the inspiration for the video came from but the little remark is amusing. Fake Steve’s comment is about citizen journalism and by referencing Ijustine’s video he brings a satirical look at the question. In effect we hear so much about problems with accuracy and mis-information that this video is a nice break. it’s satirizing the idea of citizen journalism.
“Somewhere in heaven, Marshall McLuhan is weeping. Either that or laughing his ass off.”Â
This comment is particularly relevant to the quote I used two or three days ago.
…makes each of us present and accessible to every other person in the world. To a large degree our co-presence everywhere at once in the electric age is a fact of passive, rather than active, experience.
Marshall McLuhan wrote that last comment fourty three years ago and today it’s a reality, but not as he envisaged it. The video of Justine having a little fun with a friend is a perfect representation of what the Web has become. Having spent some time researching the Operator 11 movement I have been surprised to find that people are video chatting to each other in a public place. Some of them are without shirts, others have a glass or a bottle next to them and yet more are falling asleep.
People are living their lives online. They’re going out to meet friends but they’re also social from the comfort of home. Looking at what several people have done on operatr 11 I found myself thinking that this is beavis and butthead web 2.0. The reason behind this thought is the nature of the programs. Users like Rubberbangirl start a “show” and users connect to the stream and comment both in video and through the text chat. As they do so we get a sense of community and well being. Anyone anywhere in the world can participate at any time of day and McLuhan’s thoughts are getting more concrete with every day that passes.
At this moment in time Justine and other participants of Justin.tv are walking with the cameras life casting their lives. At the same time hundreds of people are sitting behind their computer screens at home watching as a number of lives occur in real life. Within a few months I expect that we’ll see these streams straight to mobile phones so that as one person lives and broadcasts their life so someone else is living their life as they watch another.
We’re living in the digital/electric age where everyone can talk to everyone else. Whilst Fake Steve is having fun in his way so we see a little snippet of how Justine has her own fun. Neither of them is write or wrong. They’re reflections of trends that are active. The only difference is that whereas Fake Steve and Justine have a high profile so most users are still relatively anonymous.
One of my personal favourites at the moment is Chrome, it’s fast, light, and behaves the way I want it to. Better still it incorporates flash into the code. This means that I can view flash content without it being installed on the computer I’m using. 