ENGLISH TEST

MY SCORE : 20 out of 20 (100%).

TRY IT YOURSELF 😉test

I’m not sure Nicolas and Segolene got a good score :

“Wikipedia : the free encyclopedy that anyone can edit”.

I’m sorry to contradict you Mister Wikipedia, but things are a little bit more complicated… Indeed, despite our motivation and willingness to contribute to the universal knowledge, there are thousands of obstacles to curb, slow down or even to prevent the publication of our text.

Wikipedia expects its user to write an article about something which diserves a certain fame without promoting it, by furnishing precise pieces of information and giving its sources. I tried to answer to these rules in order to write an article about Krystle Warren, an American young musician who is very talented. But because I didn’t post the different links of the websites thanks to which I wrote this text and  because Krystle Warren is not very known yet, my article was rejected.

If I was quite hurt by this suppression, I think the complexity of the process is clearly representative of the unlimited ambition of Wikipedia. Actually, if a website pretends to become our on-line encyclopedy, there are many traps it should avoid such as : desinformation, desguised publicity and so on. In fact, with such a good referencement, Wikipedia cannot take the risk to publish “anyone” as it pretends to.

However, it should work on its communication with its users  by acting with more transparency, by explaining to its users why their article hasn’t been published and why it didn’t answer to their request. Because after all, knowing and learning implies sharing and communicating with others.

Internet rules !

1. Do not make fun of your friends thanks to the web. Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Twitter…there are thousands way for them to take revenge publicly. (x o x o…)

2. Choose the same password for the millions of networks and accounts you have on the internet . And if possible, not  your birthday date (it  is known by the 300 “friends” you have on Facebook).

3. Do not follow more than 2 soap operas each week or you’ll soon become a geek.

4. Do not think becoming a “geek” is cool or even funny. It is just a funny world to describe a no-life who spends his entire life in front of his screen.

5. Be synthetic : mails are not sent by pigeons but it’s not a reason to write a book.

6. Be patient : you could be the one to bug.

7. Try not to buy too many things on-line. When it comes to money, abstraction can have disastrous effects.

8. Do not believe you’ll find your charming prince on Meetic. You could be disappointed.

9. Do not steal virtual fournitures, clothes, or other stuff on the web because one day real policemen  will come to arrest you.

10. Do not use the media, BE the media !

Many things to learn about the internet and …me !

Since the creation of my blog, there are many things that I thought very complex which I consider obvious today. A few weeks ago, posting a link, a video or a photo were unknown activities to me. Now, thanks to this blog I’ve realised how the CMS (Content Manager System) such as WordPress or Blogger really ease these kind of tasks.

I just discovered how tu use Moviemaker because I did a video presentation of myself. It’s a very handy tool which doesn’t demand you to be a geek and which enables to gather videos and drawings quite well as you can see.

I know the quality of the images could be better. I’ll try to fix this.

See you later 😉

From window-shopping to screen-shopping

How could we imagine that window-shopping would eventually become old-fashioned? Since the arrival of the internet, more and more consumers have morphed into  on-line buyers.

Transparency : internet’s great boomerang

Last week,  every one could eventually have access to the brand new web site of Segolene Royal and her association “Désirs d’avenir” created in the aim of proposing and building a socialist plan able to convince French citizens and to counter Mr Sarkozy’s policy. Despite its ridiculously  old-fashioned background, Segolene Royal’s website is in keeping with the current trend that every single politic is respectively following : transparency.

Creating websites, having blogs, being on Facebook, Twitter and so on, are various ways to communicate and to make citizens believe that all pieces of information can be shared with them, that they can be aware of every single movement or actions of their political representatives. Before being elected as the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy helped by his communication advisers also tried to be in vogue by creating a website dedicated to promote the candidate’s political plan and to enable French net surfers to question him about it.

If transparency, one of the major impacts of the internet on our society, has been used by some politics as an effective  strategy of communication, it is also a trap in which many of them have been caught. Facebook.com, Youtube.com, Twitter.com…Since the arrival of social networks, thousands of videos and images are broadcasted and shared between millions of net surfers each day. Taken from cameras or mobilephones, these images are very threatening for politics who are forced to control and curb all their acts and speeches. No off !  That’s what transparency means.

Recently, Mr.Hortefeux experimented the drawbacks of this famous internet transparency while making a quite unwarranted joke about Arabic immigrants in France. The Minister was speaking with some supporters of the UMP and taking pictures with a young man (who seems to have Arabic origins) before saying, obviously speaking about Arabic people : “It’s always important to have one. When there’s one, it’s fine. It’s when they are numerous that it is a problem”.

Politics like to pretend acting with transparency.

Unfortunately for them, it’s a boomerang whose jar is quick and painful. Unfortunately for us, many of these same politics have developed a liking for making their private life transparent.

Thanks Internet transparency ! Thanks to you, we can also watch  Mrs Bruni Sarkozy and her husband kissing each other and talking about jogging, or about their dogs Clara, Toomy and Dumbledor – who, of course, are not as cute as  Bo.

You don’t know Bo !! Does this ring a bell ?

Allo…Devil’s advocate speaking ?

Homebloging… it’s the only world I have found to qualify what I’m doing right now that is to say posting my homework on the internet. You might wonder what would I do such a thing ? Actually, it’s not because I’m extremely proud of my work and that I want to share it with the entire blogosphere.

The reason is simple: more than 450 miles are separating me and my class from our teacher of e-communication Bob Spaulding. Internet is therefore a virtual place thanks to which we try to overcome the geographical distance in order to communicate, learn and work together. Thanks to social networks, email boxes and blogs, we become e-students and Bob Spaulding our e-teacher.

Fifty years before, this scenario would have been technically impossible. Bob Spaulding would not have been able to work for the CELSA, the school of communication where I study and we would have had an other teacher in the flesh. Traditional methods of learning and teaching seem to be shaked by new technologies which have crepted in the classroom. In front of that phenomenon, the educational system is far from being an isolated case.

WE ARE ALL PIRATES IN SLIPPERS

Today, the impact of the internet on the world of music is the center of international debates which are,    unfortunately, especially focused on illegal downloading. This new way of consuming music is considered as the responsible of the great crisis which currently damages music industry. But reducing on-line consumption of music to piracy would be lying. In France, the recording industry has lost 50% of its value from 2002 to 2009. On the other hand, numeric sales have increased in 50% in 2007, offering 76 millions of euros to the music industry.

It is impossible to deny the perverse effects of illegal downloading which prevent musicians from taking advantage of their copyrights and enables millions of anonymous to benefit from a costly work production whithout giving a penny. To tackle on-line thefts, each country has tried to find its own solution. In Taïwan, a brand new law forces internet suppliers to deprive net surfers of their connexion when they use illegal downloading twice. France has just adopted the Hadopi law so as to settle a progressive counterstroke against cyber-pirates while the United States have chosen to drag swindlers off to the court of justice, demanding them to make good the damage.

But why does this war against on-line piracy so much taste like defeat?

In 2007, the rock band Radiohead took the bold decision to enable a free downloading of their new album In Rainbows. According to a study launched by the British company MCPS-PRS, more than 2,3 millions of people prefered to download it illegally. Today, defending those 2,3 net surfers means choosing to be the Devil’s advocate. Illegal downloading has made the debate about the impact of internet on music deeply manichean. In France, illegal downloaders have been described by the upholders of the Hadopi law as fould and routhless stealers when they actually more look like the average citizen. This video, produced at the Austalian government’s request is quite representative of the current diabolisation of illegal downloaders :

(I know the music of the ad is terrifying and I really feel like being a terrorist while listening to it  – even if I do not download music illegaly, I promise !)

JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS

The current situation is way more complex than what the ad is made to show. Many studies have testified to the fact that e-pirates are often at the same time great consumers of CDs and DVDs. Moreover, illegal downloading does contribute to boost the sales of one album by creating a buzz on the internet.

Therefore, more than a war, musicians seem to have a kind of je-t’aime-moi-non-plus relationship with the internet and their criminal fans. Internet has offered to them new spaces to conquer so as to increase their visibility. It has enable them to use their creativity to launch new forms of marketing strategy. The rock band Muse has for instance chosen to put its  new album on www.deezer.com before it was put in stores. Musicians can also take benefit from viral videos in order to promote their shows. Thanks to platforms such as Myspace.com or Youtube.com, internet has also enable many artists to become well-known such as Colbie Caillat who has recently recorded a song with the famous Jason Mraz.

More than changing our way of consuming music, internet has chattered all types of music including the most old-fashioned and elitist one. If the world of classic music needed time to adapt itself to the internet, it seems to have taken the right direction. Many websites are day after day promoting opera shows, concerts and so on, by broadcasting them in direct live. www.medici.tv is a very good example of this new phenomenon. The quality of the sound and of the images is amazing. Of course, it’s different from having your sit in the Metropolitan Opera of New York but at least it’s less expansive and you can watch it from your bed.

Because that’s precisely what internet means to me: giving to everybody the opportunity to discover what reality has forgot to put on your road !

Stay tunned !

P.S : Next time I’ll try to make shorter 😉