Crowdsourcing into action

Ok, well this is a little off the trail of my usual talk on government processes (or live streaming), but I can't help marvel at what happened in the news today... McDonalds caved into demands from fans of the show "Rick and Morty" and sent the creators of the show, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland a bottle of "Szechuan Sauce".

This sauce is a "joke" in the fandom, that exploded rather quickly due to the popularity of the show online, with the first episode of the season running a big joke with the main character "Rick" ranting about his passion to get the limited edition "Mulan Szechuan Sauce" no matter how long it will take, Nine Seasons if it had too, it is his series arc! (No seriously, that was said on the show).

Now this was all a big joke, Mcdonald's was never going to bring back the sauce, even though a crowd-sourced petition almost 42k strong signed to bring back this "Mythical" dipping sauce. But....they did, at least for Roliand and Co.

THEY DID IT. THE SERIES ARC IS OVER, WE HAVE SAUCE.

I found this fascinating due to just how much corporations (not just McDonalds) have been interacting to pop culture through various ways other than advertisements on TV and Billboards now. If a grassroots joke just happens to be brought up, or pop culture that brings back nostalgia is expertly crafted, you have some amazing things such as the cutouts Arby's makes or the "Snarky" Wendy's twitter feed that form. These companies interact with the consumer, and sometimes through the magnificent push of a joke that the consumers are producing, listen and create! I feel like at least in corporations sense, we are having a bit of a very fluid and natural interaction sometimes, compared to some advertising cases with a "Forced meme", which just feels unnatural. It is nice that they are doing this, in the end it will help their revenue due to fans loving the brand (and this totally made people love McDonalds again, hell I want the Szechuan Sauce now).

Have you seen ways in which corporations, or really anything entity, interact with consumers who pushed something in a grassroots way, via social media?


Now...lets relate this to government...Well I guess we have This....okay, look, I'm just really excited that on my birthday Rick and Morty Season 3 is happening at 11:30 PM...it's the best show, seriously, best show, 100 years, rick and morty.

Can it be a management problem

Looking into the previous question, I wondered about why we may have slowed down in development compared to our allies...We are one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but our E-Government system isn't fully utilized...yet. One article caught my eye in Governing Magazine, talking about the management changes that spurred the use of E-Government in the UAE...it was a rather interesting read.

In the article it explored the rise in rankings of the UAE from once 49th to 28th, through its management style in which it is rather decentralized. Meaning that departments can make any services they want as long as it is bound to the common parts that the central government is building for all departments (payment, customer support), which creates a somewhat standard model that allows for sharing of innovation from department to department as it is related that that common part supplied by the central authority to each department (Newcombe, 2014). This plus the increased spending in IT products has skyrocketed, creating a focus for this endeavor on new e-government experiments.

This type of management style is very peculiar to me, while at one hand it works in the UAE, how exactly could this style be fitted into the United States as a whole. While a central core would be nice, how exactly with the CTOs (chief technology officers) and CIOs (Chief Information Officers), handle the semi-standardization of 19,354 "incorporated places" within the United States, not even including technologies at the county and state level? Would this type of standardization be looked at "smaller" in which the state provides this core, allowing for governmental processes that citizens are usually affected by to be easier to function? Or would it be through the county level depending on the density of cities? not each city needs its own e-government system due to its population, or access to technology (as rural areas can be lacking at times). Creating a common theme in technology is not a new thought for the US though, as at least federally is the "Federal Chief Information Officer", in which it is their job to commit to some standardization of federal processes...though again, this doesn't relate to states or cities..

It is a great question, how would you raise participation and development into technologies, would it be through the user or through the management?

Works Cited

Newcombe, T. (2014). The United Arab Emirates: A Rising Star in E-Government. Retrieved from Governing Magazine: http://www.governing.com/columns/tech-talk/gov-clicking-with-the-times.html

International Perspectives of E-Government? Yes Please

Regarding E-Government, there have been loads of articles from the international community and their respective experiments, in fact when it comes to E-Government, the International community is "Top Dog" compared to the United States? How much so?

Well the UN creates an "E-Government" Survey every two years, recording the international community's development of E-government systems, as well as participation. The end result? For the year 2016 the top 10 developing systems and top 11 participative systems are all international countries, The US appeared on both tables nearing the bottom of the top 10 and 11 in 2014, but that was the last time it has appeared, we are currently 12th (UN, 2017). Now why is that? well, possibly due to the some of the advantages that this system can bring compared to some of the safeties the US might possibly have.

These two areas? Costs, and Corruption. While both are still major issues in the US, they both have proved to be serious benefits of an E-Government system. So much so that a study of users interaction and costs done in London found tremendous differences in use and price, with self-service on a website being found to overshadow usage of face to face and call center interaction combined, while doing it at only .25 pounds a visit compared to the face to face 14.65 and the call center's 1.39!

Stories, such as fighting corruption are also prevalent in some countries, with one event in Macedonia noting that e-government tools and regulations involved in making an automated standardization of fees for cross-board licenses applications actually lower in cost due to the account of no corruption involved in the process from a physical representative, just a mouse click.

Two great advantages, and if you think they are worth it...well you are right, it is so great that the top countries embracing the E-Government boom are....

Whelp...I don't think these countries have any cost or corruption issues, except Italy

So for the US to not be one of the top 10 or 11 countries, but rather outside the table is quite puzzling, these are all rich western culture countries (except Singapore, Japan, and to an extent S.Korea) that have all embraced the turnover to these new digital technologies, and the citizens of these countries are active in them!

Does the US have a motivation problem? I would love to hear your thoughts!

If you want to check out this awesome interactive graph showing each countries' e-government index, click here!

Works Cited:

Perera, D. (2008, October 2). Fighting Corruption Through E-Government. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/business/worldbusiness/03iht-EGOV03.1.17420751.html

The Economist. (2008, Feb 14). The Good, The Bad and the Inevitable: The Pros and Cons of e-Government. Retrieved from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/10638105

United Nations. (2017). UN E-Government Knowledge DataBase. Retrieved from United Nations: https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/en-us/Reports/UN-E-Government-Survey-2016

Birthday week! And some really cool articles dealing with Twitch Streaming and Web 2.0 education

Hello!

So this week was rough, I had to do some last minute grading for my students since finals are deceptively fast for the Summer C semester here at FSU. It also is my Bday today! Yay!....and my parents arrived unexpectedly...well there goes my time to do work!

Yes, keep on dancing forever

Regarding this week, it will be a grab bag of topics due to working on my produsage topic! For my "assignment" I focused on getting students to appreciate and understand the amazing tools of livestreaming! I talked about it in week 2 rather briefly during "people week" when it came to AGDQ/SGDQ, but there is just so much you can do!

So much so that formal readings (ACTUAL JOURNALS) talking about Twitch have been a growing thing! and so I found several articles! Notably:

o   Tang, J. C., Venolia, G., & Inkpen, K. M. (2016, May). Meerkat and periscope: I stream, you stream, apps stream for live streams. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 4770-4780). ACM.

o   Hamilton, W. A., Garretson, O., & Kerne, A. (2014, April). Streaming on twitch: fostering participatory communities of play within live mixed media. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1315-1324). ACM.

o   Pires, K., & Simon, G. (2015, March). YouTube live and Twitch: a tour of user-generated live streaming systems. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (pp. 225-230). ACM.

o   Zhang, C., & Liu, J. (2015, March). On crowdsourced interactive live streaming: a twitch. tv-based measurement study. In Proceedings of the 25th ACM Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (pp. 55-60). ACM.

What I thought was cool from each of these articles was just how similar their studies relate to the class we are currently going through. Each one focuses on the producer or consumer and the socialization/interactions between each other. They go into "Crowdsourcing" and how it creates a supportive community that can be informative! Or they will touch on what makes livestreaming a new form of web 2.0 that is truly lifting off from its former fringe days of social media use! It is a growing medium that has been slowly rising, and as an alternative to TV, it is starting to become one! Especially with the rise of livestreaming tools and esports (professional video gaming!). If any of my readers are interested, I recommend you check out one of these articles and give them a read, talk below in the comments what you see can be related to our class!

Helpful Specific Wikis

That is not to say all instructional learning is bad, and in fact a lot of sources such as github forums are GREAT when it comes to learning with technology.

As a Raspberry Pi User, a micro PC that runs on minimal power and on a budget (around 36 bucks). I decided to make a many arcade for all the LEGAL ROMS (Files of Video Games For Emulation) I have. Since I purchased Neo Geo ROMS legally from a reputable seller (and they sponsored the ROM selling for charity), I had about 15 games for my choosing on emulation.

The Raspberry Pi was my solution to portable arcades (and the cabinet I eventually want to make) for when I truly have a massive collection of legal roms to use. Arcade Joystick, cabinet and all, that is the dream!

Now...I didn't know how to set up this machine, but fortunately that is where user sites like Github come in, actually giving away the linux code for you to understand and emulate on my machine. To understand how to port neo-geo roms to my "Pi" I checked Here! (It is safe, don't worry). And it is one heck of machine now because of it!

I love you mini Neo Geo Machine sooooooo Much..

Githubs are used in multiple things! Python/Java/Linux/etc. anything needing coding, you got it. And users all help in submitting code for those wanting to learn or at least emulate! Retropie is one example of this type of fascination into cool coding and there are many other types of wikis too.

You got your fandom wikis to keep you up to speed on "Game Of Thrones" so while you hate the show or hate the books, you can at least catch up and understand what the heck your friends are saying (like me!). Or you might participate in a really cool wiki community that prides itself on its forums, rumors, and posts!

Wikis in good nature are endless, and we must appreciate that fact, just like Wikipedia is consensus based, altcyclopedias can be harmful, and wikileaks is murky, fun wikis providing specific information can be useful (again as long as you do your due diligence).

Wikileaks, or "Lets Make the Government Love or Hate us 101"

Wikileaks, this is a term we hear about. Whether the government loves or hates them depending on what political opponent they outed, or agency revealed, it is a mess. A hugely, respectable, dangerous mess.

I'll say this about it. When it comes to instructional learning, it should be treated the same way as wikipedia. You don't use it for sources, you use it as an investigation starter (in research we sometimes use the citations from the site to actually lead us to books or journals to read, wikipedia I mean).

Yes, the documents are nice and in my opinion Assange is one smart, narcissistic son of a gun for pulling what he has done with his website, but I can't say to fully trusting or not trusting the site. Wikileaks is the same instructional learning, instead it is posters submitting "leaks" for all to believe in. Yes it has the word "Wiki" in it, but that doesn't mean it is related to the biased consensus pushing like Wikipedia is. It isn't fully checked, just leaked to the public. And Assange (or at least his site) has released personal information on many people before.

If one was to handle Wikileaks, you need to uncover more and question what you can through the sources you reach rather than come to a startling conclusion. Which is why I have nothing but contempt for those in public administration who flip flop on Wikileaks all the time. Case in point, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who recently expressed his hostile beliefs towards the site stating that :

“WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can,” he said. “I don’t love WikiLeaks.” (Benen, 2017)

But Wait, this was when Wikileaks was attacking the US government that he was hired to help run. He supported it completely and used it as "Evidence" against Hillary for her emails (Benen, 2017). Wikileaks could be ran by hostile state actors, or it might not, I don't care as just like any true scholar or academic, you take a Wiki with a grain of salt and use it as a jumping point to find the research you are looking for. Government, especially in instructional learning, needs to work the same way...Hopefully...One day...Yeah it probably won't. 

Works Cited: 

Benen, S. (2017, July 21). CIA Director Pompeo's Views on Wikileaks Have Apparently Evolved. Retrieved from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cia-director-pompeos-views-wikileaks-have-apparently-evolved

Encyclopedia Dramatica...When "Learning" goes too far

Don't go on this wiki. Don't do it, don't go on it, and if you did I am so sorry you did.

Encyclopedia Dramatica started in 2004 and is a parody of Wikipedia and other encylopedia sites.... It is user ran and maintained, and is ran by your fellow buddies on that side of the internet, you know..the "fun" side, the side that you don't want to be associated with.

There is an Irony in this

With user created instructional learning, comes user created UNinstructional learning, and in this case passing "harmless"(They aren't) jokes or memes around until people think they are actually real. So much so, that this wiki has been taken seriously in lawsuits, such as recently last year in England where the charge of  £10,000 due to posting accusations of paedophilla and "photos of proof" to a formal public administrator. The anonymous user who posted those acusations "has not been found" (Corfield, 2016).  These rises of "Encyclopedias or Altopedias" actually can be thanked to Wikipedia which released the source code to make these types of websites (Brodeur, 2017). As Wikipedia is a "user backed process" we all know in at least our classes not to use it as a source.. As this is ran not by facts, rather individuals, and biases (political, cultural, etc.) can affect the writings on the article. Fortunately studies have shown, the more a crowd "Works" on an article, the less this bias comes to show, though Wikipedia still has more bias than its "Britannica counterpart" (Frick, 2014). Britannica and Wikipedia are big names, compared to the more satirical or even "Alt-Fact" wikis...And some people might go to those to find the "Truth". With less people are those in a "Groupthink", there will surely be major disparities in factual evidence and high biases no matter what side of the aisle one leans or believes.

Sites like the satirical (Dramatica) or politically charged (Conservapedia or Rationalwiki) are problems, though fortunately the populations using them are not harmful...yet.

Disclaimer: I for one like looking at Dramatica time to time if the subject is actually funny. Sometimes some of the topics are funny, most of the time disgusting, and a good amount of the time pretty bad or hurtful, don't go on that site.

Works Cited:

Brodeur, M. A. (2017, June 23). The Rise of the Online Altcyclopedia. Retrieved from Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2017/06/22/the-rise-online-altcyclopedia/iXQtJ6JuFE7wxzf98be13N/story.html

Corfield, G. (2016, July 29). Encyclopedia Dramatica User Hit With 10k damages after calling ex-councillor a "Paedo". Retrieved from The Register: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/29/encyclopedia_dramatica_dynastia_likeicare_samuel_smith_10k_libel_case/

Frick, W. (2014, December 3). Wikipedia is More Biased Than Britannica, but Don't Blame the Crowd. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2014/12/wikipedia-is-more-biased-than-britannica-but-dont-blame-the-crowd