Snowden: Hero or Villain?

Edward Snowden – is he a hero or a villain?  In my eye, he’s neither.  I see him as more of a victim for simply trying to do what he feels is right.  I don’t agree with his views on surveillance but I do feel somewhat sorry for the man.  Whether he should be viewed as a hero or a terrorist, a patriot or a criminal is not what this post is going to explore.  Rather, I’m going to talk about my views on surveillance and what I would have done if I were him. 

The main thing that I feel both Snowden and myself agree upon is the method he exposed the story.  Snowden used The Guardian Newspaper, a prominent news media outlet in England that is known to be one of the last true fourth estate newspapers.  By using The Guardian, Snowden ensured that the truth without political bias was released with the breaking story. 

But if I was in Snowden’s own shoes, I would have done nothing with the whole issue.  With the Wiki Leaks issue still ongoing, surely he would have realised the danger he would have gotten in if he went ahead with his plan.  Julian Assange of Wiki Leaks has been in a world of trouble and issues since they leaked government information.  I would not have leaked the information knowing that sort of drama would ensue. 

But also, I don’t believe there truly is a problem with the surveillance the NSA was undertaking.  The whole idea of the surveillance program was to be a security measure against large scale attacks on the United States.  If large operations such as PRISM and the other surveillance programs are truly working to prevent such attacks then why is everyone freaking out so much?  Do people honestly have that much to hide?  When viewed on a large scale, worldwide issue such as basic human security, why so much negative backlash against the government?  I see it as a necessary task to be able to keep the security of the citizens a top priority.  

Music Sampling Innovations

I am a big fan of hip hop and electronic music.  In my mind these artists are innovators, otherwise, these genres of music simply wouldn’t exist.  This blog post is going to examine these music producers and the way they sample others work in their own.  Many of the greatest hip hop records were created back in the 1980’s when sampling wasn’t as big an issue as today.  And current electronic producers and DJs use their skills as samplers as an innovative technique, rather than simply stealing other artists music and using it as their own.  

In hip hop’s ‘golden era’ (McLeod 2011, p. 19) in the 80s, rap groups and producers had creative freedom to make the music they wanted to make, with pioneering artists such as Public Enemy, De La Soul and Boogie Down Productions creating universally acclaimed records which sampled a range of artists from soul and blues to hard rock like AC/DC.  McLeod recalls in his book that ‘the golden age was an important moment during the development of hip hop as a musical art form, and it opened up a range of artistic possibilities that largely weren’t censored by legal and economic interests’ (2011, p. 20).  In today’s hip hop world, it is impossible to create the sort of tracks that were abundant in the 80s, with so many copyright laws protecting the songs owned by the big record labels.  It is important to note that many artists who are on these labels actually like their work sampled, but the greed of the big business prevents producers from accessing them legally.  If current hip hop producers were given the free reign that existed in the 80s, hip hop’s current landscape would be a very different place.  

Electronic artists are often criticised for not performing their own content in their live sets.  But in reality they are performing other artist’s songs in different methods and styles than the originals.  Most accomplished electronic artists have a style or flair that makes their music instantly recognisable, and when they sample other songs, you can really hear their own influence coming through the music.  It is this method of sampling that makes these artists’ true innovators. 

Reference

McLeod, K 2011, Creative Licence: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, Duke University Press, Durham USA

Week Three - American University Culture

I recently went to the USA to spend a semester on exchange in an American university.  From August 2012 till January 2013 I was in a country with a slightly different culture to our own, and a very different university culture.  But this post is not going to explore the differences between Australian and American universities.  Rather, I’m going to explore the way American universities are represented in movies and pop culture and the real life experience I had.

College films usually follow the same formula: lots of partying and drinking, not much actual university coursework and plenty of girls everywhere.  And although this is an obvious exaggeration, it honestly wasn’t far off the truth.  I’ll start with the coursework.  It was on a whole another level of easy compared to Australia, and in line with the lack of work done in pop culture films.  

With the social side of university in the States, pop culture movies have it pretty much spot on.  I attended many of the frat parties over my time at the university, and some of the formats of these parties could be part of any college film.  The biggest difference that I saw was there was a lack of sheer outlandish shenanigans of the scale represented in film, but there was still plenty of ridiculous fun to be had.  

Here is an image from one of the parties I attended.  The blurriness really adds to what sort of party it was, and the sort of events that were frequently being run by student organisations. 

The popular culture of the west – movies, television, music, books, newspapers and magazines – have been increasingly flowing about the world (Hatchen & Scotton 2002, pg. 4), and it is this form of globalisation that created my awareness of how American university was represented.  Now, after having gone over to the USA and seen first-hand what it was like, I feel like I am a direct part of globalisation.  I had an initial thought that American college was just the same as it was here.  Then after viewing the movies through the globalisation of entertainment and media I changed my view to those that were represented in the films.  And finally after witnessing first-hand what it was actually like, I can see exactly how globalisation changed my view, and just how accurate the representation really was. 

Who is Tim Deller?

This blog post is part of my coursework for ALC201.

Who is Tim Deller? What exactly is my online identity? When I think of these questions myself to do with my online persona I immediatly think of the social media sites that I use most often, mainly Facebook.  This post will look at how I portray myself through my Facebook profile, and I'll briefly look at a video I created for YouTube about my time overseas. 

My Facebook profile is pretty much the only social network that I regularly check and update.  I have a twitter but I only really use it for class related coursework and at the most I’ll only check it once a week.  Even this blog was only created for another subject at Deakin. .

My Facebook Account

I believe my Facebook profile directly represents who I am in real life.  I don’t like it when I view someone’s page and it doesn’t reflect who they are when I meet them face to face.  My profile shows who I am, my interests and what I like to do.  It is a very relaxed and easy going sort of atmosphere, which is what I’m like in person.  This is best exemplified in my profile pictures.  

These are the profile pictures I’ve had on my page that have lasted the longest.  The phone is simply a long running joke I’ve had after I was simply talking on the phone one day out with friends, they took a photo of my in a similar pose to these and the tradition stuck.  I feel these photos represent who I am; a relaxed funny dude who just lies back and lets the world take me along for the ride.  This quote from Hills (2009) I feel is particularly true when talking about profile pictures.  ‘Profile pictures have also started to be thought of as corresponding to a type of photographic opportunity while users are on the go or participating in offline social events’ (Hills 2009, p. 119), and I certainly do this when the opportunity arises to take one of my phone photos, I will actively pose with the thought in my mind that this will be my new profile picture. 

The other form of social media which I only just started contributed to is YouTube.  I recently went on a trip to the United States, and similar to how I portray my profile pictures on Facebook, I used certain situations when out sightseeing to create a video which shows all the places I went to while highlighting my fun and relaxed personality.

YouTube is all about participatory culture, which is a term that is often used to talk about the apparent link between more accessible digital technologies (Burgess & Green 2013, p. 10).  The way I intend to use YouTube is to show the links to my generated videos from my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and have the friends and followers from those sites to go to my YouTube channel.  Basically I treat my YouTube account the same as I do my Facebook account. 

Reference List

Burgess, J & Green, J 2013, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, Wiley, (eBook)

Hills, M 2009, ‘Case study: social networking and self-identity‘, in Creeber, G and Martin, R (eds.), Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media, Open University Press, Maidenhead, pp. 117-21 (eBook)