Tumblr as an Artifact

 Sarah Karsten
Dr. Wendy
HU2642
24 September 2012
Tumblr: An Artifact of Digital Media
    When we look at artifacts of digital media in our age, it’s hard to determine what honestly is and isn’t pushing the boundaries of various definitions of media.  There are so many different definitions of what digital media could be, so how does one decipher the deciding factors?  Regardless of your definition, Tumblr has truly changed the way we blog and share media.  Although it may not be an educational resource, the way it allows us to share media & the forms of media it allows, the community it has created, and its purpose make Tumblr a digital artifact.
    First, a little bit of history on this amazing site: Tumblr was founded in February 2007 by David Karp.  Within two weeks of the site launch there were 75,000 registered users, although now 10 times that many people are joining every month (Ingram).  If that isn’t impressive enough, Karp started the company at the age of 19 with just himself and one other programmer.  The company has since grown to 103 employees, 74.9 million blogs, and 32.3 billion posts. (Tumblr).
    “From the first few days of using the form, I was hooked.  The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation....It was obvious from the start that it was revolutionary.” (Sullivan).  In this phrase Sullivan described the amazing qualities that blogging has to offer.  Though he might not specifically refer to Tumblr itself, these are all qualities that tumblr has to offer.  Not only does Tumblr offer text posts, but it allows pictures to be posted from a URL or uploaded, it has special formats for quotes and conversations, videos that are uploaded, recorded on the spot, or from URL, a simple link, and audio posts in many formats.  The constant additions of capabilities such as being able to link up with Spotify and Soundcloud to share music and other sounds help keep it up to date with the current times.
    Sharing all these things is incredibly simple.  Each post by a blogger other than yourself has the number of notes, or the number of times a post has been liked or reblogged, followed by a button that allows you to reblog the post, and a heart which allows you to ‘like’ the post.  As a user, you can also follow other blogs whose media will show up on your dashboard, which is similar to Facebook’s “newsfeed”.  You can attach tags to each post to make it easier for other people to find your posts, or find posts associated with a certain subject or word.  A shortcut of pressing the “alt” key means you can reblog things without even editing or tagging the post.  “Mass media and data processing are complementary technologies; they appear together and develop side by side, making modern mass society possible.” (Manovich, 23).  What Manovich means by this is that media and data go hand in hand.  While media may appear to be more for our enjoyment, as tumblr seems to be, data and important information are also processed through the same mediums.
    Community doesn’t even begin to describe what the users of Tumblr seem to form.  The compassion that I’ve witnessed as a part of this piece of digital media is absolutely fascinating.  I learned of Tumblr from a high school friend who said she had met several friends on the site.  Honestly, having been a user of the site for two years I can see why that is so easy to do.  The variety of the topics of blogs really creates a unique experience that anyone can find their niche in.  Some people have blogs that follow their favorite television shows that include quotes, pictures, and clips.  Other people have political Tumblrs, personal Tumblrs, DIY Tumblrs, and even celebrities have their own personal Tumblrs filled with their favorite media of themselves.  There are also tools that make it easy to interact with other users.  You have the option to turn on submissions for your Tumblr, and an ask box where people can send questions or messages.  Manovich talks about what makes something truly interactive, and goes into many facets of psychology to explain his ideas.  Essentially, Tumblr fits the title of new media because “...subjects have to be standardized, and the means by which they are standardized need to be standardized as well...private mental processes, and their equation with external visual forms that can easily be manipulated, mass produced, and standardized on their own. “ (Manovich, 60).  Tumblr makes posts so easy to manipulate, and often there are posts that have over 50,000 notes on them.  Things really are standardized in their own way due to what people tend to reblog or post in the first place.  This brings me back to my original idea of the community of Tumblr, because each community has their own standards, and manipulates the media they post in different ways.
    There is clearly only one argument about the purpose of Tumblr.  A new word in blogging at the time of Tumblr’s inception was “tumblelog” which was a short form blog post.  Karp clearly didn’t want to wait for someone else to create a platform specifically for these posts, so he developed one himself (Barnes).  As Tumblr grew features were added and modified to increase the experience.  I can only relate this to Baudrillard, in the sense that while Tumblr exists, it also doesn’t exist at the same time.  It is not something that we can physically hold, yet it is a thought process and pattern of digital media that we experience.  It is real, because the community makes it real (Baudrillard, Simulacra & Simulations).  I believe Tumblr must have been created as a new blog site.  However, it has clearly evolved into a social networking paradise that allows us to post things in a world that does not require us to interact face to face.
    Thus Tumblr is an artifact of digital media due to it’s almost infinite possibilities, and unique communication tools.  By allowing us to post whatever we see, feel, think, or hear, Tumblr has created a social networking community unlike anything else.  The simple tools makes it a user friendly tool, giving it a broad audience of all sorts of different people from different walks of life, and those users give the site purpose.  So what then are the deciding factors in Tumblr being a digital media artifact?  The interactive qualities make it a great contender, yet to me it is still the vast variety of subject matter that is ever changing with our current times, and what keeps us relevant.

Simulacra and Simulations

    Of course, as soon as I read anything that talks about simulations, my brain immediately goes to the computer game "The Sims".  Baudrillard does give more thoughtful examples than this, but truly this game fits the rules.  While you are in control of a sort of alternate reality, it also kind of pokes fun at reality in the way that the Sim characters act and behave.  It does bear some relation to our current reality, however it is so different at the same time that it could never be mistaken for our reality.
  The definition of Simulacrum via dictionary.com is an effigy, image, or representation.  This goes along with Baudrillard's example of Disneyland as a model of simulation.  He mentions the illusions of the different worlds, such as future world and the frontier.  This reminded me greatly of my trip to Disneyworld when I was in high school. We went to Epcot that week that we were there, and the place was unlike anywhere I'd ever visited.  The ride inside the giant golf ball like structure was like a blast back into the past.  It was so funny to see what people 50 years ago thought the future would be like today, and what their simulation of that future was like.  So interesting now that I'm reflecting upon that now.

Edit 9/19/12: I felt the need after a discussion with two of my classmates to add to this post.  After rereading a good portion of this, I was interested in the part that talks about the difference in worshiping a god, and the worship of the image of a god.  In the few times I've read the bible, I always remember how angry God became when people worshiped false idols.  It's such an interesting concept though, because even though people are thinking of God when they worship, still in churches there are giant crosses and other religious artifacts that people seem to 'worship' as well.  What is the difference between worshiping the god, and worshiping whatever item might represent god? 
  

Always Already New

   Gitelman brings up interesting points through talking about "Error 404" pages.  Having ran websites before, it was very easy for me to relate to the error messages.  In particular she mentions the "perishable quality of the web (internet)" and although she thinks there are more important questions to dwell on,  I find this to be an excellent topic.  I feel as though perishable is a great way to describe a lot of forms of newer media.  A web page can be up one minute, and then down the next.  I have seen so many websites go up quickly, and then people become bored with them within a month resulting in a web site that is either taken down or completely neglected.
   Also, I find a lot of digital media file types like .jpegs, .mov, .mp3, etc are also perishable.  Because of the fact that they are not "physically" there, often times we do not have good ways to back these up.  I know I personally have lost data such as these at times because I haven't properly backed up my system.
   Gitelman also goes on to describe the evolution of what a web publication might be, namely how to back up these up, and how to retrieve them without "error or exception".  I feel like with each passing day this becomes easier and easier for us to do with advances in technology.  Someone is always trying to create new systems and make our technology better.

As We May Think/What is New Media?

   In "As We May Think"  Dr. Bush talks about the process in which we record data, as well as what to do with it when we are done.  One interesting thing that is mentioned was how incredibly cheap it should be to mass produce and ship data.  Honestly, I think it is amazing that our society is so advanced that we can share information in so many ways, and so quickly.  However, it's also a frightening concept because what if our information falls into the wrong hands by accident?  How do we limit what we share, or for that matter keep tabs on what we limit?
   Another interesting tidbit that Dr. Bush brings up is the need to further our complex civilization through easily shared media of some sorts, suggesting that until we can create a better system to do so that our scientists cannot make progress.  Being at an engineering school makes me agree with this.  With so many different specialties in engineering, it becomes hard to absorb everything and switch between these specialties.  If learning materials and experiments were accessible in such a way that allowed students to find what they needed quickly, and even help them learn material quickly, we could increase our progress.
   "What is New Media?" addresses structure of media as well as what really defines new media.  A point that interested me is the fact that new media seems to be made up of multiple things.  The example they used was the "World Wide Web" being made up of different pages, computer languages, and programs.  I think we can even go deeper than that, because of all the different applications and tools that are available to us through the internet are so vast, that it almost feels as if you'd have to use a microscope to see it all.  Also, the fact that new media is interactive is a great point.  Just like this blog post that I am typing right now, new media allows me to connect in a new way.

Why I Blog: A Reaction

    Andrew Sullivan's "Why I Blog" brings so much insight about how journalism has changed due to blogging.  Sometimes I forget just how much power every person on the internet has when they blog.  Blogging lets us have our voice in every opinion and every matter.  While our opinions may not be seen or heard by the entire world, I know from experience that if you post things, you will get a response from someone. 
    The Tumblr community really came to mind when Sullivan discussed how immediately people feel like they need to respond and blog things.  While Tumblr is no news site, it does exemplify how we use digital media in our lives.  It gives us instant gratification to be able to post what we want, when we want and also allows us to respond to these posts instantly.  When Sullivan said "To blog is to...let go of your writing in  a way, to hold it at arm's length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others...pivot you toward relative truth", I thought about this more in the context of personal blogs.  For a lot of people, I feel like blogs killed their journals or diaries.  A blog allows them to share their experiences, their joys, even their dark days of downfalls with the world with a click of the mouse.  And through writing I believe we truly get to know ourselves better.
    Another idea I enjoyed was the personality aspect of blogs and how his readers address him by his first name when they bump into him on the street, whereas if he was publishing on paper a lot of people would address him as "Mr. Sullivan".  Blogs allow us to communicate in a new way that allows us to show our true colors.  He describes this as "friendship" and how he "writes for thousands and thousands of friends".  Since he is his own editor he can write exactly as he wishes, and people will see what he wants them to see.  I am making this a goal for myself on tumblr - to make more people see the real me and become engaged in my posts.  Just as well, I think I will become more proactive about engaging in conversations with the other bloggers of  tumblr.

First Post/Goals

Woo, first post.  Normally I hate the first post, because it seems to emphasize how empty the blog is.

Anyway, I wanted to set a couple goals for this blog.  Hopefully through this class and the reading assignments, I will learn more about myself while making connections between the learning materials in this class and those of my other classes.  I'm very excited for a productive semester, and I look forward to looking back at my posts at the end of the semester.