Jenkins begins the book by talking generally about media convergence. Jenkins describes the convergence in three dimensions. It is the convergence of producers and consumers as participants, it is the convergence of grassroots initiatives and corporate plans, and it is the convergence of old forms of media with the new. In these three respects the contact points between opposing perspectives are being brought to the forefront, and have made it necessary to change the ways we think about the way media works in the world.
One of the first ways that Jenkins constructs new media is through a discussion of the “black box fallacy”. This deals with the theory that all media will eventually converge onto one “black box” which we will carry with us or keep in one place. This model of technology is progressive, that is, in the future there will be no need for separate devices as one device will encompass all uses. Jenkins contrasts this idea by saying that there is always some disconnect between platforms, producers, consumers, and media which makes it difficult for this “black box” to ever come to fruition.
Jenkins’ contention comes from more than a mere diversion to a capitalistic marketplace, and delves more into the way we use media often creates more black boxes rather than less. There will always be new devices which are developed to specialize in a specific type of function (take for example the difference between console games and computer games), and these specialized platforms might not always be combined with the more multitasked ones. On the other hand, when specialized technologies do become combined with others (take for example the camera, the Mp3 player, and the phone) the initial use of that technology might be lost, the addition of other media to a single device can make it more complicated to perform simple tasks. Thus Jenkins writes of the “black box” as a idealistic fallacy, since the technology never neatly lines up with the platforms used to interact with it.
Moving into the first chapter, Jenkins highlights the online community SurvivorSucks, which focused on the the show Survivor in a number of complicated ways. Though the title of the group confers some animosity, the main purpose of the site was to spread spoiler information, or advanced notice of what will happen on the show before it airs. The group was highly organized and went to great lengths to try to figure out the location, contestants, and plot-line of the show before it aired. To them, the show was a sort of game between them and the executive producer Mark Burnett. With every season the show has upgraded the security measures, but the group has still been able to find some deeply spoil-able material.
For Jenkins, the group represents a presentation of what Pierre Levy calls “collective intelligence.” As opposed to shared knowledge, where a large group of people hold the same beliefs, collective intelligence is when a large group of people pool their individual resources to accomplish a task. For SurvivorSucks, the community would use satellite images, personal contacts, and individual expertise to their advantage. Though no one person could get to the bottom of Survivor, as a group they were able to accomplish it with decent regularity. Media convergence allows for a greater level of collective intelligence as it helps to engender the creation of emergent cultures.
For the majority of the chapter Jenkins considers a particular historical moment for the group, when a poster with the handle ChillOne came out with a set of deep-reaching spoilers a day before the season started. As a new poster on the forums, ChillOne was largely mistrusted by the group, who had been grossly mislead before. Throughout the season ChillOne’s predictions were heavily debated, and ChillOne’s true identity became a heated matter for discussion.
While the group often discussed their relationship to information and to the broader narrative of the show, the presence of ChillOne brought the matter to the forefront of the group. Questions such as “how do we really know when information is true?” “how do we know when to trust information?” and “when is too much information too far?” became widely debated philosophical matters.
Though ChillOne was sometimes correct, he was also off at times, leading some to completely disbelieve his information and others to argue for the difficulty of constructing “facts.” ChillOne also posted the information publicly, which was a big deal in a community where “brain trusts” had formed through the forums in order to keep some information under-wraps until it became verified. When ChillOne’s predictions were, for the most part, verified as true, some spoilers felt like they had nothing left to spoil, as if ChillOne had taken the fun out of spoiling. Others felt like spoiling was the goal, so as long as it was spoiled, it didn’t matter who or when it was spoiled. This brought up even more questions of what people were doing in the forums, what goals were being accomplished, what games were being played. Ultimately the ChillOne episode called attention to many of the hidden logics within the collective intelligence group of SurvivorSucks. Questions:
Jenkins describes emerging cultures as “voluntary, temporary, and tactical” which leads to the idea that the group easily disperses once the task has been accomplished. How should media developers respond to this highly mobile aspect of group formation? How does this model of production differ from the current models of epistemology in political realms?
What lessons can we take from the story between the community and the executive producer (evil pecker) Mark Burnett? Do executive producers like Burnett have a responsibility to these emergent cultures? Do the emergent cultures, in turn, have a responsibility to the producers of content?
Is spoiling a goal or a process? How does it change when we consider it from either side? Can it be both?
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