Henry Jenkins earned his PhD at UW-Madison in Communication Arts. He enjoys studying fan cultures, "world-making", and the relationship between text and reader. In the introduction I think his main argument is that convergence is coming whether people are ready for it or not. Companies need to be ready to give away a little bit of their creative freedom to whoever or whatever medium they have to eventually work with. Also, he talks about consumer and corporate relationships. He describes it as "both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. Going off of that, he talks about how grassroots participation and corporate media interact. The major key terms he uses are convergence, participation, and collective intelligence. He also uses franchise, corporate, grassroots, and consumer quite a lot. He sees a lot changing. He talks about how the consumer is changing; they're louder, more migratory, and more social. He also talks about the medium changing but media staying the same; he lists a ton of examples. In Chapter 4, Jenkins talks extensively about how fans of Star Wars participate in the Star Wars culture by making their own movies. Mostly, he discusses the relationship between these fans and their work and Lucasfilm the company who made Star Wars. He talks about how the relationship has changed; the company is more strict on what fans make and sometimes less strict. He does talk about how Lucasfilm has been very tolerant of their fans and I think that's part of why it is so successful. They have a positive convergence. Star Wars is heavily participated in by the consumers and most of the time, its taken very well by Lucas and his company. His company actually watches some of the movies and recognizes what they consider to be well-made amateur films. At the same time, Lucasfilm does put certain restraints on their work. I think that their success comes from the perfect balance between these restraints and the participation that they allow their fans. Jenkins also discusses how fans and their participation differ when it comes to video games. It seems like their is much more room for fans to participate and express themselves in this medium. Koster, the guy in charge of making video games for Star Wars, sees fan participation in the video game world as really important. He advocates expression.
I think Jenkins is asking us to see DIY as a way to express ourselves, but with some limitations. That seems to be a core subject of his book. Also, I think he might be trying to say that collaboration is a good idea. DIY people and big corporations may be able to work together at some point if fans and huge film corporations can. In regards to craft, he only really talks about digital craft so I think he sees digital craft as a real craft. He sees it as a real way of self expression. I definitely agree with him. I think some people see digital craft as more work than craft. Some people express themselves and use the digital world everyday. Digital work can have purpose just like normal craft can.
MIDTERM REFLECTION:
Well my progress on my dishcloths has been pretty slow. I had to look up a lot more things on knitting and try much more techniques than I originally thought I would have to. I spent hours doing this. Then, whenever I would mess up my knitting I wouldn't know how to fix it so I would just start over again. The second picture is an example of that. I got this far plenty of times and then had to start over again. This took awhile because I didn't have any technique down and I wasn't fast or good at knitting by any means. This was all VERY frustrating for me. I made progress and then had nothing to show for it basically. The most surprising part of this project for me is just how difficult knitting honestly is for me. I didn't know there was so much to it. The only thing I'm altering about my project is the number of dishcloths I'm going to be making. I hope to finish two of them. I had originally guessed that I'd finish four, but didn't really put much thought into the amount of time looking information up and teaching myself to knit would take up (which was A TON of time). However, I am proud of myself with how much I've learned and done all on my own.
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