Darwin’s New Best Friend

Charles Darwin could only imagine the vastness of information that now exists about species of plants, animals, and insects that have been compiled in the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).

Homepage of the Encyclopedia of Life

The Encyclopedia of Life is a biological wiki that was launched in 2007.  It is a catalog of all the known and soon to be discovered organisms of Earth.  It was the idea of biologist E.O. Wilson when he presented the notion of harnessing the power of the Internet at a TED conference in March of 2007.

His vision was to create an endless record of the 1.8 million known species of plants, animals, and insects that can be used to serve students, scientists, and general public.

The TED conference was his platform to get the attention of the scientific community to help fund the project which is expected to cost $110.5 million.  Within two months of his appearance at the conference, 5 science foundations announced a $50 million initial grant to get the project rolling.

The website is a wiki-based platform who’s content is created by both experts in the fields of biology and ecology as well a amateur naturalists.  The wiki is overseen by a handful of scientists that examine the content for accuracy.  A wiki, for those of you who don’t know, is a website that allows easy creation and editing of content of any number of interlinked Web pages by anyone with access to the Internet.

The Encyclopedia of Life is not just a list of all the species known to man, each species is given its own page to allow for the maximum amount of information on that species to be provided.

The Twig Girdling Beetle page.

The site is a way of educating us on the importance of conservation and sustainability and how every organism on Earth has a direct or indirect affect on human life.  The need to understand the symbiosis between us and other creatures that share this world with us is so important for the survival of the human race.

The fact that the site is a wiki it allows the general public to participate in it’s creation giving them the power to influence and inform others.  It empowers people to care about the content the message being conveyed.  Because of this the public can educate themselves of the importance of conservation and encourage them to act in a responsible manner when it comes to saving this amazing planet we live on.

If we continue to be careless and abuse Mother Earth we could be destroying organisms that could provide medications that could possibly eradicate all known human diseases.  What a waste that would be.

I hope in Darwin’s honor, the first EOL page created was for Darwin’s Finches?

Me and Interactive Technology Thus Far

I just got done banging out a website mock-up in Photoshop and sending 3 emails with attachments.  Well, I banged them out in 2 hrs.  That’s right.  Now I’ve been sitting here and thinking about all the things I’ve accomplished in the last three months at school.

Last Monday I was talking to a friend on the phone and she told me she had finally got the Internet.  I know, kind of weird, but I can completely relate. Just three months ago, the only thing I was doing with a computer was looking for a job and loading songs onto my PSP.  I avoided email like it was the plague (well, I still do), I used the Internet occasionally, and I only used Photoshop to crop and color pictures.  Monday, I’m sitting in front of my laptop video chatting with a friend I hadn’t seen in months.

I’m doing these things and a lot more on a daily basis.  Last week I finished creating an animated short film in Flash, then embedded it into a website that I designed and built, and this week I’ll be filming and editing a 30 second public service announcement.  All this in three months.

It’s pretty cool.  I’ve learned a lot and I’m starting to enjoy most of the projects we’ve been working on.  However, it’s also been very challenging and frustrating at time.  Things are good right now but that could quickly change tomorrow in the fast paced world of interactive media.

For someone like myself who has a degree in Biology, it’s a little more of challenge to grasp the communications concepts, but I’ve been able to rely on my education in psychology and sociology to stay on top of it.  Also, I cannot put into words how slow and laborious working with Photoshop, Flash, or Final Cut Pro.  Yet at the same time, I can’t put into words how much satisfaction and pride I have when I complete one of these projects.  It’s an incredible sense of gratification and I can see why people would enjoy doing it for a living.

After all the work I’ve put into these projects, I now have a whole hell of a lot more respect for interactive animators and designers.  So next time you see one of those banner ads  on a website, remember that someone spent hours creating that 5-10 second piece.

Jim and Pam’s Spreading

Alright, I know this is a couple of weeks late, but I still feel compelled to talk about it.  You’re not going to believe this, but I saw a viral video get spread back to TV.

On a recent episode of The Office, Jim and Pam were getting married.  Big mistake.  This might be the beginning of the end for the show.  It’s less dynamic when their married.  But I digress.  Towards the end of the episode, I saw something that I know I had seen before.  The wedding party dancing down the isle.

Just a few months earlier, I had a friend send me an email with a wedding video attached…oh joy.  So, I hesitantly clicked play and watched as the entire wedding party, two-by-two danced (I guess you can call it dancing) down the isle.  The JK Wedding Dance was the most viewed viral video for weeks.  Everyone was sharing it through the Internet.  Heck, you’ve probably recieved it from over 100 people by now.   As of right now, it’s had 30, 964, 909 hits.  Wait…make that 30, 971,738, I refreshed the page.  Think about it, 1/10 of the U.S. population has peered into these people’s lives.  A little spooky, but that’s for a different blog.

Then two weeks later and I’m watching the Cleveland Show (meh) and all of sudden Cleveland is rapping in the middle of what seems to be a furniture store.  Incredibly I had just seen a viral video of this exact event in one of my classes not even a week before.  It’s called the Mini Mall Rap, and it’s pretty damn funny.  It’s a commercial for an Alabama flea market that features a middle-aged man in a gold suit groovin’ and rapping about the store.  I’m sure it wasn’t the most effective commercial in the traditional sense, but I’ll bet you the change in your couch that furniture store did better than alright after the video of that commercial went viral.

Typically, entertainment such as television shows, movies, and videos are fodder for users of the World Wide Web.  Instead, The Office and The Cleveland Show spoofed and spread these video back to TV.  I’ve been trying to think of an example of this full circle event happening in the past, and can’t .  Let me know if you do.

I find it so odd, yet extremely interesting that this is happening.  I wonder what it means and if it will lead to a new theory of communication that have taken over some of our lives.  I might even be the one to come with it.