Kondratiev wave

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

A rough schematic drawing showing growth cycles in the world economy over time according to the Kondratiev theory

In economics, Kondratiev waves (also called supercycles, great surges, long waves, K-waves or the long economic cycle) are hypothesized cycle-like phenomena in the modern world economy. The phenomenon is closely connected with the technology life cycle.

It is stated that the period of a wave ranges from forty to sixty years, the cycles consist of alternating intervals of high sectoral growth and intervals of relatively slow growth.

Long wave theory is not accepted by most academic economists. Among economists who accept it, there is a lack of agreement about both the cause of the waves and the start and end years of particular waves. Among critics of the theory, the consensus is that it involves recognizing patterns that may not exist (apophenia).

History of concept

The Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev (also written Kondratieff or Kondratyev) was the first to bring these observations to international attention in his book The Major Economic Cycles (1925) alongside other works written in the same decade. In 1939, Joseph Schumpeter suggested naming the cycles "Kondratieff waves" in his honor. The underlying idea is closely linked to organic composition of capital.

Two Dutch economists, Jacob van Gelderen and Salomon de Wolff, had previously argued for the existence of 50- to 60-year cycles in 1913 and 1924, respectively.

Since the inception of the theory, various studies have expanded the range of possible cycles, finding longer or shorter cycles in the data. The Marxist scholar Ernest Mandel revived interest in long-wave theory with his 1964 essay predicting the end of the long boom after five years and in his Alfred Marshall lectures in 1979. However, in Mandel's theory long waves are the result of the normal business cycle and noneconomic factors, such as wars.

In 1996, George Modelski and William R. Thompson published a book documenting K-Waves dating back to 930 AD in China. Separately, Michael Snyder wrote: "economic cycle theories have enabled some analysts to correctly predict the timing of recessions, stock market peaks and stock market crashes over the past couple of decades".

The historian Eric Hobsbawm also wrote of the theory: "That good predictions have proved possible on the basis of Kondratiev Long Waves—this is not very common in economics—has convinced many historians and even some economists that there is something in them, even if we don't know what".

US economist Anwar Shaikh analyses the movement of the general price level - prices expressed in gold - in the US and the UK since 1890 and identifies three long cycles with troughs ca. in 1895, 1939 and 1982. With this model 2018 was another trough between the third and a possible future fourth cycle.

Characteristics of the cycle

Kondratiev identified three phases in the cycle, namely expansion, stagnation and recession. More common today is the division into four periods with a turning point (collapse) between expansion and stagnation.

Writing in the 1920s, Kondratiev proposed to apply the theory to the 19th century:

• 1790–1849, with a turning point in 1815.
• 1850–1896, with a turning point in 1873.
• Kondratiev supposed that in 1896 a new cycle had started.

The long cycle supposedly affects all sectors of an economy. Kondratiev focused on prices and interest rates, seeing the ascendant phase as characterized by an increase in prices and low interest rates while the other phase consists of a decrease in prices and high interest rates. Subsequent analysis concentrated on output.

Explanations of the cycle

Cause and effect

Kondratiev waves present both causes and effects of common events that have recurred in capitalistic economies throughout history. Although Kondratiev himself made little differentiation between cause and effect, understanding the cause and effect of Kondratiev waves is a useful discussion and academic tool.

The causes documented by Kondratiev waves primarily include inequity, opportunity and social freedoms. Often, much more discussion is made of the notable effects of these causes as well. Effects are both good and bad and include, to name just a few, technological advance, birthrates, populism and revolution—and revolution's contributing causes which can include racism, religious and political intolerance, failed freedoms and opportunity, incarceration rates, terrorism, etc.

When inequity is low and opportunity is easily available, peaceful, moral decisions are preferred and Aristotle's "Good Life" is possible (Americans call the good life "the American Dream"). Opportunity created the simple inspiration and genius of the Mayflower Compact, for example. Post-World War II and the post-California gold rush 1850s exemplify times of great opportunity and low inequity, and both resulted in unprecedented technological and industrial advances. On the other hand, 1893's global economic panics were not met with sufficient wealth-distributing government policies internationally, and a dozen major revolutions resulted, which some argue were significant causes of World War I.^[12] Few would argue against the assertion that World War II began in response to the economic strictures of World War I's Treaty of Versailles and the failure to create government policy that supported economic opportunity during the Great Depression.

Technological innovation theory

According to the innovation theory, these waves arise from the bunching of basic innovations that launch technological revolutions that in turn create leading industrial or commercial sectors. Kondratiev's ideas were taken up by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s. The theory hypothesized the existence of very long-run macroeconomic and price cycles, originally estimated to last 50–54 years.

In recent decades there has been considerable progress in historical economics and the history of technology, and numerous investigations of the relationship between technological innovation and economic cycles. Some of the works involving long cycle research and technology include Mensch (1979), Tylecote (1991), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (Marchetti, Ayres), Freeman and Louçã (2001), Andrey Korotayev and Carlota Perez.

Perez (2002) places the phases on a logistic or S curve, with the following labels: the beginning of a technological era as irruption, the ascent as frenzy, the rapid build out as synergy and the completion as maturity.

Demographic theory

Because people have fairly typical spending patterns through their life cycle, such as spending on schooling, marriage, first car purchase, first home purchase, upgrade home purchase, maximum earnings period, maximum retirement savings and retirement, demographic anomalies such as baby booms and busts exert a rather predictable influence on the economy over a long time period. The Easterlin hypothesis deals with the post-war baby-boom. Harry Dent has written extensively on demographics and economic cycles. Tylecote (1991) devoted a chapter to demographics and the long cycle.

Land speculation

Main article: Georgism

Georgists such as Mason Gaffney, Fred Foldvary and Fred Harrison argue that land speculation is the driving force behind the boom and bust cycle. Land is a finite resource which is necessary for all production and they claim that because exclusive usage rights are traded around, this creates speculative bubbles which can be exacerbated by overzealous borrowing and lending. As early as 1997, a number of Georgists predicted that the next crash would come in 2008.

Debt deflation

Main article: Debt deflation

Debt deflation is a theory of economic cycles which holds that recessions and depressions are due to the overall level of debt shrinking (deflating). Hence, the credit cycle is the cause of the economic cycle.

The theory was developed by Irving Fisher following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. Debt deflation was largely ignored in favor of the ideas of John Maynard Keynes in Keynesian economics, but it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest since the 1980s, both in mainstream economics and in the heterodox school of post-Keynesian economics and has subsequently been developed by such post-Keynesian economists as Hyman Minsky and Steve Keen.

Modern modifications of Kondratiev theory

Inequity appears to be the most obvious driver of Kondratiev waves, and yet some researches have presented a technological and credit cycle explanation as well.

There are several modern timing versions of the cycle although most are based on either of two causes: one on technology and the other on the credit cycle.

Additionally, there are several versions of the technological cycles and they are best interpreted using diffusion curves of leading industries. For example, railways only started in the 1830s, with steady growth for the next 45 years. It was after Bessemer steel was introduced that railroads had their highest growth rates. However, this period is usually labeled the age of steel. Measured by value added, the leading industry in the U.S. from 1880 to 1920 was machinery, followed by iron and steel.

Any influence of technology during the cycle that began in the Industrial Revolution pertains mainly to England. The U.S. was a commodity producer and was more influenced by agricultural commodity prices. There was a commodity price cycle based on increasing consumption causing tight supplies and rising prices. That allowed new land to the west to be purchased and after four or five years to be cleared and be in production, driving down prices and causing a depression as in 1819 and 1839. By the 1850s, the U.S. was becoming industrialized.

The technological cycles can be labeled as follows:

• Industrial Revolution (1771)
• Age of Steam and Railways (1829)
• Age of Steel and Heavy Engineering (1875)
• Age of Oil, Electricity, the Automobile and Mass Production (1908)
• Age of Information and Telecommunications (1971)

Some argue that this logic can be extended. The custom of classifying periods of human development by its dominating general purpose technology has surely been borrowed from historians, starting with the Stone Age. Including those, authors distinguish three different long-term metaparadigms, each with different long waves. The first focused on the transformation of material, including stone, bronze, and iron. The second, often referred to as industrial revolutions, was dedicated to the transformation of energy, including water, steam, electric, and combustion power. Finally, the most recent metaparadigm aims at transforming information. It started out with the proliferation of communication and stored data and has now entered the age of algorithms, which aims at creating automated processes to convert the existing information into actionable knowledge.

Several papers on the relationship between technology and the economy were written by researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). A concise version of Kondratiev cycles can be found in the work of Robert Ayres (1989) in which he gives a historical overview of the relationships of the most significant technologies. Cesare Marchetti published on Kondretiev waves and on the diffusion of innovations. Arnulf Grübler's book (1990) gives a detailed account of the diffusion of infrastructures including canals, railroads, highways and airlines, with findings that the principal infrastructures have midpoints spaced in time corresponding to 55-year K wavelengths, with railroads and highways taking almost a century to complete. Grübler devotes a chapter to the long economic wave. In 1996, Giancarlo Pallavicini published the ratio between the long Kondratiev wave and information technology and communication.

Korotayev et al. recently employed spectral analysis and claimed that it confirmed the presence of Kondratiev waves in the world GDP dynamics at an acceptable level of statistical significance. Korotayev et al. also detected shorter business cycles, dating the Kuznets to about 17 years and calling it the third harmonic of the Kondratiev, meaning that there are three Kuznets cycles per Kondratiev.

Leo A. Nefiodow shows that the fifth Kondratieff ended with the global economic crisis of 2000–2003 while the new, sixth Kondratieff started simultaneously. According to Leo A. Nefiodow, the carrier of this new long cycle will be health in a holistic sense—including its physical, psychological, mental, social, ecological and spiritual aspects; the basic innovations of the sixth Kondratieff are "psychosocial health" and "biotechnology".

More recently, the physicist and systems scientist Tessaleno Devezas advanced a causal model for the long wave phenomenon based on a generation-learning model and a nonlinear dynamic behaviour of information systems. In both works, a complete theory is presented containing not only the explanation for the existence of K-Waves, but also and for the first time an explanation for the timing of a K-Wave (≈60 years = two generations).

A specific modification of the theory of Kondratieff cycles was developed by Daniel Šmihula. Šmihula identified six long-waves within modern society and the capitalist economy, each of which was initiated by a specific technological revolution:

1. Wave of the Financial-agricultural revolution (1600–1780)
2. Wave of the Industrial revolution (1780–1880)
3. Wave of the Technical revolution (1880–1940)
4. Wave of the Scientific-technical revolution (1940–1985)
5. Wave of the Information and telecommunications revolution (1985–2015)
6. Hypothetical wave of the post-informational technological revolution (Internet of things/renewable energy transition?) (2015–2035?)

Unlike Kondratieff and Schumpeter, Šmihula believed that each new cycle is shorter than its predecessor. His main stress is put on technological progress and new technologies as decisive factors of any long-time economic development. Each of these waves has its innovation phase which is described as a technological revolution and an application phase in which the number of revolutionary innovations falls and attention focuses on exploiting and extending existing innovations. As soon as an innovation or a series of innovations becomes available, it becomes more efficient to invest in its adoption, extension and use than in creating new innovations. Each wave of technological innovations can be characterized by the area in which the most revolutionary changes took place ("leading sectors").

Every wave of innovations lasts approximately until the profits from the new innovation or sector fall to the level of other, older, more traditional sectors. It is a situation when the new technology, which originally increased a capacity to utilize new sources from nature, reached its limits and it is not possible to overcome this limit without an application of another new technology.

For the end of an application phase of any wave there are typical an economic crisis and economic stagnation. The financial crisis of 2007–2008 is a result of the coming end of the "wave of the Information and telecommunications technological revolution". Some authors have started to predict what the sixth wave might be, such as James Bradfield Moody and Bianca Nogrady who forecast that it will be driven by resource efficiency and clean technology. On the other hand, Šmihula himself considers the waves of technological innovations during the modern age (after 1600 AD) only as a part of a much longer "chain" of technological revolutions going back to the pre-modern era. It means he believes that we can find long economic cycles (analogical to Kondratiev cycles in modern economy) dependent on technological revolutions even in the Middle Ages and the Ancient era.

Criticism of Kondratiev theory

Kondratiev waves associated with gains in IT and health with phase shift and overlap, Andreas J. W. Goldschmidt, 2004

Long wave theory is not accepted by many academic economists. However, it is important for innovation-based, development and evolutionary economics. Yet, among economists who accept it, there has been no formal universal agreement about the standards that should be used universally to place start and the end years for each wave. Agreement of start and end years can be +1 to 3 years for each 40- to 65-year cycle.

Health economist and biostatistician Andreas J. W. Goldschmidt searched for patterns and proposed that there is a phase shift and overlap of the so-called Kondratiev cycles of IT and health (shown in the figure). He argued that historical growth phases in combination with key technologies does not necessarily imply the existence of regular cycles in general. Goldschmidt is of the opinion that different fundamental innovations and their economic stimuli do not exclude each other as they mostly vary in length and their benefit is not applicable to all participants in a market.

Isolated brain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_brain 

The human brain with its lobes highlighted.

An isolated brain is a brain kept alive in vitro, either by perfusion or by a blood substitute, often an oxygenated solution of various salts, or by submerging the brain in oxygenated artificial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). It is the biological counterpart of brain in a vat. A related concept, attaching the brain or head to the circulatory system of another organism, is called a head transplant. An isolated brain, however, is more typically attached to an artificial perfusion device rather than a biological body.

The brains of many different organisms have been kept alive in vitro for hours, or in some cases days. The central nervous system of invertebrate animals is often easily maintained as they need less oxygen and to a larger extent get their oxygen from CSF; for this reason their brains are more easily maintained without perfusion. Mammalian brains, on the other hand, have a much lesser degree of survival without perfusion and an artificial blood perfusate is usually used.

For methodological reasons, most research on isolated mammalian brains has been done with guinea pigs. These animals have a significantly larger basilar artery (a major artery of the brain) compared to rats and mice, which makes cannulation (to supply CSF) much easier.

History

• 1812 – Julien Jean César Le Gallois (a.k.a. Legallois) put forth the original idea for resuscitating severed heads through the use of blood transfusion.
• 1818 – Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.
• 1836 – Astley Cooper showed in rabbits that compression of the carotid and vertebral arteries leads to death of an animal; such deaths can be prevented if the circulation of oxygenated blood to the brain is rapidly restored.
• 1857 – Charles Brown-Sequard decapitated a dog, waited ten minutes, attached four rubber tubes to the arterial trunks of the head, and injected blood containing oxygen by means of a syringe. Two or three minutes later voluntary movements of the eyes and muscles of the muzzle resumed. After cessation of oxygenated blood transfusion movements stopped.
• 1887 – Jean Baptiste Vincent Laborde made what appears to be first recorded attempt to revive the heads of executed criminals by connecting the carotid artery of the severed human head to the carotid artery of a large dog. According to Laborde's account, in isolated experiments a partial restoration of brain function was attained.
• 1912 – Corneille Heymans maintained life in an isolated dog's head by connecting the carotid artery and jugular vein of the severed head to the carotid artery and jugular vein of another dog. Partial functioning in the severed head was maintained for a few hours.
• 1928 – Sergey Bryukhonenko showed life could be maintained in the severed head of a dog by connecting the carotid artery and jugular vein to an artificial circulation machine.
• 1963 – Robert J. White isolated the brain from one monkey and attached it to the circulatory system of another animal.
• 1993 – Rodolfo Llinás captured the whole brain of guinea-pig in a fluidic profusion system in vitro which survived for around 8 hours and indicates that field potentials were very similar to those described in vivo.

In philosophy

In philosophy, the brain in a vat is any of a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas about knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. A contemporary version of the argument originally given by Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy (i.e., that he could not trust his perceptions on the grounds that an evil demon might, conceivably, be controlling his every experience), the brain in a vat is the idea that a brain can be fooled into anything when fed appropriate stimuli.

The inherently philosophical idea has also become a staple of many science fiction stories, with many such stories involving a mad scientist who might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. According to such science fiction stories, the computer would then be simulating a virtual reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the person with the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world.

No such procedure in humans has ever been reported by a research paper in a scholarly journal, or other reliable source. Also, the ability to send external electric signals to the brain of a sort that the brain can interpret, and the ability to communicate thoughts or perceptions to any external entity by wire, is, except for very basic commands, well beyond current technology.

Grown

In 2004 Thomas DeMarse and Karl Dockendorf made an "adaptive flight control with living neuronal networks on microelectrode arrays".

Teams at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Reading have created neurological entities integrated with a robot body. The brain receives input from sensors on the robot body and the resultant output from the brain provides the robot's only motor signals.

In fiction

The concept of a brain in a jar (or brain in a vat) is a common theme in science fiction.

Literature

• In Alexander Beliaev's novel Head of Prof. Dowell (1925), Professor Dowell discovers a way of keeping heads of dead people alive and even to give them new bodies. After his death Dowell himself becomes a subject of such an experiment.
• The Mi-go aliens in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, first appearing in the story "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), can transport humans from Earth to Pluto (and beyond) and back again by removing the subject's brain and placing it into a "brain cylinder", which can be attached to external devices to allow it to see, hear, and speak.
• In Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future novels series (1940), the character Prof. Simon Wright is a human brain living in a transparent case.
• In Donovan's Brain (see term), the 1942 science fiction novel by Curt Siodmak (filmed three times in different versions: 1944, 1953 and 1962), the brain of a ruthless millionaire is kept alive in a tank where it grows to monstrous proportions and powers.
• The final novel in C.S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy", That Hideous Strength (1945), uses the isolated brain of Francois Alcasan, an Algerian radiologist guillotined for murder, as a plot device. At some point in the novel, it is revealed that Alcasan's artificially-perfused head is used to allow evil intelligence to communicate with humans directly.
• In Roald Dahl's short story "William and Mary" (1960), after William's death his brain is kept alive on an artificial heart.
• In Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time (1963), the character IT is a disembodied telepathic brain that dominates the planet of Camazotz.
• The Ruinators, later known as the Demiurges, are the immensely cyborgized alien society in Humans as Gods, the 1966–1977 sci-fi trilogy by Sergey Snegov. They use the isolated brains of the highly intelligent species Galaxians as the organic supercomputers in charge of the Metrics Stations, the primary and most secret military defense structure of the Ruinators' Empire. The brains are being extracted from the prisoners' babies and grown artificially in the spheres filled with the nutrient liquid. Among the most important characters of the second and third novels comes the Brain of the Third Planet, later known as Vagrant or Voice, who has somehow developed self-consciousness and later rebelled against the Ruinators. Due to the Vagrant's fervent desire for a life of those embodied, the Brain has been surgically put into a dragon's body, whose inherent brain was destroyed in a recent battle. Vagrant enjoyed a sentient dragon's life for a few decades after that, until the body grew too senile, and on the threshold of the dragon's death the brain was removed again to assume control over a starship.
• In the 1971 novel Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg, the protagonist and his acquaintances are all disembodied brains, preserved underground after a nuclear war.
• In the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy to the novel Dune, cymeks are disembodied brains that wear robotic bodies.
• In the P. C. Jersild novel A Living Soul a human brain is living in an aquarium, and is a subject of medical experiments

Film and television

A monstrous brain in a jar, in a poster for The Brain That Wouldn't Die

• Isolated brains also appeared in Star Trek. In the episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion", the Providers are disembodied brains that kidnap individuals in order to force them to fight against each other. Later, in the episode "Spock's Brain", Mr. Spock's brain is removed by a native of the Sigma Draconis system in order to serve as the Eymorg Controller. Due to Vulcan physiology, Spock's body remains alive. The crew of the Enterprise follow an ion trail to Sigma Draconis VI where, using the knowledge of the Eymorg, Dr. Leonard McCoy is able to restore Spock's brain to his body.
• Isolated brains also appear in The Wild Wild West. In the episode "The Night of the Druid's Blood", one of James West's old tutors is killed and West discovers that it is Dr Tristam who has removed the brains from the bodies and is forcing them to work for him. Finally West manages to communicate to the isolated brains that if they all work together they can destroy Dr Tristam and have peace.
• In the 1970s Doctor Who serial The Brain of Morbius, Solon, an authority on micro-surgical techniques, transplants Morbius's brain into an artificial translucent brain cylinder casing. Additionally, in the modern Doctor Who series (2005–present), the recurring antagonists known as the Cybermen are presented as human brains (in one instance, an entire human head) encased in mechanical exoskeletons, connected by an artificial nervous system; this is ostensibly done as an "upgrade" from the comparatively fragile human body to a far more durable and longer-lasting shell. Another group of modern Doctor Who foes, the Toclafane, were revealed to be human heads encased in flying, weaponized spheres, the final forms of humans from the far future who turned to desperate measures in order to survive the conditions of the impending heat death of the universe.
• In the Doctor Who episodes "The End of the World" and "New Earth", Lady Cassandra is an isolated brain attached to a canvas of skin with a face.
• The mad scientist in the French film The City of Lost Children has a "brain in a vat" for a companion.
• In RoboCop 2, the brain, eyes, and much of the nervous system of the Detroit drug lord Cain is harvested by OCP officials to use in their plans for an upgraded "RoboCop 2" cyborg. These systems are stored in a vat shortly after the surgery, where the disembodied Cain can still see the remains of his former body being discarded before being placed into the fitted robotic skeleton.
• Observer from Mystery Science Theater 3000 carries his brain in a Petri dish.
• In the animated series Futurama, numerous technological advances have been made by the 31st century. The ability to keep heads alive in jars was invented by Ron Popeil (who has a guest cameo in "A Big Piece of Garbage") and also apparently Dick Clark of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve fame still doing the countdown in the year 2999, has resulted in many political figures and celebrities being active; this became the writers' excuse to feature and poke fun at celebrities in the show. In "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" the Big Brain, an isolated brain and leader of the Brainspawn, is outwitted by Fry. The brain's disciples have been attempting to dumb down every lifeform they meet to enable them to steal all the universe's data and hoard it in the infosphere.
• In the animated series Evil Con Carne, the main character Hector Con Carne was reduced to a brain and a stomach in two jars. Both of them are able to move and talk, even without jars. Hector's brain sometimes controls the bear Boskov while Hector's stomach digests parts of Boskov's food.
• The science fantasy television series LEXX includes a robot head containing human brain tissue. Also whenever the current Divine Shadow body dies his brain is removed and placed in a device that allows him to speak and kept with rest of the Divine Predecessors.
• In the movie Crank High Voltage, Ricky Verona’s head is being kept alive in a tank to watch his older brother El Huron kill Chev Chelios the main protagonist of ””Crank,. The tank is later destroyed by a gunshot and Chev Chelios throws Ricky’s head in a nearby pool killing him.
• In the movie Blood Diner, two cannibal brothers bring their uncle's (isolated) brain back to life to help them in their quest to restore life to the five-million-year-old goddess Shitaar. Their uncle's brain instructs them to collect the required parts to resurrecting Shitaar – virgins, assorted body parts, and the ingredients for a "blood buffet".
• In the science fiction comedy film The Man with Two Brains, the protagonist, a pioneering neurosurgeon, falls in love with a disembodied brain that was able to communicate with him telepathically.
• The Outer Limits episode "The Brain of Colonel Barham" details the story of a dying astronaut, Colonel Barham. It is decided to separate his brain from his body and keep it alive, with neural implants connecting it to visual and audio input/output for the mission. But without a body, the brain becomes extremely powerful and megalomaniacal.
• The 2011 web series The Mercury Men features a brain in a jar ("The Battery") that can communicate telepathically and over a walkie-talkie-like devices and is revealed to control the "mercury men" for a catastrophic plan to destroy Earth.
• The Wonder Woman episode "Gault's Brain" features the classic "brain in a vat".
• The movie Pacific Rim Uprising has a brain kept alive through artificial means as a way for new Jaeger pilots to practice drifting.

Comics

• More Fun Comics #62 (Dec. 1940) had the Spectre battle a human brain in a vat that had developed enormous powers and become mobile and sprouted an arm.
• Adventures of Superman Annual #1 (1987) had the inhabitants of Trudeau, South Dakota, reduced to disembodied brains by the Word-Bringer.

Anime and manga

• Many people in the Ghost in the Shell manga and anime franchise possess cyberbrains, which can sustain a modified human brain within a cybernetic body indefinitely.
• One of the main antagonists in the anime series Psycho-Pass, the Sibyl System, is a secret organization of former criminals who, upon joining the group, had their brains surgically removed from their bodies and placed inside glass containers in an underground complex, from where they were able to surveil the country's citizens.

Video games

• In the Fallout series of games, isolated brains are used to control robots called "Robobrains". In the Old World Blues downloadable content for the video game Fallout: New Vegas a group of scientists, dubbed the "Think Tank", have a more advanced version of the technology.
• The video game Cortex Command revolves around the idea of brains being separated from physical bodies, and used to control units on a battlefield.
• The Mother Brain from the game Metroid.
• In Streets of Rage 3, Mr. X is now a brain in a jar that fights by controlling a robot named Robot Y, known as Neo X in the Japanese version.
• In The Evil Within, the brain of Ruvik, the antagonist of the game, is removed and placed in vitro suspension in order to operate STEM.

Other

• A brainship is a fictional concept of an interstellar starship. A brainship is made by inserting the disembodied brain and nervous system or malformed body of a human being into a life-support system, and connecting it surgically to a series of computers via delicate synaptic connections (a brain–computer interface). The brain "feels" the ship (or any other connected peripherals) as part of its own body. An example, The Ship Who Sang (1969) short story collection by science fiction author Anne McCaffrey is about the brainship Helva. "Mr. Spaceship" (1959) is an earlier story by Phillip K. Dick about a brainship.
• The B'omarr Monks, of the Star Wars Universe, would surgically remove their brains from their bodies and continue their existence as a brain in a jar. They believe that cutting themselves off from civilization and all corporeal distractions leads to enlightenment. These monks are easily identified in Return of the Jedi as the spider-like creature that walks past C-3PO as he enters Jabba’s Palace.
• Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game supplement Monstrous Compendium MC15: Ravenloft Appendix II: Children of the Night (1993) features Rudolph Von Aubrecker, a living brain and villain character. The idea was republished as brain in a jar in the third edition Libris Mortis (2004) and fourth edition in Open Grave (2009) D&D books. Tyler Linn of Cracked.com identified the brain-in-a-jar as one of "15 Idiotic Dungeons and Dragons Monsters" in 2009, humorously stating: "...It's a brain in a jar. Fuck, just kick it over, who's going to know?" The elder brains, directing force of the illithid race in the game, are also gigantic disembodied brains with powerful psionic powers floating in a tank.

Participatory culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_culture 

Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.

Overview

Recent advances in technologies (mostly personal computers and the Internet) have enabled private persons to create and publish such media, usually through the Internet. Since the technology now enables new forms of expression and engagement in public discourse, participatory culture not only supports individual creation but also informal relationships that pair novices with experts. This new culture, as it relates to the Internet, has been described as Web 2.0. In participatory culture, "young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of "consumers."

The increasing access to the Internet has come to play an integral part in the expansion of participatory culture because it increasingly enables people to work collaboratively, generate and disseminate news, ideas, and creative works, and connect with people who share similar goals and interests (see affinity groups). The potential of participatory culture for civic engagement and creative expression has been investigated by media scholar Henry Jenkins. In 2009, Jenkins and co-authors Ravi Purushotma, Katie Clinton, Margaret Weigel and Alice Robison authored a white paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. This paper describes a participatory culture as one:

1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

History

Participatory culture has been around longer than the Internet. The emergence of the Amateur Press Association in the middle of the 19th century is an example of historical participatory culture; at that time, young people were hand typing and printing their own publications. These publications were mailed throughout a network of people and resemble what are now called social networks. The evolution from zines, radio shows, group projects, and gossips to blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks has impacted society greatly. With web services such as eBay, Blogger, Wikipedia, Photobucket, Facebook, and YouTube, it is no wonder that culture has become more participatory. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of culture, economy, society, and democracy.

Forms

Memes as expression

Forms of participatory culture can be manifested in affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving, and circulations. Affiliations include both formal and informal memberships in online communities such as discussion boards or social media. Expression refers to the types of media that could be created. This may manifest as memes, fanfiction, or other forms of mash-ups. When individuals and groups work together on a particular form of media or media product, like a wiki, then they engage in collaborative problem solving. Finally, circulation refers to the means through which the communication may be spread. This could include blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and even some forms of social media. Some of the most popular apps that involve participation include: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok.

Fanfiction creators were one of the first communities to showcase the public could participate in pop culture, by changing, growing, and altering TV show storylines during their run times, as well as strengthen the series’ popularity after the last episode aired. Some fanfiction creators develop theories and speculation, while others create ‘new’ material outside of the confines of the original content. Fans expand on the original story, putting the characters falling in love within the series through different adventures and sexualities. These communities are composed of audiences and readers from around the world, at different ages, with different backgrounds, coming together to develop theories and possibilities about current TV shows, books and films, or expand and continue the stories of TV shows, books, and movies that have come to a close.

Technology

As technology continues to enable new avenues for communication, collaboration, and circulation of ideas, it has also given rise to new opportunities for consumers to create their own content. Barriers like time and money are beginning to become less significant to large groups of consumers. For example, the creation of movies once required large amounts of expensive equipment, but now movie clips can be made with equipment that is affordable to a growing number of people. The ease with which consumers create new material has also grown. Extensive knowledge of computer programming is no longer necessary to create content on the internet. Media sharing over the Internet acts as a platform to invite users to participate and create communities that share similar interests through duplicated sources, original content, and re-purposed material.

Social media

People no longer blindly absorb and consume what large media corporations distribute. Today there are a great deal of people who are consumers who also produce their own content (referring to "prosumers"). The reason participatory culture is a high interest topic is due to the fact that there are just so many different social media platforms to participate and contribute to. These happen to be some of the leaders in the social media industry, and are the reason people are able to have such an advantage to participate in media creation. Today, millions of people across the world have the ability to post, quote, film, or create whatever they want. With the aid of these platforms, the ability to reach a global audience has never been easier.

Social media and politics

Social media have become a huge factor in politics and civics in not just elections, but gaining funds, spreading information, getting legislation and petition support, and other political activities. Social media make it easier for the public to make an impact and participate in politics. A study that showed the connection between Facebook messages among friends and how these messages have influenced political expression, voting, and information seeking in the 2012 United States presidential election. Social media mobilizes people easily and effectively, and does the same for the circulation of information. These can accomplish political goals such as gaining support for legislation, but social media can also greatly influence elections. The impact social media can have on elections was shown in the 2016 United States presidential election, hundreds of fake news stories about candidates were shared on Facebook tens of millions of times. Some people do not recognize fake news and vote based on false information.

Web 2.0

Not only has hardware increased the individual's ability to submit content to the internet so that it may be reached by a wide audience, but in addition numerous internet sites have increased access. Websites like Flickr, Wikipedia, and Facebook encourage the submission of content to the Internet. They increase the ease with which a user may post content by allowing them to submit information even if they only have an Internet browser. The need for additional software is eliminated. These websites also serve to create online communities for the production of content. These communities and their web services have been labelled as part of Web 2.0.

The relationship between Web 2.0 tools and participatory culture is more than just material, however. As the mindsets and skillsets of participatory practices have been increasingly taken up, people are increasingly likely to exploit new tools and technology in 2.0 ways. One example is the use of cellphone technology to engage "smart mobs" for political change worldwide. In countries where cellphone usage exceeds use of any other form of digital technology, passing information via mobile phone has helped bring about significant political and social change. Notable examples include the so-called "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the overthrow of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, and regular political protests worldwide

Participatory media

There have been several ways that participatory media allows people to create, connect, and share their content or build friendships throughout the media. YouTube encourages people to create and upload their content to share it around the world, creating an environment for content creators new or old. Discord allows people, primarily gamers, to connect with each other around the world and acts as a live chatroom. Twitch is a streaming media website where content creators can "go live" for viewers all around the world. A lot of times, these participatory sites have community events such as charity events or memorial streams for someone important to the people in the Twitch community.

Relationship to the smartphone

The smartphone is one example that combines the elements of interactivity, identity, and mobility. The mobility of the smartphone demonstrates that media is no longer bound by time and space and can be used in any context. Technology continues to progress in this direction as it becomes more user driven and less restricted to schedules and locations: for example, the progression of movies from theaters to private home viewing, to now the smartphone that can be watched anytime and anywhere. The smartphone also enhances the participatory culture by increased levels of interactivity. Instead of merely watching, users are actively involved in making decisions, navigating pages, contributing their own content and choosing what links to follow. This goes beyond the "keyboard" level of interactivity, where a person presses a key and the expected letter appears, and becomes rather a dynamic activity with continually new options and changing setting, without a set formula to follow. The consumer role shifts from a passive receiver to an active contributor. The smartphone epitomizes this by the endless choices and ways to get personally involved with multiple media at the same time, in a nonlinear way.

The smartphone also contributes to participatory culture because of how it changes the perception of identity. A user can hide behind an avatar, false profile, or simply an idealized self when interacting with others online. There is no accountability to be who one says one is. The ability to slide in and out of roles changes the effect of media on culture, and also the user himself. Now not only are people active participants in media and culture, but also their imagined selves.

Producers, consumers, and "produsage"

In Vincent Miller's Understanding Digital Culture, he makes the argument that the lines between producer and consumers have become blurry. Producers are those that create content and cultural objects, and consumers are the audience or purchasers of those objects. By referring to Axel Bruns' idea of "prosumer," Miller argues "With the advent of convergent new media and the plethora of choice in sources for information, as well as the increased capacity for individuals to produce content themselves, this shift away from producer hegemony to audience or consumer power would seem to have accelerated, thus eroding the producer-consumer distinction" (p. 87). "Prosumer" is the ending result of a strategy that has been increasingly used which encourages feedback between producers and consumers (prosumers), "which allows for more consumer influence over the production of goods."

Bruns (2008) refers to produsage, therefore, as a community collaboration that participants can access in order to share "content, contributions, and tasks throughout the networked community" (p. 14). This is similar to how Wikipedia allows users to write, edit, and ultimately use content. Producers are active participants who are empowered by their participation as network builders. Bruns (2008) describes the empowerment for users as different from the typical "top-down mediated spaces of the traditional mediaspheres" (p. 14). Produsage occurs when the users are the producers and vice versa, essentially eliminating the need for these "top-down" interventions. The collaboration of each participant is based on a principle of inclusivity; each member contributes valuable information for another user to use, add to, or change. In a community of learners, collaboration through produsage can provide access to content for every participant, not just those with some kind of authority. Every participant has authority.

This leads to Bruns' (2008) idea of "equipotentiality: the assumption that while the skills and abilities of all the participants in the produsage project are not equal, they have an equal ability to make a worthy contribution to the project" (p. 25). Because there are no more distinctions between producers and consumers, every participant has an equal chance to participate meaningfully in produsage.

In July 2020, an academic description reported on the nature and rise of the "robot prosumer", derived from modern-day technology and related participatory culture, that, in turn, was substantially predicted earlier by Frederik Pohl and other science fiction writers.

Explicit and implicit participation

An important contribution has been made by media theorist Mirko Tobias Schäfer who distinguishes explicit and implicit participation (2011). Explicit participation describes the conscious and active engagement of users in fan communities or of developers in creative processes. Implicit participation is more subtle and unfolds often without the user's knowledge. In her book, The Culture of Connectivity, Jose Van Dijck emphasizes the importance of recognizing this distinction in order to thoroughly analyze user agency as a techno-cultural construct (2013).

Dijck (2013) outlines the various ways in which explicit participation can be conceptualized. The first is the statistical conception of user demographics. Websites may “publish facts and figures about their user intensity (e.g., unique monthly users), their national and global user diversity, and relevant demographic facts” (p. 33). For instance, Facebook publishes user demographic data such as gender, age, income, education level and more. Explicit participation can also take place on the research end, where an experimental subject interacts with a platform for research purposes. Dijck (2013) references Leon et al. (2011), giving an example of an experimental study where “a number of users may be selected to perform tasks so researchers can observe their ability to control privacy settings “(p. 33). Lastly, explicit participation may inform ethnographic data through observational studies, or qualitative interview-based research concerning user habits.

Implicit participation is achieved by implementing user activities into user interfaces and back-end design. Schäfer argues that the success of popular Web 2.0 and social media applications thrives on implicit participation. The notion of implicit participation expands theories of participatory culture as formulated by Henry Jenkins and Axel Bruns who both focus most prominently on explicit participation (p. 44). Considering implicit participation allows therefore for a more accurate analysis of the role technology in co-shaping user interactions and user generated content (pp. 51–52).

Textual Poachers

The term "textual poachers" was originated by de Certeau and has been popularized by Jenkins. Jenkins uses this term to describe how some fans go through content like their favourite movie and engage with the parts that they are interested in, unlike audiences who watch the show more passively and move on to the next thing. Jenkins takes a stand against the stereotypical portrayal of fans as obsessive nerds who are out of touch with reality. He demonstrates that fans are pro-active constructors of an alternative culture using elements "poached" and reworked from the mass media. Specifically, fans use what they have poached to become producers themselves, creating new cultural materials in a variety of analytical and creative formats from "meta" essays to fanfiction, comics, music, and more. In this way, fans become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. Fans usually interact with each other through fan groups, fanzines, social events, and even in the case of Trekkers (fans of Star Trek) interact with each other through annual conferences.

In a participatory culture, fans are actively involved in the production, which may also influence producer decisions within the medium. Fans do not only interact with each other but also try to interact with media producers to express their opinions. For example, what would be the ending between two characters in a TV show? Therefore, fans are readers and producers of culture. Participatory culture transforms the media consumption experience into the production of new texts, in fact, the production of new cultures and new communities. The result is an autonomous, self-sufficient fan culture.

Gendered experiences

Participatory culture lacks representation of the female, which has created a misrepresentation of women online. This in turn, makes it difficult for women to represent themselves with authenticity, and deters participation of females in participatory culture. The content that is viewed on the internet in participatory situations is biased because of the overrepresentation of male generated information, and the ideologies created by the male presence in media, thus creates a submissive role for the female user, as they unconsciously accept patriarchal ideologies as reality. With males in the dominant positions "media industries [engage]… existing technologies to break up and reformulate media texts for reasons of their own".

Design intent from the male perspective is a main issue deterring accurate female representation. Females active in participatory culture are at a disadvantage because the content they are viewing is not designed with their participation in mind. Instead of producing male biased content, "feminist interaction design should seek to bring about political emancipation… it should also force designers to question their own position to assert what an "improved society" is and how to achieve it". The current interactions and interfaces of participatory culture fails to "challenge the hegemonic dominance, legitimacy and appropriateness of positivist epistemologies; theorize from the margins; and problematize gender". Men typically are more involved in the technology industry as "relatively fewer women work in the industry that designs technology now... only in the areas of HCI/usability is the gender balance of workforce anything like equal". Since technology and design is at the crux of the creation of participatory culture "much can – and should – be said about who does what, and it is fair to raise the question of whether an industry of men can design for women". "Although the members of the group are not directly teaching or perhaps even indicating the object of… representation, their activities inevitably lead to the exposure of the other individual to that object and this leads to that individual acquiring the same narrow… representations as the other group members have. Social learning of this type (another, similar process is known as local enhancement) has been shown to lead to relatively stable social transmission of behavior over time". Local enhancement is the driving mechanism that influences the audience to embody and recreate the messages produced in media. Statistically, men are actively engaging in the production of these problematic representations, whereas, women are not contributing to the portrayal of women experiences because of local enhancement that takes place on the web. There is no exact number to determine the precise percentage for female users; in 2011 there were numerous surveys that slightly fluctuate in numbers, but none seem to surpass 15 percent. This shows a large disparity of online users in regards to gender when looking at Wikipedia content. Bias arises as the content presented in Wikipedia seems to be more male oriented.

Promise and potential

In mass media and civic engagement

Participatory culture has been hailed by some as a way to reform communication and enhance the quality of media. According to media scholar Henry Jenkins, one result of the emergence of participatory cultures is an increase in the number of media resources available, giving rise to increased competition between media outlets. Producers of media are forced to pay more attention to the needs of consumers who can turn to other sources for information.

Howard Rheingold and others have argued that the emergence of participatory cultures will enable deep social change. Until as recently as the end of the 20th century, Rheingold argues, a handful of generally privileged, generally wealthy people controlled nearly all forms of mass communication—newspapers, television, magazines, books and encyclopedias. Today, however, tools for media production and dissemination are readily available and allow for what Rheingold labels "participatory media."

As participation becomes easier, the diversity of voices that can be heard also increases. At one time only a few mass media giants controlled most of the information that flowed into the homes of the public, but with the advance of technology even a single person has the ability to spread information around the world. The diversification of media has benefits because in cases where the control of media becomes concentrated it gives those who have control the ability to influence the opinions and information that flows to the public domain. Media concentration provides opportunity for corruption, but as information continues to become accessed from more and more places it becomes increasingly difficult to control the flow of information to the will of an agenda. Participatory Culture is also seen as a more democratic form of communication as it stimulates the audience to take an active part because they can help shape the flow of ideas across media formats. The democratic tendency lent to communication by participatory culture allows new models of production that are not based on a hierarchical standard. In the face of increased participation, the traditional hierarchies will not disappear, but "Community, collaboration, and self-organization" can become the foundation of corporations as powerful alternatives. Although there may be no real hierarchy evident in many collaborative websites, their ability to form large pools of collective intelligence is not compromised.

In civics

Participatory culture civics organizations mobilize participatory cultures towards political action. They build on participatory cultures and organize such communities toward civic and political goals. Examples include Harry Potter Alliance, Invisible Children, Inc., and Nerdfighters, which each leverage shared cultural interests to connect and organize members towards explicit political goals. These groups run campaigns by informing, connecting, and eventually organizing their members through new media platforms. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik identified three mechanisms used to translate cultural interests into political outcomes:

1. Tapping shared passion around content worlds and their communities
2. Creative production of content
3. Informal discussion spaces for conversations about salient issues

In education

Social and participatory media allow for—and, indeed, call for—a shift in how we approach teaching and learning in the classroom. The increased availability of the Internet in classrooms allows for greater access to information. For example, it is no longer necessary for relevant knowledge to be contained in some combination of the teacher and textbooks; today, knowledge can be more de-centralized and made available for all learners to access. The teacher, then, can help facilitate efficient and effective means of accessing, interpreting, and making use of that knowledge.

Jenkins believes that participatory culture can play a role in the education of young people as a new form of implicit curriculum. He finds a growing body of academic research showing the potential benefits of participatory cultures, both formal and informal, for the education of young people. Including Peer-to-peer learning opportunities, the awareness of intellectual property and multiculturalism, cultural expression and the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

Challenges

In online platforms

Rachael Sullivan discusses how some online platforms can be a challenge. According to Rachael Sullivan's book review, she emphasizes on Reddit, and the content used that can be offensive and inappropriate. Memes, GIFs, and other content that users create are negative, and are used primarily for trolling. Reddit has a platform where any users in the community can post without restrictions or barriers, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. This has the potential for backlash against Reddit, as it doesn't restrict content that could be considered offensive or pejorative, and can reflect negatively on the community as a whole. On the other hand, Reddit would likely face similar backlash for restricting what others would consider their right to free speech, although free speech only pertains to government backlash and not private companies.

YouTube and Participatory Culture

YouTube has been the start-up for many up and coming pop stars; Both Justin Bieber and One Direction can credit their presence on YouTube as the catalyst for their respective careers. Other users have gained fame or notoriety by expounding on how simple it can be to become a popular YouTuber. Charlie “How to Get Featured on YouTube,” is one such example, in that his library consists solely of videos on how to get featured, and nothing else. YouTube offers the younger generation the opportunity to test out their content, while gaining feedback via likes, dislikes, and comments to find out where they need to improve.

For consumers

All people want to be a consumer in some and an active contributor in other situations. Being a consumer or active contributor is not an attribute of a person, but of a context. The important criteria that needs to be taken into account is personally meaningful activities. Participatory cultures empower humans to be active contributors in personally meaningful activities. The drawback of such cultures is that they may force humans to cope with the burden of being an active contributor in personally irrelevant activities. This trade-off can be illustrated with the potential and drawbacks of "Do-It-Yourself Societies": starting with self-service restaurants and self-service gas stations a few decades ago, and this trend has been greatly accelerated over the last 10 years. Through modern tools (including electronic commerce supported by the Web), humans are empowered to do many tasks themselves that were done previously by skilled domain workers serving as agents and intermediaries. While this shift provides power, freedom, and control to customers (e.g., banking can be done at any time of the day with ATMs, and from any location with the Web), it has led also to some less desirable consequences. People may consider some of these tasks not very meaningful personally and therefore would be more than content with a consumer role. Aside from simple tasks that require a small or no learning effort, customers lack the experience the professionals have acquired and maintained through daily use of systems, and the broad background knowledge to do these tasks efficiently and effectively. The tools used to do these tasks — banking, travel reservations, buying airline tickets, checking out groceries at the supermarket — are core technologies for the professionals, but occasional technologies for the customers. This will put a new, substantial burden on customers rather than having skilled domain workers doing these tasks.

Significantly, too, as businesses increasingly recruit participatory practices and resources to market goods and services, consumers who are comfortable working within participatory media are at a distinct advantage over those who are less comfortable. Not only do consumers who are resistant to making use of the affordances of participatory culture have decreased access to knowledge, goods, and services, but they are less likely to take advantage of the increased leverage inherent in engaging with businesses as a prosumer.

In education

Participation gap

This category is linked to the issue of the digital divide, the concern with providing access to technology for all learners. The movement to break down the digital divide has included efforts to bring computers into classrooms, libraries, and other public places. These efforts have been largely successful, but as Jenkins et al. argue, the concern is now with the quality access to available technologies. They explain:

What a person can accomplish with an outdated machine in a public library with mandatory filtering software and no opportunity for storage or transmission pales in comparison to what [a] person can accomplish with a home computer with unfettered Internet access, high band-width, and continuous connectivity.(Current legislation to block access to social networking software in schools and public libraries will further widen the participation gap.) The school system's inability to close this participation gap has negative consequences for everyone involved. On the one hand,those youth who are most advanced in media literacies are often stripped of their technologies and robbed of their best techniques for learning in an effort to ensure a uniform experience for all in the classroom. On the other hand, many youth who have had no exposure to these new kinds of participatory cultures outside school find themselves struggling to keep up with their peers. (Jenkins et al. pg. 15)

Passing out the technology free of charge is not enough to ensure youth and adults learn how to use the tools effectively. Most American youths now have at least minimal access to networked computers, be it at school or in public libraries, but "children who have access to home computers demonstrate more positive attitudes towards computers, show more enthusiasm, and report more enthusiast and ease when using computer than those who do not (Page 8 Wartella, O'Keefe, and Scantlin (2000)). As the children with more access to computers gain more comfort in using them, the less tech-savvy students get pushed aside. It is important to note that it is more than a simple binary at work here, as working-class youths may still have access so some technologies (e.g. gaming consoles) while other forms remain unattainable. This inequality would allow certain skills to develop in some children, such as play, while others remain unavailable, such as the ability to produce and distribute self-created media.

In a participatory culture, one of the key challenges that is encountered is participatory gap. This comes into play with the integration of media and society. Some of the largest challenges we face in regards to the participation gap is in education, learning, accessibility, and privacy. All of these factors are huge setbacks when it comes to the relatively new integration of youth participating in today's popular forms of media.

Education is one realm where the participatory gap is very prominent. In today's society, our education system heavily focuses on integrating media into its curriculum. More and more our classrooms are utilizing computers and technology as learning aides. While this is beneficial for students and teachers to enhance learning environments and allow them to access a plethora of information, it also presents many problems. The participation gap leaves many schools as well as its teachers and students at a disadvantage as they struggle to utilize current technology in their curriculum. Many schools do not have to funding to invest in computers or new technologies for their academic programs. They are unable to afford computers, cameras, and interactive learning tools, which prevents students from accessing the tools that other, wealthier schools have.

Another challenge is that as we integrate new technology into schools and academics, we need to be able to teach people how to use these instruments. Teaching both student and adults how to use new media technologies is essential so that they can actively participate as their peers do. Additionally, teaching children how to navigate the information available on new media technologies is very important as there is so much content available on the internet these days. For beginners this can be overwhelming and teaching kids as well as adults how to access what is pertinent, reliable and viable information will help them improve how they utilize media technologies.

One huge aspect of the participation gap is access. Access to the Internet and computers is a luxury in some households, and in the today's society, access to a computer and the Internet is often overlooked by both the education system and many other entities. In today's society, almost everything we do is based online, from banking to shopping to homework and ordering food, we spend all of our time doing everyday tasks online. For those who are unable to access these things, they are automatically put at a severe disadvantage. They cannot participate in activities that their peers do and may suffer both academically and socially.

The last feature of the participation gap is privacy concerns. We put everything on the Internet these days, from pictures to personal information. It is important to question how this content will be used. Who owns this content? Where does it go or where is it stored? For example, the controversy of Facebook and its ownership and rights of user's content has been a hot button issue over the past few years. It is disconcerting to a lot of people to find out that their content they have posted to a particular website is no longer under their control, but may be retained and used by the website in the future.

All of the above-mentioned issued are key factors in the participation gap. They play a large role is the challenges we face as we incorporate new media technology into everyday life. These challenges affect how many populations interact with the changing media in society and unfortunately leave many at a disadvantage. This divide between users of new media and those who are unable to access these technologies is also referred to as the digital divide. It leaves low-income families and children at a severe disadvantage that affects them in the present as well as the future. Students for example are largely affected because without access to the Internet or a computer they are unable to do homework and projects and will moreover be unsuccessful in school. These poor grades can lead to frustration with academia and furthermore may lead to delinquent behavior, low income jobs, decreased chanced of pursuing higher educations, and poor job skills.

Transparency problem

Increased facility with technology does not necessarily lead to increased ability to interpret how technology exerts its own pressure on us. Indeed, with increased access to information, the ability to interpret the viability of that information becomes increasingly difficult. It is crucial, then, to find ways to help young learners develop tactics for engaging critically with the tools and resources they use.

Ethics challenge

This is identified as a "breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants" (Jenkins et al. pg. 5). For example, throughout most of the last half of the 20th century learners who wanted to become journalists would generally engage in a formal apprenticeship through journalism classes and work on a high school newspaper. This work would be guided by a teacher who was an expert in the rules and norms of journalism and who would confer that knowledge to student-apprentices. With increasing access to Web 2.0 tools, however, anybody can be a journalist of sorts, with or without an apprenticeship to the discipline. A key goal in media education, then, must be to find ways to help learners develop techniques for active reflection on the choices they make—and contributions they offer—as members of a participatory culture.

Issues for educators and educational policy-makers

As teachers, administrators, and policymakers consider the role of new media and participatory practices in the school environment, they will need to find ways to address the multiple challenges. Challenges include finding ways to work with the decentralization of knowledge inherent in online spaces; developing policies with respect to filtering software that protects learners and schools without limiting students' access to sites that enable participation; and considering the role of assessment in classrooms that embrace participatory practices.

Cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. Unfortunately a large number of new media are designed to see humans only as consumers; and people, particularly young people in educational institutions, form mindsets based on their exposure to specific media. The current mindset about learning, teaching, and education is dominated by a view in which teaching is often fitted "into a mold in which a single, presumably omniscient teacher explicitly tells or shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about". A critical challenge is a reformulation and reconceptualization of this impoverished and misleading conception. Learning should not take place in a separate phase and in a separate place, but should be integrated into people's lives allowing them to construct solutions to their own problems. As they experience breakdowns in doing so, they should be able to learn on demand by gaining access to directly relevant information. The direct usefulness of new knowledge for actual problem situations greatly improves the motivation to learn the new material because the time and effort invested in learning are immediately worthwhile for the task at hand — not merely for some putative long-term gain. In order to create active contributor mindsets serving as the foundation of participatory cultures, learning cannot be restricted to finding knowledge that is "out there". Rather than serving as the "reproductive organ of a consumer society" educational institutions must cultivate the development of an active contributor mindset by creating habits, tools and skills that help people become empowered and willing to actively contribute to the design of their lives and communities. Beyond supporting contributions from individual designers, educational institutions need to build a culture and mindset of sharing, supported by effective technologies and sustained by personal motivation to occasionally work for the benefit of groups and communities. This includes finding ways for people to see work done for the benefits of others being "on-task", rather than as extra work for which there is no recognition and no reward.

A new form of literacy

Jenkins et al. believes that conversation surrounding the digital divide should focus on opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills required to take part rather than get stuck on the question of technological access. As institutions, schools have been slow on the uptake of participatory culture. Instead, afterschool programs currently devote more attention to the development of new media literacies, or, a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape. Participatory culture shifts this literacy from the individual level to community involvement. Networking and collaboration develop social skills that are vital to the new literacies. Although new, these skills build on an existing foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.

Meta-design: a design methodology supporting participatory cultures

Main article: Metadesign

Metadesign is "design for designers".  It represents an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social and technical infrastructures in which participatory cultures can come alive and new forms of collaborative design can take place. It extends the traditional notion of system design beyond the original development of a system to allow users become co-designers and co-developers. It is grounded in the basic assumption that future uses and problems cannot be completely anticipated at design time, when a system is developed. Users, at use time, will discover mismatches between their needs and the support that an existing system can provide for them. These mismatches will lead to breakdowns that serve as potential sources of new insights, new knowledge, and new understanding. Meta-design supports participatory cultures as follows:

1. Making changes must seem possible: Contributors should not be intimidated and should not have the impression that they are incapable of making changes; the more users become convinced that changes are not as difficult as they think they are, the more they may be willing to participate.
2. Changes must be technically feasible: If a system is closed, then contributors cannot make any changes; as a necessary prerequisite, there needs to be possibilities and mechanisms for extension.
3. Benefits must be perceived: Contributors have to believe that what they get in return justifies the investment they make. The benefits perceived may vary and can include professional benefits (helping for one's own work), social benefits (increased status in a community, possibilities for jobs), and personal benefits (engaging in fun activities).
4. The environments must support tasks that people engage in: The best environments will not succeed if they are focused on activities that people do rarely or consider of marginal value.
5. Low barriers must exist to sharing changes: Evolutionary growth is greatly accelerated in systems in which participants can share changes and keep track of multiple versions easily. If sharing is difficult, it creates an unnecessary burden that participants are unwilling to overcome.