David Gauntlett - Making is Connecting

1. Theory

2.  David Gauntlett is a British sociologist
and media theorist who specialises in
studying contemporary media
audiences, the every making and
sharing of digital media and the role of
such media in self-identity and self-
expression.

3.  Creativity involves putting things
together, ideas and materials to make
something new.
 The social dimension.
 It increases for feeling of
embeddedness and feeling of
participation in the world.

4.  This tree represents society it has to be sustained with
nutrients which in this case is our creativity, people
being able to participate and create within their lives.
The pretty pink bird reminds us that it is not just a
nice thing for individuals to be creative,
it is absolutely essential for society
to flourish that people get the
opportunity to make and share
things rather than being consumers
of things.

5.  People have been creative and making things for many hundreds of years.
 Rozsika Parker talks about embroidery as a weapon of resistance that women
were able to use to carve out their own thinking, time and space within their
lives and you could say blogging for example meets all of these criteria.
 John Roskin admired the gargoyles you can see on medieval cathedrals because
within them you can see the individual spirit the creative maker just making
something they wanted to make, didn’t need to ask for permission they were
just doing what they wanted to do, its not fine art but it expresses something,
and you can say these same ideas apply to YouTube today.
 William Morriss took up Roskins ideas and developed them into a more
community kind of model, explaining how people need to make the stuff of
their own lives.
 Ivan Illich similarly argues that people need to be able to shape and create their
own environments, to create the tools by which they can use to stamp elements
of their own personality upon the world in which they live.

6.  Web 1.0 we have people making their own websites, but
they’re individual gardens. They have built their own
platforms and put them out there for people to see it.
 The idea of web 2.0 is you have a big communal allotment
where everybody pitches in and puts their stuff so you don’t
need to own
your own website, you can add
onto other websites such as
YouTube and Wikipedia.
 These are sites where the more
people are using them, the better
they get.