MASHUP Data Integration and More - Chapter 2

MASHUP Data Integration and More - Chapter 2

As I said yesterday, I learned a new word which I needed to explore. Here is a mashup of sorts, as several different chair styles intended to be suited with their own style become a row of seating unique to itself.

Even fruit can be a mashup when the creator experiments with several fruit.

I mentioned four mashup genres yesterday, one of which is music. This is perhaps the most controversial because of the possibility of infringement of copyright law when portions of songs are incorporated into something that is purportedly new. An example can be found in the mashup on YouTube called Pop Music United State of Pop (Viva La Pop) which uses the top 25 Billboard hits. You can see and hear it here.

The term mashup suggests the reuse, or remixing, of works of art, of content, and/or of data for purposes that usually were not intended or even imagined by the original creators. Remixing and mashup have a history predating the current digital information explosion yet today the properties of this digital environment has provided everyday users like me with the power to redo, revamp, rewrite, and reassign information in unprecedented ways. I can copy, combine and remix ad infinitum. Sophisticated mashups are conducted by web and program designers, by marketing and merchandising, by educators and researchers.

Our digital technologies hold out great promise yet create cultural and logistical challenges. Mashups complicate this arena considerably for educators and policy-makers. What can be legitimately deemed an original work? How shall assessment of originality be done and creativity rewarded? What risks are inherent in this borrowing, user-friendly atmosphere?

Read Brian Lamb’s article on Educause.

The brand images today are interesting logo mashups, a combination of two brands into one in each case.

MASHUP Data Integration and More.

Where have I been? I learned a new word today but the word has been around for a long time. CBC Online Radio menu introduced me to the word this morning as it promoted an audio show that airs tonight at 7:30 pm on Radio One. The promo says “Canada is a country of mashups. People from different cultures find themselves living and working together here — bumping into different values, assumptions and different ways of doing things.” Did you notice how I gave credit for this quotation?

This is the universal symbol for mashup.

So much of what I write and what I paint is mashup. How I think is mashup, come to think of it. When I write a blog post for GPS, I typically have an idea, develop it and add expressions and images I have accessed from internet sources. Invariably the product is mashup. If I use artists' images I source them with credit. I even do that with some photographic images. I have even asked permission for use of some of these. Where I quote verbatim I source the writer. In the mashup universe, giving credit is a lost courtesy, even though some will say it is a legal requirement. This is under constant debate.

So I pulled up the Wikipedia definition for Mashup and learned about four mashup genres.
1. Mashup (digital), a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, which recombines and modifies existing digital works to create a derivative work.
2. Mashup (music), the musical genre encompassing songs which consist entirely of parts of other songs. The basic idea of a mashup is that you take samples of existing content (audio, video, text), and put them together into something new.
3. Mashup (video), a video that is edited from more than one source to appear as one
4. Mashup (web application hybrid), a web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source.

More mashup tomorrow and the next day, and maybe as long as I do this, because apparently I don’t have an original thought in my head.
Sorry for the long delay between posts. I was trying too hard to be original.