It's my first post on the Ucubd blog and fittingly I'm writing about the MASHup. I think I have my own unique take on the concept because afterall, the word is in the tag phrase of a product I helped launch, "Make Mashups". But what the heck is a mashup? I'm going to go hit up GOOgle in about an hour and search the word to see the most recent trending definitions. In the meantime, I'm going to sit here and think about what I’m probably going to see. Funny as it is, I never really thought about the word itself even though it’s fitting to my everyday.
What first comes to mind is Viral Video, Radiohead, and DJ sets. Generally, what comes to my mind is the thought of something slightly eccentric and mixed up and a bit of snappy fun. If that doesn’t make much sense, know that I’m finding it actually pretty hard to describe, so what does the rest of the internet have to say?
All researched out, and after my reflective break, thankfully I'm finding out that Google is not shy about giving its 15 cents and neither is Wikipedia on the topic.
“In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that uses or combines data or functionality from two or many more external sources to create a new service.”
Hmm… this is true, and even though I make mashups in this context everyday integrating the latest API’s from other products and services across the internet into Ucubd templates. I never really thought that I was making mashups in this sense. A mashup to me is something artistic and visual, auditory and as I mentioned it’s kind of a “I’ll know it when I see it” thing and I just don’t see how web services relate to this entirely.
The next link down in Google refered to another software development based article and the third link was “mashup town” a music based website. This trend is actually really mixed up. Even brilliantly written computerized algorithms cant make sense of what a mashup means. All of the google ads on the right side were links to development like business and enterprise tools, so even in this quintessential aspect I didn’t understand how this related to a music mashup, and the creative flow of mashup town.
In my immaculate research, I found that the Google links happened to be equally split between software development and music , and essentially you can say - in a broader sense, between technology and entertainment.
Isn't it strange to see this equal mishmash of seemingly disconnected terms? Perhaps the word mashup is becoming main stream and not only because of web services and technology and enterprise alone. Lets look at this way.. can the mashup be a kind of entertainment piece and the end result of “making mashups”, using and building upon other work as a whole and not just plugging in Flight track data on top of Google maps?
I think to the greater world what a mashup means is very different.
Hard as it is to believe to us techno-geeks, there are many many many people out there that have no idea what a mashup means in the context of software development but I guarantee you they know about mashups and more so they also think that mashups are somehow innately cool. Many also wish they could produce them at the snap of their fingers and they appreciate what mashups are all about even if they dont fully understand them. What most people do understand about the mashup is that it's something highly personal and highly viral at the same time, its something to sit back and enjoy and its also something to engage with and actively create. The mashup has an inherient dual personality and its potential is both fanciful and practical at the same time.
And really, the fanciful is the reason why mashups are being talked about in the greater mass media and why the word gets flung into the mainstream cultural moment every once in a while too. For example, CNN’s Campbell Brown show contains a prominent “The Mashup” moment in the show. And if you really get down to it and think about what a mashup is essentially is, it is actually an inherent part of creativity, entertainment and ultimately being human. The mashup is certainly at least meant to be fun, and it’s meant to be shared. On Twitter where 8 out of 10 posts about “mashups” are entertainment related, the word is used to promote links to video mashups and interesting music beats. Essentially the mashup is migrated into a visual and auditory language we can all understand.
Now don’t get me wrong, web services are cool, but downright dope as Jay-Z. Perhaps not.
Is this what we can ultimately come to expect from the mashup? Is a mashup this enigmatic internet thing part art and media and part technology and software? Perhaps. It is quite obvious now that we are in this internet mass media convergence era where Hardware is music, music is software, and software is music. Just as there are hundreds of cataloged google map mashups, there are also hundreds of mashed up renditions of keyboard Cat. Everything just seems to be getting mashed up. Maybe truly, the mashup is somewhere in this cross section between the internet, software, and technology and mass media, entertainment and culture.