The President's College 2011

2011-02-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

photo by 1 hr photo via flickr creative commons

we stole the top image. sorry, patty

De Laude Scriptorium

2011-02-10T12:57:00.001-08:00

Lethem

2011-02-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

Any text that has infiltrated the common mind to the extent of Gone With the Wind orLolita or Ulysses inexorably joins the language of culture. A map-turned-to-landscape, it has moved to a place beyond enclosure or control. The authors and their heirs should consider the subsequent parodies, refractions, quotations, and revisions an honor, or at least the price of a rare success.

A corporation that has imposed an inescapable notion—Mickey Mouse, Band-Aid—on the cultural language should pay a similar price.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors but “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate.

Contemporary copyright, trademark, and patent law is presently corrupted. The case for perpetual copyright is a denial of the essential gift-aspect of the creative act. Arguments in its favor are as un-American as those for the repeal of the estate tax.

Art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the field of culture.

Digital sampling is an art method like any other, neutral in itself.

Is authorship a social fiction?

2011-02-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

“Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take it."

Susan Blum:

In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

“Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.

Lethem:

The Walt Disney Company has drawn an astonishing catalogue from the work of others: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Song of the South, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, and, alas, Treasure Planet, a legacy of cultural sampling that Shakespeare, or De La Soul, could get behind. Yet Disney's protectorate of lobbyists has policed the resulting cache of cultural materials as vigilantly as if it were Fort Knox—threatening legal action, for instance, against the artist Dennis Oppenheim for the use of Disney characters in a sculpture, and prohibiting the scholar Holly Crawford from using any Disney-related images—including artwork by Lichtenstein, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others—in her monograph Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art.

What is authorship?

2011-02-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

Lethem

If those don't strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid's “Pyramus and Thisbe” with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism.

Sampling

2011-02-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

All digitial records are montages.

A digital sampled sound takes, effectively, 44,000 snapshot per second, arranges and replays them.

2011-02-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Creative Commons.

Hey, let's take something!

Marcus Boon

2011-02-10T12:18:00.001-08:00

Copy my book

Lethem on Music

2011-02-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

In 1941, on his front porch, Muddy Waters recorded a song for the folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing the song, which he told Lomax was entitled “Country Blues,” Waters described how he came to write it. “I made it on about the eighth of October '38,” Waters said. “I was fixin' a puncture on a car. I had been mistreated by a girl. I just felt blue, and the song fell into my mind and it come to me just like that and I started singing.” Then Lomax, who knew of the Robert Johnson recording called “Walkin' Blues,” asked Waters if there were any other songs that used the same tune. “There's been some blues played like that,” Waters replied. “This song comes from the cotton field and a boy once put a record out—Robert Johnson. He put it out as named ‘Walkin' Blues.' I heard the tune before I heard it on the record. I learned it from Son House.” In nearly one breath, Waters offers five accounts: his own active authorship: he “made it” on a specific date. Then the “passive” explanation: “it come to me just like that.” After Lomax raises the question of influence, Waters, without shame, misgivings, or trepidation, says that he heard a version by Johnson, but that his mentor, Son House, taught it to him. In the middle of that complex genealogy, Waters declares that “this song comes from the cotton field.”

Blues and jazz musicians have long been enabled by a kind of “open source” culture, in which pre-existing melodic fragments and larger musical frameworks are freely reworked. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called “versions.” The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music.

Mash-ups

2011-02-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

The name Pop Will Eat Itself was taken from an NME feature on the band Jamie Wednesday, written by David Quantick, which proposed the theory that because popular music simply recycles good ideas continuously, the perfect pop song could be written by [combining] the best of those ideas into one track. Hence, Pop Will Eat Itself.^[

^{]A mashup or blend^[1] (also mesh ,mash up and mash-up) is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another.^[2] To the extent that such works are 'transformative' of original content, they may find protection from copyright claims under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.^[3]}

Jaron Lanier

2011-02-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

In fact, the dynamics of the Web, as the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier observes in another new book, are encouraging “authors, journalists, musicians and artists” to “treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.”

Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”

David Shields

2011-02-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

KAKUTANI:

Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.” He only acknowledges the source of these quotations in an appendix, which he says his publishers’ lawyers insisted he add.

“Who owns the words?” Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.”

SANTE:

There is an artistic movement brewing, Shields writes. Among its hallmarks are the incorporation of “seemingly unprocessed” material; “randomness, openness to accident and serendipity; . . . criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity; . . . a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction.”

Helene Hegemann

2011-02-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

Her story.

And now this: The culture blog www.gefuehlskonserve.de found out that Hegemann plagiarised – mainly from Strobo, a sex, drugs and clubbing novel by blogger Airen (b. 1981) published last year by SuKuLTuR, a small publishing house in Berlin. Not only did she borrow humorous collocations like “Techno-Plastizität" (techno plasticity) or "Vaselintitten" (Vaseline tits), she lifted whole lines and scene setups.

Helene Hegemann says she’s sorry, she knows it was wrong “not to mention all the people whose writings helped me”. And yet she stands by her novel: after all, “there’s no such thing as originality anyway, there’s only authenticity”. What’s more, she’s only a “lodger” in her own mind: “I help myself to whatever inspires me.”

The virtual poets' society

So people are now crying scandal, but the spreading hullabaloo over the “Hegemann case” is basically a knee-jerk reflex: we think the aura of authenticity is incompatible with a little cribbing. Yet Axolotl Roadkill constructs an aura that no longer acknowledges any distinction between fact and fiction. Helene Hegemann belongs to the "Virtual Poets’ Club” evoked in Strobo: "We’re part of a strand that occasionally slipslides into fiction. It’s all pretty schizophrenic." Incidentally, it was Carl Hegemann who developed the theoretical superstructure for this hybrid artistry: "A reality is no longer encountered, but brought forth by the ‘members’ of a culture.” In this sense Helene Hegemann did what she knows how to do best: she cut-and-pasted together a novelistic existence for herself.

Appropriation

2011-02-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Against hierarchy

2011-02-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

In real simple media theory terms, one thing the Internet did was to push the atomized audience closer together.

Some would even argue that a different notion of "the public" has emerged.

By the time we got to Wikileaks, though, there appeared to be some understanding that there could be a fusion between the anarchic Net and the legacy media.

What's going on today?

2011-02-02T04:44:00.000-08:00

Oh, nothing much. News Corp is launching its much-discussed iPad "newspaper."

But somebody already has hacked it.
The New York Times is trying to develop a counter-product.
A website got its hands on an AOL internal document detailing AOL's depressing version of journalism.
Sounds not terribly different from "content farms."

Two things happened simultaneously

2011-01-26T17:03:00.000-08:00

The crumbling of the newspaper business model (Cragislist supplanted the classifieds, etc.)
and the end of the acceptance of a hierarchical news model.

Now there are all kinds of experiments that involve getting people to pay for news online. Here's one from Slovakia.

Closer to home, the Times's paywall is coming.

Part of the problem is that the 'Net as an advertising meeting has never quite clicked, even though clicking is something you can track really well. 35 percent of media us = 14 percent of ad dollars, a trend which is leveling off. 8 percent of web users account for 85 percent of click-throughs. Example.

One of the first things to get ditched was explanatory journalism:

Technology is further shifting power to newsmakers, and the newest way is through their ability to control the initial accounts of events. For now at least, digital technology is shifting more emphasis and resources toward breaking news. Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms. This is focusing more time on disseminating information and somewhat less on gathering it, making news people more reactive and less proactive. It is also leading to a phenomenon in which the first account from newsmakers — their press conferences and press releases — make their way to the public often in a less vetted form, sometimes close to verbatim. Those first accounts, sculpted by official sources, then can rapidly spread more widely now through the power of the Web to disseminate, gaining a velocity they once lacked. That is followed quickly by commentary. What is squeezed is the supplemental reporting that would unearth more facts and context about events. We saw this clearly in a study of news in Baltimore, but it is reinforced in discussions with news people. While technology makes it easier for citizens to participate, it is also giving newsmakers more influence over the first impression the public receives.

We should probably talk a bit about the Courant.

Try to remember

2011-01-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

Early newspapers were, essentially, blogs.
And in their history, they have been many things.

The New/Old Echo Chamber

2011-01-26T13:49:00.000-08:00

What does the news look like right this minute?

What is that a product of?

From Pew:

Reportorial journalism is getting smaller, but the commentary and discussion aspect of media, which adds analysis, passion and agenda shaping, is growing — in cable, radio, social media, blogs and elsewhere. For all the robust activity there, however, the numbers still suggest that these new media are largely filled with debate dependent on the shrinking base of reporting that began in the old media. Our ongoing analysis of more than a million blogs and social media sites, for instance, finds that 80% of the links are to U.S. legacy media.

Some of the tension between those two sources has led people to expect newspapers to be more open. And this is as good a place as any to talk about the comment function issue. (Remember the Coasean law.)

The bad news

2011-01-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

Um, newspaper deaths.
Patch.
Fumbling efforts with paywalls.

The good news

2011-01-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

The incredible role played by YouTube and citizen-generated video.

And perhaps an understanding that "news" can be presented a lot of different ways.
Patch.
Well maybe not Patch but hyperlocal sites.
When they work.
And here's one close to home.
At a statewide level, we have an unbundled site for government and politics.
Here's a slightly jazzier version. (remember Rapaille and codes.)

And a cool-looking semi-paywall version.
About $150 million in nonprofit money has flowed into news projects since 2006.

This is one of the more famous examples.

In many ways, the home feed of Facebook has become -- or can become -- a multivitamin news source.
Some FB users use their pages as, essentially blogs.

Twitter and Tumblr are elastic, searchable news sources.

Week 2 -- Let's start with a little perspective on the press.

2011-01-21T12:53:00.000-08:00

Here's Jay Rosen.

A few general principles

2011-01-18T18:57:00.001-08:00

Web. vs. Net

The notion of Code -- Clotaire Rapaille.

Short stays, the lack of brand identification, the Code of the Wild West.

The car vs. the bridge. (Hidden elements of Wikipedia and Google)

The Coasean notion of transaction cost. (apply to FB)

Focus-grouping reality on FB.

Crowd-sourcing.

The tool shapes the user.

Not every tool is right for every job.

Nothing is private.

Hot vs. cool environments, using Obama's candidacy and the notion of "not a finished product."

Also, two years later, the Tea Party as cool.

Second orality and Walter Ong.

(By lowering the Coasean cost, does the internet make us more oral?)

The Nicholas Carr critique.

(Keep in mind that most of these criticisms echo back to, for example, what Plato said about writing. And what scribes said about printing. And so on.)

Tribalism.

The history of information, searchability, the 17th century, the impenetrability of the book.

How the world surfs

2011-01-18T18:21:00.000-08:00

The population trends.
The trends in use.
The shift from searching to sharing.
The Tunisia example.
What's the relationship to old-line media?

Eminem

2011-01-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

Note to self -- pick this up around 2:30

Let's Get It Started

2011-01-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

So why do this at all?

2010-09-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

We're living through, I would argue, THE BIGGEST information revolution in the history of humankind.

In many ways, the shift returns us to our pasts, when we relied more on ourselves to circulate information and less on professionals.

That, in a nutshell, is what should make this more attractive to farmers. (There's a dark side to all this, which we'll discuss.)

But let's also make a list of what you want to accomplish.

Let's make a list of your needs.

Whom do you need to reach?

What do you need them to know?

What kinds problem involving communication and information-sharing are you struggling to solve?

What -- in the area of getting the word out and sharing a general sense of your operation -- would make you happier a year from now?

What kind of communicator are you right now? What do you think you do well?

Case study

2010-09-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

So here's a very nice-looking website for a farm whose Provincetown farmer's market presence I recently visited.

Let's talk about what it does and doesn't do well.

Should it have an update-able blog?

Video.

Buttons for FB and Twitter?

A personality?

Different information on its home page?

A physical presence that points to its digital presence?

Techno-literacy

2010-09-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

The New York Times magazine, conveniently, offered this set of guidelines yesterday for techno-literacy.

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.
• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.
• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.
• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.
To those, I would add: Have Fun and Don't Be Intimidated.

Assimilate or else

2010-09-19T14:42:00.001-07:00

Most of what I'm going to teach you today will be less relevant than your actual performance in Google.
Whoever handles your website should at least glance at Google's copious advice about SEO.
It's also a good idea, probably to have an actual Google account that links to your website. It's all about making their 'bots happy.

The Social Network

2010-09-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to think about social media is in terms of the energy expended to get a result.
Facebook is the king of low energy expenditure.
And let's talk about event pages.
And the art of the FB post.
And getting OTHER people to post about you.
(But don't completely forget about good old-fashioned email blasts.)

Coordination of activities like this one.

The joys of crowdsourcing

2010-09-19T13:56:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia is crowdsourcing.

Let's crowdsource the idea of crowdsourcing for farmers and their friends.

Sites that aggregate

2010-09-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

You probably know most of these:

buyctgrown.
CtFarmMap.
localharvest.
shared harvest.
farmfresh.

For PYO, this is a very effective site.

Here are some great-looking sites that, I think, do the social media thing very well.
This one in Chicago.
And this one in Fairfield County.

We should talk, in connection with those, about the idea of parnterships.
(Which goes to the issue of simplicity.)

Let's talk Twitter

2010-09-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

So here's Twitter.
Some things you could use Twitter for:
-- real time updates to your customers about the condition of crops, i.e. "this is the last week for blueberries at Piotrowicz Farm!"
-- real time updates from a farm stand or farmer's market. "I've got five heads of bronze arrow lettuce left at the West End Market."
-- talking to (and about) legislators if there's a bill coming up that affects you.
-- to give and receive real time information about weather
If you do Twitter, it makes sense to learn more about hashtags.

One general thing to remember: the news media now troll Twitter and other forms of unpaid social media for news ideas.

The Commandments

2010-09-19T12:38:00.000-07:00

Just to review, this is roughly the order in which you should worry about things.
1. Have a website.
2. Get your website listed with all the farm aggregators.
3. Be Google-friendly. It's probably a good idea to have a Google account with a profile that links to your website.
4. Join Facebook. Recruit friends.
5. (Maybe) Create a Twitter account.
6. If you do something that requires fresh content -- a website blow, Facebook or Twitter -- update a lot. A LOT!
7. make a little sign -- with your website and FB and Twitter info, if relevant --for your farmstand and especially for farmers markets.

Future Games

2010-09-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

What would help?

Sometimes, it's the efforts of volunteers. Look what this person did in Los Angeles. One option would be to gather together a volunteer problem-solving council of people who love farms and have a way with digital media.

This enterprise, located not far from here, got an NSF grant to develop web presences for artists. This is another route Connecticut farmers could consider taking. I'd be happy to arrange a meeting between some farm people and Beth Mesina, founder of artbox.

Some other models, here in CT, for pooling resources.

A co-working site in NH.

I know Kate Emery, but I need to learn more about this.

2009-12-14T14:22:00.000-08:00

Maybe Google is just better at stuff.
Maybe the question is not what will out-Google Google but will under-Google it.

Alyssa says Google is adept at expansion:

McLuhan talks about the immediacy of the telegraph and it was perceived by
literary sophisticates as distasteful. It reminded me a lot of Murdoch's
attitude toward aggregators. It is the attitude of those who feel left behind by
a medium they don't understand and would rather not try to understand. The
difference between the effect of the Internet and the telegraph, I think, is
that the telegraph was a compressional force. It forced different mediums to
come together (i.e. The Associated Press example). The Internet, I think, is
expansional. It forces companies like Google to expand beyond its original
intention, beyond its original specialization. And the nature of the Internet
itself (inter connecting networks world-wide) makes it the perfect medium for
organizations to stretch beyond itself and link multiple outlets together, which
creates sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc and aggregators like CT Report.

But are we headed for contraction now?

Tina says we need the help of "credibe people."

Kevin asks what omces after Google. Shelia asks is the future a future of links?
Alyssa says aggregators are good grabbers but lousy sorters. There has to be more than just links.

Kevin (and somebody else, but I forget who), made me think about the splintering of self and presence on the 'net. I'm Tweeting. But that's not that same as, you know, me, writing a review.

Just a collage

2009-12-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Matt D says the collage is an MMish response to the digital age, I think partly because the 'net is a place of raw materials for mash-ups and party because there's an implicit control-taking.
You gotta see his video.

Not related to class?

2009-12-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

Greg, of course it is. The medium is the message.

So is Lisa's "overaching" and lovely invocation of the heart of the transistor radio.

"Why is it all so small" is a very MM question.

Dan says each new tech revolution pushes us farther from our hearts and souls. Greg's old clacking railroad board probably spoke a little more to his soul.

It is technology which further helps to distract us, pushing us farther from the
center. The more people share about themselves on Internet reveals to me the
less they truly know about themselves. Most of what people say on the Internet
is vague, inflated. The Internet takes us away instead of bringing us closer to
ourselves. But I also admit that I dislike technology because at my inner core I
am scared; scared at what I have found and what I will find in the future;
scared to be judged by others, scared that who I am and what I think will be
deemed unworthy, less important. It may seem paradoxical coming from a person
who preaches hatred for the masses and seems to claim superiority to most, who
states with confidence that people are stupid, that I would desire their opinion
and acceptance so much. And at the level of my mind, I don’t. But at the inner
core, where all the masks are stripped away and my individual human nature is
vulnerable, I desire what I feel most people who look inwardly at themselves
would desire, and that is inclusiveness and acceptance from our fellow human
beings.

The Human Factor

2009-12-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

So who's in control, Kasey wonders, us or the machines?

Dan says that ship may have sailed:

Aside from a post-apocalyptic Terminator or Matrix scorching the sun so the
machines can’t live but we survive in a stone age world, I think that what I
want to stress, which McLuhan would agree with the contrary, is that human
beings should be in control; we should be using machines and technology to
better our lives, when in fact, we have become a slave to them, unable to live
without them. It is scary reading McLuhan’s book knowing it was written in the
60s. The fact that we are dominated by machines proves McLuhan’s idea that since
the message is the medium, it has changed the way we as a society thinks and
functions.

Interesting how many of us thought about SkyNet this week.

Kasey:

Should we be nervous? That is one of my questions as I consider the significant
power of the internet in our lives. In thinking about the notion that artists
are more sensitive to shifts in culture, especially when it comes to media, I
can’t help but ponder Terminator, I Robot, Minority Report, and even that flop
of a film with poor Sandra Bullock, The Net. All of the stories behind these
films show a world taken over by the machines, and that world is scary and out
of control. I think humans have always been at least a bit dubious of machines,
computers, and the internet. I remember when people were reluctant to begin
using debit cards.

Jessica:

Is this the maximum depth? Can any more information be available to us than
there is (or potentially could be) on the internet? Is the next step a Sky-Net
or brain implants? It's scary to consider, but given our proclivity to do
exactly as McLuhan warns against and adopt new technologies before thinking of
their consequences, it might just be possible.

Colin:

But then there's a separate set of issues about who stores stuff and where that
stuff is stored. I don't really speak the language of server farms and clustered
networks ... yet. But I feel like that's important in a way most of us don't
get. I mean, it's like "Terminator." A lot of power is flowing over to the info
equivalent of SkyNet. It's probably too important for us to let ourselves be
stupid about it, you know?

John, at some length.

You have Kasey to thank for

2009-12-14T13:36:00.001-08:00

Interesting, especially in light of John's post about how we think news that we want should find us. But whappens when that's the model, right? We're at somebody's mercy.

On separation

2009-12-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

From Allison:

MM concept of "media" being a medium or sorts is very interesting. The impact of
each medium varies with each social network. Meaning, while the actual medium
remains constant, the effect is different. For this I agree. However, once
someone detaches themselves from the medium, they can control the outcome of the
medium. So does this mean that everyone who attempts to change media or
technology is living in a detached state? So by detaching themselves, they
neutralize the affect the medium has. But is that possible? If the media and
technology, and all the other words he uses to describe the exact same
thing, are all around you, how can you detach yourself? It would be like
going into a different dimension, not just mentally, but completely. Maybe it
has something to do with this light bulb idea. Media isn't an actual thing, but
is determined and described by the result of the affect it has on the
environment. So does that mean the words in a newspaper isn't an actual thing,
but the result of it on the social fabric?

This from David re: MM

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without knowledge of the way media work as environments (McLuhan 26).

I think -- don't know -- that McLuhan would say: don't imagine that you can completely separate yourself. (I think again of that video clip in which he seemed to acknolwedge, playfully, the impossibility of achieving a point of view untinctured by the media about which one is trying to have a point of view.

Jess Passing Through / Lisa Can't Stand the Rain

2009-12-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

Reading Jessica's eloquent summing-up, I find myself answering in the voice of Dan. In a way, the rise of server-farms and cloud computing is, in MM terms, a metaphor for changes-in-mind among digitual users. Gradually, heavy IT users realized they could affordto be in the server business anymore -- or that it didn't make sense. So they outsourced storage.

Jessica says that's what's happening in education too. Students are not longer understood as storers of information but as adept getters of what is stored.

Dan would say: the problem with that is that, with no wisdom, with no core of cultural literacy, we're less likely to know what it is that we're getting and why we wanted it in the first place. Unless it's take-out.

Lisa says one of the real tests will come when an entirely digital generation reaches adulthood. Will they lose the "invented gene of deep reading?"

As Jess and McLuhan say, people become instant. That engages their passions, possibly at the expense of wisdom.

Courtney A.. at peace? Not really

2009-12-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

Here is Courtney's last post, which begins by making the point that it's difficult to make definitive statements about the Internet because the 'net does not really stop and pose for photos. D'accord. (French for true dat.) CA then proves her point by adding another post (about the way online journalism hasn't really opened up opportunities for women) after her last post. I struggle with the same problem in teaching it.

Courtney's lingering suspicion is that idea she brought up months ago. That somehow, we have willingly assembled not merely dossiers about ourselves on the 'net but actual simulacra of our conscious minds.

Our Poet Laureate

2009-12-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

...is Sally, for her Holiday McLuhan Epic.

...and thereafter our tools shape us

2009-12-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

The internet sometimes seems like a hot medium pretending to be a cool one. If you use Google and Wikipedia to the exclusion of other tools your bain will be living in the crust of the internet and rarely penetrating to the stuff down below. Not only that but, in the case of Google, you will essentially be hardening and reinforcing that crust just by using it. (Use solidifies page rangk which increases use.)

There are, of course, drill-down tools.
But somebody is going to have to know how to use them. Google and Wikipedia have succeeded -- despite being slightly blunt and very general tools -- into everybody's tools of choice for anything. It as if people decided to use a Swiss Army knife for all home repairs.

You know who I think will be important? Librarians. If they can be more like this guy. The thing is, a lot of them are. Librarians had to learn the 'net early. Searchability and storage are kind of second nature to them.

The crossroads, for users of the digital media, has to do with intention vs. passivity. If you can act with intention when you look for information, you use the internet. If you put yourselves in the hands of google, the net uses you.

It's the same crossroads for social media, and my (somewhat hopeful) guess is that some people will leve Facebook and build social media sites that they truly control. This could happen at a place like Trinity. It could also happen in a community of creators and users, whether it's the arts community in Hartford or people who practice yoga in the Midwest or people who are really interested in mass transit. Build the system and make laws while you do. It's not that far from what we did the night we made up Grumpy.com.

What I've been thinking about

2009-12-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Contrary to my original plan, I didn't devote a class to aggregators. That was probably a mistake. I realized that after listening to and pondering a show on the subject by my colleague Mr. Dankosky.

People use these things a lot, whether its a user-rated model like Digg or a bot-driven model like Memeorandum. Or algo-driven like Google news. It's also incresingly common to see news coverge of an item's performance on memeorandum, as if that measured something (which it probably does ...in a circular, self-reinforcing manner).

TPM DC had it at 11, adding that Rahm Emmanuel told staffers "not to come back to
the next day's meeting if they hadn't read the article." The Daily Beast got it
at one twenty and, by afternoon, it was at the top of the Memeorandum--a site
that highlights in real time what is being most heavily linked to--homepage..

Obviously, that starts to put a lot of power in certain (sometimes robotic) hands. Which makes it pretty important to figure out, as this and other sites do, what's really going on with something like Google news.

But, the other problem with aggregation is that it's ahistorical and acontextual.

I mean, you can follow the links and dig around and find that stuff, but it's not there on the surface of the site itself. And that makes me wonder whether the aggregators promote a kind of snapshot-thinking. It's nice to be"ïn the moment" in your zen practice. In your understanding of news and the world you live in, not so much.

But then it's also not as simple as that, particularly at Digg, which has a really interesting search function. I decided to type in something releatively esoteric, something connected to a relatively distant news event.

So I typed in "Zoe Baird"(long story).

And I was impressed.

I even followed one of the links and wound up at this blog which regularly offers, of all things, sort of an aggregation of interesting history links.

It all made me think, though, that storage and searchability are huge battlefronts in the future of 'net culture. In the world of search, Google is inadequate and even if it were adequate it doesn't make sense to give it so much power. My guess is that there will be, there should be eventual search engine models that work in different ways. Maybe even search engines that mirror our various perspectives a little bit. Either that, or materials will be grouped and archived in places that make them easier to search in a more specific and nuanced and efficient way than the Google page-rank system. (For example, today I wanted to read an article that explains the rugby in "Invictus" to me. I bet such an article exists, but Google was a shitty way to have to look for it. But I bet somebody like our own Kevin could start a site that culls and groups the kind of article that cross references from films-of-interest to interests-sparked-by-those-films. And that site would NOT make me wade through the self-published stuff by untalented amateurs: "We didn't get until the end that Invictus was a poem. He should make that more clear.")

But then there's a separate set of issues about who stores stuff and where that stuff is stored. I don't really speak the language of server farms and clustered networks ... yet. But I feel like that's important in a way most of us don't get. I mean, it's like "Terminator." A lot of power is flowing over to the info equivalent of SkyNet. It's probably too important for us to let ourselves be stupid about it, you know?

A little weekend McReading

2009-12-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

The second part of U.M., although long, is actualy more readable than the first, because it's a little less theory and a little more practice. I won't subject you to much of it, but do read Chapter 25 --on the Telegraph. (You'll find some amazing stuff there.), Chapter 31 on Television (possibly the most discussed chapter of part II, and the crtivcial reception to U.M. (starts on page 545 in the edition that most of us have).

A rolling log of McLuhan questions and answers

2009-12-07T12:37:00.001-08:00

1. Why does MM says movies are hot but TV is cool?
(for me, it has something to do with the difference between dreaming and processing reality).
2. Is Google hot or cool?
3. What would MM have said about talk radio, from Limbaugh forward? [Think about what he says about symphony rehearsals]{but also think about the phrase "the illusion of"}
4. What's the deal with email. [Hint it's a _______medium trying to accomplish a ____________purpose.] What would MM have said about emoticons.
5. Comic strips!
6. Somehow this became a class at least partly about Eliot, so I point out to you that Benda -- whom McLuhan cites -- was supported by Eliot. You could take the Benda/MM argument and apply it to David Letterman and Harvey Pekar. Sharp differences in understanding and accepting roles.
7. MM says that "implosion" ended, in some ways, the notion of rugged individualty. Did the 'Net open that possibility back up? Did the 'Net in any sense, cause "explosion."
8. MM says media is power and that the owners of media tend not to be cared about content. What does this mean? And can it be different on the 'Net. Is the 'Net -- in its diffused ownership -- in someway an outgrowth of MM's ideas?
9. For the idea of cooling off -- consider Moses and the tablets.
10. Do we have permanent goals even as innovations disrupt us? What does MM say about the transfer of consciousness into the digital world?
11. What would MM tell Dan -- I can never teach a class like this again with out a Dan -- to do.? What is the job of a Dan in the digital world? If you can (or should) neither completely reject or embrace it, what do you do?

Going too far?

2009-12-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

or just an MM moment?

Mix-a-Lot

2009-12-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

So is the 'net hot or cool? Matt D. is struggling with this question right now. Ordinarily, we would say that speed and intensity go with the idea of hot, right. The 'net does this in ways nobody could have imagined. But ...where there's a really big but there. And I like it.

On the media fence

2009-12-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

Props to Lisa, who found this essay. And this part, I think, is the part that might speak to the current mental condition of her and Dan (according to Lisa) anbd I would add several others in the room, including probably me.

... I feel a deep personal connection with Understanding Media because
the book was published the same year I was born. We have both entered middle age
now. For me, this means being frustrated with people older than I am for feeling
ill at ease with technologies that both fascinate me and facilitate my everyday
tasks. It also means being equally frustrated with those younger than I am
(particularly my students), who seem to have lost touch with narrative-driven
technologies such as books and old-style movies. I also feel a certain sense of
paranoia, suspecting that younger people now place me in the category of those
discomfited by newer technologies.
For Understanding Media, I suspect middle
age means sitting on the fine line between classic and anachronism. We are
living in the future that the book foretold. We cannot but acknowledge the truth
in many of its pithy aphorisms. In fact they seem self-evident, even if we can
still appreciate McLuhan’s gift for metaphor in stating them. Perhaps we repeat
his legendary phrases too glibly. Perhaps we’re not repeating them all that
frequently anymore. Much has happened since Understanding Media appeared in
1964—to the book’s place in society and to society itself. To me, it is a
classic and just as worthwhile a read for the “millennial” generation as for the
baby boomers.

I read this...

2009-12-06T15:09:00.001-08:00

...and I thought of Dan.

One question I will ask tomorrow night

2009-12-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

What do you think MM would say about our class if he walked in an beheld it, not having seen a college class for a decade?

Tiger Burning Bright

2009-12-06T10:47:00.000-08:00

So here's an MMish story from today's NYTimes.

Read, in particular, the last quote in the story, from the Daish guy. It's right out of the MM playbook. The medium and what it can do are more important than facts and details.

Maybe I'm stretching a point or forcing a comparison, but I linked it to what MM said about Cubism. that Cubism -- through its claim to be able to tell the entirey of a a visual story, the inside and the outside -- in two-dimensions was asserting the dominance of its medium.

And when you think about it the way, something like auto-tune the news is a similar assertion about media.

The new electric structuring

2009-12-05T13:14:00.001-08:00

Jess found this clip (although I think the embed was disabled, so you have to click through). Watch it. Whoever is directing the camera work has read MM and has a sense of humor. Because they are almost over-making his point, trying to see if they can overwhelm his content by overemphasizing the medium. And he's trying not to have a point, because or a fixed physical position, of course, he has already doped out the situation.

The thing is, MM himself was embodying an artifact verging on extinction. The celebrity-intellectual. They made a joke about him on Laugh-In. And look at how abstruse his work is. There is no modern counterpart, is there?

We bring good things to light

2009-12-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

So Courtney A writes:

Maybe I am going to be wrong about this, but if Marshall decides to use a
light bulb as his example for something that lacks content but creates an
instant environment, does that mean I can take anything and apply these
principles? I guess everything in the world somehow has a "social effect",
but it must be dependent on the society, right? Because some cultures
still do not use light bulbs and wouldn't be subject to the light bulb theory
... but maybe they use fire, so does that count too?

Here's how I see it. MM cites the lightbulb just because he doesn't have to separate it from its message. It doesn't really have one. So it's easy to talk about it just as a medium. And as a medium, it does all those thing MM talks about. When you think about life before artificial light, you realize that, among other things, night was this huge fracking deal. Third shift? Are you kidding? People were just happy to make it through the night alive. There is this amazing book about the whole subject. So artifical lighting completely renegotiated our relationship with darkness. Work, family, schooling, the life of the intellect, sex, sleep. (For much of human history, towns and cities closed huge gates at darkness and sentries walked the wall, and you couldn't get in or you had the pay a toll to get in the lone gate. And it sucked if you mistimed your journey and got locked out in the frightening and completely dark countryside.) So MM says, think bout that, think about how the environment of human life changed because of this medium.

From there it is easier to understand how he views, say, the Kennedy-Nixon debates. What was said and who they were were very unimportant (to McLuhan and -- I think you would concede -- to the outcome) compared to the fact that they were on television. Television was the message. Therefore understanding television was, in a certain sense, more important and more predictive than understanding Vietnam or the economy. Because television renegotiated our relationship to so many things, including potential presidents. And people still don't get this. How many completely smart and reasonable people do you know who just cannot figure out why Dennis Kucinich does not do well in in national campaigns?

Mac users

2009-12-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

This guy has some helpful interperetations.

Let's get this one out of the way

2009-12-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Eminiem, assigned

2009-12-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

The really essential stuff is in those first seven chapters.
We can cherry-pick the rest. So, to start, read Part I.

Eminem

2009-12-01T14:28:00.001-08:00

Tell me this was not written in the last seven years:

In our present electric age the imploding or contracting energies of our
world now clash with the old expansionist and traditional patterns of
organization. Until recently our institutions and arrangements, social,
political, and economic, had shared a one-way pattern. We still think of it as
"explosive," or expansive; and though it no longer obtains, we still talk about
the population explosion and the explosion in learning. In fact, it is not the
increase of numbers in the world that creates our concern with population.
Rather, it is the fact that everybody in the world has to live in the utmost
proximity created by our electric involvement in one another's lives.

Kevin2015 ...

2009-11-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

...is cutting edge internet TV and

something along the lines of Google Wave, an
even-more-instant-than-Twitter real-time-service that somehow gets news to
millions in a blink of an eye. That'll actually be it's name:
EvenMoreInstantThanTwitterRealTimeServiceThatImprovesOnTheIdeasOfGoogleWave.
Google Wave users will hate it.

eMatt

2009-11-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

Matt D. Wonders what happens when the aggregators have little or nothing left to aggregate.
And he thinks the policy-makers still have a lot of power, even in eDemocracy.

All in all a typical day in TrinblogVoxLand

2009-11-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

OK, Lisa is freaking out but in a really really interesting post and she wants an iPhone and intends to contribute to democracy and become part of complete storytelling.

Dan worries that people are blinded by the shining promise of technology without really insisting on the preservation of any humanistic standards to go with it. He is both pessimisatic and strangely hopeful.

And Courtney found this remarkable next-phase of the New York Times and correctly (I think) delved into Creative Commons because she noted the angst in the online world over who owns what as copyright ahd paywalls and the in-out flow of information becopme more pressing issues. The basic CC argument, I think, is: to get more famous, don't charge money. But don't lose ownership. Then, if and when you get famous you can think some more of it. Noted that Lessig (see ignorance post) licenses his book through CC.

Nobody asked me, but I think there's a backlash coming against the free flow of information. Consider the Fairey/AP case.
And then there's Murdoch's block Google movement, which we need to talk about tonight.

You do/don't like the idea of posting leaked material to reddit and then letting the crowd sort it

2009-11-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

Jessica raised some interesting questions on whether the (claimed) mission gets accomplished.
So did Allison, although she liked the set-up of reddit.

The rational ignorance argument

2009-11-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

So Jessica's blog led me to this lengthy article basically arguing that transparency -- one of the pillars of eGovernance -- has its downsides.
Sheila would call that reporting without context.
Matt D. Would call it the problem of everybody.
Jess cited this response and there was this one on the same site.

Mostly, I think this stuff is not that hard.
If you can get to this file, you can begin asking questions, good questions that need to be asked. And you don't need to be a reporter.

Sally2015

2009-11-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

Sally really stepped up on this thought experiment.

Update on what Aldon is thinking about

2009-11-30T11:36:00.001-08:00

I didn't know there were two different Epics.

My assignment and thought experiment for you

2009-11-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

Watch the scary 2014 video again. Then imagine a similar not-too-distant future. The NY Times, as we know it, is gone. So is the Courant. So are some other old semi-reliable big media models.

What do YOU see in its place?

What are YOUR content consumption habits, at that point?

What role do you see yourself playing, possibly even as a content creator?

(Support your ideas with links whenever possible.)

Things to ponder.

1. the hot new term is mutualization. What does it mean? What role would it play in your vision?
Here Shirky talks about using the same idea to save local book stores. (Even Dan would be in favor of that!) Note his use of the term "third place" to describe a type of environment. One incredible visionary described, earlier this year, how that idea of a space or place could be applied to news.

2. In the eDemocracy model, we almost do without journalists. New tools are added almost every day. You could "know" almost anything you wanted to know, but then what would you do? (I'm asking!)

3. Another option is that linked causes would create the journalism they want. Nonprofits with mutual interests -- maybe even mutual interest not immediately evident -- could band together to create media. But then who consumes the media? What are the other questions that crop up and how do you answer those?

I've signed on as a paid advisor to the yearlong project, which will happen
largely virtually. The idea is that the alternative, progressive nonprofits —
the National Wildlife Federation, National Civic League, Freespeech.tv, Mother
Jones and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy — will assign point
people to work with producers selected by San Francisco State's Renaissance
Journalism Center.

4. Another argument you could make is that journalism of all kinds will take a back seat to PR and advertising, that those sectors have been faster to master. In which case, news platforms like Foursquare might take over and make where you go, what you buy, what you like the main story of interest to you. This guy, for instance, loves FourSquare, but I don't think he's worried about the future of journalism.

1. It’s a geolocation service that you use on your Smart Phone (I use it on my
iPhone and on my Droid). It competes with a raft of services like Britekite,
Google Latitude, Gowalla, and others.2. It’s a game. You check in where you are
and it gives you points and prizes.3. It enhances your experience in each
location. Check in at the Half Moon Bay Ritz and you’ll see tons of “tips” that
people have left for you. Francine Hardaway, for instance, tells you where the
best dog beach is. I tell you how to save $40 on smores. Other people tell you
that Tres Amigos is the best Mexican place nearby, etc.4. It’s an advertising
platform that enables local businesses to give you offers based on where you
check in. Check in at the San Francisco Apple Store, for instance, and the
Marriott across the street could offer you $5 off of a cocktail to get you to
cross the street and come over.

Oh, wait, maybe he does care. I love this post, where he says the little things make you smarter. And he argues that the little things are left out of a thing like memeorandum, which I admit to using pretty addictively. Ah, mememorandum. We never did get to discuss that. Note how other journalists now use it as a way to measure how widespread a meme is.

A Revolution?

2009-11-26T11:52:00.000-08:00

Right around the time our class is ending, there will be a flurry of activity in this movement exploring this idea that coalitions of programmers, developers, activists and citizen journalists could run around the outside of lobbyists. elected bigshots and the entrenched professional press.
So you've got a Hackathon.

And the Other Future of News. (#ofon)

eGovernance

2009-11-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

Building on EPIC 2014 and on the preceding post (in which reddit and Wikileaks basically "broke" a story with no assistance from anything resembling the news media) one notion Aldon Hynes will want to discuss is the idea of eGovernance:(not a very helpful wikipedia article)
as I understand it the idea that the power of online crowds could result in a pretty radical re-balancing of power, especially in terms of the chance citizens would have to affect government decisions in real time.

A kind of convergence

2009-11-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

So, this week Wikileaks -- an interesting concept in its own right -- released an incredible dump of 9/11-related messages .
It's of course way too much for any small group to humans to sort through.
So one of the places it went is to a special reddit thread where the act of user-voting would theoretically flush significant material toward the top.
Reddit itself is worth a look.

Depth, of a sort

2009-11-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

One argument you could make is that what the web needs is not "the next new thing" but a chance to kind of catch its breath. It's a situation in which the amount of content vastly outstrips our ability to consume, store or even sort.
One reason I like the very old-fashioned Metafilter is that it's one of the places that guides you past some of the superficial stuff that so annoys Dan.
I mean, come on, somebody making Kant fun?

"The Road"

2009-11-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

Getting warmed up.
I'm pretty sure I taught this video in 2005, my first class about the internet. Weidly enough, as Aldon Hynes will say, some its predictions have already come true but a lot of its implicit questions have not really been figured out even now.

Another question for next Monday:
Is there a safe way to manage your web identity?

Much more to come.

I still don't know jack

2009-11-23T14:41:00.000-08:00

I think one of the keys to Twitter is the slight impression of anonymity. It's less binding-to-you than Facebook.
Twitter is about content and conversation -- and the blurring of the two.
The "following" feature is kind of interesting. In a way it's a lot more invasive than Facebook.
Oh, I give up.
You guys are going to have to figure this out.

Scoble

2009-11-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

Doing Twitter wrong?

Teach me about Twitter

2009-11-23T13:12:00.000-08:00

Some basics: Cortney C. has some useful guides and hints.
And Kasey found a very cool way of telling the story of T.

Following:
This, via Corutney A.

Sally: "Like a small, easy Web."
How Courtney C. came to like Twitter (better than blogging, anyway).
Sheila, on why she likes it.
Greg on why he likes it -- a very McLuhanian take.
Courtney A. just doesn't frackin' like it. And you know she tried. And I know what she means, too. Twitter almost isn't enough of a place. She also found this response to unflattering Twitter theories.
Jess really tried too. But it seemed hollow.
I like this (via Lisa) about the political uses of Twitter. And this which calls it a totally alien form of communcation

uses:
Matt D. "Real time story telling."
And poetry!
Matt Fitz on hashtags.
Kasey: Cultivate an audience and watch the news go by.
Searching. (Kasey found that and said this. We should try an in-class experiment.) I like the idea that you can get unbranded information, but so far in my experiments, I didn't find much,. Wrong search topics?
David says when you post a question, someone answers.

Greg likes the geostamping., but Allison doesn't.
Courtney C likes this, instead of Tweedeck.

Making us stupid?

2009-11-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

Kind of what we have been talking about all year.

More ...

2009-11-23T07:39:00.000-08:00

Kevin on Twitter Apps.

As someone who regularly uses Twitter (yet doesn't actually tweet all that
much), some may find it odd that I rarely, if ever, actually visit Twitter.com.
While I have nothing against Twitter's website per say, I do find that user an
application for my Twitter viewing is much better. I've tried many (and given
them a fair shake) desktop apps ranging from Tweetie to twhirl to Twitterrific to TweetDeck and on the iPhone, I've
tried TweetDeck and TwitterFon.By far, my favorite, on both platforms, is
TweetDeck. The layout is simple and user-friendly. It's a full featured app that
is powerful yet accessible. It's easy to navigate, easy to pick up yet easy to
utilize to its full potential.I do find it interesting that there is such a
proliferation of Twitter Apps readily available for free use. Unlike the other
major social networks, such as Facebook or MySpace, Twitter Apps have thrived to
the point that I'm not sure I know of any of my friends who actually utilize
Twitter by going to the service's actual website. The app experience allows your
feed to be open all the time, running in the background, allowing quick access
for checking Twitter whenever you want without having to visit the site. I guess
I've become the de-facto app guy for the class so it probably doesn't come as a
surprise that I support and use an app for this but in this case, the app
geniunely makes a Twitter experience easier and more effective.

And on differences with FB

Just as a start to my week's posts (I'm a Twitter believer), I think the
easiest way to look at the difference between the Facebook Status Update Feed
vs. Twitter's feed is that Facebook's is designed to keep track of people you
know. The beauty of Twitter lies in it's ability to follow people you don't. As
a result, where Facebook is a way to keep tabs on your friends and their
activities, Twitter is much more a true news feed from around the world. It is
entirely user-generated and operated.Some people were complaining last night
that they didn't have enough people to follow to make Twitter worthwhile. I'm
not sure Twitter is meant to just check in on friends. It is easy, however, for
people you want to hear more from (sports figures/writers, movie/music critics,
industry leaders, stars) to broadcast their thoughts. I don't necessarily "know"
or need to know ESPN's Adam Schefter but I "know" the Twitter Adam Schefter, who
has the best breaking news on the NFL around.

Kevin Knows Twitter

2009-11-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

Here are his fave five.

Here's my list of 5 potential uses of Twitter:1. Crowd-Sourcing: A quick
search for a hashtag or trending topic will give one a pretty good idea as to
what the masses are saying about it. This was initially more difficult without
the use of a client desktop application but since Twitter has implemented a
viable search on their own site, this is a quick and easy process. Let's say I
wanted to see what Eagles fans thought about Sunday Night Football. Search for "Iggles" and there you go.2.
News Source: One can get breaking news information quicker on Twitter than any
place else on the 'net. Whether you choose to follow news organizations such as
the NY Times or rely strictly on the
idea of citizen journalism, a Twitter user can get to the point info fast and
easy.3. Blogging Platform: Tired of writing longer blog entries? Twitter
alleviates that with it's 140 character restriction. When a Twitter user is
efficient and up to date (Adam
Schefter), you can get the information you want without having to sift
through a longer blog entry. Twitter forces the user to boil down his/her post
to the bare minimum, a blast of information without the (sometimes) needless
opinion.4. Keeping up with Friends: An offshoot of #3 and an intrusion on
Facebook's (which has essentially adopted Twitter's format for their news feed)
territory, one could use Twitter for what doubters hate Twitter for. If you want
to tweet that you're sitting watching TV while eating Cheetos, have at it. Just
don't expect anyone other than your friends to follow you.5. Meeting New People:
While Facebook is designed for keeping track of people you know, Twitter is much
easier to find people with similar interests and seeing what they have to say.
Utilize the excellent WeFollow and you can
find Twitterers for just about any topic you want to learn about.

#here

2009-11-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

Interesting use of hashtags.
People use them to create a kind of parallel same-time reality.

Or as organizing tools.

Coupla things

2009-11-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

Sheila has the cool idea of creating a #Trinblogwar hashtag.

And then there's this.

I still don't really understand the Twitterverse

2009-11-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Do you?

Twitter-mining

2009-11-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! jumps in.

Measuring your tweetness.

2009-11-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

As if you didn't have enough anxieities.

Rotten Twimatoes

2009-11-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Sort of an interesting use of Twitter.

Speaking of rotten tomatoes...

Tiwi$$er

2009-11-21T08:45:00.001-08:00

On a slightly more serious note, here is the latest musing about the business end of Twitter.

Tweggo

2009-11-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

Please note the role Twitter is playing in getting us through the national Eggo crisis.

But then, it has divided Canada.

Somebody else figure out what this means

2009-11-20T05:24:00.001-08:00

I'm reaching the point where some of the things I learn sound like the teacher talking in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

How You Tweeted

2009-11-20T05:13:00.001-08:00

A nice example of Twitter in action right where we are.

Life Is Tweet

2009-11-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

I barely know what I'm doing, but I did set up a Tweetdeck account. So far, it does not really please me, but I haven't figured out how to get the columns the way I want them.
same goes for TwitScoop. What I really want is a Twitscoop feed onto Tweetdeck that is customized for the searches I want. I bet there's a way to do it.
I did have some success searching Hartford on TwitScoop. I found some people who, I think, will be helpful in some shows I'm doing in early December. (They are young Christians, and I don't know how else I would have found them.) So I've started following them.
I also purged out some of the followees one seems to get as a default setting on Twitter. I kept a few, like Jimmy Fallon, just for the sake of heterogenity. Then I started following Shirky and a few other people germane to our work.

Nothing about Twitter

2009-11-19T05:47:00.001-08:00

More of a continuation of last week's discussion.

Shirky strikes again !!!

2009-11-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

This is SO what we've been talking about.

I Tweet, Therefore I am

2009-11-18T04:57:00.000-08:00

If you're puzzled, you can read this helpful intro. There are links near the end that go into more depth. You might even fool around with posterous if you get curious.

This guy offers a few tips.

I'm Thecolinmcenroe, by the way.

Could someone tell me tonight if...

2009-11-16T14:48:00.000-08:00

...monkeys are flying out my ass?
Or some other 2012 thing?

Because the improbable is happening.

And, indeed, for next week, you must all have Twitter accounts and have used them and have learned about Tweetdeck and Twitscoop.
And hashtags.

You'll all be required to find FIVE things you could use Twitter for.
This has some of the same ones but more.

The proverbial this and that

2009-11-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Only Courtney would have found this, but here is the website referenced in this research paper. (And here is the support group for non-profit sites.)
The thing about MyMissourian is that there's a friendliness we might like to preserve and/or copy, even if we acknowledge that the site is too random. The look and feel kind of reaches (come of) the people. Read Courtney's meditation on content, especailly her interesting assertion that online content if often presumed "alternative."

Kevin tackled the Sports question.

Blink: How about that first impression?
Here's Allison.
Courtney has a few she likes.
Mfitz cruised the Webbys. Good idea.
John cites a few sources for thoughts about design. He likes simple and clean and useable.
And this post from Lisa suggests that, in terms of courting millennials, John may be right.

Comments and interaction:
I'm sort of worried about Dan. In this post, he actually embraces the viewpoint of online culture. It's also a very well done overview of the interactivitiy question.
Jess shows you what a blogback looks like.
Very nice post by Lisa on commenting policies.

I like Matt Dwyer's idea of tying in blogs by subject.

From the reader standpoint

2009-11-16T04:37:00.000-08:00

So, let's say I am the hypothetical reader who really cares about the political and governmental business of the state of Connecticut. It's Monday morning. I'm ready to begin my week. What do I want?
I probably want to know what got said on those Sunday morning state news shows that nobody watches. I want to know any interesting gossip and little stories I can amuse my colleagues with. I want to know if any news broke over the weekend in any venue. Above all, I want my snapshot to be comprehenensive. I want to look at one thing that doesn't leave anything out.
I some ways, my best shot right now is this non-organized impossible-to-search fairly new thing.
But it's not really what I want.

What I want does not exist right now.

Monday night

2009-11-15T16:28:00.000-08:00

One group wants to give multiple presentations. I guess that's OK with me. You will also have time to huddle at the start of the evening.

Take me out...

2009-11-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

Have any of you thought/talked about putting in a carefully targeted sports component? Not game coverage but some kind of niche commitment to a watchdog role. I guess this would focus mainly on UConn, a big time sports program where, I think it could be argued, the paid press doesn't really like to poke around all that much, so that the big story of the year -- before the Jasper Howard case -- was broken by Yahoo! Sports.
During the Calhoun-Krayeske run-in, the sports press largely bought Calhloun's claim about $12 million without even asking for proof. Other non-sports reporters had to go in and dig up the numbers.
And so on.
Maybe there's a vacuum.

The President's College 2011

De Laude Scriptorium

Lethem

Is authorship a social fiction?

What is authorship?

Sampling

Marcus Boon

Lethem on Music

Mash-ups

Jaron Lanier

David Shields

Helene Hegemann

Appropriation

Against hierarchy

What's going on today?

Two things happened simultaneously

Try to remember

The New/Old Echo Chamber

The bad news

The good news

Week 2 -- Let's start with a little perspective on the press.

A few general principles

How the world surfs

Eminem

Let's Get It Started

So why do this at all?

Case study

Techno-literacy

Assimilate or else

Further reading on websites

The Social Network

The joys of crowdsourcing

Sites that aggregate

Let's talk Twitter

The Commandments

Future Games

Just a collage

Not related to class?

The Human Factor

You have Kasey to thank for

On separation

Jess Passing Through / Lisa Can't Stand the Rain

Courtney A.. at peace? Not really

Our Poet Laureate

...and thereafter our tools shape us

What I've been thinking about

A little weekend McReading

A rolling log of McLuhan questions and answers

Going too far?

Mix-a-Lot

On the media fence

I read this...

One question I will ask tomorrow night

Tiger Burning Bright

The new electric structuring

We bring good things to light

Mac users

Let's get this one out of the way

Eminiem, assigned

Eminem

Kevin2015 ...

eMatt

All in all a typical day in TrinblogVoxLand

You do/don't like the idea of posting leaked material to reddit and then letting the crowd sort it

The rational ignorance argument

Sally2015

Update on what Aldon is thinking about

My assignment and thought experiment for you

A Revolution?

eGovernance

A kind of convergence

Depth, of a sort

"The Road"

I still don't know jack

Scoble

Teach me about Twitter

Making us stupid?

More ...

Kevin Knows Twitter

#here