Sunday, December 10, 2006
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Just a couple more things
I want to return, if we have time, to Swarm Intelligence, aka the hive mind, aka digital maoism. Read that essay and these responses. A lot to chew on.
And then, if you want to follow the advertising boys better, here's a good site to visit. I use it a lot these days.
And then, if you want to follow the advertising boys better, here's a good site to visit. I use it a lot these days.
Jeez, Is He EVER Gonna Post About the Last Class???
Finally, yes. One question that has been nagging me a bit is this: Are blogs an exciting new medium now the way they were scant years ago? The answer is yes only if people are finding new ways to work with them. Take a look at these, which represent, in most cases, attempts to tweak the way a blog works.
Also coming to the last class will be Steve Wolfberg and Tom Bradley from Cronin to talk about the imact of all this new media on the advertising world and about what works and what doesn't.
Also coming to the last class will be Steve Wolfberg and Tom Bradley from Cronin to talk about the imact of all this new media on the advertising world and about what works and what doesn't.
Monday, December 04, 2006
SNS Live
An aside: with each passing day I realize I am not really qualified to teach this class. Look at the conferences I don't go to. Hey, lots of people had lots to say this week, so check out everybody else's stuff. I''m just going to make sure we have quick cuts to MySpace, LiveJòurnal, Friendster, Facebook, and ... God help me ...it turns out we're old and ugly and marking time until death ...eons. Sara thought LJ had some interesting communities of interest, but I would observe that Wikia may be doing the same subject better. Certainly, this is Sara's idea of heaven. I wonder if the smaller, more lcosed model may ultimately be mre effective. Renee pointed out this.
B to the Lizzogg
My man Scotty-B kept it real this week. Chck out his blog and click on all the lizz-inks. Especially 'Sheed. Wud up, 'Sheed?
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Blogger Still Broken.
Can't believe I have to handcode.
OK, This article from the WSJ gives you some sense of the problem facing something like MySpace. Scale. Scale. Scale. And spam and inauthenticity.
This article may be even more paranoid than Jason Scott. I'm just tossing it in here for the hell of it.
This sort of gives you a sample of how much information you can move on one MySpace page. (I'm just waiting for the "I never meant this to beused in a class!" wail.
But it's not all young people getting personal, huh? WARNING, the scary song does not go away right away. And also, this is just kind of scary in general.
OK, This article from the WSJ gives you some sense of the problem facing something like MySpace. Scale. Scale. Scale. And spam and inauthenticity.
This article may be even more paranoid than Jason Scott. I'm just tossing it in here for the hell of it.
This sort of gives you a sample of how much information you can move on one MySpace page. (I'm just waiting for the "I never meant this to beused in a class!" wail.
But it's not all young people getting personal, huh? WARNING, the scary song does not go away right away. And also, this is just kind of scary in general.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
This Week
I hope it is needless for me to say that this week, as we study MySpace and other social networking sites, you really have to put your toe into at least one, especially if you have never joined one before. I joined Eons, which is proving to be kind of boring. But look at them all. And then REALLY look at at least one.
There's starting to be a fair amount of scholarship about all this.
This guy focuses on Facebook.
I would give you more, but blogger is sort of broken at the moment and I am having to hand code in the links.
There's starting to be a fair amount of scholarship about all this.
This guy focuses on Facebook.
I would give you more, but blogger is sort of broken at the moment and I am having to hand code in the links.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Communities
The brash and brazen -- but nonetheless helpful -- Suzan has found a very good article for us to read.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
We've done it again!
We have upset somebody, although I am, frankly, surprised this time, inasmuch as I spent the last ten minutes of class raving (semi-incoherently) about how great this was.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Lucy in the Sky
This person could easily be a big star in blogging, IMHO. I'm going to keep my eye on her. Thanks, Cosmo. Boy, livejournal never looked so bangin', huh?
Sunday, November 26, 2006
The Kind of Blog That Pisses Scott Off...Pisses Off Scott?
I was looking at a lot of art in New York City this weekend ... at MoMa and in the galleries around Chelsea too. And it made me think about blogs-as-art. And whether bloggers are just kind of opting-out of artistry. From the Steve Himmer essay I linked below:
The latitude allowed a weblogger, over time, to unfold the many aspects of his or her life and personality, and to do so in the same space in which they offer commentary on politics and culture, is a luxury not afforded to journalists or even novelists: discrete, commodifiable work requires a purpose, a point, or at the very least a markable focus. This is not to say, however, that the self presented on a weblog is a “complete” or even an accurate one: just as in journalism, memoir, or fiction, decisions are made about what to include and what to exclude. The weblogger, in that sense, can be read as fictional, as a character, in precisely the same ways that Andy Rooney or James Joyce can be—furthering the collapse between factual and fictional, public and private, and distinct genres in general. The play of time in the weblog allows for the presence of what Walter Benjamin calls an “aura,” the work’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence in the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence” (p. 222). The weblog—rather, the weblog as it was in the moment before the most recent addition or change—cannot be reproduced: it is inextricably bound with its moment of production, and that moment is lost when a new moment occurs in its place.
But that got me to thinking about a potentially Scott-off-pissing blog about which last year's class obsessed for a while. We went back to its beginning and thumbed around in it and could not decide how much of it was real. Since then, I see she kept it going, though a title change that happened right here. And here it is today. But she seems to epitomize some of the issues discussed in the essay, which continues:
That the weblog is always in process, never completed, can be read as both its greatest strength and, in another way, its weakness as a form. Burger (1995) argues that the project of the avant-garde is to collapse the distinction between the art object and the process of its creation, that art (and the creation of art) should be integrated into the practice of everyday life. “What is negated,” Burger writes,
is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life praxis of men. When the avant-gardistes demand that art become practical once again, they do not mean that the contents of works of art should be socially significant. The demand is not raised at the level of the contents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way art functions in society, a process that does as much to determine the effects that works have as does the particular content. (p. 49)
The latitude allowed a weblogger, over time, to unfold the many aspects of his or her life and personality, and to do so in the same space in which they offer commentary on politics and culture, is a luxury not afforded to journalists or even novelists: discrete, commodifiable work requires a purpose, a point, or at the very least a markable focus. This is not to say, however, that the self presented on a weblog is a “complete” or even an accurate one: just as in journalism, memoir, or fiction, decisions are made about what to include and what to exclude. The weblogger, in that sense, can be read as fictional, as a character, in precisely the same ways that Andy Rooney or James Joyce can be—furthering the collapse between factual and fictional, public and private, and distinct genres in general. The play of time in the weblog allows for the presence of what Walter Benjamin calls an “aura,” the work’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence in the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence” (p. 222). The weblog—rather, the weblog as it was in the moment before the most recent addition or change—cannot be reproduced: it is inextricably bound with its moment of production, and that moment is lost when a new moment occurs in its place.
But that got me to thinking about a potentially Scott-off-pissing blog about which last year's class obsessed for a while. We went back to its beginning and thumbed around in it and could not decide how much of it was real. Since then, I see she kept it going, though a title change that happened right here. And here it is today. But she seems to epitomize some of the issues discussed in the essay, which continues:
That the weblog is always in process, never completed, can be read as both its greatest strength and, in another way, its weakness as a form. Burger (1995) argues that the project of the avant-garde is to collapse the distinction between the art object and the process of its creation, that art (and the creation of art) should be integrated into the practice of everyday life. “What is negated,” Burger writes,
is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life praxis of men. When the avant-gardistes demand that art become practical once again, they do not mean that the contents of works of art should be socially significant. The demand is not raised at the level of the contents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way art functions in society, a process that does as much to determine the effects that works have as does the particular content. (p. 49)
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