provides the class with tonight's slogan
No matter who put it there, the fact that we can hear the real voices of Alvin and the Chipmunks makes us feel more powerful.
There are two "interesting" things about the Alvin guy. This is one of them: Cousin of author William Saroyan, with whom he collaborated on the song "Come On-a My House," Rosemary Clooney's all-time biggest hit
Scott rocks Eminem I:
hot - mechanical, structured, requires little participation, extends one sense in high definition. ex: radiocold - electrical, requires lots of participation. ex: telephoneThis conception got me thinking about sites like metafilter and slashdot, others, and blogs in general. Are they hot or cold?Unfortunately, McLuhan doesn't do a good job of defining "participation" - whether it is group participation or individual, so I can't really make a judgment. The computer itself is an electrical device, but I don't know, either, whether the web falls into another classification - the digital - perhaps.These sites, do, however, live off the participation of their communities. In reading, responding, and supplying new content. They bring in many pieces of information from many sources, but are also very, very, high definition. Is all this an area that goes beyond McLuhan's ideas about media, or at least my remedial understanding of it? Thoughts?hot - mechanical, structured, requires little participation, extends one sense in high definition. ex: radiocold - electrical, requires lots of participation. ex: telephone
Jim on Cred: The web is different than many other mediums in that newness lends credibility while experience and history almost seems a negative trait.
Caitlin on Cred:
Metafilter is pretty accessible to all and allows anybody to sashay on in and add a link or a comment. I like the site's articulated goal: "This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members." Sounds a little less kumbaya than Wikipedia's "We're going to create a space for THE SUM OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!" (grin). Metafilter makes you rack up a little street cred before you get to post on a main page and be a lofty contributor. You've got a waiting period of at least a week (oh God! A whole WEEK!? A veritable cyber LIFETIME!), plus postings, before becoming eligible for this honor.
christuhfuh:
Read BoingBoing's linking policy. It's terrific.
but then NewsCloud has the thing abnout YouTube stripping out all its copyrighted stuff.
Jim to Steph: I think I've written more in the past few weeks than at any point in my life. I've also had to think a lot more about what others are saying and how to respond in a concise, clear fashion.
Steph and Jason on Hacking!
Kirsten on Steph and Jason and the indelibility of speech!!!
I thought this was an interesting policy regarding the comments:
We believe that discussions in Slashdot are like discussions in real life- you can't change what you say, you only can attempt to clarify by saying more. In other words, you can't delete a comment that you've posted, you only can post a reply to yourself and attempt to clarify what you've said.In short, you should think twice before you click that 'Submit' button because once you click it, we aren't going to let you Undo it.Jason Scott mentioned something along these lines on another blog when the blogger deleted a post, but he had saved it. Blogs and the internet in general, containing the great ability to hit 'delete,' do give the illusion that you can say something without having to accept any serious consequences. Many times you can accomplish this, but on some occasions you honestly cannot have total control. You have to always worry about what you put out online. Many people are learning that the hard way when they get fired/suspended/reprimanded for something they put on a blog, myspace, etc. To some extent, this isn't as true in real life as slashdot claims. You can always lie about saying something, as long as it wasn't recorded and only a few people heard you say it. You can always claim they misquoted or misunderstood. It is much harder to deny what it is in print. You also can't be an 'anonymous coward' in real life, for the most part (by the way, what is with the hostile language?).
JSqP on ... stuff
Maybe I haven't poked around enough, but I think that many of these sites require user accounts to communicate, so that trolls are shot and killed before they cause too much damage. The effect, I think, is that these sites tend to gather together "like minds" that are receptive to the common viewpoint and resistant or combative to rogue views. Reading the Metafilter description about what makes a good post and what makes a bad post kind of struck me that way. I'm not sure what to think about Newscloud and maybe after I poke around a little more I'll understand it better, but it seems to be more of a thread-generation site than any kind of news service. Slashdot's threads are like a tree with a thousand roots, and in regard to reading any one thread through to completion I refer to my earlier "colossal waste of time" comment.
Sara doesn't feel so good:
I've never pushed it one step further into what Teilhard calls a "vast thinking membrane...containing our collective thoughts and experiences." Since infancy, we're taught to work in groups, to share, and to listen. But to me, these things always seemed confined to classrooms and homes and office spaces (in other words, confined to person-to-person contact), but in thinking of the internet as a membrane wherein our collective thoughts and experiences lie brings a new dimension to the concept of "teamwork." And when we join together, when we collaboratively blog and create sites like MetaFilter, are we building something that will soon take its own course, have its own "life" no longer under our control? It certainly seems that way. Let's look at MetaFilter. It was created by "bloggers" but now seems to sort of exist on its own, morphing as the users and their ideas multiply. Though I love The X-Files and have a geeky penchant for the Sci-Fi channel and horror movies, I've always found the idea of life in computers, within the internet or on blogging sites impossible.
Jim: I would like to discuss and learn more about the importance of visual appeal for sites. Some attract me and seem easy to use, while others turn me off and I find them confusing. I liked digg but not clipmarks. I'm sure its a personality, age, culture thing, but one worth exploring.
Steph was wondering where to find the history of metafilter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafilter
Rene: Metafilter's pull
As I reviewed the broad range of topics, I was compelled to read the article on performance enhancing drugs, computerless e-mail printer, etc, I realize that the site titles tend to draw the reader in to review archive articles and to ultimately register and start posting comments as well. There are numerous links even more comments in response to the weblog.
Caitlin to Jim
So the blog gives us distance and yes, by nature is analytical (or, in the words of my father, who now reads this blog as well as most of yours ((*Hi, Dad!*)) "seems like a whole lotta navel gazing to me, Cato.") but does it make us LESS human, or rather frighteningly moreso? Perhaps this'll mean me outing myself as something of a cynic, but I think that deep down inside, past the layers of kindness and rational justice, we're all just a little bit assholic--the blog just happens to lend itself so nicely to showcasing this basic human snarkitude. Also, aren't we always passing judgment on the people we meet, though it may be on some unnoticed, unconscious level? As a culture we've become so preoccupied with political correctness that it's hardly appropriate to breathe too heavily in someone's general direction, much less tell them what we think of them. I think that out of instinct and desire to be a) polite b) liked and c) cover our asses, we're far more apt to smile pretty and call people nitwits in our heads than we are to simply behave indifferently or express actual antipathy. So I don't know, Jim, if the blog makes us crueler by removing a level of humanity or if it makes us more honest by ripping off the bullshit colored mantle of proper social protocol. For the record, I hope it's the former, but I can't help but play devil's advocate and entertain the possibility of the latter.Also, I'd like to think that with carefully chosen words and clearly communicated ideas, blog intent can't be missed by too huge a margin. Text DOES communicate that which the author wishes--it's really a matter of careful diction and thorough cogitation before one gets to the point at which he hits "publish," and the words are up there forever. With that said... I think it's unlikely that bloggers often ARRIVE at that "thoroughly cogitated" point before hitting "publish" (I know I often don't). Therefore, intent is frequently slightly off-center and people, being slightly assholic at the core, love to be offended, so will naturally vault up onto their soapboxes and start a fight at really any given little time.
Slashdot's Commander Taco to Me:
I think Slashdot works quote well. What it does is disseminate the
days major tech/geek news, distilling out the cruft, and providing a
reasonable stab at the most important news of the day. Then it gives
people a place to discuss that news. People can participate as
observers viewing filtered subsets of the data, or use it like
newsgroups getting themselves neck deep in the debate.
Slashdot has changed in subtle ways over the years... I think in the
early days our stories were more inflammatory in tone. Now we tend
to let the users have the inflammatory discussion and let our stories
provide more of a starting point than an opinion. Initially I
selected almost every story, but today a staff of several help.
As far as troubles we've had over the year, I guess some general
axioms worth considering would be to be as open as you can be, as
transparent as possible. But when the line needs to be drawn to
obscure certain things, you must draw that line as opaque as possible.
For example we keep our moderation system fairly private to prevent
certain kinds of abuses. You mention wikipedia, because of the nature
of their system, it makes sense for them to provide in depth historic
logging information about every nitpicky change because a wikipedia
entry might last for months or years. Slashdot stories last only a
few days. They are more impulsive, so we find it advantageous to hide
some information because else people react with a kneejerk and hours
later the jerk may be all that is left ;)
Aldon, so necessary!Colin raises the interesting distinction between moving information and considering information. Various people looking at MeFi end up talking about how overwhelming the amount of information is. Some of this may get to the information overload that Toffler talks about in Future Shock. So, how do we deal with information overload and future shock?We look for tools to help us filter our information. The filters might be very sophisticated and spend time considering the information, yet this produces more information needing to be filtered. Or, the filter might be fairly simple, in terms of people simply flagging other information that they consider important; simply moving information.The latter, it would seem, moves us closer to emergent swam activity, where the swarm is smarter than the individuals in the swarm. The ants moving material back and forth are not considering the material that they are moving.This leads me to the discussion about Civilities. I’ve known Jon for quite a while and it seems as if his biggest hurdle, and the biggest hurdle of many online efforts, is to get critical mass. I’ve been involved with many efforts that never came close.One of the big issues is the role of the leader. DailyKos has achieved critical mass. Markos provides a strong leadership that encourages people to participate. Jane, at Firedoglake, does that herself in her own particular way. The question is, can a community emerge without a strong leader like that? What would it look like? That takes us, I believe to de Chardin. It seems as if the Noosphere is conceived of much more in that manner. Related to this is what Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy, calls Co-Intelligence.To tie this all back together, when you go back to Future Shock, our friends at Wikipedia tie this to the Technological Singularity.
6:18 AM
Monday, October 30, 2006
I, Robot
I agree with Caitlin that this post by Jim deserves wider comment. Maybe Scott, who has been delving into McLuhan, can help.
My response to his visit and his subsequent comments surprised me. The distance and analytical nature of the blog changed my voice, making it more metallic and harsh as I examined someone who I’d met for two hours and then passed judgment on him as if he were another blog. He is human and I forgot and in doing so became a little less human myself. That I think is the great flaw of blogs and technology – we have trouble communicating our humanity. There is no inflection of voice, a smile, a raised eyebrow to redirect, clarify or soften sarcasm, to add humor where it was meant to be. The words simply sit on the screen, not controlled by the writer, but interpreted by the reader. Even if we don’t assume new identities, as in Wikipedia or Second Life, we are new, different because of the flat nature of the medium. Perhaps, that is why there are all these odd fights, flaming on blogs and Wikipedia – the nuance of humanity is not there.
My response to his visit and his subsequent comments surprised me. The distance and analytical nature of the blog changed my voice, making it more metallic and harsh as I examined someone who I’d met for two hours and then passed judgment on him as if he were another blog. He is human and I forgot and in doing so became a little less human myself. That I think is the great flaw of blogs and technology – we have trouble communicating our humanity. There is no inflection of voice, a smile, a raised eyebrow to redirect, clarify or soften sarcasm, to add humor where it was meant to be. The words simply sit on the screen, not controlled by the writer, but interpreted by the reader. Even if we don’t assume new identities, as in Wikipedia or Second Life, we are new, different because of the flat nature of the medium. Perhaps, that is why there are all these odd fights, flaming on blogs and Wikipedia – the nuance of humanity is not there.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
OK. Last thing? I promise.
What's the purpose -- you may ask -- of reading this batch of blogs? Well, that's sort of what I'm asking you. What does blogging do? And why are people trying to do it? One theory is that the internet could become a way of thinking together, as opposed to separately.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
I could be wrong about this ...
...but it seems to me the newer sites Aldon cited are more about moving information than considering it. I could get very addicted to digg, but it's not at all contemplative. An older site like Plastic was all about disucssion, with the rating of the comments being kind of the big thing. Plastic feels like it's shriveling up a little, although I could not find any acknolwedgement of that.
I'm geeking out today.
I'm geeking out today.
Aldon is right. I am behind the times. Although I prefer the slower, more meditative qualities of Metafilter to the fun, snappy collective-ADD vibe of Clipmarks. Maybe also, becuase I am an old, old man, I feel have already absorbed some of the info that might pop up here. Fainting goats are not news to me.
As is ALWAYS the case when you visit one of these blogs, visit the whole thing. Read some of the comments and get to know some of the requent posters/commenters. Who did this? Why? How does it work?
As is ALWAYS the case when you visit one of these blogs, visit the whole thing. Read some of the comments and get to know some of the requent posters/commenters. Who did this? Why? How does it work?
It's Raining, So There's Time to Think
To what degree is this class a swarm? I don't think we're there yet, but by the end of the term, we might be.
There are lot ways to think about this. One is to say that news (and news is just the spread of new information) has become a conversation, instead of a top-down instruction model. Civilities has tried hard to explore this question of whether pooling information deomcratically leads to a different place, but I get the feeling his site is kind of turning into a spore. I mean, I don't think he was able to get a lot of cooperation for a site that was, fundamentally, about the study of cooperation. Also, a lot of his links are busted because the sites went dead. I want to teach an hour or so of one of our classes about dead blogs. What happens when the blogger decides to pack it in? I bet Aldon has some poignant examples of and thoughts about that. Also, a long time ago, somebody brought up pamphleteers, so while I think of it here is somebody making that connection.
There are lot ways to think about this. One is to say that news (and news is just the spread of new information) has become a conversation, instead of a top-down instruction model. Civilities has tried hard to explore this question of whether pooling information deomcratically leads to a different place, but I get the feeling his site is kind of turning into a spore. I mean, I don't think he was able to get a lot of cooperation for a site that was, fundamentally, about the study of cooperation. Also, a lot of his links are busted because the sites went dead. I want to teach an hour or so of one of our classes about dead blogs. What happens when the blogger decides to pack it in? I bet Aldon has some poignant examples of and thoughts about that. Also, a long time ago, somebody brought up pamphleteers, so while I think of it here is somebody making that connection.
McBoingBoing
So we're looking at (more or less) collective efforts to pool and screen information that certain users would find ... what? ... useful? vital? entertaining? Here is BoingBoing, a perennial #1 site by the Technorati rating system. Why? And BB led me to Newscloud which has a different feel and, I guess, a different mission.
Wikipedia wants to be everything to everybody, right? What do these want to be. And do they represent some kind of effort to create a kind of swarm intelligence? I guess another question I have is, do they create sub-communities of knowing. I mean, if you paddled around in a cerain pool of these, would you wind up coated in a different set of memes than users of other pools? Of course you would. What are the implications of that?
I mean, we could begin to think of society as divided into people who want to know certain things and people who want to spread certain things. The job of the spreaders is obviously changing. And the experience of the knowers is changing too. But how? Really DO think of it as a swarm or a hive. I think some of the bees have jobs that never exited before.
Wikipedia wants to be everything to everybody, right? What do these want to be. And do they represent some kind of effort to create a kind of swarm intelligence? I guess another question I have is, do they create sub-communities of knowing. I mean, if you paddled around in a cerain pool of these, would you wind up coated in a different set of memes than users of other pools? Of course you would. What are the implications of that?
I mean, we could begin to think of society as divided into people who want to know certain things and people who want to spread certain things. The job of the spreaders is obviously changing. And the experience of the knowers is changing too. But how? Really DO think of it as a swarm or a hive. I think some of the bees have jobs that never exited before.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The Whole Wide World
I love you guys for using your blogs to process the visit by Jason Scott. I think it was one of my favorite class sessions ever. The more I teach -- and, I might add, I'm constantly wrestling with whether I should teach at all! -- the more I think the boundaries should be shoved aside as much as possible. I believe that you should all teach each other, in class and blog-to-blog; and I love the fact that the outside world comes bulling its way in. I know it's a little freaky sometimes, but, on balance, I think it's great. I wish more of you had been there for Aldon's visit, because it's a nice bookend with Jason. And Aldon, if you're out there, come back any time you feel like it. I feel the same way about last year's class. I'm happy thhat Eric and Matt and Brett have all come back to share stuff with you. Why should there be boundaries between one year and another? Maybe Elin will be popping in some night too? Bill on the other hand ...well, we might never get any of our work done. Very soon you'll also be meeting a few other bloggers.. Spazeboy, Caffeinated Geek Girl, and who knows who else?
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Coincidence
While we were in class last night, LaRouche supporters were disrupting the debate. I looked up LaRouche on Wikipedia. And the entry had gone into mediation.
Jason Leaves
One of the problems with teaching is that, while orchestrating the class and kind of worrying about the discussion, you don't always get to listen as completely as you would like to everything being said. I wish I had been able to absorb more of the remarkable stuff we heard from Jason Scott last night in his impromptu visit. Maybe some of you who took good notes will -- without revealing that one secret thing -- blog a little about it Scott and Caitlin both have. And Caitlin heard back from Jason. Already. My guess is that Jason, like Aldon, will hang around with us a bit for the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, as I tried, fumblingly, to say at the end, not every collective effort on the internet is as all-encompassing as as Wikipedia. Some things are just mostly fun. Start with a long visit with MetaFilter, one of my favorite sites. As usual, poke around into rules and background and try to figure out what that human network thing is over on the right. Who is here? What is the code? What makes something appropriate content for this site?
Finally, what should we do about this? Class field trip? Jimmy Wales, the Founder of Wikipedia, will be lecturing at UH Wednesday, November 15 at 7;30 in Lincoln Theater. Free but you need tickets.
Meanwhile, as I tried, fumblingly, to say at the end, not every collective effort on the internet is as all-encompassing as as Wikipedia. Some things are just mostly fun. Start with a long visit with MetaFilter, one of my favorite sites. As usual, poke around into rules and background and try to figure out what that human network thing is over on the right. Who is here? What is the code? What makes something appropriate content for this site?
Finally, what should we do about this? Class field trip? Jimmy Wales, the Founder of Wikipedia, will be lecturing at UH Wednesday, November 15 at 7;30 in Lincoln Theater. Free but you need tickets.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Halloween, Early
This class has a tremendous ability to upset people!!!!!!
Jason Scott wants to come in.
Also, if you have a moment, look at the profiles of Wikipedia contributors. Very interesting. (You just click on some names in the talk threads.)
Jason Scott wants to come in.
Also, if you have a moment, look at the profiles of Wikipedia contributors. Very interesting. (You just click on some names in the talk threads.)
Animal Farm
Wiki the Revolution, let's dance.
I bow down to this:
However, it was experts who told us of WMDs and that we had enough troops on the ground. It will be the expert who determines if Clinton was impeached on legal ground, if we are experiencing global warning, and if Columbus was an explorer or a pirate. And to what extent is ‘gentle guidance’ and ‘direction’ the deletion of an edit or new topic by someone with a different point of view?
I bow down to this:
However, it was experts who told us of WMDs and that we had enough troops on the ground. It will be the expert who determines if Clinton was impeached on legal ground, if we are experiencing global warning, and if Columbus was an explorer or a pirate. And to what extent is ‘gentle guidance’ and ‘direction’ the deletion of an edit or new topic by someone with a different point of view?
Wiki Chung Tonight
Man, oh, Man. You could teach a whole course of wikipedia. Maybe I will.
I'm struck in particular by the way the structure of Wikipedia and all the machinations are not apparent to the typical user. It's a cathedral looked-at on cornice at a time.
Unless it's a bazaar, not a cathedral.
Eric S. Raymond famously likened the traditional way of creating software and content- Microsoft Windows and the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance- to building a cathedral. There's a top-down central planner, closely guarded blueprints and drafts, workers contracted to implement those blueprints, a laborious quality assurance process, and so forth. The Open Source and Wikipedia model, in contrast, is more analogous to a freewheeling bazaar in that, with no central authority, order sort of emerges bottom-up from the actions and desires of the participants. People see what needs to be done, and due to the project's open design and collective ownership, can do it themselves. This open approach can create wonderful things that the cathedral model can't- like Linux and Wikipedia.[7]
The biggest critique:
skewed toward being "a system committed to the maximum empowerment of amateurs," a place where enthusiasm and conviction count for more than actually being correct.
Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade described Wikipedia as “a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.”
Oooops. But read what this has to say about the nature of information.
One of Sanger's ideas:
Simplification:Sanger feels Wikipedia tends to accrue unneeded complexity in bureaucracy and organization. There will be a significant focus on simplifying and avoiding subject categories, portals, user boxes, and wikiprojects, and minimizing the number of official roles in the community. Presumably this will also involve less focus on current events and facts from pop culture and more on the areas of knowledge which encyclopedias have traditionally been concerned with.
The community as Aaron Swartz states,
Building a community is pretty tough; it requires just the right combination of technology and rules and people. And while it's been clear that [online] communities are at the core of many of the most interesting things on the Internet, we're still at the very early stages of understanding what it is that makes them work.
But Wikipedia isn't even a typical community. Usually Internet communities are groups of people who come together to discuss something, like cryptography or the writing of a technical specification. Perhaps they meet in an IRC channel, a web forum, a newsgroup, or on a mailing list, but the focus is always something "out there", something outside the discussion itself.
But with Wikipedia, the goal is building Wikipedia. It's not a community set up to make some other thing, it's a community set up to make itself. And since Wikipedia was one of the first sites to do it, we know hardly anything about building communities like that.
Actually, Aaron is pretty indispensable on who writes and who runs Wikipedia. On the latter:
But what's less well-known is that it's also the site that anyone can run. The vandals aren't stopped because someone is in charge of stopping them; it was simply something people started doing. And it's not just vandalism: a "welcoming committee" says hi to every new user, a "cleanup taskforce" goes around doing factchecking. The site's rules are made by rough consensus. Even the servers are largely run this way -- a group of volunteer sysadmins hang out on IRC, keeping an eye on things. Until quite recently, the Foundation that supposedly runs Wikipedia had no actual employees.
From The New Yorker Piece
Wikipedia is a combination of manifesto and reference work. Peer review, the mainstream media, and government agencies have landed us in a ditch. Not only are we impatient with the authorities but we are in a mood to talk back. Wikipedia offers endless opportunities for self-expression. It is the love child of reading groups and chat rooms, a second home for anyone who has written an Amazon review. This is not the first time that encyclopedia-makers have snatched control from an élite, or cast a harsh light on certitude
I'm struck in particular by the way the structure of Wikipedia and all the machinations are not apparent to the typical user. It's a cathedral looked-at on cornice at a time.
Unless it's a bazaar, not a cathedral.
Eric S. Raymond famously likened the traditional way of creating software and content- Microsoft Windows and the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance- to building a cathedral. There's a top-down central planner, closely guarded blueprints and drafts, workers contracted to implement those blueprints, a laborious quality assurance process, and so forth. The Open Source and Wikipedia model, in contrast, is more analogous to a freewheeling bazaar in that, with no central authority, order sort of emerges bottom-up from the actions and desires of the participants. People see what needs to be done, and due to the project's open design and collective ownership, can do it themselves. This open approach can create wonderful things that the cathedral model can't- like Linux and Wikipedia.[7]
The biggest critique:
skewed toward being "a system committed to the maximum empowerment of amateurs," a place where enthusiasm and conviction count for more than actually being correct.
Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade described Wikipedia as “a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.”
Oooops. But read what this has to say about the nature of information.
One of Sanger's ideas:
Simplification:Sanger feels Wikipedia tends to accrue unneeded complexity in bureaucracy and organization. There will be a significant focus on simplifying and avoiding subject categories, portals, user boxes, and wikiprojects, and minimizing the number of official roles in the community. Presumably this will also involve less focus on current events and facts from pop culture and more on the areas of knowledge which encyclopedias have traditionally been concerned with.
The community as Aaron Swartz states,
Building a community is pretty tough; it requires just the right combination of technology and rules and people. And while it's been clear that [online] communities are at the core of many of the most interesting things on the Internet, we're still at the very early stages of understanding what it is that makes them work.
But Wikipedia isn't even a typical community. Usually Internet communities are groups of people who come together to discuss something, like cryptography or the writing of a technical specification. Perhaps they meet in an IRC channel, a web forum, a newsgroup, or on a mailing list, but the focus is always something "out there", something outside the discussion itself.
But with Wikipedia, the goal is building Wikipedia. It's not a community set up to make some other thing, it's a community set up to make itself. And since Wikipedia was one of the first sites to do it, we know hardly anything about building communities like that.
Actually, Aaron is pretty indispensable on who writes and who runs Wikipedia. On the latter:
But what's less well-known is that it's also the site that anyone can run. The vandals aren't stopped because someone is in charge of stopping them; it was simply something people started doing. And it's not just vandalism: a "welcoming committee" says hi to every new user, a "cleanup taskforce" goes around doing factchecking. The site's rules are made by rough consensus. Even the servers are largely run this way -- a group of volunteer sysadmins hang out on IRC, keeping an eye on things. Until quite recently, the Foundation that supposedly runs Wikipedia had no actual employees.
From The New Yorker Piece
Wikipedia is a combination of manifesto and reference work. Peer review, the mainstream media, and government agencies have landed us in a ditch. Not only are we impatient with the authorities but we are in a mood to talk back. Wikipedia offers endless opportunities for self-expression. It is the love child of reading groups and chat rooms, a second home for anyone who has written an Amazon review. This is not the first time that encyclopedia-makers have snatched control from an élite, or cast a harsh light on certitude
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Dear Class ...
I'm pasting in this whole article which ran Oct. 8 in the NYT because otherwise you'd have to register. Diane Farrell has since been restored.
By NOAM COHEN
SOMEWHERE in the hierarchy of personal celebrity, between the discovery that you are listed in the phone book and, say, being knighted, sits the Wikipedia entry.
The online encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org), which is created by a worldwide community of volunteers, has more than 1.4 million articles in English, with some 120,000 devoted to biographies of living people — from Terje Aa, a Norwegian bridge player, to Todd J. Zywicki, a George Mason University law professor.
Yet each day dozens of new Wikipedia articles about people — and about historical figures, fictional creatures, obscure concepts, run-of-the-mill organizations and even shopping centers — are deleted, having been deemed sufficiently unnotable or otherwise unworthy of being listed.
Wikipedia volunteers have produced detailed suggestions as to what makes a person or organization “notable.” For musical groups, for instance, the criteria include, “Has had a record certified gold or higher in at least one large- or medium-sized country.” Notable people must have achieved “renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events,” the guidelines suggest, or be “the primary subject of multiple nontrivial published works whose source is independent of the person.”
Roughly 4,000 articles are added each day, and about half that number are deleted that same day, Wikipedia says, by administrators who determine that an article is not up to standards. Tougher cases are debated for five days — at times, a decision is postponed if deep divisions remain. What follows is a sample of recent entries proposed for deletion, and the debate by Wikipedia volunteers whether to delete or keep them. NOAM COHEN
Songs Featuring Cowbells
A Wikipedia user creates an entry that consists simply of a list of hundreds of song recordings that feature cowbells, including “Africa” by Toto, “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang and “An Alpine Symphony,” by Richard Strauss.
Debate
I’m sorry, but we cannot have an article in an encyclopedia which is a) unsourced, and b) claims that Bob Dylan, David Bowie, the Beatles, Jay-Z, The Byrds, George Harrison, Black Sabbath, Dizzy Gillespie ... had songs featuring cowbells. There are two references in the entire article that verifies two songs. The rest is taken from “The Cowbell Project” (I’m assuming, since that’s the only external link, which itself is just some crazy fanatics home page, and cites no sources). ...Honestly, can you call yourself a good Wikipedian if you want an article in an encyclopedia that claims that Jimi Hendrix used cowbells. Kill it, kill it fast! Wikipedia user “Oskar”
Delete, or significantly pare down to what is sourced. I could see how this list could possibly be useful if it were properly sourced, as any list of songs featuring any particular instrument could in theory be useful. However, “The cowbell project” doesn’t look like it can be considered a reliable source. VegaDark
Delete. ... Just on a side note however, Jimi Hendrix did in fact use cowbells. The song “Stone Free” has a very noticeable amount of cowbell. It would be very hard to miss it.
Nauticashades
As a percussionist I can tell you the cowbell is a very fine instrument. As a Wikipedian, I can tell you this is a very pointless list. Delete. danntm
Delete as not remotely suitable for an encyclopedia. Commit anyone who thought writing it added to the stock of the world’s knowledge. Legis
Outcome
Deleted.
Pooky
An article about the teddy bear belonging to Garfield, the cartoon cat. According to the Wikipedia entry, Pooky first appeared Oct. 23, 1978; Garfield found the teddy bear when he was searching through a drawer of his owner, Jon Arbuckle.
Debate
Delete. If Pooky ever actually did anything, maybe keep it. But Pooky is a stuffed bear; not a lot of character development possible there. Badbilltucker
Delete. Yes, it can be improved, but washing garbage just gets you clean garbage. This is a cartoon prop that was used for awhile and since discarded — a fictional item of no real importance. Calton
Props can warrant entries. Consider it a prop with character or otherwise important value. For example, if one were to propose the deletion of the “tricorder” entry on the basis that it is simply a prop, an army of Trek fans would start burning houses down.
That’s Just It
Outcome
Merged with Garfield list of characters.
Chuck Greene
The entry for Mr. Greene describes him as a 48-year-old javelin thrower who competed for Western Michigan University, finishing eighth in the 1981 N.C.A.A. Championships. He later won a gold medal at the 12th Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv.
Debate
Delete — 8th place in one N.C.A.A. championship is not exactly the Olympics. Fan-1967
Keep, based on his gold medal in the international competition in Israel. Dekar
I’d like to point out that the Maccabiah Games are basically the “Jewish Olympics” and even the article says that they are on a lower tier than even the Commonwealth Games, which most medal winners do not have articles based on those accomplishments.
Renosecond
Outcome
Deleted.
The Constantian Society
An article about a political group, founded in 1970, that advocates for monarchy in the United States.
Debate
Utterly nonnotable fringe political group. Statement “It cannot be determined whether the society has been active since 1997” gives you an idea of its influence. Fishal
Keep. American Monarchists are probably always going to be a fringe political group, but the movement does exist, and fringe doesn’t automatically equal non-notable. ... They apparently publish a journal, which means both their existence and the substance of their views are verifiable. Monarchism, as a movement, is rather outdated, but hardly non-notable (as many monarchies still exist worldwide.) Dina
Outcome
Kept.
Diane Farrell
The Democratic candidate in the Fourth Congressional District of Connecticut, running against the incumbent, Christopher Shays.
Debate
Delete. Come back if elected. Fan1967
Keep: It would be highly unfair to delete this article unless you were also deleting the article of her opponent, congressman Chris Shays. I say this as a representative of the Farrell campaign. Unsigned
Delete. ... Do you really think people will choose not to vote for someone because they don’t have a Wikipedia page? Samael775
Outcome
Deleted.
By NOAM COHEN
SOMEWHERE in the hierarchy of personal celebrity, between the discovery that you are listed in the phone book and, say, being knighted, sits the Wikipedia entry.
The online encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org), which is created by a worldwide community of volunteers, has more than 1.4 million articles in English, with some 120,000 devoted to biographies of living people — from Terje Aa, a Norwegian bridge player, to Todd J. Zywicki, a George Mason University law professor.
Yet each day dozens of new Wikipedia articles about people — and about historical figures, fictional creatures, obscure concepts, run-of-the-mill organizations and even shopping centers — are deleted, having been deemed sufficiently unnotable or otherwise unworthy of being listed.
Wikipedia volunteers have produced detailed suggestions as to what makes a person or organization “notable.” For musical groups, for instance, the criteria include, “Has had a record certified gold or higher in at least one large- or medium-sized country.” Notable people must have achieved “renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events,” the guidelines suggest, or be “the primary subject of multiple nontrivial published works whose source is independent of the person.”
Roughly 4,000 articles are added each day, and about half that number are deleted that same day, Wikipedia says, by administrators who determine that an article is not up to standards. Tougher cases are debated for five days — at times, a decision is postponed if deep divisions remain. What follows is a sample of recent entries proposed for deletion, and the debate by Wikipedia volunteers whether to delete or keep them. NOAM COHEN
Songs Featuring Cowbells
A Wikipedia user creates an entry that consists simply of a list of hundreds of song recordings that feature cowbells, including “Africa” by Toto, “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang and “An Alpine Symphony,” by Richard Strauss.
Debate
I’m sorry, but we cannot have an article in an encyclopedia which is a) unsourced, and b) claims that Bob Dylan, David Bowie, the Beatles, Jay-Z, The Byrds, George Harrison, Black Sabbath, Dizzy Gillespie ... had songs featuring cowbells. There are two references in the entire article that verifies two songs. The rest is taken from “The Cowbell Project” (I’m assuming, since that’s the only external link, which itself is just some crazy fanatics home page, and cites no sources). ...Honestly, can you call yourself a good Wikipedian if you want an article in an encyclopedia that claims that Jimi Hendrix used cowbells. Kill it, kill it fast! Wikipedia user “Oskar”
Delete, or significantly pare down to what is sourced. I could see how this list could possibly be useful if it were properly sourced, as any list of songs featuring any particular instrument could in theory be useful. However, “The cowbell project” doesn’t look like it can be considered a reliable source. VegaDark
Delete. ... Just on a side note however, Jimi Hendrix did in fact use cowbells. The song “Stone Free” has a very noticeable amount of cowbell. It would be very hard to miss it.
Nauticashades
As a percussionist I can tell you the cowbell is a very fine instrument. As a Wikipedian, I can tell you this is a very pointless list. Delete. danntm
Delete as not remotely suitable for an encyclopedia. Commit anyone who thought writing it added to the stock of the world’s knowledge. Legis
Outcome
Deleted.
Pooky
An article about the teddy bear belonging to Garfield, the cartoon cat. According to the Wikipedia entry, Pooky first appeared Oct. 23, 1978; Garfield found the teddy bear when he was searching through a drawer of his owner, Jon Arbuckle.
Debate
Delete. If Pooky ever actually did anything, maybe keep it. But Pooky is a stuffed bear; not a lot of character development possible there. Badbilltucker
Delete. Yes, it can be improved, but washing garbage just gets you clean garbage. This is a cartoon prop that was used for awhile and since discarded — a fictional item of no real importance. Calton
Props can warrant entries. Consider it a prop with character or otherwise important value. For example, if one were to propose the deletion of the “tricorder” entry on the basis that it is simply a prop, an army of Trek fans would start burning houses down.
That’s Just It
Outcome
Merged with Garfield list of characters.
Chuck Greene
The entry for Mr. Greene describes him as a 48-year-old javelin thrower who competed for Western Michigan University, finishing eighth in the 1981 N.C.A.A. Championships. He later won a gold medal at the 12th Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv.
Debate
Delete — 8th place in one N.C.A.A. championship is not exactly the Olympics. Fan-1967
Keep, based on his gold medal in the international competition in Israel. Dekar
I’d like to point out that the Maccabiah Games are basically the “Jewish Olympics” and even the article says that they are on a lower tier than even the Commonwealth Games, which most medal winners do not have articles based on those accomplishments.
Renosecond
Outcome
Deleted.
The Constantian Society
An article about a political group, founded in 1970, that advocates for monarchy in the United States.
Debate
Utterly nonnotable fringe political group. Statement “It cannot be determined whether the society has been active since 1997” gives you an idea of its influence. Fishal
Keep. American Monarchists are probably always going to be a fringe political group, but the movement does exist, and fringe doesn’t automatically equal non-notable. ... They apparently publish a journal, which means both their existence and the substance of their views are verifiable. Monarchism, as a movement, is rather outdated, but hardly non-notable (as many monarchies still exist worldwide.) Dina
Outcome
Kept.
Diane Farrell
The Democratic candidate in the Fourth Congressional District of Connecticut, running against the incumbent, Christopher Shays.
Debate
Delete. Come back if elected. Fan1967
Keep: It would be highly unfair to delete this article unless you were also deleting the article of her opponent, congressman Chris Shays. I say this as a representative of the Farrell campaign. Unsigned
Delete. ... Do you really think people will choose not to vote for someone because they don’t have a Wikipedia page? Samael775
Outcome
Deleted.
Bad Wiki!
I'm sorry I've been away from you guys for a couple of days This election is stretching me thin, but I'll be around a lot this weekend, comments in your blogs and posting more stuff here. This guy is an important source of criticism. Make sure you click on his links. You don't have to listen to his 45 minute speech, but read his text(s).
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Oh!! Also!
You must read this! And you must chop down the tallest tree in the forest with this! But if I had said with this, would I have violated Wikipedia's fair use rules? Did I just now?
Wonderful World of Wikis
It's not a blog but ... It's time to visit Wikipedia. But this time, for the first time, don't use it. Read it. Pull it apart. What are the rules? What are the ideas behind it? What is its code?
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
See? I am NOT crazy!!!!!!!!
Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, October 16, 2006; A02
You can see it the next time you visit your office cafeteria or a nearby park: Whites sitting together with whites, blacks with blacks, young people with other young people. When individuals from these groups mix, it is usually because they share something else in common, such as a pastime.
Sociologists call this phenomenon homophily, a somewhat grand word to describe the idea that birds of a feather flock together. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle onward have observed that people seem to be drawn to others like themselves.
But while the basic idea is simple, homophily has surprisingly complex causes and consequences. Three weeks ahead of a midterm election, for example, it is playing a powerful, but largely invisible, role in politics.
Studies show that most people interested in politics associate nearly exclusively with others who have similar political beliefs. In fact, research by sociologist David Knoke at the University of Minnesota shows that if you know whether a person's friends are Republicans, Democrats or independents, you can predict with near certainty that person's political views.
Homophily may help explain some of the bitter partisanship of our times -- when your friends are drawn exclusively from one half of the electorate, it is not surprising that you will find the views of the other half inexplicable.
"I often hear people say with absolute certainty that whoever they are in favor of is obviously going to do well because they haven't talked to 'anyone' who supports the other person" in the election, said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who has studied homophily. She rolled her eyes and said, "Oh yeah, sure! That is a good argument."
While the instinct for homophily in politics and other areas seems hard-wired, technology may be fueling our nature. Cable television and the Internet have allowed enormous numbers of people in distant areas to form virtual groups that are very similar to what you see in the office cafeteria.
Smith-Lovin's research, for example, shows that homophily is on the rise in the United States on nearly every dimension of social identity. Ever larger numbers of people seem to be sealing themselves off in worlds where everyone thinks the way they do. No Walter Cronkite figure unites audiences today, the sociologist noted. We can now choose cable stations, magazines and blogs that see the world exactly as we do. If the research on homophily is right, those heavily e-mailed partisan screeds from the op-ed pages are largely talking to those who agree with those points of view to begin with.
But while people may choose blogs or op-ed columnists because they agree with those points of view, do they really choose friends the same way? When was the last time you met someone at a social gathering and quickly asked him his views on abortion, gay marriage and the war in Iraq before deciding to be friends? That does not happen, of course, so one of the most interesting puzzles about homophily is how it turns out that friends often end up having the same views on those subjects.
While beliefs matter, there are two other powerful but subtle factors at work, said sociologist Mario Luis Small of the University of Chicago: One is demography, and the other is shared experiences.
Take, for example, two mothers who become friends after meeting at a day-care center. Beliefs, especially about politics, may never be part of their explicit conversation. But the day-care center exerts a very powerful role in selecting people with similar demographic backgrounds and shared experiences. The mothers are likely to be about the same age, to face common child-rearing challenges and to have similar views on how to balance parenting and work. The fact that they are at this day-care center means they can afford it, which suggests they are in roughly the same socioeconomic class.
"It is not quite the case that I meet you and say, 'Oh my goodness, you also believe in the elimination of Roe v. Wade ,' " said Small. "Two years later, these guys are friends, but it is not because we believe the same things, but our experience and our demographics put us together in the first place."
What this ultimately suggests, Small and Smith-Lovin added, is that while organizations and schools and workplaces and neighborhoods and churches may seem to bring together broad mixes of people, they really do not. Organizations play a very powerful role in bringing together similar people and in creating homogenous views on a variety of topics. University professors, for example, are prone to believe in education, financial aid and research, but those views also lead to other beliefs about the importance of government and activism, Smith-Lovin said.
While there is nothing wrong with being around others who are similar to yourself, both Smith-Lovin and Small said that people and organizations pay a price for homogeneity. In politics, for example, the fact that people rarely have friends with different views makes it difficult to seek common ground or to examine one's positions closely.
"Most of us would be hard-pressed to provide clear explanations for our political beliefs," said Small. "If you ask the average person why they believe what they believe on Roe v. Wade , you are not going to get a coherent answer. We participate in settings where we don't have to explain ourselves because everyone else agrees with us. What this means is, 'I have no reason to challenge or question my own beliefs.'
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, October 16, 2006; A02
You can see it the next time you visit your office cafeteria or a nearby park: Whites sitting together with whites, blacks with blacks, young people with other young people. When individuals from these groups mix, it is usually because they share something else in common, such as a pastime.
Sociologists call this phenomenon homophily, a somewhat grand word to describe the idea that birds of a feather flock together. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle onward have observed that people seem to be drawn to others like themselves.
But while the basic idea is simple, homophily has surprisingly complex causes and consequences. Three weeks ahead of a midterm election, for example, it is playing a powerful, but largely invisible, role in politics.
Studies show that most people interested in politics associate nearly exclusively with others who have similar political beliefs. In fact, research by sociologist David Knoke at the University of Minnesota shows that if you know whether a person's friends are Republicans, Democrats or independents, you can predict with near certainty that person's political views.
Homophily may help explain some of the bitter partisanship of our times -- when your friends are drawn exclusively from one half of the electorate, it is not surprising that you will find the views of the other half inexplicable.
"I often hear people say with absolute certainty that whoever they are in favor of is obviously going to do well because they haven't talked to 'anyone' who supports the other person" in the election, said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who has studied homophily. She rolled her eyes and said, "Oh yeah, sure! That is a good argument."
While the instinct for homophily in politics and other areas seems hard-wired, technology may be fueling our nature. Cable television and the Internet have allowed enormous numbers of people in distant areas to form virtual groups that are very similar to what you see in the office cafeteria.
Smith-Lovin's research, for example, shows that homophily is on the rise in the United States on nearly every dimension of social identity. Ever larger numbers of people seem to be sealing themselves off in worlds where everyone thinks the way they do. No Walter Cronkite figure unites audiences today, the sociologist noted. We can now choose cable stations, magazines and blogs that see the world exactly as we do. If the research on homophily is right, those heavily e-mailed partisan screeds from the op-ed pages are largely talking to those who agree with those points of view to begin with.
But while people may choose blogs or op-ed columnists because they agree with those points of view, do they really choose friends the same way? When was the last time you met someone at a social gathering and quickly asked him his views on abortion, gay marriage and the war in Iraq before deciding to be friends? That does not happen, of course, so one of the most interesting puzzles about homophily is how it turns out that friends often end up having the same views on those subjects.
While beliefs matter, there are two other powerful but subtle factors at work, said sociologist Mario Luis Small of the University of Chicago: One is demography, and the other is shared experiences.
Take, for example, two mothers who become friends after meeting at a day-care center. Beliefs, especially about politics, may never be part of their explicit conversation. But the day-care center exerts a very powerful role in selecting people with similar demographic backgrounds and shared experiences. The mothers are likely to be about the same age, to face common child-rearing challenges and to have similar views on how to balance parenting and work. The fact that they are at this day-care center means they can afford it, which suggests they are in roughly the same socioeconomic class.
"It is not quite the case that I meet you and say, 'Oh my goodness, you also believe in the elimination of Roe v. Wade ,' " said Small. "Two years later, these guys are friends, but it is not because we believe the same things, but our experience and our demographics put us together in the first place."
What this ultimately suggests, Small and Smith-Lovin added, is that while organizations and schools and workplaces and neighborhoods and churches may seem to bring together broad mixes of people, they really do not. Organizations play a very powerful role in bringing together similar people and in creating homogenous views on a variety of topics. University professors, for example, are prone to believe in education, financial aid and research, but those views also lead to other beliefs about the importance of government and activism, Smith-Lovin said.
While there is nothing wrong with being around others who are similar to yourself, both Smith-Lovin and Small said that people and organizations pay a price for homogeneity. In politics, for example, the fact that people rarely have friends with different views makes it difficult to seek common ground or to examine one's positions closely.
"Most of us would be hard-pressed to provide clear explanations for our political beliefs," said Small. "If you ask the average person why they believe what they believe on Roe v. Wade , you are not going to get a coherent answer. We participate in settings where we don't have to explain ourselves because everyone else agrees with us. What this means is, 'I have no reason to challenge or question my own beliefs.'
Monday, October 16, 2006
Real Sonic
You guys poke your snouts in such interesting places. Definitely some interesting tensions between real and ersatz. And even the real is ersatz. Does anybody even SAY ersatz anymore?
notes
YouTube.com, Online Video Audience Soars
August 17, 2006
- Associated Press
The video-sharing site YouTube.com has cracked the Internet's Top 50 for the first time, a Web research company reports.YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing sites, where amateurs and professionals alike can share and view videos - of a recent trip, of a new dog or even of themselves burping.According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July, a 20 percent increase from June. The site didn't even have measurable traffic until August 2005, when it had 58,000 unique visitors."Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the Web," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. "The trends we're witnessing indicate that online video is emerging from its infancy and entering the mainstream."For July, YouTube debuted in the Top 50 at No. 40, up from 58th in June.ComScore also recorded a doubling of traffic to MySpace.com's video site, with 20 million visitors, trailing only Yahoo!'s video site, which had 21 million.
August 20, 2006
Candidly Speaking
The YouTube Election
By RYAN LIZZA
AUGUST, usually the sleepiest month in politics, has suddenly become raucous, thanks in part to YouTube, the vast videosharing Web site.
Last week, Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican, was caught on tape at a campaign event twice calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca,” an obscure racial slur.
The student, working for the opposing campaign, taped the comments, and the video quickly appeared on YouTube, where it rocketed to the top of the site’s most-viewed list. It then bounced from the Web to the front page of The Washington Post to cable and network television news shows. Despite two public apologies by Senator Allen, and his aides’ quick explanations for how the strange word tumbled out, political analysts rushed to downgrade Mr. Allen’s stock as a leading contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
YouTube’s bite also hurt Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who was defeated by the political upstart Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s Democratic primary earlier this month. In that contest, pro-Lamont bloggers frequently posted flattering interviews with their candidate on YouTube and unflattering video of Senator Lieberman. The Lamont campaign even hired a staffer, Tim Tagaris, to coordinate the activities of the bloggers and video bloggers.
In the real world, of course, neither Senator Lieberman nor Senator Allen is finished. Senator Lieberman, running as an independent, leads in recent polls. And Senator Allen, who said that he had meant no insult and that he did not know what macaca meant, is favored to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, James Webb. But the experience serves as a warning to politicians: Beware, the next stupid thing you say may be on YouTube.
When politicians say inappropriate things, many voters will want to know. Now they can see it for themselves on the Web.
But YouTube may be changing the political process in more profound ways, for good and perhaps not for the better, according to strategists in both parties. If campaigns resemble reality television, where any moment of a candidate’s life can be captured on film and posted on the Web, will the last shreds of authenticity be stripped from our public officials? Will candidates be pushed further into a scripted bubble? In short, will YouTube democratize politics, or destroy it?
YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005, but it now attracts some 20 million different visitors a month. In statements to the press, the company has been quick to take credit for radically altering the political ecosystem by opening up elections, allowing lesser known candidates to have a platform.
Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,” said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.”
But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.
“Politicians can’t experiment with messages,” Mr. Dowd said. “They can’t get voter response. Seventy or 80 years ago, a politician could go give a speech in Des Moines and road-test some ideas and then refine it and then test it again in Milwaukee.”
He sees a future where candidates must be camera-ready before they hit the road, rather than be a work in progress. “What’s happened is that politicians now have to be perfect from Day 1,” he said. “It’s taken some richness out of the political discourse.”
Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not known for her spontaneity, agrees.
“It is a continuation of a trend in which politicians have to assume they are on live TV all the time,” Mr. Wolfson said. “You can’t get away with making an offensive or dumb remark and assume it won’t get out.”
These rules have long applied to White House contenders, but the dynamic is getting stronger and moving down the ballot. “It used to be the kind of thing that was only true for presidents,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Now with the proliferation of technology it is increasingly true for many other politicians.”
But Mr. Wolfson, who recently led an effort by the Clinton camp to reach out to liberal bloggers hostile to his boss, believes that this trend has one advantage. “It does create more accountability and more democratization of information in the process,” he said.
The explosion of instant video may also put pressure on the news media. In the old days, the Allen video would not have been available for all to see. “Imagine this happened 10 years ago,” Mr. Wolfson said. “We had video and trackers then. But you had to get it to a TV station or newspaper. You had to persuade them to run a story on it. This allows you to avoid the middleman.”
And by doing so, avoid an arbiter, however flawed, of standards. “There’s no, ‘Is this the right thing for political discourse?’ ” Mr. Dowd said. “It’s just there.”
These days journalists are concerned not just about being cut out, but about being part of the show. Reporters often suffer the wrath of bloggers in the same way politicians do. At a recent conference of political bloggers in Las Vegas, reporters more than once reminded one another to be discreet in their conversations because anything overheard was fair game for bloggers to post.
Now, as the campaign trail turns into a 24-hour live set, members of the press corps may find themselves starring on YouTube. “At least one big-time journalist will have their career or life ruined because some element of their behavior that was heretofore private will be exposed publicly,” predicted a senior adviser to a potential 2008 presidential candidate. The adviser requested that his name not be used because he did not want his personal views to be taken for his boss’s.
Then again, YouTube’s impact on politics may be exaggerated. For one, the site’s users are generally young and not highly engaged politically.
“Most social networking sites cater to younger audiences, 18 to 24,” says Michael Bassik, vice president of Internet advertising at MSHC Partners, which advises candidates on media strategies. “For the most part, it’s not political conversations taking place there.”
And maybe the Allen video wasn’t all that shocking after all.
Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and an Internet consultant to The New York Times Company, doesn’t think all that much has changed.
“Is it news that politicians say stupid things?” he asks. “Of course not.”
Ryan Lizza is a senior editor at The New Republic.
August 17, 2006
- Associated Press
The video-sharing site YouTube.com has cracked the Internet's Top 50 for the first time, a Web research company reports.YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing sites, where amateurs and professionals alike can share and view videos - of a recent trip, of a new dog or even of themselves burping.According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July, a 20 percent increase from June. The site didn't even have measurable traffic until August 2005, when it had 58,000 unique visitors."Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the Web," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. "The trends we're witnessing indicate that online video is emerging from its infancy and entering the mainstream."For July, YouTube debuted in the Top 50 at No. 40, up from 58th in June.ComScore also recorded a doubling of traffic to MySpace.com's video site, with 20 million visitors, trailing only Yahoo!'s video site, which had 21 million.
August 20, 2006
Candidly Speaking
The YouTube Election
By RYAN LIZZA
AUGUST, usually the sleepiest month in politics, has suddenly become raucous, thanks in part to YouTube, the vast videosharing Web site.
Last week, Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican, was caught on tape at a campaign event twice calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca,” an obscure racial slur.
The student, working for the opposing campaign, taped the comments, and the video quickly appeared on YouTube, where it rocketed to the top of the site’s most-viewed list. It then bounced from the Web to the front page of The Washington Post to cable and network television news shows. Despite two public apologies by Senator Allen, and his aides’ quick explanations for how the strange word tumbled out, political analysts rushed to downgrade Mr. Allen’s stock as a leading contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
YouTube’s bite also hurt Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who was defeated by the political upstart Ned Lamont in Connecticut’s Democratic primary earlier this month. In that contest, pro-Lamont bloggers frequently posted flattering interviews with their candidate on YouTube and unflattering video of Senator Lieberman. The Lamont campaign even hired a staffer, Tim Tagaris, to coordinate the activities of the bloggers and video bloggers.
In the real world, of course, neither Senator Lieberman nor Senator Allen is finished. Senator Lieberman, running as an independent, leads in recent polls. And Senator Allen, who said that he had meant no insult and that he did not know what macaca meant, is favored to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, James Webb. But the experience serves as a warning to politicians: Beware, the next stupid thing you say may be on YouTube.
When politicians say inappropriate things, many voters will want to know. Now they can see it for themselves on the Web.
But YouTube may be changing the political process in more profound ways, for good and perhaps not for the better, according to strategists in both parties. If campaigns resemble reality television, where any moment of a candidate’s life can be captured on film and posted on the Web, will the last shreds of authenticity be stripped from our public officials? Will candidates be pushed further into a scripted bubble? In short, will YouTube democratize politics, or destroy it?
YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005, but it now attracts some 20 million different visitors a month. In statements to the press, the company has been quick to take credit for radically altering the political ecosystem by opening up elections, allowing lesser known candidates to have a platform.
Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,” said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.”
But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.
“Politicians can’t experiment with messages,” Mr. Dowd said. “They can’t get voter response. Seventy or 80 years ago, a politician could go give a speech in Des Moines and road-test some ideas and then refine it and then test it again in Milwaukee.”
He sees a future where candidates must be camera-ready before they hit the road, rather than be a work in progress. “What’s happened is that politicians now have to be perfect from Day 1,” he said. “It’s taken some richness out of the political discourse.”
Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not known for her spontaneity, agrees.
“It is a continuation of a trend in which politicians have to assume they are on live TV all the time,” Mr. Wolfson said. “You can’t get away with making an offensive or dumb remark and assume it won’t get out.”
These rules have long applied to White House contenders, but the dynamic is getting stronger and moving down the ballot. “It used to be the kind of thing that was only true for presidents,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Now with the proliferation of technology it is increasingly true for many other politicians.”
But Mr. Wolfson, who recently led an effort by the Clinton camp to reach out to liberal bloggers hostile to his boss, believes that this trend has one advantage. “It does create more accountability and more democratization of information in the process,” he said.
The explosion of instant video may also put pressure on the news media. In the old days, the Allen video would not have been available for all to see. “Imagine this happened 10 years ago,” Mr. Wolfson said. “We had video and trackers then. But you had to get it to a TV station or newspaper. You had to persuade them to run a story on it. This allows you to avoid the middleman.”
And by doing so, avoid an arbiter, however flawed, of standards. “There’s no, ‘Is this the right thing for political discourse?’ ” Mr. Dowd said. “It’s just there.”
These days journalists are concerned not just about being cut out, but about being part of the show. Reporters often suffer the wrath of bloggers in the same way politicians do. At a recent conference of political bloggers in Las Vegas, reporters more than once reminded one another to be discreet in their conversations because anything overheard was fair game for bloggers to post.
Now, as the campaign trail turns into a 24-hour live set, members of the press corps may find themselves starring on YouTube. “At least one big-time journalist will have their career or life ruined because some element of their behavior that was heretofore private will be exposed publicly,” predicted a senior adviser to a potential 2008 presidential candidate. The adviser requested that his name not be used because he did not want his personal views to be taken for his boss’s.
Then again, YouTube’s impact on politics may be exaggerated. For one, the site’s users are generally young and not highly engaged politically.
“Most social networking sites cater to younger audiences, 18 to 24,” says Michael Bassik, vice president of Internet advertising at MSHC Partners, which advises candidates on media strategies. “For the most part, it’s not political conversations taking place there.”
And maybe the Allen video wasn’t all that shocking after all.
Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and an Internet consultant to The New York Times Company, doesn’t think all that much has changed.
“Is it news that politicians say stupid things?” he asks. “Of course not.”
Ryan Lizza is a senior editor at The New Republic.
Signal/Noise
Dan sent me to this. And it made me wonder about signal to noise. I mean, 8 minutes of ANYTHING seems like al ot in such a competitive environment.
This Class Is Wrong
Chris was kind of riffing on Aldon, and it made me think: he should teach this class, but he never wold, because it's too static. Same time, same place. That's so not-blogger.
Back to School
This is the third YouTube founder. His values are kind of interesting and possibly significant.
Blog like a Pirate day
i'm engaging in the kind of piracy this article talks about, but I wanted it n front of you tonight because it's a big aspect of the youtube thing
The Wall Street JournalOctober 14, 2006; Page A3
In an apparent display of saber-rattling aimed at nudging video Web site YouTube Inc. into cutting favorable licensing deals, a number of major media companies have banded together to explore the legal implications of the video site's unauthorized use of copyright material, people familiar with the matter say.
The move comes just days after YouTube agreed to be acquired by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion. If the deal goes through, deep-pocketed Google could be held responsible for YouTube's legal liabilities.
YouTube, a hugely popular video-sharing site, carries both homemade videos, as well as professionally produced video clips from television networks and movie studios -- some uploaded illegally by users, and some available with the companies' consent. YouTube contends that it hasn't run afoul of copyright laws, because it immediately removes clips when rights holders complain about their inclusion on the site.
But lawyers for the group of media companies, which includes News Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Viacom Inc., have concluded that YouTube could be liable to copyright penalties of $150,000 per unauthorized video, people familiar the matter say. Viacom believes that pirated versions of video clips from its cable channels -- including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon -- are watched 80,000 times a day via YouTube. At that rate, potential penalties could run into the billions of dollars.
Time Warner Inc. hasn't joined the group, but has also warned YouTube about what it considers to be the site's repeated infringement of its copyrights. In an interview that appeared in Britain's Guardian newspaper Friday, Time Warner Chief Executive Richard Parsons made ominous hints about what course he would pursue if YouTube doesn't agree to a deal.
Whether the media companies eventually will file legal action is unclear, but the legal maneuvering comes as each of them is holding separate negotiations to allow YouTube to carry their programming in return for a slice of advertising revenue. Executives hope the possibility of legal action could prompt YouTube to improve terms it offers the media companies, according to people familiar with the matter.
The media companies have an ambivalent view of Google. On the one hand, they fear its size and clout. On the other hand, the media companies know that Google can be a valuable partner in distributing their content around the Web and also in drawing advertising. Indeed, Google already has separate links through partnerships and ownership stakes to a number of media companies, a fact that could ease the companies' negotiations with YouTube.
YouTube has been negotiating with content owners throughout the year as it tries to reach licensing pacts with them and head off any copyright lawsuits. So far, YouTube has struck deals with TV companies NBC Universal, CBS Corp. and with most of the major music companies, including Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s and Bertelsmann AG's joint venture. YouTube is building a system that would help automate identification of videos containing copyright material on its site, and allow the content owners to get a portion of any related ad revenue.
The negotiations leading up to those pacts have sometimes included public criticism of the video-sharing site. Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors last month that YouTube violated copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content. Universal Music had considered taking legal action against YouTube over that issue prior to announcing its pact with the video site Monday, say people familiar with the matter.
The media companies now contemplating legal action have generally turned a blind eye to YouTube's use of their video. One reason for such tolerance is that the site guarantees their programs a degree of exposure hard to find elsewhere on the Web.
In June, NBC inked a deal with YouTube to make available promotional video clips for some of its popular programs, including "The Office" and "The Tonight Show." But NBC has had repeated run-ins with YouTube over its use of videos the company hasn't approved. It has been asking the site to take down as many as 1,000 clips a month, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person says that Google's involvement with YouTube has added a sense of urgency to the negotiations for a resolution, because the deal is likely to sharply improve the video site's reach.
Google said that pacts it and YouTube announced this week with content owners demonstrate their "commitment to respect the rights of content owners and to work with them to create new revenue streams."
The media industry has been keen to avoid the mistakes music companies made in attacking Napster, an online service that allowed users to download pirated music. Although the original version of Napster was shut down, the move also spawned scores of imitators that continued to undermine the industry's business model. Meanwhile, music-industry litigation relating to Napster has dragged on for years.
Legal experts debate how much liability YouTube faces. Some say that YouTube has the benefit of a set of special "safe harbors" enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Under that process, Web-hosting sites such as YouTube have to comply with "takedown" notices that copyright holders may send when they become aware of content uploaded without their permission. Some entertainment companies have privately expressed frustration with the process, since it requires them to track down infringing works on a multitude of video-sharing sites.
"YouTube looks to be on relatively firm legal ground," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. But, according to John Palfrey, an intellectual-property professor at Harvard Law School, media companies will argue that YouTube shouldn't fall within the safe-harbor protections of the copyright law because, among other reasons, YouTube is deriving direct financial benefit from the infringement.
YouTube already faces a copyright suit filed in July in U.S. District Court by Los Angeles News Service owner Robert Tur over several videos he alleges appeared on the site without his permission
The Wall Street JournalOctober 14, 2006; Page A3
In an apparent display of saber-rattling aimed at nudging video Web site YouTube Inc. into cutting favorable licensing deals, a number of major media companies have banded together to explore the legal implications of the video site's unauthorized use of copyright material, people familiar with the matter say.
The move comes just days after YouTube agreed to be acquired by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion. If the deal goes through, deep-pocketed Google could be held responsible for YouTube's legal liabilities.
YouTube, a hugely popular video-sharing site, carries both homemade videos, as well as professionally produced video clips from television networks and movie studios -- some uploaded illegally by users, and some available with the companies' consent. YouTube contends that it hasn't run afoul of copyright laws, because it immediately removes clips when rights holders complain about their inclusion on the site.
But lawyers for the group of media companies, which includes News Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Viacom Inc., have concluded that YouTube could be liable to copyright penalties of $150,000 per unauthorized video, people familiar the matter say. Viacom believes that pirated versions of video clips from its cable channels -- including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon -- are watched 80,000 times a day via YouTube. At that rate, potential penalties could run into the billions of dollars.
Time Warner Inc. hasn't joined the group, but has also warned YouTube about what it considers to be the site's repeated infringement of its copyrights. In an interview that appeared in Britain's Guardian newspaper Friday, Time Warner Chief Executive Richard Parsons made ominous hints about what course he would pursue if YouTube doesn't agree to a deal.
Whether the media companies eventually will file legal action is unclear, but the legal maneuvering comes as each of them is holding separate negotiations to allow YouTube to carry their programming in return for a slice of advertising revenue. Executives hope the possibility of legal action could prompt YouTube to improve terms it offers the media companies, according to people familiar with the matter.
The media companies have an ambivalent view of Google. On the one hand, they fear its size and clout. On the other hand, the media companies know that Google can be a valuable partner in distributing their content around the Web and also in drawing advertising. Indeed, Google already has separate links through partnerships and ownership stakes to a number of media companies, a fact that could ease the companies' negotiations with YouTube.
YouTube has been negotiating with content owners throughout the year as it tries to reach licensing pacts with them and head off any copyright lawsuits. So far, YouTube has struck deals with TV companies NBC Universal, CBS Corp. and with most of the major music companies, including Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s and Bertelsmann AG's joint venture. YouTube is building a system that would help automate identification of videos containing copyright material on its site, and allow the content owners to get a portion of any related ad revenue.
The negotiations leading up to those pacts have sometimes included public criticism of the video-sharing site. Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors last month that YouTube violated copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content. Universal Music had considered taking legal action against YouTube over that issue prior to announcing its pact with the video site Monday, say people familiar with the matter.
The media companies now contemplating legal action have generally turned a blind eye to YouTube's use of their video. One reason for such tolerance is that the site guarantees their programs a degree of exposure hard to find elsewhere on the Web.
In June, NBC inked a deal with YouTube to make available promotional video clips for some of its popular programs, including "The Office" and "The Tonight Show." But NBC has had repeated run-ins with YouTube over its use of videos the company hasn't approved. It has been asking the site to take down as many as 1,000 clips a month, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person says that Google's involvement with YouTube has added a sense of urgency to the negotiations for a resolution, because the deal is likely to sharply improve the video site's reach.
Google said that pacts it and YouTube announced this week with content owners demonstrate their "commitment to respect the rights of content owners and to work with them to create new revenue streams."
The media industry has been keen to avoid the mistakes music companies made in attacking Napster, an online service that allowed users to download pirated music. Although the original version of Napster was shut down, the move also spawned scores of imitators that continued to undermine the industry's business model. Meanwhile, music-industry litigation relating to Napster has dragged on for years.
Legal experts debate how much liability YouTube faces. Some say that YouTube has the benefit of a set of special "safe harbors" enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Under that process, Web-hosting sites such as YouTube have to comply with "takedown" notices that copyright holders may send when they become aware of content uploaded without their permission. Some entertainment companies have privately expressed frustration with the process, since it requires them to track down infringing works on a multitude of video-sharing sites.
"YouTube looks to be on relatively firm legal ground," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. But, according to John Palfrey, an intellectual-property professor at Harvard Law School, media companies will argue that YouTube shouldn't fall within the safe-harbor protections of the copyright law because, among other reasons, YouTube is deriving direct financial benefit from the infringement.
YouTube already faces a copyright suit filed in July in U.S. District Court by Los Angeles News Service owner Robert Tur over several videos he alleges appeared on the site without his permission
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Real Life 2
Video bloggers have gone rather arty in the last 12 months ago. Last year, some of us were kind of transfixed by this apparently real-life, low-art post. Is this what you wanted, Steph?
Real Liife
Steph is getting pissed off at video blogs. She wants something a little more nonfiction. Aldon? Anybody?
MIB
Dude is not merely our current Most Improved Blogger. At the moment, he's kind of smokin'! I think Aldon reached him. I would take Aldon's class.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Think About This, Please
Just a quick thought after watching blogger Andrew Sullivan at the Ct Forum last night...Think about the fact that blogging is unique in its current ability to choose narrative medium. Written, audio, video, some manticore-ish fusion of all three. In its early stages it was text. Now it doesn't have to be. But what can text do that video can't? What's behind all the choices?????
Friday, October 13, 2006
Videos Continued
How are you doing with the videos? We picked an interesting week, the week YouTube was bought by Google. Google, of course, had its own video site, but I heard one analyst speculate that the problem was that Google users see the code of Google as being a tool, not a community. (Think of the spare, open, sterile home page.) People don't "hang out" in google.
Meanwhile, check the recommendations Aldon made in the previous comment thread. One of them, bliptv, guides you to some sites I like. I hadn't seen this one in about a year. It's pretty addictive. But what is it?
Meanwhile, check the recommendations Aldon made in the previous comment thread. One of them, bliptv, guides you to some sites I like. I hadn't seen this one in about a year. It's pretty addictive. But what is it?
Monday, October 09, 2006
Who Tube?
Well, you could begin with learning as much as you can about YouTube. This is their latest controversy. But video bloggers, independently, have tried to say something about life. And art.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Special Guest
Blogging visionary Aldon Hynes has agreed to join us Monday night. Aldon tends to get you thinking about stuff you would never have thought about on your own. But he also really likes to hear what we're thinking about. So come! Can I get a head count? How many are coming? Email me or post.
What Do Blogs Do?
My idea is to make tomorrow's class a little looser and to let you get to know one another a little. So bring any food you like ... to eat and/or share. If the package stores are open, I will bring a little wine.
The emergence stuff is, I admit, a little arcane. What I'm realy looking for are more models for the information we're reading. How do you "flow around" in the blogosphere and what kind of learning or self-informing does that facilitate? What kind of art?
The important part of the Johnson interview is this second page, where he talks about signal-to-noise and the whole problem of organizing and filtering everything that's out there without having the blogosphere begin to resemble the more authority-based "top-down" structure of the mainstream media. How do you preserve spontaneity, democracy and serendipity?
Last week we spoke to two people who are working in the tightly focused area of a campaign, in which information is funneled and concentrated and used like a laser. Certainly, blogs can work that way, but an awful lot of bloggers seem to be trying to do something else. Something more general and semi-private and random.
But what is it? What are they trying to do? (That link goes, for some reason, to the comments. You have to scroll up to Eric's virus post.) (Spazeboy explains why in a comment.)
And what about the idea of literary (or other) art itself? We traditionally think of the painter in his garret, but some of the bloggers seem to need to do their stuff in front of the audience. That is, the art evolves over the course of several posts and comment threads. Is there any sense in which that IS the art? This blogger would say yes, I think. Her art is the creation of community and the pulling together of comments.
The emergence stuff is, I admit, a little arcane. What I'm realy looking for are more models for the information we're reading. How do you "flow around" in the blogosphere and what kind of learning or self-informing does that facilitate? What kind of art?
The important part of the Johnson interview is this second page, where he talks about signal-to-noise and the whole problem of organizing and filtering everything that's out there without having the blogosphere begin to resemble the more authority-based "top-down" structure of the mainstream media. How do you preserve spontaneity, democracy and serendipity?
Last week we spoke to two people who are working in the tightly focused area of a campaign, in which information is funneled and concentrated and used like a laser. Certainly, blogs can work that way, but an awful lot of bloggers seem to be trying to do something else. Something more general and semi-private and random.
But what is it? What are they trying to do? (That link goes, for some reason, to the comments. You have to scroll up to Eric's virus post.) (Spazeboy explains why in a comment.)
And what about the idea of literary (or other) art itself? We traditionally think of the painter in his garret, but some of the bloggers seem to need to do their stuff in front of the audience. That is, the art evolves over the course of several posts and comment threads. Is there any sense in which that IS the art? This blogger would say yes, I think. Her art is the creation of community and the pulling together of comments.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Fun?
This is gaming emergence. Tagaris kind of reluctantly alluded to it Monday night. But what if you just kind of started somewhere arbitrarily and kind of clicked around for an hour, just reading what interested you from embedded links and blogroll links. What would happen?
A Fun Night
We'll have a little food, and maybe a little wine, and that might make us want to move away from the nitty-gritty of politics toward something more theoretical. Read a little bit about emergence, which is very much the way people collect and distribute information on blogs, I think. We'll tak about how people read blogs. More short assignments on this will follow.
Also, any stuff that YOU want to talk about.
Also, any stuff that YOU want to talk about.
Class is on, for those who can come
We will definitely meet Monday night. Details about what we will discuss and what to read will be posted later this moring.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Next Monday Part 2
Here is what I say: I there are even seven people (besides me) who want to do it, we'll do some kind of special class. Maybe even meet for food with some other bloggers. Post your answers or email me.
Next Monday
I'm a little puzzled as to how to handle the sudden appearance of this holiday. I'll throw it out to you -- we can have some kind of special class which will probably be attended mainly by the grad students. Want to? If so, any preferences on what we do?
Monday, October 02, 2006
Blogs vs. the MSM
Remember how last week we talked about the eyeblink between thinking and posting? Maybenot. But it will come up tonight.
Prepare to Become Media Whores!!!
With Tagaris and Gerstein showing up in our midst tonight, we may have several members of the press on hand too. Almost definitely the BBC. Look your best and act real smart!!!
Mrs. Blogfire
Hello, poppets!! Many of you are having problem with blogger, so don't worry: I will understand if you don't post.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
The Language of LL
Vain Scott raises this question. It might be interesting to ask Dan Gerstein whether, in fact, the challenge posed by blog was so different that professional spin doctors have struggled to meet that challenge. Spinners are accustomed to spinning -- that is subtly changing the tilt on a message or trying to get the MSM to see a new angle to a story. The blogs were like flamethrowers. They weren't spinnable because they eschewed subtlety. The normal campaign communication approaches were not going to work, because it wasn't a matter of picking up a conscious or unconscious slant hidden in a David Lightman piece and trying to get Lightman to correct for that. (Additionally, the bloggers started to do that job in their own way, beating up on reporters they thought were tools.)
Please to Gird Loins
This will be an important class, and I hope you have been hunting around in the blogs long enough to have developed your own working theory (or at least a bunch of questions) about the role blogs and the internet played in this election. A reminder: Our guests will include Tim Tagaris who came to CT to run Lamont's internet operation. And Dan Gerstein, a longtime Lieberman aide with roots in both CT and D.C. Gerstein had left Lieberman but rejoined him to help in the campaign, especially -- I would argue --because the Lieberman operation, pre-Gerstein, could not put out the meme fires that would start on the internet and spread to the MSM. Although the Lieberman campaign did eventually establish a blogging voice, I don't think it had much luck matching Lamont in terms of the support from the hard-to-control, spontaneously generated independent blogs. Why do you think that was? What is there that is fundamental to the nature of blogs that the Lieberman candidacy could not access? And did it matter? We won't really know for another five weeks.
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