danah is compiling a list of people researching social network sites….

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From Susan Crawford’s blog:

From the OECD, a useful paper about interconnection online. It turns out (surprise!) that inter-networking is working fine without intervention. There are zillion networks out there, and as long as the local telecommunications environment is sufficiently open (all the way to opening up incumbent facilities to competitors), these networks are finding ways to connect on their own:

The greatest cost barriers to any country connecting to global networks are not traffic exchange relationships, in competitive environments, but monopolists charging high prices in the absence of such competition.

Also — where there’s facilities-based competition, broadband prices can plummet and services to rural areas can be profitable. Global Broadband Battles makes the same point: Reform to telecommunications regulation (opening up facilities to competitors) is the key to stimulating growth in access.

She thanks Milton Mueller for the pointer to the paper, so I thank him to the second degree…Tags:net_neutrality susan_crawford oecd

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Sonific lets you provide background music for your page, choosing from the site’s copyright-cleared selection. It’s free, but even so, I am so far out of the demographic that I ‘d rather have Sonific-earmuffs that auto-mute any site that installs it. Don’t get me wrong: Sonific may catch on, and for those who like that sort of thing, it may be just what the dj ordered. The fact that it’s not for me is probably a good sign for Sonific – we can only assume that Sonific’s target market isn’t crotchety old men.

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Mitch Joel has posted the first half of a 45-min interview on marketing ‘n’ stuff as part of his Six Pixels of Separation series. This is somehow related to a keynote I’m doing at a Canadian Marketing Association conference. [Tags: marketing cluetrain mitch_joel]

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Susan Crawford has a terrific analysis of Sen. Ted Stevens’ Consumer Internet Bill of Rights, which, as she points out, is wrong from its very first word. Yo, Ted, you know what I’m exactly not doing with the Internet right now? Consuming it. I’m creating a little tiny bit more of it.

Susan’s analysis, however, is more balanced and thorough, and does not use the word “Yo” even once.

She concludes:

The IBR doesn’t shift the current situation. Network access providers have all the power and discretion they want — and, indeed, this bill if enacted would codify their right to packet-discriminate.

…

…the only ex ante rule that will make unfettered internet access a reality is mandated structural separation. We’d need to turn transmission into a utility in order to change the environment.

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[Note: I know the following is dangerously close to self-parody. But I do think the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon is interesting.]

1. Remember how we all made Mahir, the Kiss man, famous? Some people spread the link out of a mean sense of superiority. (Mahir used his moment of celebrity to try to engage people across cultures, so now who’s the foolish one, eh?) But we also spread it because we could. We — all of us, each of us, none of us famous — could make an unknown human famous. It changed our relationship to celebrity, the continued existence of Paris Hilton not to the contrary.

With Snakes on a Plane, we’re flexing our muscles in a new way. We’re not insisting that JarJar be killed in the sequel, although we did write the movie’s most quotable line. But that’s cool only because it means with SoaP we’re messing with the audience’s relationship to the movie, and not just – as with Rocky Horror – during the time when the movie unspools in the theater. Rather, with SoaP the audience has taken over the meaning of the movie. This is very different from being asked to design Indiana Jones’ new outfit or write witticisms for the next James Bond movie. We, without being asked, have insisted on what this movie means to us.

What does it mean to us? Well, we’re refusing to let the movie be marketed to us as B movies — think Anaconda — are, as if we’re idiots who really think such movies are anything more than a retelling of the same plot over and over and over. With SoaP we’re saying that we know exactly what sort of movie it is, and we’re capable of enjoying it for the very qualities that make it a B movie. Don’t think we’re really surprised when a snake bites the guy on the nuts, as I assume happens, even if we jump because of the clever editing. We all knew someone would get bitten in the crotch, and we’ve always been conspirators in the success of B movies. Now we’re making that clear by reveling in our power, just as we did with Mahir.

I don’t think this is a turning point in how movies are made. The SoaP phenomenon has gotten much of its juice from the fact that this is the first time. Hollywood I’m sure is already trying to figure out how to repeat the success. But that’s like Hollywood plotting to find the next Mahir. Nah, Hollywood will continue, and we’ll find the next project we want to commandeer because, after all…[cue portentious music] aren’t we all the snakes on the plane?

2. Samuel L. Jackson. [Tags: snakes_on_a_plane SoaP movies pretentious_writing]

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They spake so plain,
of the stakes to gain.
Rakes of pain?
Flakes of murrain?
Complain of a migraine?
Inane to the brain?
Or parfait by the Seine?
A rain of champagne?
Playin’ with sugar cane?
Wayans’ amazin’?
Stay in a Days Inn?
Charlemagne of Acquitaine?

The main pain?
Sustain three motherf***ing quatrains.

[Tags: soap snakes_on_a_plane]

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Seb Schmoller points out that the article in Wikipedia about the history of virtual learning environments was created on July 29, and just a couple of weeks and hundreds of edits later, it’s pretty durn good. But this is not idle knowledge. It comes in the face of the patent granted to Blackboard. The article tacitly establishes prior art.

Well, not entirely tacitly. A notice at the top of the article links to a wiki that contests the Blackboard patent claim by claim. [Tags: blackboard patent vle education wikipedia seb_schmoller]

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El Mercurio (Chile) has published an interview with me about blogging and marketing.

As far as I can tell — my high school Spanish doesn’t get me all that far — it seems fine, and I enjoyed talking with Daniela Santelices, the author. Two corrections, though: 1. The conference/seminar I was going to in Santiago in a week has just been canceled. Que lástima! 2. I think the article says I’m a columnist for the NY Times, when in fact many years ago they ran an op-ed of mine in their Education section. So, I’m happy to take the upgrade, but…

I don’t mean to carp, and I do appreciate the chance to express myself in a part of the world I’ve never visited, but I also want to set the record straight. [Tags: blogs marketing cluetrain]

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I’m not very happy with what I wrote yesterday about anonymity. I should have taken more time with it, but the conversation was moving so quickly that I felt I had to jump in.

There must be a mathematical way to express the Law of Conversational Overclocking: As the acceleration of conversation increases past the maximum speed of thought, the quality of conversation deteriorates.

In fact, isn’t there a sweet spot, which varies by topic, medium, number of participants, and personality? Conversations improve as they approach a certain velocity, and then deteriorate rapidly, until they break the Unsound Barrier (where the laws of logic go through a singularity), at which point the conversation just is no more?

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