Atom Feed
January 22, 2008
The New York Times has proclaimed Twitter a phenomenon in a piece redolent with all the smug, self-referential authority it can muster. Journalists are using it! One twittered something that made it into the NY Times! Twitter therefore matters!
Why is journalistic innovation happening last at the newspapers?
January 21, 2008
My friend Bob Morris at UMass Boston, in a message to a mailing list, points out how few posts attribute “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” to Abraham Maslow. Bob found the attribution via Google Groups, which pointed him to Google Books. In fact, a search at Google Books for Maslow as the author and for hammer and nail turns up the relevant snippet of Maslow’s 1966 The Psychology of Science, in which he writes: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” The folk process seems to have sharpened the aphorism.
Bob notes that the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs only traces it as far back as a NY Times article.
Bob also points out that Google Books does not give page references for the Maslow book, which unnecessarily limits GB’s utility as a tool for scholarly research.
That aside, all hail Google Books!
January 20, 2008
Doris Obermair interviewed me at the Picnic conference in spring 2007, and now has posted an edited version in which I talk about the effect of the miscellaneous on business. (With Spanish subtitles.) (By the way, I list videos here.)
January 17, 2008
Global Voices has produced a great intro to citizen’s media, under the guidance of David Sasaki. It’s clear, friendly, and full of heart. And, needless to say, it’s not US-centric. It’s available in English, Spanish, and Bengali, with more on the way.
Well done, David and team. [Tags: gv global_voices citizen_media david_sasaki journalism ]
January 13, 2008
I had a stimulating dinner conversation with someone who works for an institution that preserves the work of a well-known choreographer. (I’m being a bit cagey because I may not be representing this person’s views accurately.) The institution licenses productions very carefully and is stringent in insisting that every element of the productions be authentic, i.e., be as the work was originally produced.
Predictably, I wondered why the institution didn’t loosen up. The choreographer would have more influence because her (or his — caginess!) works would be more frequently performed. After all, if the Beethoven Institute insisted that all performances must be on original instruments, using exactly the same pacing, intonations, sonic dynamics, etc., as Beethoven intended, our culture would be far poorer because we’d hear much less Beethoven and many fewer creative interpretations of his works. In fact, Beethoven would have copyrighted himself right out of culture.
But, replied my dinner companion, it’s different with the work of a great choreographer. The work consists of the details of music, costume, lighting and gesture. The gap between composition and performance is smaller than with a musical score; in fact, there is no gap.
I am not convinced. Nor am I not unconvinced. I think I think that the magic of metadata could let us have our cake and dance it too: the association could authenticate those performances that met its criteria, while freely (liberally, if not for free) permitting non-canonical performances. I don’t know the status of Gilbert and Sullivan’s copyrights, but the D’Olyly Carte group performs a similar metadata function: There are many productions of Gilbert and Sullivan works — a couple of weeks ago, we saw a delightful Mikado that updated lyrics with references to Dick Cheney’s little list — but if you want to see an authentic version, you go to D’Oyly Carte.
But, much as a I like metadata, I’m not confident that I understand the dimensions of the issues in copyrighting something that seems to fall between a score and a performance.
January 11, 2008
From Pew Internet:
One Quarter of Teens Are Super Communicators
The Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction — a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others. 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.
Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation:
* 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys
* 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys.
* 19% of Online boys post video content online, compared to 10% of online girls who have posted a video online where others could see it.47% of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.” Many teens, however, limit access to content that they share.
January 8, 2008
StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative developed to combat badware, today released its report on Sears Holding Corporation’s (SHC) “My SHC Community†software application, finding it to be badware because of inadequate disclosure of extensive tracking and data collection and because the application does not identify itself while running.
Sears has already announced that it’s going to mend its ways. (StopBadWare.org is a project led by the Berkman Center and the Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.)
Some time in the early evening of February 11, I’ll be conducting a very special (as they say in the entertainment biz) Web of Ideas session about how the new business models for music are affecting music…by interviewing BradSucks, who will also favor us with some songs.
I’m a big fan of Brad’s, so I’m quite excited about this.
January 6, 2008
Andy Carvin (in a tweet) points to the Wikipedia entry on the phrase “Viewers like you.” All part of the Web’s dismantling (and reassembling) of the traditional notion of topics.
January 5, 2008
Andy Olmsted was the first American soldier killed in Iraq this year. He blogged at Obsidian Wings as G’Kar. The site has posted a message Andy wanted published if he were killed.
Joho the Blog uses WordPress blogging software.
Thank you, WordPress!
