Sunday, July 19, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Belated Response to Carr/Cascio/Postman
Keeping it very short, as I noticed I neglected to respond to this post as I was checking over everything as a video uploads to my blog. . .I'll touch on two topics: the pharmacology piece of Cascio's article, and the assumption that the benefits of Google/technology in general are and/or will be evenly distributed. And what about the energy & natural resources required to build and run these increasingly advanced networks? Cascio admits to using modafinil in order to combat jet lag, slightly avoiding the fact that doctors are prescribing this drug outside of its FDA sanctioned uses. There's a term for this, but I'd have to Google it. Hmmmm. . . . On the other topic, what's going to happen to the have-nots whose brains are not stimulated to evolve? Will they be the Geico cavemen of the 22nd century media?
Friday, July 10, 2009
Response to Facebook
I wish the Facebook article had been broken into different articles: one rant about the neocon money & politics behind the scenes, and one about the data-mining and advertising connection. Hodgkinson has a couple different arguments going on, and the visceral nature of his anger in the first part kind of turned me off. For the author, or editors, to make the gaffe about the CIA & Sept. 11 also weakens the overall article. I wondered who the author was and whether he was a regular columnist or not. I did find the section on data-mining and us becoming shills for advertisers to our friends pretty interesting. Oh yes, read your privacy policies. But who really does?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Response to Twitter & Postman
Twitter: I'm not sure whether to vomit or get some of my dot.com buddies together to create a service called Shitter that allows us all to keep up on the bowel movements of our favorite celebrities, preferably as an audio file, but obviously limited by technology to 140 seconds.
If we ever thought that Big Brother would be surreptitiously forced upon us by an Orwellian government, rest assured that we have not gone kicking and screaming to the Gulag, but have willingly offered up all the personal information the Corporation could have ever desired.
5-7 sentences is a mere pittance of a response, so I'll focus on this part:
“The information we subscribe to on a feed is not the same as in a deep social relationship,” Boyd told me. She has seen this herself; she has many virtual admirers that have, in essence, a parasocial relationship with her. “I’ve been very, very sick, lately and I write about it on Twitter and my blog, and I get all these people who are writing to me telling me ways to work around the health-care system, or they’re writing saying, ‘Hey, I broke my neck!’ And I’m like, ‘You’re being very nice and trying to help me, but though you feel like you know me, you don’t.’ ” Boyd sighed. “They can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you.”
She has about 400 people she follows online but suspects many of those relationships are tissue-fragile.
Tissue-fragile? You think? It's not even that fragile. Tissue is physical. She put these personal details out into the twittersphere and is now complaining about the responses?
In the interest of fairness, I noted positives about Twitter:
One page 5 of 6, the New York Times actually started to mention some advantages, like its haiku-length, but my 140 characters just ran . . .
If we ever thought that Big Brother would be surreptitiously forced upon us by an Orwellian government, rest assured that we have not gone kicking and screaming to the Gulag, but have willingly offered up all the personal information the Corporation could have ever desired.
5-7 sentences is a mere pittance of a response, so I'll focus on this part:
“The information we subscribe to on a feed is not the same as in a deep social relationship,” Boyd told me. She has seen this herself; she has many virtual admirers that have, in essence, a parasocial relationship with her. “I’ve been very, very sick, lately and I write about it on Twitter and my blog, and I get all these people who are writing to me telling me ways to work around the health-care system, or they’re writing saying, ‘Hey, I broke my neck!’ And I’m like, ‘You’re being very nice and trying to help me, but though you feel like you know me, you don’t.’ ” Boyd sighed. “They can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you.”
She has about 400 people she follows online but suspects many of those relationships are tissue-fragile.
Tissue-fragile? You think? It's not even that fragile. Tissue is physical. She put these personal details out into the twittersphere and is now complaining about the responses?
In the interest of fairness, I noted positives about Twitter:
One page 5 of 6, the New York Times actually started to mention some advantages, like its haiku-length, but my 140 characters just ran . . .
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Response to "The Persuaders"
1. Advertisers are responsible for their own vicious cycle of clutter, which then they all must try to cut through ad nauseum. (hmm, pun not intended, but it works well so I'll leave it).
2. Madison & Vine. When it doesn't work, it's shameless, obvious product placement. When it works, it's racking up BMW sales. I'm interested in the idea of how pushing the envelope means not just tolerating ads, but searching them out. I subscribe to a Youtube channel that kind of works this way.
3. Reptilian hot-buttons. Are we that simple? Am I smarter than the average bear? Or have they just convinced me that I am in order to sell luxury products?
4. Ad 3.0: Putting the Cult back in Culture!
5. Is any of this working? Or, I'm wasting half of my advertising dollars, I'm just not sure which half. Are we savvy enough to what advertisers are doing that we can accept it on our own terms, or does the sheer inundation of advertising we are subject to have its own effects we don't see, even when we're thinking about it.
Response to "Feed"
Feed: Fast Times at Ridgemont High meets The Matrix, as told by George Orwell's great-grandson to a friend while IM'ing in class.
1. Over-reliance on media to do our critical thinking for us.
I subscribe to US News & World Report, which recently changed formats from a news weekly to a monthly, with an additional web version I have yet to check out. I think the loss of more in-depth reporting is unfortunate. It seems everything must be packaged for us. TV news seems particularly prone to a 30 second gloss-over of unrelated events.
2. A negative perception of public schools.
The ironic description in Feed of the corporations taking over schools because they care about America's future was great. Titus's view of the prior school system as "filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps" is not a great stretch from the way some outside education view schools. Maybe I'm just defensive because I'm an English teacher! If there's a silver lining in this cloud, at least it's usually a case of community members thinking their school is okay, it's all the rest that are messed up.
3. Strange, frustrating & hopeful duality of teenagers: self-absorbtion vs. altruism.
Although Violet dies, she represents that part of the American teenager that doesn't quietly accept everything he or she is told, and doesn't think only of their own immediate gratification. The ending of the book is pretty bleak, but I still have faith in our students and the future they'll create.
1. Over-reliance on media to do our critical thinking for us.
I subscribe to US News & World Report, which recently changed formats from a news weekly to a monthly, with an additional web version I have yet to check out. I think the loss of more in-depth reporting is unfortunate. It seems everything must be packaged for us. TV news seems particularly prone to a 30 second gloss-over of unrelated events.
2. A negative perception of public schools.
The ironic description in Feed of the corporations taking over schools because they care about America's future was great. Titus's view of the prior school system as "filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps" is not a great stretch from the way some outside education view schools. Maybe I'm just defensive because I'm an English teacher! If there's a silver lining in this cloud, at least it's usually a case of community members thinking their school is okay, it's all the rest that are messed up.
3. Strange, frustrating & hopeful duality of teenagers: self-absorbtion vs. altruism.
Although Violet dies, she represents that part of the American teenager that doesn't quietly accept everything he or she is told, and doesn't think only of their own immediate gratification. The ending of the book is pretty bleak, but I still have faith in our students and the future they'll create.
Response to "The Making of a Media Literate Mind"
1. Americans spend 10-12 hours a day consuming media? If that's an average, somebody out there never sleeps. This is one of those statistics that my gut tells me is exaggerated. How was this reported?
2. I saw a student-produced video once about the mega-corporation ownership of the six media giants, and reading this article and watching the Frontline episode also mentioned 6 holding companies owning the vast majority of ad/marketing agencies.
3. "Whoever is telling the stories within a culture has enormous power to shape how people think, act, and buy." Why else did Stalin and Pol Pot come after the teachers and intelligentsia first?
4. "Asking questions helps demystify media's power." Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain never got Dorothy anywhere.
5. "Is Celebrity X's marriage more newsworthy than the school play?" Somebody must buy this crap, or we wouldn't be subjected to it in every checkout line.
Question: What are the ethics of using these manipulative techniques to tell the stories we in education think are relevant, beneficial and important for society? For example, if I want to sell reading to an audience of disaffected boys.
2. I saw a student-produced video once about the mega-corporation ownership of the six media giants, and reading this article and watching the Frontline episode also mentioned 6 holding companies owning the vast majority of ad/marketing agencies.
3. "Whoever is telling the stories within a culture has enormous power to shape how people think, act, and buy." Why else did Stalin and Pol Pot come after the teachers and intelligentsia first?
4. "Asking questions helps demystify media's power." Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain never got Dorothy anywhere.
5. "Is Celebrity X's marriage more newsworthy than the school play?" Somebody must buy this crap, or we wouldn't be subjected to it in every checkout line.
Question: What are the ethics of using these manipulative techniques to tell the stories we in education think are relevant, beneficial and important for society? For example, if I want to sell reading to an audience of disaffected boys.
Introduce Myself
1. I'm Kurt Broderson. I just moved into teaching high school English at Mt. Abraham UHS in Bristol, VT after teaching middle school here for the past 14 years. I live in Addison with my wife, two year old son, a yellow lab and two cats. I'm taking this class because touches on a lot of my interests: technology, media, video technology, sticking it to the man, etc. Oh yes, I'm up for recertification next year as well.
2. I like lots of choices in what I watch/read. I like witty, intelligent ads. I don't like telemarketers. To quote Bruce Springsteen, I don't like 57 channels, and nothing on. Jeeze, that's dated.
3. My wife and I watched the semi-recent X-Files movie last week, which prompted us to watch several of the early episodes that I bought WAAAAY back on VHS.
2. I like lots of choices in what I watch/read. I like witty, intelligent ads. I don't like telemarketers. To quote Bruce Springsteen, I don't like 57 channels, and nothing on. Jeeze, that's dated.
3. My wife and I watched the semi-recent X-Files movie last week, which prompted us to watch several of the early episodes that I bought WAAAAY back on VHS.
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