Peering Blurrily...just peering blurrily

Can we eclipse the Apocalypse?: Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution

2012-01-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (2011) by Jeremy Rifkin

This is the must-read of the decline-of-western-civilization books I’ve been devouring lately. It provides the inkling of hope for the future that The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca Costas fails to give. Rifkin shows how government and society are being restructured around the global environmental changes that we are already experiencing and the developing distributed capitalism that is replacing the old order. He gives solid examples of how the transition is already in motion.

In future, each building, including our homes, will generate its own energy and sell surplus to the grid. Many people have already started doing this, including a neighbor down the street who installed a giant wind turbine in his front yard a couple of years ago. But in the book, Rifkin gives the example (on p. 175) of an African woman who sold one of her animals to buy a small solar panel from which she could charge her cell phone, and power a light bulb or two. This facilitated the minute-scale business she built that improved her family’s lives.

The chapter on distributed capitalism cites examples that are already up and running, such as Linnex, Etsy, Gramen Bank, CSA farming, and Zip Car. The idea of open source and free or micro-payment sharing is coming into play. Centralized distribution of goods is going the way of the Berlin Wall. Brick-and-mortar has had to move to etail too, to survive. Now sellers can sell directly to their customers with only a website as a middle man. If a culture of trust can be cemented, sharing can go even more local with such activities as car sharing (I could rent out my car to my neighbors, for instance) and already exists in the phenomenon of couch surfing.

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Rifkin is a true bleeding-heart rose-colored-glasses-wearing liberal who bases his theory of civil society on the empathetic nature of human beings. He says people seek community for the good of the whole. I’m not sure I see that, but rather feel that people will operate as a community, collaborate, for their own survival, as now they share for their own benefit or self-advancement. I’m not sure I agree with him that humans are such great beings, but I buy his paradigm of the Third Industrial Revolution because I can see it already getting underway. My consciousness is changing along with the community of which I’m a part, and I want to embrace the coming way of using energy, working, and sharing goods and services on my small scale. Like the Smart Car commercial says, instead of “BIG BIG BIG,” I want “small.” And local, like from here in my little house.

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Here are my notes:

P. 130 - Seeing the Big Picture
P. 178 - UAE’s Masdar, post carbon city
P. 183 - Pacific NW’s PNWER
P. 210 and 224 - “Biomimicry”

P. 216 - intellectual property in a lateral world
P. 217 - a fossil fuel economy in the hands of a few giant corporations will seem odd to youth of 2050
P. 218 - Financial Capital Versus Social Capital
P. 219 - “sharing is to ownership...”
P. 221 - The Dream of Quality of Life
P. 224 - “A new scientific worldview...”
P. 225 - “efficiency needs to make room for sustainability...”
P. 233 - The Most Outdated Institution in the World
P. 235 - Biosphere Consciousness
P. 251 - what is “awesome”?
P. 253 - “How can we expect present and future generations to attend to the long-term stewardship of the biosphere, which requires focused attention and patience stretched out over lifetimes of commitment, when they are so easily distracted from moment to moment by a blur of signals, images, and data screaming out for their immediate attention.” (Reminded me of Super Sad True Love Story)
P. 265 - Rethinking Work
P. 266 - “While the civil society...”
P. 267-268 - “Many of the brightest young people around the planet are eschewing traditional employment in the marketplace and government in favor of working in the not-for-profit third sector. The reason is that the distributed and collaborative nature of the third sector makes it a more attractive alternative for a generation that has grown up on the Internet and engaged in similar distributed and collaborative social spaces.... And like the Internet, the core assumption is civil society is that giving oneself to the larger networked community optimizes the value of the group as well as its individual members.”
P. 268 - “Just as the industrial revolutions...”

The Joy of Quiet... and of carrying a smaller purse

2012-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

I carry a big ass purse, to borrow Reggie Watts' phrase, so that I can always have room for a book and be able to accommodate a folded The Stranger too. I usually have the day's crossword puzzle in there, and, of course, my iPhone with all its apps, mp3s, ebooks, and the internet.

When I traveled in Yemen and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries a decade ago, I noticed that shopkeepers, souk vendors, and mostly everyone I saw squatting in public by their wares or shop doors sat with nothing in their hands to read. They maybe were chatting with a neighbor, chewing a big wad a qat leaves, or just staring into space, but they were placid in their non-distraction by book, Gameboy, TV, or even radio.

I wonder if any of them now are checking their phones while eating communally on the floor, traditional-style. Or if sheesha smokers puff and peer at their devices in Khan Al Kalili. I guess they do.

Pico Iyer, in his recent NY Times article, "The Joy of Quiet," promotes the case, which is being ever more frequently made, for stillness and life offline. Here's a quote that also emphasizes the importance of education for information and media literacy and critical thinking:

So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.

Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&smid=fb-share

and here's Reggie's Big Ass Purse video:

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Open-Sourced Civilization: the Beauty of Collaboration and Love of Self-Sustaining Work

2011-12-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

People using their bodies and loving their work is a most beautiful manifestation of humanity. The honest sweat physicality of what these people who are innovating a new civilization do is what I so admire. Also, I love how they spurn the top-down traditional way of doing things that no longer work for whatever reason. This collaborative self-sufficiency facilitated by global networking is one of the signs that we are experiencing the transition into the Third Industrial Revolution (read Jeremy Rifkin's book!). Here's another guy out there figuring out new solutions and sharing them:

Marcin Jakubowski: Open-Sourced Blueprints For Civilization

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/wiki-diy-civilization_n_1157895.html

"Wow": Tracking language development and the spread of mass conversation

2011-12-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Also Visualizing data. Wow.

Deb Roy: The Birth Of A Word

Passing our Problems Along

2011-11-17T23:00:00.001-08:00

Costas writes about the phenomenon of societies in decline passing their unsolvable problems on to the next generations. [See post below] Funny, I always do think I'll probably squeak through, but worry about my nephew and niece. I've noticed they don't seem worried.

Listen to this guy--their age--on the subject of when he figures doom will descend:

(Sorry about the ads. Relatively new thing, but full on comparable to TV now. Yay progress on the internet!)

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I BELIEVE Rebecca D. Costa that what's happening to society is due to OVERLOAD

2011-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction (2010) by Rebecca D. Costa

"The Believing Brain" by Michael Shermer, scientist, former born-again Christian, now self-described monist--proponent of the idea that there's no mind, only brain, and no soul, only body (vs. dualist)--cites lots of brain studies and statistics on beliefs and ideologies, religious, political, extra-sensory, etc. It provides scientific support for Costa's warning in her book about the folly of the many currently who adopt beliefs vs. facts. Blog post here

In "The Watchman's Rattle," Rebecca Costa illuminates points of comparison between the current "broken" state of American (and western?) society and that of great civilizations of the past that collapsed. She writes about the phenomenon of cognitive threshold as explanation of our national gridlock of politics and ideologies. She proposes that people are more susceptible to irrational beliefs, such as birther and conspiracy theories as well as other religious and magical thinking, under the current circumstances of overload, and that our brains need actually to evolve to cope. Since I've read this book, I've begun seeing so many examples in the media.

Costa cites civilizations that have collapsed in the past, arguing they hit their cognitive threshold in face of overwhelming impending problems that ultimately brought each of them down: The Mayans, the Romans, the Egyptians, and the Khmer, Ming, and Byzantine empires. She shows how specific environmental issues became overwhelming and rather than finding solutions for them, people kept passing them on to the next generations, substituting beliefs and superstitious rituals for facing facts.

She writes, “History makes it clear that we hit some obstacle that causes progress to slow long before the specific event(s) blamed for the collapse of a civilization--some recurring obstruction that is both natural and predictable: The uneven rate of change between the slow evolution of human biology and the rapid rate at which societies advance eventually causes progress to come to a standstill (p. 7).”

Here’s the warning for today’s society: “Once a society begins exhibiting the first two signs--gridlock and the substitution of beliefs for facts--the stage is set for collapse (p. 13).”

Gridlock. Beliefs instead of facts. Congress. Fox News. Candidates’ confusing stances.

Costa lists supermemes, which are ideas, beliefs, and behaviors that become widely shared, as of five types. These are the result of a society reaching cognitive threshold and heading toward collapse:

Irrational Opposition
Personalization of Blame
Counterfeit Correlation
Silo Thinking
Extreme Economies

Costa loves her alliteration. Her chapters and sub-headings often manage, unstrainedly, to be concise and memorable: Ch. 12 “Invoking Insight: Conditions Conducive to Cognition” (help solutions chapter) with sub-sections titled “Wise about Size,” “Cobblestones and Cognition,” “Training, Braining, and Gaining,” “Bring Back the Break,” and “Damaging Distractions.”

Here are passages I bookmarked:

P. 35
With new cognitive processes, such as insight, the human brain inevitably reaches a limit in the amount of complexity it can discern. The left hemisphere of the brain becomes gridlocked because no logical systems exist for narrowing a sea of options. The right hemisphere, which specializes in the synthesis of implicit data, begins interpreting millions of obscure, unrelated facts in an attempt to make sense of a situation. We begin stringing together clues and identifying patterns that simply make no sense. Once left- and right-brain processes become gridlocked, it’s a sign that we have reached a cognitive threshold.
So, if the cognitive threshold is responsible for the cascade of behaviors leading to collapse, all we need to break the pattern is to make certain our ability to understand and manage complexity doesn’t fall behind our ability to create it. When we develop new cognitive tools, such as insight, we can prevent a cognitive threshold from ever occurring.
So the real question is this: Will insight evolve fast enough to solve our most dangerous problems?

P. 106
And being overweight doesn’t just affect the cognitive abilities of children.
A second study examined senior citizens who averages seventy-eight years of age. This research revealed that obese seniors had 8 percent less brain matter and that by simply requiring seniors to exercise forty-five minutes per day, cardiovascular fitness increased the volume of their brains and improved cognition.
Whether young or old, Ratey concludes, “too much fuel and not enough movement slows down the human brain.”
…

(p. 107) Ratey distinguishes himself because not only has he made the important connection between obesity and cognition, but he is also one of the few experts working for massive, systemic change rather than holding the obese responsible for their own plight. He may believe self-impowerment--the individual’s power to rise above--but in parallel with personal accountability, he also acknowledges that powerful forces in society work against a healthy lifestyle.

Obesity isn’t just a personal problem--it’s a systemic one. And it needs a systemic prescription to cure it.

P. 188
The difference between the slow speed at which the human brain can evolve and the rapid rate at which complexity grows is called the “cognitive threshold.” Every civilization has encountered the cognitive threshold, and when they did, it marked the beginning of decline.

…

Gridlock is the earliest sign. Leaders and experts become unable to resolve society’s threats such as drought, war, and disease and begin passing these problems from one generation to another in an endless inheritance. Individual citizens also begin to feel paralyzed, fearful, and hopeless.
(We never suspected gridlock was part of a pattern. Now it seems obvious.)
Once we reach a gridlock, unproven beliefs take the place of facts and rational thinking. Over time, some of these beliefs become so powerful that they become supermemes. The purpose of supermemes is to compensate for cognitive shortcomings, but they do far more harm than good.
(We never imagined that complexity would lead to abandoning facts.)
Supermemes eventually become so pervasive that they overwhelm all social institutions, customs, values, and rational thinking. Today, five supermemes prevent progress: irrational opposition, the personalization of blame, counterfeit correlations, silo thinking, and extreme economies. As these supermemes grow stronger, they cause singular ways of behaving and thinking. Singularity in turn suppresses helpful solutions from coming forward. All the while, dangerous problems persist.

P. 249 “Cobblestones and Cognition”
The link between the locomotion of our bodies and how we perceive and process data is undeniable. Although this connection may have been forged millions of years ago when man stood upright, the cognitive benefits of walking are still as real today as they were for our earliest ancestors. Today, we know that walking not only leads to wellness, but it offers a wellspring of wisdom as well.

P. 256 “Collaborating with Complexity”
One of the surefire ways to slow down complexity is to stop buying and doing more. When we willingly choose to keep adding new things to our lives--more goals, activities, needs, wishes, products, and so on--we become unconscious accomplices of complexity.

P. 259
Foods Associated with Higher Brain Functioning [image]

[Also] Research shows that being sedentary and repeating a narrow range of tasks over and over again mean depending on the same circuits in the brain instead of creating new ones.

(p. 260) In short, when we improve blood flow through exercise, we are also improving idea flow. Blood flow is so crucial to the functioning of the human brain that scientists are on the cusp of discovering that increasing blood flow may reverse the effects of aging in both the body and the mind....
But cognitive fitness requires new learning to take place, so physical exercise that incorporates new sensory experiences is the best was to give both our bodies and brain a workout.

Circular linking! I noticed that my blog entry was listed on Costa's book site: http://rebeccacosta.com/RelatedArticles

Then there’s this TED Talk here by Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, “The Real Reason for Brains,” which says the only reason we have brains is “to produce adaptable and complex movement [of our bodies].” One doesn’t think about it, but it’s true that every manifestation of our brains that impacts the world is through movement. So now will I get off the sofa and go for a damn walk? Costa says that’s the only way we will get the insight that will save us as a society from extinction. Certainly it might, at least, prolong my little life a little bit.
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DWTS twangs the gender continuum

2011-10-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Chaz Bono and Hope Solo faced each other on the chopping block last night on Dancing with the Stars, which is interesting because these two contestants were pilloried all season about their non-conformity to the gender stereotypes DWTS so loves. Hope was never "sexy" enough and Chaz was characterized as an ewok or a penguin: just too roly poly and cute to be truly masculine.

It's commendable that DWTS had Chaz on as a star at all, given that it was bound to be, and was, criticized by the Christian conservative right. It's a show with a family audience, judging by its sponsors shilling toys and cleaning products, which means that the kids sharing the sofa might ask discombobulated parents what it means to be a transgender man.

But I'll bet the judges caught themselves blinking with bewilderment at the brouhaha after Maksim Chmerkovskiy's rebuke of their criticism. Perhaps Maks was disrespectful to say maybe it was time Len got out after being in the dance business for 50 years. What he should have articulated better is that the judges need to update their standards, especially regarding gender characteristics in the respective dance roles. Maks is certainly guilty of representing the extreme end of the masculine ideal on the show, while co-host Brooke Burke looks as much like Barbie as is humanly possible (just by accident of birth). But do you have to look super he-man or super lithe gumby girl to be a good dancer? Are the judges focusing too much on sexiness? For higher ratings maybe, hmmm?

I'm glad Chaz expressed his displeasure with the judges' comments over the course of his time on DWTS. He always kept his cool and gave it his best. I am sorry to see him go as I thought he was a good dancer. He certainly worked hard at it, overcoming a weight disadvantage to do so, and he remained professional and upbeat.

As for Hope, she expresses her "femininity" in her sometimes tearful frustration against the judges' demands that she dance more like Salome rather than like the world class soccer athlete she is. I think Maks appreciates her and was brave to raise his objections, though he did so clumsily, unlike his elegant dancing.

Maks post-outburst interview: http://www.eonline.com/news/maksim_chmerkovskiy_dancing_with_stars/271651

Image source: http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/blogs/2011/tv-news/dwts-week-6-maks-is-diva-with-the-stars-on-broadway-night/
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That TED vid for Christina

2011-09-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

What with ever increasing education cuts, is it time to look for an alternative political system to democracy? Ideas?

TED Talks
Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

What is a Fact anyway? And Who sez Scientists know what is True? True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

2011-09-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

The same afternoon I finished the book, I watched a report on the 4:30 Kiro News program that illustrated a VRN--Video News Release--which is “a short clip of marketing propoganda produced in the language and style of real news...the most sophisticated of which are virtually indistinguishable from honest news, featuring interviews with (paid) experts and voiceovers by (fake) reporters who susubtly pitch products during their narratives.” A VRN is an easy gap-fill for those slow news days. This one was about corporate sponsorship of football games and showed extended footage of boxes of Pepsi trundling down a roller belt. Beyond product placement (which, actually, is probably even more insidious), this was a Pepsi ad. This is one of the biggest take-aways for me of Manjoo’s book and will be as irksome every time I catch it as product placement has been since I first learned about it. But, of course, I already knew about it: VRN’s are just sneakier infomercials.

Everybody pick a reality!
p. 16

In some ways we are returning to the free-wheeling days before radio and television launched the very idea of mass media--the era of partisan newspapers and pamphleteers. But our niches, now, are more niche than ever before. We are entering what you might call the trillion-channel universe: over the last two decades, advances in technology--the digital recording and distribution of text, images, and sound over information networks, aka, the modern world--have helped to turn each of us into producers, distributors, and editors of our own media diet. Now we collect the news firsthand through digital cameras, we send our accounts and opinions to the world over blogs, and we use Google, TiVo, the iPod, and a raft of other tools to carefully screen what we consume.

This “us” created media is now so rampant that news and other programs pander to it by running “tweet” streams. Yes it is valuable to know what “we” are saying (on the spur of the moment, of course. Why waste time pondering or composing?), but we shouldn’t forget that these streams are edited or at least filtered and the stand-outs are chosen to go to air.

As a Read
Manjoo’s writing is not as compelling as I’d have liked. I skimmed a bit, despite my interest in the subject. He threads three cases throughout the book: the Swift Boat and Gore-Bush election debacles, and 9-11 conspiracy theories. Granted, these are very illustrative of the points he is making. Here’s his Table of Contents:

Introduction: Why Facts No Longer Matter
1. “Reality” Is Splitting
2. The New Tribalism: Swift Boats and the Power of Choosing
3. Trusting Your Senses: Selective Perception and 9/11
4. Questionable Expertise: The Stolen Election and the Men Who Push It
5. The Twilight of Objectivity, or What’s the Matter with Lou Dobbs?
6. “Truthiness” Everywhere
Epilogue: Living in a World without Trust

If those headings don’t make you want to read the book, then you shouldn’t, but you should look for other reading on the subject, as it is critical to the society we are becoming (have become?).

Colbert?
Since Colbert’s “Truthiness” is referenced here, I can throw in the observation I’ve had that Colbert is getting too heavy-handed himself with blatant product placement on his Colbert Report. Even if he is doing it ironically, to construct a skit, it still gets the product to the audience: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/07/colbert-tries-to-understand-michele-bachmann_n_952557.html
It’s like what Manjoo says about trust--we who like Colbert trust him. But he is asking for a lot of trust lately. Is he exploiting his viewers love by collecting contributions to his super pac when he hasn’t said how the money will be used? Because he has targeted Rick Perry (PArry) with a couple of Iowa political ads, we are to believe that however he uses the money will be in progressive best interests. I still believe that, still, but it feels a little like a show of power, too. I wonder if Colbert has been in character too long.

On the Local News
P. 196

Technological advances since the 1980s--smaller, more portable cameras; digital recording and editing; and the distribution of video through satellites and the Internet--allowed for further cost cutting in local news. In many U.S. TV newsrooms, you’ll now find computer terminals belonging to a system called Pathfire, which hooks stations into a cloud of video coming in from all over the world--clips from syndicates such as the Associated Press, from other local stations, and from large broadcast networks.
For producers, Pathfire is a palette from which to create full stories at extremely low cost; now images of overseas wars, out-of-state disasters, nearby sports victories, freakish weather events, adorable zoo animals, and gripping celebrity goings-on are quickly pulled down and cut up into digestible bits of news...According to one study, more than a quarter of the video you see on a typical local newscast isn’t at all local and was collected instead from video coming in on the cloud.

I’ve noticed lately that the local news and “World News” are not that different, with the local being just slightly more relevant. At least the “human interest” stories on local news are closer to home.

Choosing Who to Trust
Epilogue, p. 229

The underlying story here is this: new communications technology breeds particularized trust....
What arises from all this, finally, is the condition Stephen Colbert diagnosed as “truthiness.” Truthiness means you choose. But you’re not just deciding a reality; you’re also deciding to trust that reality--which means deciding to distrust the others. Whenever you choose, you’re making a decision to form a particularized trust. This is the essence of the new medium.

Manjoo’s last words are “Choose wisely.” And that’s the crux of the problem: we can’t choose wisely out of this roiling content sea. We have to trust “friends” for guidance. And that comes back to the issue of how we sort ourselves, and how we are educated. Some condemn college campuses as hotbeds of liberalism. Is that because in college students are taught critical thinking and to question all givens?

Here’s an item hot from the news, just as all media is saturated with 9-11 commemoration coverage: NBC’s Twitter feed gets hacked and a false story of another attack on NYC goes out to millions of followers. Terrorism at home. http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/09/7692776-nbc-twitter-account-hacked-issued-false-reports

Happy swimming in the miasma.

Here's a fun Farhad Manjoo thing on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2303531/

Manjoo, Farhad. True enough: learning to live in a post-fact society. New York, NY: Wiley, 2008. Print.

Image borrowed from http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/13_essential_twitter_tips

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The problem of envisioning future tech: anachronisms (PowerPoint and texting) in "A Visit from the Goon Squad"

2011-09-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Tech notes

Chapter 12, Alison’s SLIDE journal (she’s aged 12, retorts to her mom Sasha’s “I mean writing a paper.” “Ugh! Who even uses that word?”) is told in Powerpoint, including charts, graphs, callouts--basically everything PPT does except animation and slide transitions...because the slides are in a made-of-paper book. You hold the book sideways and read the text top to bottom, often guided by arrows, though some slides are non-linear. It’s an anachronism of the future. People spurn Powerpoint now: hard to imagine it will be a thing in 2020. Hard to imagine people will write at all. Voice recognition is coming in now--I prefer it in my Google app because it works so well and is effortless compared to typing out my search term. People have Skype on their phones now and video calling and god knows what other apps that are becoming widely used.
Text language - “U hav sum nAms 4 me?” “hEr thA r” “GrAt. Il gt 2 wrk.” (note cap for long vowels--too many extra keystrokes--plus punctuation). Same as above. People will just speak to text.
Looping Pauses - Lincoln (somewhat autistic), Sasha and Drew’s son, documents pauses in rock songs, then loops them to create his own music of pauses. Note his comments on “Foxey Lady” about Jimi Hendrix breathing in the pause: Yesterday, while listening to Reggie Watts vids on YouTube, serendipitously, I read about Everyday Looper for iPhone in a comment. Watch Reggie Watts with a keyboard and his live sounds (“big ass purse” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g1vEXz5BvA&feature=related; him laying tracks on stage singing “cat song”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01IkYtk4GVs&feature=related; and using Everyday Looper on a Sirius radio interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csw3LrmHkUg&feature=related. For a demo on Everyday Looper watch this other guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW5ZcjQ3I10&feature=colike. Seriously, skip the tutorial to hear his music at the end.
Diagrams - I laid awake last night thinking of drawing a diagram of the book’s characters and how they connect to each other. I’d looked for an index at the end of the novel--like the glossary I was surprised to find at the end of A Clockwork Orange after I’d already figured out through context and repetition Burgess’s hooligan slang. You begin each new chapter in Egan’s book like a time machine traveller--it takes a little while to figure out the who, when, and where. Characters pop in and out so that you have to wrack your brains (or go back and reread) to remember where you read about them before. The effect is like a giant jigsaw. So as I was thinking about making this diagram, I decided to Google to check whether anyone else’d had the same idea and I found this: http://rosiesays.com/2011/07/05/jennifer-egan-makes-me-do-crazy-things/. But don’t do like one commenter said and print it off to tuck in the book before she reads it. Work it out first.

Proust
Epigraph - connects Ch 12 with Alison imagining, coming home, as it would be in the future.

Dystopia
NYC has a high sea wall that blocks people seeing the sunset; January temp is 87*; people can’t take strollers into public places because they inhibit evacuation; the Twin Towers site is called “The Footprint” though no one remembers what the towers looked like There are no lawns in Arizona and the desert is covered with solar panels and wind turbines. The earth has shifted on its axis due to global warming, resulting in shorter winter days and longer summer ones.

The Goon Squad
is Time.

Here's Alison's slide showing Lincoln's songs with pauses:

Egan, Jennifer. A visit from the Goon Squad . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print.
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Will you be a Spotify espouser? Or stay loyal to Pandora.

2011-08-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

I got Spotify on my iPhone almost as soon as it was available. Yea--Hype. But I have yet to use it because I have yet to find a single song that is not "Premium Content." I opted for the free version, as I do with all apps (except Scrabble--and I make Scrabble WORK for its money).

As I'm not really a music consumer anymore, Pandora suits me. It expands my repertoire, which I need because I don't listen to music radio much. I love the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons. If you are attentive (and you kind of have to be: Pandora doesn't like being totally ignored) you can really shape your station into music you love. You do have to reward Pandora for digging up your most diggable tags by thumbing it UP.

The only problem with Pandora is that you can't immediately repeat a song you really like, but have to wait for it to come around again on your station. I guess at that point I could upgrade at Spotify and listen to it as much as I want. Maybe I'll stop being cheap one day, but for me, for now, as I rarely listen to my iPod, a little music goes a long way. Maybe I'll tune to KEXP in my Public Radio app or see if, like KUOW recently, they've got their own app. Yay for serendipity!

Was optimism (if that's what it was) justified in Shampoo Planet?

2011-08-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet came out in 1992, yet it doesn't read very different from some of the new dystopia novels I've been reading. It's set in Lancaster (read Hanford), eastern Washington, a radio-active town that rapidly falls into decay when "the Plants" are closed down and the Ridgecrest Mall is boarded up store by store. Tyler and his friends still cruise the mall and find it fun to be there, a place where they can maintain and expand their collections of hair products and other goods. Tyler, child of raging hippies, born on a commune, seeks to be "modern." He calls his room at home "The Modernarium," as it's his high tech, German-stark, oasis in his mother's house that's filled with sand candles, crystals, spider plants, and hash paraphernalia.

Tyler aspires to work for "Bechtol" and loves the hotel hospitality industry (in a hotel room there's no past or future: only an "essence" of now). He calls his car the "comfortmobile." And he observes the contrast between the old world (Europe) and the new, which he sees as a land of freedom and opportunity. (Oh, Coupland, are you secretly a Tea Partier?) Here's an exchange between Tyler and his girlfriend Anna-Louise:

"I wonder," says Anna-Louise, "if the future is going to be like Ridgecrest Mall."

"How so?"

"You know. Improvised sort of. Solid cement and steel structures from our own era, but with cardboard and straw for windows. Exxon stations with thatched roofs." "Goats feeding in the dead fountains of the fashion plaza."

...

I think her idea over. "You know, Anna-Louise, I wouldn't mind if consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking around the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst?"

"What?"

"If we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet--with just one person inside even--I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.

Reagan-era Tyler is ambitious, reads "Entrepreneur" magazine, but holds the somewhat Socialist view (perhaps, more accurately, Coupland's view?) that there shouldn't be a wide wealth gap or above-it-all privilege for the wealthy.

Dystopia. Why am I so gratified reading all these end-of-the-world novels? Before this, I read Coupland's Player One: What is to Become of Us: A Novel in Five Hours, (2010) about the point at which the world runs out of petroleum and anarchy breaks out. Even in this novel life goes on. There's even an out-of-body near-death scene. Douglas, what do you think happens after death?

I finished Shampoo Planet out on the deck on a temperature neutral day--75 degrees, gentle. Later a massive and dark cloud bank rolled in, but before it plastered over, the sky had been just gauzily veiled. At one point the sun burned through, the light quickly got brighter and brighter, like a supernova, and the sun's heat, as though it was passing through a magnifying lens, seared my skin. I almost leapt up to run for shade, but then it faded back.

Coupland, Douglas. Shampoo planet . New York: Pocket Books, 1992. Print.

More on anonymity

2011-08-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

"The Nasty World of Online Comments," Weekday on KUOW, Aug 15, 2011, http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=24252

A point is made here that we in the United States are losing the ability to find a center. We lack unifying media, such as Britain has in BBC Today, which everybody there wakes up to and watches, according to the KUOW story. Facebook certainly facilitates finding like minded friends and forming silos vs building a community with diverse points of view. Increasing polarization.

Again, the book I read a while ago, The Big Sort, turns out to have been seminal. I thought I'd written about it. What an oversight. See citation below.

Bishop, Bill. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

Image borrowed from http://www.thebigsort.com/home.php (without permission--sorry!)
`

Anonymity online has to go?

2011-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

What's your view? I'm a bit with Randi--and Jaron Lanier

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/randi-zuckerberg-anonymity-online_n_910892.html

"Super Sad True Love Story" and Prescience

2011-07-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote about Shteyngart's prescience about the decline and fall of literacy in an earlier post, but here's a new article I read in the HuffPo today about his prediction of the U.S.'s financial default. Enjoy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/gary-shteyngart-super-sad-true-love-story_n_901764.html

Like Shteyngart predicted about the future of literacy...

2011-07-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

"Blogs wane as the young drift to sites like Twitter"
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2014294485_bloggingdecline21.html?cmpid=2628

I saw this in the Seattle Times, which still writes using some semblance of paragraphs and complete sentences, though paragraphs that are telegraphic--or Twitteresque--compared to news writing of the past. In an earlier post I quoted from a Slate article I saw recently:

Quote of the day: " I find myself wishing we were tweeting instead of old-school writing." From http://www.slate.com/id/2281158/entry/2281717/.

Here's some of what the "blogging decline" article had to say:

Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

And...

Although Tumblr calls itself a blogging service, many of its users are unaware of the description and do not consider themselves bloggers — raising the possibility that the decline in blogging by the younger generation is merely a semantic issue.
Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. "It's different from blogging because it's easier to use," she said. "With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that's it."

Here's what I do, but I also get the occasional hit from a Google search. I also inveigled my way onto the web site links list of a prominent educational blogger, "Confessions of a Community College Dean," (Suburban Dad was kind to link to me)--more from the "Blogs wane" article:

In any case, he said bloggers often use Facebook and Twitter to promote their blog posts to a wider audience. Rather than being competitors, he said, they are complementary.
"There is a lot of fragmentation," Schneider said. "But at this point, anyone who is taking blogging seriously — they're using several mediums to get a large amount of their traffic."

I read a lot (including books, which is no longer the norm), but a lot of what I read strikes the infosphere like lightning bolts, here then quickly gone, or is like the news crawl at the bottom of the screen that appears on most TVs now, including on news programs. As the cartoon image would have it, sometimes there's smoke coming out of my ears.
`

Virtual shopping with a smartphone

2011-06-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

I love this because I hate shopping. Not a lot different from using a website, but one step closer to untethering from the desktop and getting the most out of that one pocket device we carry everywhere. Dig shopping while waiting for the subway train.

If only we had subway trains in America.

Virtual shopping in Korea movie: http://www.wimp.com/marketingcampaign/ and/or http://mobile-device.biz/content/item.php?item=30953
`

Are you a "plagiarism fundamentalist?"

2011-06-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell uses this term in his New Yorker article, "Something Borrowed" (worth reading: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact) and builds his argument in a typically coherent essay.

"The final dishonesty of the plagiarism fundamentalists is to encourage us to pretend that these chains of influence and evolution do not exist, and that a writer’s words have a virgin birth and an eternal life."

He uses the example of a Tony award-winning play called "Frozen," by Byrony Lavery (can that name be real?), to argue that a new work can be legitimately made borrowing gathered ideas--without attribution. After all, he says, nothing is absolutely original.

(This is interesting: when I copied from the article, this link pasted with it:
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact#ixzz1OFgSLb5Z. Hey, New Yorker, I was going to cite!)

I ran across it not on the web, but in the large print library book What the Dog Saw by Gladwell. I found the following articles in that anthology also worth the read. Click here or check out the book:

The Art of Failure http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/08/21/2000_08_21_084_TNY_LIBRY_000021523
Late Bloomers http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell
The Talent Myth http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/07/22/020722fa_fact

Towards Avoiding Plagiarism:
Gladwell, Malcolm. "Annals of Culture: Something Borrowed : The New Yorker." The New Yorker. N.p., 24 Nov. 2004. Web. 3 June 2011. <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact>

Gladwell, Malcolm. What the dog saw and other adventures. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. Print.

The impulse is growing stronger and stronger...but

2011-05-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

That Clash song, "Should I stay or should I go?" is resonating in my brain again. The web. I want to go. My Comcast service seems to be getting worse--I assume this is because we lost the battle for net neutrality and big business is raking in all the bandwidth. And I'm paring back to the bone, out of necessity. I'm praying we don't lose our public libraries.

Of course, as a society we can't go back. Nor would we want to. These problems with internet culture will be solved, dangers averted, though it is difficult to see our political divide narrowing rather than ever widening and ideologies fossilizing. We will go on until the wind blows us away. (I click on lots of animal videos, but simply could not on one in Huffington Post today of a Missouri dog who crawled home with two broken legs after a tornado. More and more I simply want to exist in my little envelope of peace as long as it lasts. But I do think this is a luxury of being older and starting to divest.)

So, here's an article I read today about the wackiness of worrying about ranking. It has a cute kid anecdote too, so BONUS! It's called "I don't care of you read this article," by Dave Pell. But, of course he has to care. However, I don't.

I read the article on NPR's All Tech Considered at http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2011/05/26/136654846/i-don-t-care-if-you-read-this-article?sc=fb&cc=fp.

The Dangers of Algorithmic Personalization on the Web

2011-05-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Watch this TED video of Eli Pariser speaking about how algorithms are personalizing our news and search results and the dangers to society of this:

http://www.wimp.com/filterbubbles/

We need to be delivered more than just "relevant" information--as determined by these ninny algorithms. We need all the boxes checked:

Screen shot from the talk.

See more posts below.

huh

2011-04-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/suburban-dictionary/

youth malaise

The Many Ways In Which Technology Is Screwing Us « Thought Catalog

2011-03-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Yup...

The Many Ways In Which Technology Is Screwing Us « Thought Catalog

Further on the folly of filtering

2011-03-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

See earlier posts on this topic below...

TED 2011: Junk Food Algorithms and the World They Feed Us
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/eli-pariser-at-ted/

Chris Hedges as a sort of inverse Glenn Beck with his book "Death of the Liberal Class"? No--not.

2011-02-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

Hedges, Chris. Death of the Liberal Class . New York: Nation Books, 2010. Print.

This is not one of those one-grain-of-truth-in-the-whole-book-and-the-rest-is-filler books. While not always clearly organized, this book is dense with scrutiny of movements and eras that include American Marxists, McCarthy, the Taft-Hartley Act, union building and busting, anti-war protests, hedonistic drop-out liberals of the 60’s, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and how they came around to each others’ positions, Reagan-father-of-the-current-fait-accompli-corporatization, aid-and-abettor-fake-progressive-Clinton, Benetton-ad-Obama, death of journalism, death of the environment, and impending death of us all even the enclaved rich as the last hold-outs standing on the bodies of the working and middle classes. The title says it all: it’s a book about death and Hedges delivers it like a Howard Beale academician, like Glenn Beck if he were an real academician. Death of the Liberal Class, published in 2010, is the handbook on how we’re going down.

Oddly, the book gave me some insight into the Tea Party as comprised of people who see that there’s something wrong, that the government is not to be trusted; but what they’ve bought is the bill of goods sold to them by the Koch brothers and the like that capitalism is the American way and that the free market will solve all problems. They’ve eaten up media manipulation, both the feistily entertaining conservative message, and the distraction of commercially sponsored diversion. Hedges points out that the liberal class is likewise distracted by media and “fun” of engaging in polarizing debate that ends in focus on each other as the enemy rather than the real enemy which is the greedy corporate entity that is sucking our civilization dry. Hedges’ thesis goes further than condemning the rich; he shows how the liberal class has stood by and allowed it.

It is so wrong to mention Chris Hedges and Glenn Beck in the same sentence. Hedges is a seasoned journalist who has covered several wars first hand, a Pulitzer prize winner, and a responsible intellectual. This book ends with 15 pages of chapter notes, acknowledgements, and an extensive bibliography. Its index is 13 pages long. This is a scholarly work that presents a profound thesis and supports it with historical documentation and the works of other writers and thinkers over decades. Quite a step above chalk boards, puppets, and pictures of Nazis. Yet it is kind of scarily nutty, it does rant:

(p.190)

Our destitute working class now understands that the cloying feel-your-pain language of the liberal class is a lie. The liberal class is not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, or jobs from being exported. The gap between a stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities, fatuous academic and financial experts, oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are often willing to listen to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear.

(p. 194)

The liberal class assumed that by working with corporate power... (Click on images to enlarge them)

(p. 195)

The true militants of the American twentieth century...

Hedges’ rant on the death of print is reminiscent of Shteyngart’s dystopia, Super Sad True Love Story. He references Jarod Lanier (whose book, You Are Not a Gadget, I reviewed earlier) extensively as well, on the detriment wrought by social networking internet culture:

(p.207)

Lanugage, as the cultural critic Neil Postman pointed out...

(p. 208)

As the culture has shifted from print to image, the old artifacts grounded in print have become as obtuse and unintelligible as hieroglyphics. Those who resist will be able to do so only as long as they wall off the new forms of communication and remain wedded to the complexity of print. But this will also result in rebels becoming foreigners in their own land.

This section about virtual tribal groups dinged my head because I’ve been observing it in myself and my own Facebook and HuffPo life, though the start of this paragraph would seem to be controverted by what’s going on now in the middle east, i.e. the popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and spreading:

(p. 208)

The great promise of the Internet--to open up dialogue...

I wrote years ago on this blog about the question of authority by popularity, based on how search engines display results. It’s a continuing problem for teaching library-resistant students how to research. Lanier points out the wider problem:
(p. 209)

On the Internet, as in the wider society, the value and status of tastes and information are determined by the crowd, in what Lanier calls the “hive mentality.” Music, books, journalism, commercials, bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into the national consciousness based on their level of Internet traffic.

There is much too much material in this book to represent in snippets here (though I’m trying). As I wrote above, it is a handbook, and we should support the monetary value of intellectual property, as Hedges’ also points out as a condemnation of internet culture, by buying it and either encouraging our friends to buy it also or lending it to them. (However, this copy I’m reading is a library copy because of my own current financial circumstances.. Hey, libraries need our support too.) Anyway, though Hedges has told us that the working class is dead, global warming has rendered the future of life as we know it on this planet as a no go, the liberal class is toothless and has let democracy cede to oligarchy, he leaves us with a gummy rallying cry:
(p.216)

The corporate elite does not argue that the current system is just or good, because it cannot, but it has convinced the majority of citizens that there is no alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate. Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabbotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement, any any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority.… Acts of rebellion permit us to be free and independent human beings. Rebellion chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor. Rebellion sustains the capacity for human solidarity. Rebellion, in moments of profound human despair and misery, keeps alive the capacity to be human.

I’m guessing Hedges is buoyed, if only (from the depths of his evident anger and despair) a little, by the Wisconsin protests and the spread of rallies across the country. Rallies are spread by social networking, which is a positive you have to give to internet culture. Moveon.org and the Coffee Party post their messages into my Facebook stream among all the chatter and drivel, but they get through to a lot of people. Twitter is eponymously light-sounding, yet I use it as a news stream exclusively. There are serious people out here and more will come as Hedges’ reality comes to common light.

~

Other snippets:
(p. 26)

The uniformity of opinion molded by the media is reinforced through the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paint all dissidents as “soft” and “unpatriotic.” The “patriotic” citizen, plagues by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. There is no questioning of the $1 trillion spent each year on defense.

[Hedges devotes a section to the horror of war, depicting it on a graphic level that forbids any glamorizing. Images, p. 54 and 55]

(p. 82)

The war launched the destruction of American cultures--for we once had distinct cultures--through mass communication.

Hedges’s coverage in this book of twentieth century social, political, and cultural history is comprehensive. He writes extensively about art, bohemians, and the Beats:
(p. 100)

Crowley observed that after the war, artists, too, became devoted to self-expression, political cynicism, and hedonism, including the cult of the body. These values were embraced in the name of counterculture, but they were also the core qualities corporate capitalism sought to inculcate in the public. The cult of the self was central, Crowley wrote, to the Behemians and later the Beats.[2 images]

There’s a chapter titled “Politics as Spectacle,” which relates to what I touched upon above regarding media, internet culture, and Facebook. Here Hedges writes about the era I remember well. I only observed it, though no doubt also absorbed its values:
(p. 110)

Protest in the 1960s found its ideological roots in the disengagement championed earlier by Beats such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. It was a movement that, while it incorporated a healthy dose of disrespect for authority, focused again on self-indulgent schemes for inner peach and fulfillment.

The taming of art, and channeling of artistic expression into “specializations”:
(p.115)

(p. 119)

Hedges addresses what is behind “the patriotic citizen” and discusses hypermasculinity in terms of control, even into the area of pornography:
(p. 154)

The mechanisms of control, which usually work to maintain a high level of fear among the populace, have produced, despite these admissions of failure, the “patriotic” citizen, plagued by job losses, bankrupted by medical bills, foreclosed on his or her house, and worried about possible terrorist attacks. In this historical vacuum, the “patriotic” citizen clings to the privilege of being a patriot--or, perhaps, the double privilege of being white and a patriot. The retreat into a tribal identity is a desperate attempt to maintain self-work and self-importance at a time of deep personal and ideological confusion.… The failure of the liberal class to articulate an alternative in a time of financial and environmental collapse clears the way for military values of hypermasculinity, blind obedience, and violence. A confused culture disdains the empathy and compassion espoused by traditional liberalism. This current runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, where contestants endure pain and humiliation while they betray and manipulate those around them in a ruthless world of competition. These are the values championed by an increasingly militarized society and the manipulation and dishonesty on Wall Street. Friendship, trust, solidarity, honesty, and compassion are banished for the unadulterated world of competition.

(p. 172)

“American has been a police state for a long time,” Zinn went on.

Who in Seattle’s First Nation community mourning the slaying of wood carver John T. Williams by police officer Ian Birk would argue?

Hedges, Chris. Death of the Liberal Class . New York: Nation Books, 2010. Print.

Please excuse both the act and quality of these shortcut images of the direct text. They were part of my notetaking. I think I will buy the book, though! Here are my notes on Hedges' Empire of Illusion.

Book image source: http://www.nationbooks.org/book/217/Death%20of%20the%20Liberal%20Class

What What? TED Books

2011-01-27T07:54:00.001-08:00

Kindle singles--like the single Four Loko you used to buy at 7 Eleven. Reading! Words in a flowing series of blocks! Whatever happened to Powerpoint and the power of talk? Like in Huffington Post, don't I always choose to watch the video over grating my brain across spiky words? Isn't that why I unsubscribed to the newspaper Christian Science Monitor or New York Times that I used to carry on the subway folded to that long analysis that (come to think of it), standing up, I could hold just like a Kindle? TED, will I have to now go back to converting symbols to images without the assistance of someone telling me and pointing to pictures?

Introducing TED Books...wait, there's no embedded video?

Stay in Line, You!

2011-01-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

(news feeding, news opining, Facebook, Huffington Post, and Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion)

Okay--so maybe I've joined the line I'm in voluntarily, but having done so doesn't mean I want to be then chained into it.

From 'How Online Reading Habits Have Changed Over 2010' By Richard MacManus / December 6, 2010 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_online_reading_habits_have_changed_over_2010.php

It may be that we can just no longer cope with RSS Readers, with the information overload that Facebook, Twitter and others have only added to over the past year. That's where filtering tools - like LazyWeb, Regator, Feedly, my6sense - have come into play in 2010. They aim to filter and personalize news for your tastes.

Is this an outcome of the siloing of our political thought, or the cause of it? Both. Companies are exploiting how we now consume news. Remember the recent revelation that Facebook now gets more hits than Google? I read a lot of news that my politically like-minded friends link to on FB. But I’ve also had the uncomfortable feeling that I should listen to Fox News once in awhile, to try to balance out MSNBC. But that doesn’t work. Monitoring two extremely biased sources doesn’t lead to understanding of any kind of truth.

I’ll admit: I love the Huffington Post. It’s got everything, and is pretty nakedly honest about its mission, which is to feed my liberal bias entertainingly. There’s even a page devoted to divorce--shades of Jerry Springer. Like Chris Hedges says in his book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, what we primarily want is entertainment, and Huff Po provides it by the frequently updated shovelful. I notice I feel all “huffy” after reading the Huff Po. And I get incensed after following links posted on Facebook to Rush Limbaugh’s latest insane rant. I get so mad I want to shout out of windows about how I can’t take it any more.

A book I read awhile ago keeps resurfacing in my thought and I keep telling people about it: The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop. Bishop identifies the Big Problem, which is that we in this country have sorted ourselves, both in our choice of neighborhood and socially, so as to only mix with like-minded people. Therefore we no longer hear the other side of issues, don’t hear things from other frames of reference, ever.

Somebody recently, in the both accusatory and defensive post-Tucson-tragedy ranting and babble, pointed out that we are not each other’s enemies. We are all in this together, and we need to work out solutions together. We have to block out all the polemical ranting and support sources of information that conscientiously attempt objectivity and balance (i.e. real journalism) and whose only agenda is the greater common good. I respect Jon Stewart for his calls for sanity.

So I’m trying to swear off Huff Po and Olbermann and those posts to incendiary, outraged articles posted on Facebook. I’ll try to stick to NPR (KUOW), the Seattle PI, the NYTimes, the Christian Science Monitor, and the like. I swear I’m getting off media crack!

Listen to Stewart's response to the Tucson tragedy, if you haven't heard it yet.

~

Below are my notes from Empire of Illusion. Skim, scan, or speed read if you like. :)

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
by Chris Hedges, 2009
Chris Hedges organizes this disturbing book around five areas of illusion he says we are lost within as a country. The literate reader can guess the content of the first part, the Illusion of Literacy, in which it is revealed that reading cell phone texts, however literary, does not equate to reading books. The second section, the Illusion of Love, is all about the exhibitionistic crazies on Jerry Springer and the degenerates who watch such shows, the horrors of the porn industry, and the dangerous delusion of Las Vegas as the pinnacle of American quest for culture and international experience (the damnation of Las Vegas is good reading). Part three, Illusion of Wisdom, portrays our misguided trust of our elected leaders, our love of anti-intellectualism, the corruption of our elite institutions of higher education and the fake learning the elites who attend them attain, and the general degradation of the academic system, support for the humanities and for career academicians. The Illusion of Happiness, the fourth section, discusses the pervasiveness of positive psychology, the pop culture quest for happiness (Oprah’s work comes to mind, such as her promotion of “The Secret”), and Big Corporate pushing retail therapy. This kind of profitable happiness makes conformists of us all.
But the abject pessimism of this book blooms in its final section, The Illusion of America. Pages 144-145 caught my attention. Then, on p. 145, in blunt, atypically clipped sentences, Hedges sums up our doom :

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality. There is little President Obama can do to stop it. It has veen decades in the making. It cannot be undone with $1 trillion or $2 trillion in bailout money. Nor will it be solved by clinging to the illusions of the past.

He goes on, in a sequence of queries:

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and the fantasies of a glorious tomorrow, or will we responsibly face our stark, new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up at moments of crisis and panic to offer fantastic visions of escape? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent?

Here are more of my notes:
2nd para p. 146 - interesting that the description of “Inverted Totalitarianism”* of the corporate state evoked for me Glenn Beck’s imagery
mid p. 148 - how Obama can’t deliver on people’s real, though perhaps not completely understood, HOPE; spectacle & diversions; keep citizens politically passive; Tao Lin’s outsider stoicism and passivity--out of ignorance or resignation?
p. 149 end para - “apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness” “thin commitment to democracy”
“Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not” - Look at destruction of net neutrality
bottom p. 149 - where the decline of the American Empire began--when we stuffed from an “empire of production” to an “empire of consumption” end of the WWII era
p. 151 “‘The old America’ is not coming back.” Financial investing an illusion? What I do with my investment?
Mid p. 153 - “The defense industry is a virus. It destroys healthy economies.”Mellman: “permanent war economy”
p. 155 - Healthcare. “Obama offers false hope.” Geyman, UW scholar and author of Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is dying, and How We Must Replace It (mid p.156)
p. 157 “The Democratic Party has been as guilty as the Republicans in the abdication of real power to the corporate state. It was Bill Clinton...” “betrayal,” “slick advertising,” NAFTA, Welfare Reform, slashed Medicare (p.158), Lawrence Summers “Financial Services Modernization Act” of 1999 removed firewalls.
p.161 - State budget shortfall. Social breakdown caused by poverty.
p. 162 - “Corporations are ubiquitous parts of our lives...we all eat corporate food...” Movie The Corporation (which, unfortunately, is long and dry) but outlines psychotic personality traits, mid p. 163, but corporations, by design and supported recently by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations the right to contribute to political campaigns, have the same rights as individuals.
p. 170 bottom - how news “reporters” may not be believed.
Mid p.175 2008 FISA bill protects secret surveillance of citizens.
p. 177 “The emergence of the corporate state always means emergence of the security state.”
Top p. 183 - Lost hope of working class and desperation. “The concept of the common good, mocked by the behavior of the privileged classes, disappears. Nothing matters. It is only about ‘Me.’” Last paragraph of p. 183: dire!
“Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities.” bottom p. 185. Bottom p.189 - vision of Shytengart’s dystopia
p. 190 - Mass culture magical thinking and wishing perpetuated by people like Oprah
Vision of hope in post-collapse society
p. 191 - 2nd paragraph of quote
Love’s power p. 193 -- glimmer of hope

*Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, by Shelton S. Wolin (2008)

http://wimp.com/simplelife/ - URBAN FARMING!

2011-01-05T22:24:00.001-08:00

"I don't want stuff" -- a new paradigm

2010-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

"Usage trumps possessions" -- Rachel Botsman on TED, "The case for collaborative consumption" (see video below) &

"access is better than ownership" --Kevin Kelly

My husband spaded out our front lawn three or four years ago. This summer we had tasseled corn stalks standing among our peonies, roses, camellias, rhodies, next to our magnolia trees. We've got a nice hot spot against the south face of our house where tomatoes grow great. Summer 2009 was such a bumper crop we were making curries from our frozen home-grown tomatoes well past Christmas. We've got a fairly large lot in the city and a couple of beds in the back yard: we could grow a lot more food here. But we don't know how! Our success has been hit-and-miss. A lot miss.

Here's a post I put on Facebook recently:

Hey --I'm looking for an urban farmer to come, come spring, turn our little city plot into a burgeoning basket of plenty. If you hear of anybody who'd come plow, plant, propagate, and train us how for a % of the yield, let me know. (I'm talking veggies, of course)

Now I'm kind of excited. I just watched Rachel Botsman's presentation on "collaborative consumption" on TED. First articulation I'd heard of a new phase of society! Botsman talked about how we are moving out of a "hyperconsumption" phase back into a collaborative bartering society. She makes the point that renting your car for a couple of hours to someone you met through a website requires trust. Trust is built through ratings, which lead to "reputation capital" that gets you into the trust system.

So, I learned from this talk about a U.K. site called Landshare, which led me to the American site Shared Earth. I have land and I want help getting food from it. Simple. Now let's see if enough people are on board yet to make it work.

Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption | Video on TED.com

"We need more poets." For love of Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets

2010-12-17T18:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, standing behind my own home like this, I imagine letting go of this dream of solvency...let it go...float away into the sky...

Matt Prior, in Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, is eight years younger than me, but he is dealing with the same issues as me--falling apart and rapidly aging. Maybe it's the times. I think it is. Anyway:

...I don't want to entertain such a grandpa-thought, but I feel so old, so unemployed, outdated, dead technology, impotent scrap-heap, unraveling, unraveling, unrav-- (ch.1)

The story is about a man's radical actions to "keep it together"--his family, lifestyle, status...yea, vs. my dreaming about taking radical actions to escape, even to the extent of pre-emptive action in the face of the big hit. Anyway, shit continuously changes, but we only see the day we're in. Walter writes about that:

Who knows what it is that causes the world to seem benevolent: you rise in the morning, and it feels that something has lifted, some weight. Everything that yesterday looked terrifying today seems benign, maybe even munificent." (ch.17)

Okay--maybe a given, not that original an image, but what I experience. Then it flips and you're in thick smog again. That's my trajectory through volatile weather and changing terrain, currently sharply rocky underfoot so it's harder to get up from my rests.

Walter's book was published in 2008, the start of the Great Recession (his caps) when the housing market dropped like a plane hitting an air pocket and jobs dying like the reefs. Is this really, incredibly, the start of our society's decline--or rather, the onset of symptoms of a disease contracted years ago?

The book ends prosaically (real worldly, I suppose), with Matt clean and sober and starting over, scaled down.

I think we are supposed to somehow be better off now, out from under all of those middle-class weights and obligations and debts, all the lies that we stacked above our heads like teetering lumber.

He's making the new austerity work for him, though he's a little bitter, and maybe hasn't signed on 100%:

But it's not easy, realizing how we fucked it all up. And that turns out to be the hardest thing to live with...the realization that the edge is so close to where we live.

The book doesn't really end prosaically: it ends with a little poem that starts, "For two ice cream cones./ No, we miss our things/...

Here's my little poem that I'll end this sort-of review with:

Me too. Timber above my head.
Packed into a crate
and the shipping cost too great.
But I love the spunky idea
of a financial newsletter in poetry,
and of Arrow Lakes PB medicinal.
Legalization now!

Oops-- P.S.
I woke up thinking of a blog title, "My wife doesn't exercise," which led to the thought, "I'm not a potato; I'm more like a quantity of semi-soft beef tallow that finds its level on the sofa." Then I remembered a wonderful depressive metaphor in the book. I can't find it now (and, no, I don't want a Kindle for Christmas) but it was about how a creek all its life before it goes dry unknowingly carves out its own grave. Maybe something about the creek's nature being to seek the lowest level. Btw, I haven't praised this book enough. It is good. Read it.

Shteyngart is observant

2010-11-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

Here's corroboration from Nicholas Carr in his Wired article, "The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains," at http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/:

Gary's book is about a near future where literacy is a thing of the past...except for ill-spelled, ungrammatical texting. People simply think books stink. Carr says the following, though, about straight text (while hyperlinking within his text--a demonstration of his point, perhaps?):

In a study published in the journal Media Psychology, researchers had more than 100 volunteers watch a presentation about the country of Mali, played through a Web browser. Some watched a text-only version. Others watched a version that incorporated video. Afterward, the subjects were quizzed on the material. Compared to the multimedia viewers, the text-only viewers answered significantly more questions correctly; they also found the presentation to be more interesting, more educational, more understandable, and more enjoyable.

and

In a 2001 study, two scholars in Canada asked 70 people to read “The Demon Lover,” a short story by Elizabeth Bowen. One group read it in a traditional linear-text format; they’d read a passage and click the word next to move ahead. A second group read a version in which they had to click on highlighted words in the text to move ahead. It took the hypertext readers longer to read the document, and they were seven times more likely to say they found it confusing. Another researcher, Erping Zhu, had people read a passage of digital prose but varied the number of links appearing in it. She then gave the readers a multiple-choice quiz and had them write a summary of what they had read. She found that comprehension declined as the number of links increased—whether or not people clicked on them. After all, whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which is itself distracting.

I've pretty much stopped clicking on links in text, or I'll open the link in a new tab and read it later. But that last sentence above is true: you have a mini-debate with yourself that crashes your focus.

Stuck watching by the river side:

We want to be interrupted, because each interruption—email, tweet, instant message, RSS headline—brings us a valuable piece of information. To turn off these alerts is to risk feeling out of touch or even socially isolated. The stream of new information also plays to our natural tendency to overemphasize the immediate. We crave the new even when we know it’s trivial.

and--BAM!

Intensive multitaskers are “suckers for irrelevancy,” says Clifford Nass, one professor who did the research. “Everything distracts them.” Merzenich offers an even bleaker assessment: As we multitask online, we are “training our brains to pay attention to the crap.”

Carr concedes that browsing, skimming and scanning are as important skills as deep reading, but posits that they are becoming the dominant mode, to the detriment of "our intellectual lives and even our culture." The article concludes with this dire theory:

What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.

Where does AGGREGATION come into it? That's what I (try to) do here--thread stuff together based on my blurry view/apprehension. It seems it is all about aggregation now: Facebook, The Huffington Post, Twitter, etc. So, (to expand upon in another blog post) there's this -- http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1 -- which sums up my day almost verbatim (no XBox) in its first paragraph. Apps. And the Web is dead.

Note on Carr article: Adapted from The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, copyright©2010 Nicholas Carr to be published by W.W. Norton and Company in June. Nicholas Carr(ncarr@mac.com) is also the author ofThe Big Switch and Does IT Matter?

Scary Stuff: Olbermann, Unscrewed Brains, and Revelationists (Please Vote)

2010-10-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

I just now closed a clip of Keith Olbermann's Oct 27 scary Special Comment (see below): it was his ultimatum to us all to vote. It's just a few days to the 2010 midterm elections and I feel like I'm in a horror show. I thought, "Yay! I'm watching the Halloween episode of 'The Office' later"...and it seemed surreal: or rather, I was still quivering in the "reality" created by Olbermann's dire collage of crazy Tea Party candidates' quotes. He should be a featured personality at Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive.

As I write this, my son is watching a Halloween movie, of which I caught the scene where an unhygienic-looking doctor was just screwing off the neatly sawn crown of a conscious man's skull--and then carefully pulled out his brain. "Don't watch this," the son said, knowing I am squeamish. I replied that I had just finished reading a book even more gruesome than that: James Murrow's Only Begotten Daughter (1994). The setting is pre-Netscape Navigator and ubiquitous PC and cell phone era, though the story jumps to 2013 halfway through. Murrow didn't foresee social networking or the Patriot Act in his Biblical Sci-fi dystopia, but maybe post-Tea Party America appeared to him in a vision.

Only Begotten Daughter is about Julie Katz, zygote of celibate Murray Katz and, well, God. She's Jesus's half sister, and she leads a (perhaps) roughly parallel life to his, except in current times. There is much fodder for religion vs. science debate here, but the Halloween horror of a society run by "Revelationists" who reenact the methods of the Romans of early Christianity and later medieval Inquisitors makes you kinda clench in these interesting political times of ours.

Christine O'Donnell was flabbergasted recently to learn that America's founding fathers intended that there should be separation of church and state. Murrow's book portrays a purely theocratic state run by a fundamentalist zealot, and partially orchestrated, unbeknownst to him, by the person of Satan. Talk about your skeletons! The government lines the roadways with them as warning to "sinners," "heretics," Jews, Muslims, atheists, and followers of the "Uncertainist" church that arose after Julie worked her public miracles, revealing her divinity.

Ah, the book gets much stranger than that--gory--but not scarier than the scenario of a Tea Party take-over of America's legislature. If you haven't got time to read it, you can rely on Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann to each in their antithetical ways entertainingly scare the bejesus out of you. Happy Halloween. Oh, and

VOTE or DIE!

Actually a Cog

2010-09-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

SUMMER READING 2010

"A Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart (2010)

: just finished a scary book and now reading up guys like kevin kelly, clay shirkey, jason calacanis, and watched movie about josh harris called "we live in public." book is sci fi, but barely. following up on the topic shows he must have pulled his novel from reality that's here now.

äppärät (wearable and ever-present super smart phone/computer) - for "GlobalTeens" (i.e. FB) and "teening," and for shopping
Rating & "HNWI" and "LNWI" (high and low net worth individuals)
Zero Privacy - "credit poles"
illiteracy and distain for bound, printed books and reading
complete dominance of youth culture - new technology to reverse aging
New York city restricted to the young and rich
Totalitarianism and the end of the U.S. as a country - taken over by China and other global creditors

More notes to follow (so I keep saying...). Read Jess Walter's book review in the SF Chronicle.

"Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" by Douglas Coupland (1991)

Ah ha! Coupland used the term "Global Teen" in this wonderfully comic 1991 pre-ubiquitious-internet book. Surely Shteyngart got it here, but he doesn't cite or refer to it in his acknowledgements. Does he consider it such a widely used term that it no longer belongs to Coupland? I'd like to ask Shteyngart.

Coupland's characters are isolationists from society, who find each other and stay entertained by telling each others stories. They don't find romantic relationships, but they share intimacy and caring for each other against "global teen" culture. The book's margins are filled with pop lingo definitions and other rubber stamp mottos, such as the term "McJob," which the trio have all rejected doing. Other examples:

Cryptotechnophobia - the secret belief that technology is more of a menace than a boon

Emallgration - migration toward lower-tech, lower-information environments containing a lessened emphasis on consumerism. (very progressive and foresightful for 1991!)

& (rubber-stamped) LESS IS A POSSIBILITY

Coupland defines Generaton X as born in the late 50's and 60's--that would make me Gen X and not Boomer, which is interesting, because, awhile ago online, when I read through lists of characteristics for both, I felt I fit better in Gen X. The characters enact what I've always thought of doing, and perhaps did do, such as when I went to Iowa for a summer to escape home and change myself (didn't work) and when I went to teach in Kuwait (did work, to a certain extent). They are discontented and reject much of American culture, but they also are drifting and are connected only to their own small clique. The ending is interesting: while driving to join his two friends, who have taken off to Mexico to withdraw even further, he stops to look at a "mushroom cloud" resulting, he eventually sees, from field burning. As he is standing by the road looking, another group has stopped too--a group of mentally disabled kids--and in the course of milling around end up group-hugging him, and he realized he has missed this human touch.

In chapter 1 Dag says of his vandalizing cars that have bumper stickers that offend him: "...whether I feel more that I want to punish some aging crock for frittering away my world, or whether I'm just upset that the world has gotten too big--way beyond our capacity to tell stories about it, and so all we're stuck with are these blips and chunks and snippets on bumpers."

Later in chapter 1 Andy thinks: "I wonder that all things seem to be from hell these days: dates, jobs, parties, weather... Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised heaven in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can't help but suffer in comparison."

The book was written back when people used dial phones and folding maps. The friends hang out and tell each other stories (a Coupland device that ameliorates his obsession with loneliness). Dag has a preoccupation with nuclear testing and mushroom clouds and paranoia about atomic waste, which seems like a transitional condition between Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, perhaps. I remember "duck and cover" training in 6th grade and scary talk about Russia and all the novels that came out. Maybe that set the tone for my life--and Gen Xers'--of pessimism about the future. Now I'm more worried about global climate change than nuclear annihilation, but the feeling is the same.

TED Talks
Nicholas Christakis says in his Feb 2010 TED talk that "the benefits of social networks outweigh the costs" and says that if they weren't fundmentally good, didn't principally spread "love and kindness and happiness and altruism," that they would disintegrate because people would simply break their connections. But is that true when people become addicted to their networks and accept negativity that might burgeon and turn on them? The most vulnerable people turn against themselves along with the mob.

Kevin Kelly on TED (filmed Dec '07 and post Jul '08!) says the following, ideas which are all coming to life, such as with FaceBook, to the dismay of guardians of privacy and individuality:
"You have to be open to sharing your data."
"Total personalization requires total transparency."

Kelly compares this net "machine" to the development of the alphabet and writing in that they also transformed culture and we are now dependent on them. "We are the web" and the web is the machine.

Other of my notes
ubiquity: interconnectedness: rating and comments: Calanis's "IAS (Internet Aspergers)"; Lanier's "hive mind"; and Shirkey's "Cognitive Surplus.

Ouch! Quote from Lanier's 2006 essay, "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism":

It's safer to be the aggregator of the collective. You get to include all sorts of material without committing to anything. You can be superficially interesting without having to worry about the possibility of being wrong.

Lanier on the movement away from use of the internet as people driven vs. a generator itself (is it a machine or not?):

The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.

"You are not a gadget," by Jaron Lanier (my notes)

The important point Lanier makes is against anonymity in social networking. He says that the ability to post comments anonymously brings out the worst in both the person posting, who can be as vile, libelous, and misleading as s/he wants, and the person reading, who gets the wrong information, may be incited to wrong beliefs and actions, and begins to blur fact and opinion in his or her media consumption.

Popularity vs. Authority
In Chapter 2 Lanier decries Wikipedia as an example of the concept I've discussed in this blog: the strength of popularly over authority in search engines. He shows how, unconsciously, we lower our expectations to make the computer look "smarter," such as by accepting a Google searches top suggestions and often not looking beyond the first page of results. As Wikipedia becomes so widely used, it frequently appears among the top 5 results, and is often at the very top. He argues that our laziness causes us to accept the links at the top and let that information suffice.

Predictive Text
Jaron also complains about Word's ability to predict your intent, such as with formatting. It can insist on changes you don't intend: outlining, capital letters, etc. On the one hand, it is forcing writers to stick with standard English. On the other, it is making that decision for us, interfering, e.g., with a poet's creativity with text. I find this predictive ability useful in search, though. I find I often don't have to type more than a word or two in a phrase, or even a letter or two, to have my search term appear in a dropdown menu. I'm assuming that happens because a bunch of people have typed the same term--such as for a crossword clue (i.e. cheating, as I am wont to do when I get stuck).

Digital Publishing
Another of my earlier posts is about "snippets." Lanier laments the idea of all digital books (i.e. eventually all books) becoming "one big book" from which excerpts can be taken without reference to their source. Mashup facilitates aggregation and reformulation into new ideas, which erases the whole argument it samples from by preventing its completion.

This also feeds into the question of plagiarism, whether there is such a thing anymore despite college instructors' efforts to catch students at it.

Generation X
Lanier writes, "The blankness of Generation X never went away, but became the new normal." Gen X turned out bland at the same point digital culture was emerging. Is this blandness permanent due to the "Hive Mind"? Or is it a transitional lull. He raises questions about creativity and its future.

My Paradox (upon making notes from this book)
If I dropped out of "cybernetic totalist culture," I wouldn't be able to understand this book. It's the problem with participating: the urgency increases and certainly leads to a sense that one mustn't miss anything. Knowing what is happening leads to a sense of belonging, which is why older people, as they gradually stop keeping up, feel so isolated.

I thought that I could sit passively in front of TV when I got old and enjoy mindless entertainment (vs. wasting time like that as a young person), but I can see how disorienting TV is for my mother. TV now looks more like a computer screen than like a play on a stage.

And people now accept integration of advertising (product placement) and don't let it enrage them as they should. I feel it as a phenomenon over which I have no control. If others are accepting it, I must, if I want to partake of the media, too. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Finally this anachronistic image from a song I heard while sitting in Ladro--my almost-last bastion of mixing with bricks-and-mortar humans:

"Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest"
--Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust

(oh, and how can I find that wonderful poem I read awhile ago about a phone booth conversation? My mind can't call it up for me.)

Bibliography

Jason Calanis http://calacanis.com/2009/01/29/we-live-in-public-and-the-end-of-empathy/ (posted January, 28th 2009)
Josh Harris and his "Quiet" and "We live in public" art/socialexperiment projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Harris_(internet)
We Live in Public: Capsule Hotel (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABLO1d97TBQ&feature=related

Kevin Kelly on "The One" http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html (TED talk filmed Dec 2007!
Kevin Kelly on what technology is and its evolution http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_tells_technology_s_epic_story.html (filmed Nov 09)
Jaron Lanier, author of "You Are Not a Gadget," which expands on his 2006 essay (2nd link) http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2010/feb/20/jaron-lanier-web20; and " fetish site for foolish collectivism" essay on "Digital Maoism" (2006) and comments/rebuttals: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html
Is the concept of intellectual property waning? Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age - NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?_r=1
Anarchy? Hell's Angels? No Fear Facebook Anonymity: http://blog.seattlepi.com/renton-pi/archives/217785.asp (I can pull anything into this thesis)

The river side

2010-04-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

I stress about content on Facebook and Twitter passing me by. In the physical world, do we think about every seaside wave coming in or, at the river bank, about every passing leaf? I don't sit as often as I should just looking at the ceaseless movement of water either passing me or potentially washing over me. But I can sit immobile for hours at my computer, monitoring. For what?

And I am aware the hours of the day are precious.

I pick up lots of interesting links on FB and Twitter: I collect them in Delicious. I hoard--like I used to do with newspaper clippings. (Vis à vis hoarding, why don't I trust my brain? Maybe that's my academic training, that I might need to cite my sources.) The problem is: when I'm not logged on scooping items out of the passing stream, I think about what I might be missing. Because unlike my RSS feeds, FB and Twitter don't pool for me to dip into when I am so inclined.

When I participate--post to social sites, this blog--is that keeping me afloat, riding instead of drowning in the tide?

Is being informed the key to happiness? Is allowing oneself to slip out of the loop a kind of retirement, inevitable as old age?

Trim the technology fat and stop flying around

2009-11-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

In his article, "Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job," in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael J. Bugeja argues that since budget cuts are forcing institutions to cut back, administrators are right to look first to dubious attempts to teach using technology. He targets particularly Second Life, Twitter, and classroom clicker devices.

Is this article speaking to my situation? At the very least it is saying that it's time to trim the fat and not waste resources on forays into would-be educational technology adventures that don't deliver bang for buck. But I worry that he is reflexively proposing that innovation is not a value because it is by nature experimental and may not pan out. It is a conservative, "let's go slow," perspective in a swiftly ever-changing time. Like it or not, we are being either buoyed or churned forward on a tide--teachers, students, and administrators together.

I am going back to teaching full time, but I will always be looking for new ways to engage student learning within environments that are real to their lives and the workplace into which they are headed. I agree with Bugeja, though, that I'd like to do that using open source and cloud technology that is cheaper and freely accessible. I'm with you, Ms. Frantz.

Oh, and this new survey from Educause in my email today: "Can We Sustain Funding for IT? Tell Us! Complete ECAR's Survey by Dec. 1."

Skim the article and the comments, too.

Bugeja, Michael J.. "Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job - Run Your Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education."Home - The Chronicle of Higher Education. N.p., 9 Nov. 2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. http://chronicle.com/article/Reduce-the-Technology-Rescue/49078/.

I've been on LMS auto-pilot

2009-11-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

Am I going to make different choices now that I'm going back to teaching full time? I'm carrying on with my current course, and will probably request an Angel course for my second writing class. But I think I will experiment with other tools for my new reading course. I'll let you know how that works out.

Meanwhile, I am making changes to my current course--away from the training that I have given a zillion (ok, dozens) of times in Angel orientations. I had my course set up into weekly modules, which I've finally noticed are too discrete as units for my instruction. It feels like we have only dipped into the week before we are done with it. This is probably because I teach 2 days a week, with only one of those (i.e. 50%) online supported. Of course, students access the online activities all week--at least that's the idea.

I will base my modules next quarter on Assignments vs. Weeks, modeled on what I saw another instructor doing with her class (Thanks for the ideas, Wendy!). These mods will be two weeks long, which will give students more time to discuss the integrated reading on the forum and me more time to respond. It will feel "roomier," also, for inclusion of related grammar points, examples and models, individualized rubrics (if I can get more limber at writing rubrics), and so on.

I've been using weekly folders for a few years now. I'm excited about reorganizing my course.

tumblr. Really?

2009-11-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

I revisited Tumblr after seeing Paul Constant (TheStranger.com) use it to post videos and have them appear on Facebook, but dang if it wouldn't work for me. And this after I went back, having joined a couple of years ago and finding it no added value to what I was already doing.

Search Tumblr help, "Error uploading audio file," and see what that gets ya. That's what I did after not succeeding at posting an mp3 file. They got back to me initially on my ticket, but no follow up. Now I just feel unloved. That's my story.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

2009-08-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Do you banish Wikipedia from your classroom? Altogether--even as a secondary source? Here's an idea for a new approach: have your students contribute a Wikipedia article as a course assignment.

This isn't my idea, but I like it. I read about on Clioweb, "Three Roles for Teaching Using Technology": http://clioweb.org/2009/02/07/three-roles-for-teachers-using-technology/ (See Jeremy's example under the second role, "Instructor as Tech Support."

Have students gain information literacy and research and writing skills in one fell swoop, and pick up a little netiquette and collaboration savvy along the way.

Source:

Boggs, Jeremy . "ClioWeb Blog Archive » Three Roles for Teachers using Technology."ClioWeb . 12 Aug. 2009 http://clioweb.org/2009/02/07/three-roles-for-teachers-using-technology/.

And thanks, Elizabeth Koh (http://twitter.com/elizabethkoh), for passing this along on Twitter.

Practice is all there is to it

2009-06-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

That old "Practice makes Perfect" adage we know is true, though we wish it weren't. (Ever had to practice scales on a musical instrument?) Here at this link, in an excerpt from the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland (which I plan to read--will put it on my library queue), is the concept in a nutshell: http://kottke.org/09/02/art-and-fear (go have a look for yourself).

See? Sez it.

Just take a look at Facebook if you don't believe it

2009-05-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

"Me, me, me! America’s ‘Narcissism Epidemic’": a book review at TODAY Books, MSNBC, at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30312181//

The article's sub-title, "Authors say long-term consequences are destructive to society," makes you think, "Ok, out-of-touch old people with good-ol'-days syndrome predict societal changes as evil." Video image shows a woman with Anita Bryant hair. But here's an excerpt:

When observing cultural change — especially changes in the negative direction — one runs the risk of mistaking one's aging for a true shift in culture. Change is difficult to take when you're older, and it's easy to conclude that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. We have tried to avoid this bias by finding as much hard data and considering as many perspectives as we could. Many cultural changes were eminently quantifiable: the fivefold increase in plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures in just ten years, the growth of celebrity gossip magazines, Americans spending more than they earn and racking up huge amounts of debt, the growing size of houses, the increasing popularity of giving children unique names, polling data on the importance of being rich and famous, and the growing number of people who cheat. We also journeyed outside the research data by gathering stories and opinions through our online survey at www.narcissismepidemic.com (we have changed respondents' names and, in some cases, identifying information). Since this is a book about culture, we explore media events, pop culture happenings, and Internet phenomena. We also talked to our students to get perspectives from the younger generation. We were somewhat shocked to find that many graduate students — most in their mid-twenties — think things have gotten worse in their lifetimes. Undergraduates are more accepting of the current culture but often report feeling tremendous pressure to self-promote and keep up in a materialistic world.

Interesting article about society that is increasingly stressful on so many levels. I'm thinking we need a little Dr. Timothy Leary philosophy pretty soon--the "drop out" part. Or maybe not. Maybe that's where it all started. (damn hippies!)

Source:

"Me, me, me! America’s ‘Narcissism Epidemic’." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- msnbc.com. 22 May 2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30312181//.

More (if you can take it!):

"Can you spot the Facebook narcissist? Study: The self-obsessed use Facebook the same way they do relationships" at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26904719/

"Can you spot the Facebook narcissist? - LiveScience- msnbc.com." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- msnbc.com. 26 Sep. 2008. 22 May 2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26904719/

Citation generator: Bibme at http://bibme.org/

Seattle's New Bartering

2009-04-15T15:53:00.000-07:00

Got no cash? Get goods and services anyway using Seattle-based bartering site Dibspace.com. Clever idea. Read all about it in Seattle's one and only remaining (for now) traditional print newspaper, The Seattle Times. Here, ironically, is the link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009029111_dibspace13m0.html.

Source:

Ramirez, Marc. "Local News No cash? Barter for services with "dibits" Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times Seattle Times Newspaper. 15 Apr. 2009 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

Citation generated by http://bibme.com/.

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Technology In Higher

2009-04-03T09:02:00.001-07:00

Picked this up on Twitter from Intellagirl.

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Technology In Higher

View more presentations from Sarah Robbins.

Link to Using Web 2.0 in Education Resources

2009-04-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

Another one from an Elizabeth Koh tweet. Rockin'!

Dr. Alice Christie's Using Web 2.0 in Education Resources
Setting the Scene \| Blogs \| Wikis \| Podcasting \| Text Messaging/Instant Messaging TeacherTube/YouTube \| Productivity Tools \| Mind Maps and Mapping Photo Sharing \| Social Tagging \| Online Surveys \| MashUps \| Other Tools \| Chart

http://www.alicechristie.org/edtech/web2/index.html

Okay, I see a trend here: Elizabeth seems to be now writing this blog.

Teaching with SocialNetworking

2009-03-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's another link from Elizabeth Koh (Twitter):

Ideas to Inspire

http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/#1

and a screen shot of one of the Twitter slides. Worth a look-see.

http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/twitter.htm

(The power of Twitter!)

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

2009-03-22T10:59:00.001-07:00

...and, specifically, Twitter. These from Elizabeth Koh on Twitter (thanks, Elizabeth!):

Good for a skim.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano.

And "My 30 Day Twitter Challenge" from Ryan Bretag. I had seen the video before, also via a Twitter post: http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=741

No mourning death of messy ink-on-paper

2009-03-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, Clay Shirky convinced me.

Lovely, long, in depth, beautifully written article with nothing blinking, undressing, or facially peeling at the sides. Picked the link up off Marc Lentini's blog. Here's the author of Here Comes Everybody (link goes to his org), on the Journalism revolution we are currently amid:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

Source:
Shirky, Clay. "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable." Clay Shirky. 13 Mar. 2009. 19 Mar. 2009 www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/.

Sim City = Real Life?

2009-03-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on whether Net Gen people truly understand the difference between simulation and real life:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/03/18/is-simulation-as-good-as-real-life.aspx

Rocketboom explains Twitter

2009-03-09T08:53:00.001-07:00

When I first signed on to Twitter, I didn't get it. But now I do. I mostly tweet 140 character poems based on a prompt with a small international group. I follow those poets, as well as politics and EdTech people, and have got a number of good leads, such as this Rocketboom link. The lovely "New Amanda" shows how Twitter is a search engine http://search.twitter.com/ that is infinitely more immediate than Google. It's quite grandiose, how she tells it:

http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_09_mar_09/

My Twitter stream (mostly Twitter poems):
http://twitter.com/janiasea

See you on Twitter!

Stuff - will come back to fill in and cite

2009-03-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Get these!

http://www.tynt.com/ Trace what's being copied from your site

http://produle.com/ Design, publish, and share Flash apps

[These picked up on Twitter from Intellagirl]

From the SUNY online conference for instructional designers and eduTech leaders - Feb 09

Presentation slide shows at http://www.slideshare.net/group/sln-solsummit-2009:

SolSummit2009 Presentation: Tools and Techniques for Just-In-Time and Remote Training and Support

http://www.slideshare.net/clarkshahnelson/solsummit2009-presentation-tools-and-techniques-for-justintime-and-remote-training-and-support

Kevin Lim "Leveling up Students with Blogs"

http://www.slideshare.net/brainopera/leveling-up-students-with-blogs

Amy Jo Johnson "Inside Game Mechanics for Social Media

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/02/04/amy-jo-kim-on-game-mechanics-for-social-media-from-startup2startup/

***

"A load of Twitter"

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5747308.ece?Submitted=true

Horsey cartoon says it all?

2009-02-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

This is scary stuff, people:

HORSEY, DAVID. "Horsey: Financial collapse threatens real journalism." Seattle news, sports, entertainment | seattlepi.com - Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 16 Feb. 2009 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/400061_horsey15.html

Horsey cartoon "A President press conference in the near future"

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1903

In the whoosh of the past 4 months or so we evidently have been witnessing the suction of U.S. society down some kind of tube. Optimistically, we'll shoot out at the end with a soft thump and find ourselves among the global community, our hubris scrubbed, yet with our individuality and democratic ideals in tact. But what are we without journalism?

Citizen journalism is great, but we need full-time professionals on the watch.

By the way, my mom noticed today the Seattle Times is an inch narrower. Change happened last week but I didn't see an announcement. Maybe that's good for the tree population, but it feels in my hands like the small town newspaper I grew up with.

Email the new essay?

2009-02-09T15:45:00.001-08:00

Here's one for Writing teachers. I'm not sure whether this is satire or not, but it's an interesting, if somewhat old, read on the debate about whether the essay is outmoded. I think I would be more inclined toward the blog as the new essay, but a blog IS an essay, one that gets published instantly, which, it is hoped, is some incentive for the writer to get the message right for the intended audience. What's your opinion?

Batson, Trent. "Writing: It Ain’t the Same Anymore -- Campus Technology." Campus Enterprise Networking & Infrastructure -- Campus Technology. 9 Feb. 2009 . http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2008/05/Writing-It-Aint-the-Same-Anymore.aspx .

& there's this:

RICH, MOTOKO. "The Future of Reading - Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 16 Feb. 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=1&ref=books.

Here's what I quoted and commented on Facebook:

"Some literacy experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem." And getting used to ads always in your periphery.

Society transforming before our eyes

2009-01-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Froma Harrop makes good points about newspapers. She says:

I'd like to interrupt this column to praise the newsrooms of America. Their ranks are thinning as more people feel they can meet their duty as informed citizens by grazing on blogs or watching a clash of personalities on cable talk shows. Yes, a few Web sites and television outlets do some original digging, but the great mass of consequential reporting on civic affairs still comes from the print media.

And similar claims can be made for the coverage of the current financial mess and its human impact. The lefty Huffington Post blog may blow hot-and-indignant as it swipes from others — including its writers, few of whom it pays — but the real lowdown on the villains and their cons have come from the pages of BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal and other employers of reporters.
Barron's magazine published a piece questioning Bernard Madoff's financial genius seven years ago. Imagine the pain that could have been spared had more people read it.

Today's front page story: "P-I's closure would reflect U.S. trend. Eric Pryne writes:

In Seattle, the grieving already has begun. "This is a civic crisis," said Anne Bremner, co-chair of the Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town, a group that formed six years ago when a legal battle with the rival Seattle Times threatened the P-I's future.
At their best, newspapers serve as community watchdogs, mirrors, forums. "No one doubts their value in our democracy," Mayor Greg Nickels said Friday.
That value is enhanced, many say, when a city is served by two or more newspapers, not just one. That's why the P-I's likely demise is so troubling.
"Competition improves the quality of journalism," said Kathy George, the two-newspaper committee's attorney and a former P-I reporter and editor. "If you lose that, there's going to be less incentive to break important stories and to be aggressive watchdogs."
Don't count on bloggers or talk radio to fill the gap, said former state Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, another committee leader: They mostly talk about what's in the newspapers.

[as I do, so thank you, Eric Pryne, for your reporting]

And, the ST on the P-I, including timeline: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008607234_pimain09.html

Sources:
Harrop, Froma . "Opinion | Onus now on Obama and his party to govern nation ethically | Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Newspaper. 10 Jan. 2009. 11 Jan. 2009 <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008610560_opin10harrop.html

Pryne, Eric . "Local News | Report: Stage set for P-I to close | Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Newspaper. 11 Jan. 2009 <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008607234_pimain09.html

Pryne, Eric. "Local News | P-I's closure in Seattle would reflect U.S. trend | Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Newspaper. 11 Jan. 2009. 11 Jan. 2009 <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008614615_pisale11.html

New blog to follow

2009-01-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

It's called Remote Access and here's his "Massive List of Upcoming Ed - Tech Conferences" http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2009/01/massive-list-of-upcoming-ed-tech-conferences.html

He's also got an on-target recent post about Twitter and getting "followed" by companies. Ugh--no escaping.

Name's Glassbeed and seems his Canadian. Check him out.

Trees winning out: print newspapers a dying breed

2009-01-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

I started writing this post this afternoon, then this news broke: the Seattle P-I is to be put for for sale with no buyer expected. I feel sick, so sad:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/395362_newspaper09.html

In April, the "Christian Science Monitor" goes online only--except for a weekend edition. Does it matter if made-from-trees newspapers go away? It does to me but maybe I'm just old and unwilling to yield this one to net culture.

There are two threads here: does print newspapers going online mean traditional journalism--investigative journalism--fades away and leaves democracy without a watchdog? Or is it simply that I won't have that thump on my doorstep early morning any more and the crossword to do while I'm eating my toast?

KUOW "The Conversation" on Newspapers on the Ropes

http://kuow.org/program.php?id=16477

I hate doing the crossword online.

Nostalgia--my first post here: http://janiceadams.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html

So on to the new--an article from the online Christian Science Monitor:

student self-publishing

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2008/12/16/students-write-publish-their-own-books/

Face me Book and Twitter me Timbers!

2009-01-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

I created my Facebook account a few years ago but only recently have started using it...and getting a little addicted. It's pretty much fluff, but does create the illusion of human contact.*

So, I decided to take up using my Twitter account too, which I hadn't conceived I'd ever want to do because the concept just seemed so inane and such a waste of time. But, I mentioned Twitter to a poet I know and we decided to Tweet poems--max 140 characters each. Then, because my niece began texting me more frequently, I upped my texting allowance on my phone plan. Now I've started mobile Twittering. Oye.

Online media-sharing

If you haven't heard of http://drop.io/ yet, check it out. You can drop a file, or files, of any kind and either give guest access for collaborative editing to drop.io or simply send the URL to viewers. Lots of options, and seems different, maybe a bit more feature-ful, compared to Google Docs. http://drop.io/howto for a quick, comprehensive how-to video.

Clippings Catch-up

Parents, relax: Study says kids' online time is positive

Lewin, Tamar. "Nation & World | Parents, relax: Study says kids' online time is positive | Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Newspaper. 20 Nov. 2008. 4 Jan. 2009 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008413080_netkids20.html

Japan goes manga over Karl Marx comics

Yamaguchi, Mari. "Nation & World | Japan goes manga over Karl Marx comics | Seattle Times Newspaper." The Seattle Times | Seattle Times Newspaper. 23 Dec. 2008. 4 Jan. 2009http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008550877_marxcomic23.html

and, old, old, old and irrelevant now, but bubblelicious--good example of visual literacy and cloud computing. Love the graphic:

"Nation & World | Convention Rhetoric vs. Reality | Seattle Times Newspaper." 6 Sep. 2008. 4 Jan. 2009

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008161884_camptruth06.html

*Interestingly, when f2f in the real world with my "friends," it seems social protocol forbids any reference to what has gone on on Facebook. It feels a little like a high school clique: dare I invite so-and-so to be my friend? Then, if I "get in" with them, dare I comment on their stuff, or should I just lurk? And who do I "poke" and who would welcome some karma or gift of an eco-plant? See? High School. But sometimes the interesting post--including of a video or news article. Oh, and by the way, I'm following Barak Obama on Twitter, and apparently he's following me! (a little scary...)

Obama supports net neutrality

2008-11-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another thing to love about our soon-to-be president (can we wait?) from Monday's Seattle Times:

...it is expected that Obama will make net neutrality and access to broadband in
rural and poor areas a key part of his agenda to close economic divides and help
spur job creation.

Obama's grasp of the importance of net neutrality is another indication that he will work to protect citizens' rights to free speech and repair damage to civil liberties that has been done by the current administration. And, of course, it is further evidence of his Net Generation connectedness and that he intends to use the internet for good--beyond just the good of getting himself elected president.

King, Celia. "Internet-savvy Obama makes telecom industry wary." Seattle Times 17 Nov. 2008. 17 Nov. 2008 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008399746_btobamotelecom17.html.

not ed-geeky but culture trend, perhaps

2008-09-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

societal ideas that are bleeping on my radar:

Irvine, Martha. "Living simply by sharing space." Seattle Times 8 Aug. 2005. 8 Aug. 2005 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008092083_simplicity05.html.

Gross, Jane. "At the end of life, a turn to "slow medicine"." Seattle Times 6 May 2008. 8 May 2006 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2004394499_slowmed06.html.

Try Tokbox right here! Live video from your web site

2008-07-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

Got a new toy (Logitech web cam) to play with...I mean test...here at work and might have found the plug-in to use with it for enhancing interaction with students right from instructional web sites. I simply copied and pasted the embed code from Tokbox's site (signing up was quick and free) http://www.tokbox.com/view/embed into the web site code (okay--maybe a small challenge for some people, just to wade through and find the right spot to plunk it) and the box appears on the page, as you see below, at the very bottom of this blogspot window (scroll all the way down. The box was too wide to fit on the side, as I'd hoped) .

I'm not sure how I can embed into Blackboard, but I'll investigate and if I figure it out, will let you know. Meanwhile, I can use Tokbox here on Blogger and on my faculty web site too.

Plug in your web cam and email me a time you can be online and test it with me. It would be nice to see a real face out there in cyberspace!

Online SOCIAL word processing, spreadsheets, and lots'o'stuff

2008-06-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

I first wrote here about online word processing and document sharing on January 1, 2006 (http://janiceadams.blogspot.com/2006/01/online-word-processing-and-document.html) about a site called Writely.com. Since then, Writely, and any number of other innovative online services, have been googled up. I'm the beneficiary, since I've long had a Gmail account and automatically got access to Google stuff. Now I've got email, online word processing and spreadsheet document storage and sharing with anyone on the internet, news reader, blogger, image and video sharing, Google Books and Scholar (search), my own personal calendar, and more.

What's the "killer app" (application) of all these for me? I've just started using calendar, which gives me a place to put my personal events online, with reminders to my email, so it's a boon. But aside from email, what I use most is online documents. The word processing function is not as fully featured as Word, nor does it always transfer between formats smoothly, but there's no going back from the convenience of having my documents stored and editable online. I can even save my documents in PDF format. And I can share my documents with anybody with any email account for either viewing only or for collaborative editing.

The uses of these online apps for education are great. Group projects and peer editing spring first to mind. Google apps also includes a group web site feature that project teams could use as a final product. Of course, there are lots of blog clients, wikis, and other applications out there. However, though I do have moments of sweaty fear of the Google monolith, I have to admit it is nice to have all this stuff in one place, accessible with one login.

Generation Y (Net Gen, Millenials, you name it)

2008-06-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here's an enlightening article about our students (and note how it comments at the end that Gen Yers won't have read to that point. right.) :

Perez, Sarah. "Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web - ReadWriteWeb." ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking & Social Media. 8 May 2015. 27 June 2008 <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_gen_y_is_going_to_change_the_web.php>.

Is there any hope for us under Information Overload?

2008-06-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

I want to know if there is a field for information organization. Individual information organization, that is. Google comes up with sources for libraries and business. Perhaps for individuals, the experts are called "life coaches." Hmmm. The NPR stories below tell the tale: most of us, even "techie" people, have a dirty little secret, and the stain on the dress is the 3,901 emails we have in our inboxes.

The fact is, even using folders and filters and PSTs*, email management overwhelms me, and I know I'm not alone in that. It distracts me from my task, and keeping my inbox under control sucks time and stresses me.

I've done a little revamping and have unsubscribed from all but essential newsletters and listservs; I've set up rules to send some emails to folders (including to the Delete folder); and I've recombined and subbed folders and PSTs, narrowing down the unmanageable numbers of folders I had--so many that sometimes I created a new folder because I didn't see the already existing one in the crowd; I've deleted left and right. I've been ruthless.

My resolution is firm to CLOSE Outlook when I need to focus on a project.

And, I will practice e-communication conservation (a term I just made up, but suggested by Susan Jacoby's "Cultural Conservation" concept in her book The Age of American Unreason): will email only when necessary so as to garner good karma. And I will use other tools and strategies, such as instant messaging (ICQ, GTalk, etc.), the phone, and my feet--to walk to see the person if he or she is nearby.

Also, I'm trying out a new email index program that I'd heard about a couple of times. It's called Xobni ("inbox" reversed) and works with Outlook. The website is at http://www.xobni.com/. I'll let you know if it helps.

Those stories on this topic on NPR:

Noguchi, Yuki . "Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails : NPR." NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts. 16 June 2008 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91366853>.

Noguchi, Yuki. "E-Mail Sins, Horror Stories and Strategies : NPR." NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts. 16 June 2008 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91544386>.

Oh, and here's a link a colleague sent...by email:
Suarez, Luis . "Preoccupations - I Freed Myself From E-Mail�s Grip - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 29 June 2008. 7 July 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/jobs/29pre.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin>.

*Microsoft Outlook's "Personal Store" file that allows you to store emails offline.

Reference:
Jacoby, Susan. The Age of American Unreason. New York: Pantheon, 2008.

(Automatic citations by http://www.bibme.org/)

english teacher sez hey!

2008-05-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

hallelujah---i can finally pop my corset stays and breathe out! all this time i've been using capital letters in these postings and you didn't realize i was just putting on a show, playing the academic game.

anick jesdanun, of the associated press, raises a hopeful point with regard to chat slang that creeps into college written assignments:

The chairman of the commission's advisory board [National Commission on Writing at the College Board], Richard Sterling, said the rules could possibly change completely within a generation or two: Perhaps the start of sentences would no longer need capitalization, the way the use of commas has decreased over the past few decades. "Language changes," Sterling said.

amen! (pesky commas, anyway.) and what freedom, what flow, when i don't bother with capitals. the article, which i read in The Seattle Times (sometimes capitals just say 'uh huh!') and you may read at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004372500_teenwriting25.html, addresses that chat slang issue that i, as a proper composition teacher who facilitates learning using technology tools, confront from day one, and in my syllabus: no chat language! then battle is waged, and by the end of the quarter, i've almost got it won! but, oh, how i love to draw those smiley faces on papers i mark by hand. so hard to resist on the computer.

i was surprised by the last paragraph of this article:

Defying conventional wisdom, the study also found that the generation born digital is shunning computer use for most assignments. About two-thirds of teens say they typically do their school writing by hand. And for personal writing outside school, longhand is even more popular.

i, myself, can barely navigate a word by pencil anymore. i was going to write to my cousin the other day, and ask her for her email address, but i was afraid that my handwriting in a note would give me away as the semi-literate i am. when i hand write, i often get going too fast and skip over a letter, then have to go back and try to squeeze it in above the word.

anyway, let the reader work a little, earn these gems of wisdom! i'm reading a good book now, Charles Baxter's Feast of Love, in which he dispenses with quotation marks. actually, it isn't difficult at all to follow when characters are speaking, so good for him. how does the saying go? less is more.

sources:
Baxter, Charles. The Feast of Love (Vintage Contemporaries). New York: Vintage, 2000.
Jesdanun, Anick . "Chat slang creeps into teens' assignments." Seattle Times 25 Apr. 2008. 1 May 2008 .

Our lives on stress

2008-03-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Poll: College kids often stressed out
By The Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2004291445_collstress19.html

WASHINGTON — College kids are so frazzled they can't sleep or eat. Or study. They're even anxious about spring break.
Most students in U.S. colleges are stressed out, from everyday worries about grades and relationships to thoughts of suicide, according to a nationwide poll of undergraduates. The survey was conducted for The Associated Press and mtvU, a TV network available at many colleges and universities. read on

Kids on stress become bosses on stress who become pushers of stress. A certain amount of stress is essential for human survival, both for the individual and as a culture. But do we know when enough is enough? Or are we just going to evolve into another kind of species--with enlarged thumbs, and asses, as some have already speculated. With enlarged hearts, but heartless to each other?

The problem is we never get relief from stress: we unthinkingly seek it out as entertainment at home. We tolerate it for the sake of "free" TV, for example (and tolerate the stress of commericals even on TV we pay for). We have to brush it aside to get to our web content, or try to block out shimmying ads along side the "new journalism" article we're trying to read (trying trying. I've adjusted windows so that such a sidebar ad--like one of a pulchritudinous anime girl stripping and redressing in a series of outfits and differing hair colors--was covered by another window on top of it, or tucked away off the edge of the screen). geesh!

Oh, I'm tired. I'm taking my ad-free book (from the public library) and going to bed.

Living lightly

2008-03-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, I just love this. It appeals to my current fantasies:

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Danny Westneat
Who says tiny house cramps our style?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2004276351_danny12.html

It's 230 sq. feet (vs. 2,300 sq. ft. or 4,300) and the walls don't close in...IF you don't have stuff.

The web is not for us Pt 2

2008-03-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

"Personalized" Marketing

This has always been a land of hawkers and hawkees: the network newscast sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes with the anchormen puffing right on camera to demonstrate the product; the soap opera of the Burma Shave signs; soap operas themselves. They all manipulated us, planted subliminal seeds. But they were seeds cast widely, wildly, not aimed to fly right into my eye.

Here's an article that, again, makes me want to step off the grid.* The headline sounds positive (good for Seattle!), but the article talks about how Amazon, Costco, and even Starbucks, like Oprah, one book at a time, are promoting large volumes of a restricted number of books. Amazon, with its Google-like targeting technology, "personalizes" its web pages just for you. Okay, good that they promote books at all, but it's that same corporate phenomenon: "screw diversity: let's go for the greatest common denominator!" (Okay, I know this sounds like stock anti-corporation liberal ranting--see this blog: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
2008/03/05/82-hating-corporations/ --but bloody hell!)

(and sorry, Nancy Pearl: despite what I've just written about Starbucks, and Oprah--what I actually think is her good use of TV to promote literature--I applaud your "What if everyone in Seattle read the same book" program. We have tried that here at Highline, called it "Highline Reads," to attempt to bring everybody together across the curriculum over popular literature that has relevance to real life.)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Seattle helps shape what nation reads
By Julie Bick
New York Times News Service
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/
2004273751_seattlebookczars.html

The following are assorted articles I've clipped from The Seattle Times, that roll of pulverized tree that thuds on my doorstep every morning, delivered by a hard-working woman who has to roll herself out of bed when she should be getting her REM sleep, and circumnavigate my dark front walkway with its various seasonal trip hazards of hoses, piles of pulled weeds, and, worst of all, late summer's recumbent yucca flower stalks. I truly appreciate her because I like the paper's big limp morning pages to absorb my coffee stains--even when the news disturbs me:

Monday, December 17, 2007
Companies listen online, tap into marketing opportunities
By Eric Benderoff
Chicago Tribune
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/
2004077307_conversation17.html

Curtailment of free speech

Sunday, February 17, 2008
Afghan student is prisoner in cultural conflict
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post

(Can't get ST link to work, so here's article on World News http://upge.wn.com/?t=cheetah-article/
postcomment.txt&action=form&article=WNAT99f6f8e33e974b06a589cebe2909d683)

Here's the first couple of paragraphs--should be enough to hook you:

KABUL, Afghanistan — While trolling the Internet last October, Afghan journalism student Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh came across some articles that questioned the limits of women's rights under Islam. According to Afghan prosecutors, he downloaded the articles and circulated them on campus.
In the West, it would have been an innocent act. In Afghanistan, it has just earned him a death sentence.

Online spying

Monday, March 10, 2008
Internet activity is tracked more than we realize
By LOUISE STORY
The New York Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004271898_internet.html

Business & Technology: Saturday, February 23, 2008
It should be no secret that e-mail privacy can be invaded (Print title)
Charles Bermant
Special to The Seattle Times
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/
vortex/display?slug=ptinbo23&date=20080223&query=Inbox+/+Charles+Bermant

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Thais check if monks are flirting online
By AMBIKA AHUJA
The Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004261105_monks05.html

On the other hand, why worry?

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Astronomers' forecast of end of world "a touch depressing" (print title)
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The New York Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004273858_doom11.html

(Sorry, no proper citation this time. No BibMe. You'll have to fend for yourself.)

*Here's an excerpt from Alexander Theroux's Laura Warholic, or The Sexual Intellectual, published by Fantagraphics Books, 2007:

Eyestones shook his head. "As to me, I feel as if I am getting lost, my mind full of odd, disorderly servants. I'm not interested in money or even bettering myself, as the phrase goes. I'm reclusive. I can't see worth a jot. I can't see objects in front of me half the time. I suffer from nightmares. I have too many opinions. I have low self-esteem, as of course you know. I get too involved with...people. Or do I? I remember that you once told me that a day seldom passed when you didn't at some point, however brief, feel like crying. I share that feeling. I can't even remember when it began."... "I also feel time-deprived," continued Eyestones gloomily. "I hate the age of access and lack of solitude. I look around the world today at the lack of altruism, all the marketing impresarios, all the reapportioned technologies, paid-for experiences, all the hustle and burrowing and commodifying, and I don't even belong. E-commerce. The cult of vagueness. Hypercapitalism. Gossip as news. Crass unapologetic materialism.The general subjectivism. The nonreconciliating unmusicalization of everything. I have to say that I agree with you, Duxbak, I cannot stand the lidless, snatching, over-arching communalism, national and international, that the Internet gives--or the racing urge that people have to need instantly to get in touch with one other. All values seem commercialized." (p.339-340)

and finally:
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Mr. Rogers' goodness is missed
Nicole Brodeur, Seattle Times staff columnist
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2004289269_brodeur18m.html

The web is not for us

2008-03-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm in a grumpy mood. Why do I ever more frequently have the desire to step "off the grid"? (I visualize it like stepping off the edge of a celestially high cliff and blissfully sailing down with my arms open like wings.)

Today's Seattle Times Technology section, print version, was filled with interesting tidbits that are no big news (so you can stop reading now--in fact, you are advised to) but that bug me, because they show the trend--actually, what is already true--toward the internet as just another marketplace where everything is about ripping off our hard-earned money.

First article is by technology columnist Brier Dudley about QL2, a software company that provides "market intelligence" to big businesses. It utilizes a search technology that makes Google look like it's powered by pterodactyls pedaling big chiseled gears, like on The Flintstones.* It's at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004255940_brier03.html. I guess the blow I received from this is that we, the people, internet users are not getting the latest and greatest like we thought we were. But I guess it's like a lot of sites out there: to get full functionality you have to pay. Maybe that's fair enough. Anyway, read here to see how big business stays one step ahead of us (especially if you are naive enough to think you can outsmart the airlines by finding cheap tickets).

The next article is about ID Vault, a USB flash drive type device that facilitates storage of all your passwords, login info, credit card info, etc. A good thing, but dismaying (always) to be reminded of how vulnerable we are when we're on the net, and how increasingly sophisticated malware is ever becoming. This article is at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004255950_btsoho03.html. Good information, it seems to me, and not only the future, but the present for us and our students.

Finally, "Newspaper goodbye, blogosphere hello" (actually titled "Jumping into the valley's entrepreneurial swirl") is about a guy who tells us here that he is shifting all his eggs to a digital basket: giving up his print newspaper job and going to full time blogging--or rather, going to write full time for a blog venture capital news site called VentureBeat. He says he likes the blogging medium for its direct contact to his reader--the comments box. He does leave the newspaper with this:

The great advantage that this newspaper will always have, which the Internet
will never take away, is its sense of place. It is the hometown newspaper. It is
right in the middle of the most interesting place on Earth.
I hope readers will continue to be involved in the newspaper and help it steer a course. If the newspaper keeps the readers front and center, then I have to believe it will stay relevant, the same way that radio has kept alive in the face of innovations
such as TV, satellite radio, and the Internet. Wish us all luck.

Out with the old, in with the new, as the saying goes. You'll note, though, that I started with the newspaper. That business/Tech section is folded into quarters, article up, here beside my keyboard. We'll see what e-readers like Kindle are like, but can the textual graphite skritch of letters into crossword boxes on rough newsprint paper ever really be replaced? No, but maybe it will be one of the sensory experiences (like walking on a glacier?) that will be lost and not missed by future humans. I guess it's Flintstone technology, however pleasurable.

*The Flintstones. (2008, March 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:55, March 3, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Flintstones&oldid=195294941

Dudley, Brier. "QL2 Sells Smarter Web Searches." Seattle Times 3 Mar. 2008. 3 Mar. 2008, from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004255940_brier03.html

Crossman, Craig. "Lock up sensitive info with ID Vault." Seattle Times 3 Mar. 2008. 3 Mar. 2008 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004255950_btsoho03.html.

Takahashi, Dean. "Jumping into the valley's entrepreneurial swirl." Seattle Times 3 Mar. 2008. 3 Mar. 2008 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004255953_btview03.html?syndication=rss.

Citations generated by BibMe http://www.bibme.org/)

TeacherTube

2008-01-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

Caution advised: My early review of TeacherTube has to be that it exemplifies how very much teachers are "out of it." I viewed several of the top rated postings and all except one were slideshows, a la PowerPoint! (crushing disappointment) The one I viewed that showed a live person moving, was not much better, though at least its intentions were good. It showed a teacher "rapping" about how to find a perimeter: except that you couldn't hear her very well and she had no visual aids. Attempt to be cool and probably great face-to-face, but not of much educational merit as is. Plus, (grump grump) the site is very slow. You teachers who are hip, get over there and upload some good videos. For the rest of us, I figure we are better off with YouTube, which has a vast database.

[We now resume regular programming.]

Expert predictions for educational technology are that anarchical, "democratic," user-generated sites like YouTube (and--dare I say it--this blog) will produce clones that will have authoritative content authored by recognized experts. The emergence of a video site called TeacherTube is an example. Its founders and users are teachers who are in the constant process of adding to it as a database of instructional videos that all can use.

Here's an excerpt from an article called "Predictions for 2008," in a recent e-Learn Magazine newsletter:

Content within corporations and universities is going to become more and more disaggregated and learner created. Truly valuable content will be found as short videos on YouTube, entries on blogs, or a favorite page on a wiki, none will be housed in a Learning Management System. In fact, I predict a corporate version of YouTube will emerge just as the academic version, TeacherTube previously emerged.

Formalized "instructional design" will begin to look more like "instructional assembly," in that what is traditionally thought of as a course will really be the efforts of an instructional designer to assemble disaggregated pieces of related content into a coherent flow for novice learners or learners who are not comfortable with assembling the content themselves for whatever reason.

—Karl Kapp, Assistant Director, Institute for Interactive Technologies and Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg

I was likewise interested in the prediction about what instructional design is tending to become--I think I can see that trend at my college. Our innovators and early adopters are already looking into creating virtual environments for learning on Second Life, as well as incorporating gaming, blogging, wikis, online audio and video, etc. into their curricula.

On our campus, we are already advocating for disaggregation, in a sense. Because of server space limitations, we are asking instructors to post their content to their own web sites and link to it from Blackboard, our institutional course management system, rather than import files into it. This "best practice" ultimately encourages instructors to manage their resources outside of the collective CMS. Likewise, instructors are choosing tools that serve their educational purposes better than Blackboard's tools---for example, Skype or GTalk for student collaboration and office hours chat .

Blackboard at Highline---are your days numbered? Will our next choice for CMS (LMS) be a looser, more a la carte, perhaps open source, choice?

University, USA
Excerpt from 1.22.08 http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=58-1

TeacherTube
http://www.teachertube.com/index.php

About TeacherTube
http://www.teachertube.com/about.php

Feels like Fall

2007-08-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

...though I have one more week of summer vacation (a week in which I will peek online into stuff I'll have to do hitting the ground running after Labor Day--ah, the wonders of telecommuting). But already it is sometimes a little too cold to sit here with the window cracked, and when I look out, I see our ping-pong ball bush (I have no idea what kind of bush it is, but early spring it flowers all over with little white clusters) is turning rust, as are the upward curving branches of one of the large trees behind our house--one of the sunset guard that also block water views for so many neighbors. Those leafy arms that look like they are reaching out to shake your hand have their sleeves tinged with red, as though they had brushed a wet wall. And, of course, another sign of fall: spider webs strung everywhere, with patient little spiders waiting smack in the middle--for my face as I walk through to our compost bin beside the house.

So, it's strange, but as summer tires out and the plants start to pack up for their vacation in the Bahamas (do you think they dream of island climes as they huddle, sucked in, through winter?), I start to feel a ratcheting up of energy, a both reluctant and eager launch into the new academic year. I think it is a collective energy that radiates not only from me, but from all those kids, who complained of nothing to do all summer--this is their pay-back for all that whining. Soon we'll all be back in class, this summer a faint memory and next summer as far away as mystical mountains in the indiscernible distance.

There is a pile of yellowed newspaper clippings here beside my computer that goes back to May. I'm not sure how relevant they are anymore, but just because I saved them have a look:

Editorials & Opinion: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Editorial
Do the math first
(Yawn?) Blah blah, Reform Math sucks controversy. This editorial walks the line and says the Seattle School Board should not commit to purchasing a new math program called "Everyday Mathematics," another that uses the discovery method, until the new standards and new leaders are in place. I'm sure the Seattle Times as a slant on this issue. I'll keep a watch to try to figure out what it is. Stay tuned.
AND the next day...
Editorials & Opinion: Thursday, May 31, 2007 Guest columnist
High-test fuel for WASL, By Wendy Grove, Special to The Times
Wendy Grove, guest columnist to the ST, teaches a third- and fourth-grade multi-age class at Machias Elementary in Snohomish. She write that has seen her students succeed at solving standardized test problems using the constructivist method on which her curriculum is currently based. The problem she identifies has to do with inadequate and mixed support for the introduction of new constructivist math programs, including insufficient training in both the new methods and basic skills of new teachers. She argues, "The kids need more practice, and more accountability. Still, it doesn't mean we can't have both: children who think about math and are fluent in basic skills." How does she propose for us to get to this happy state? "The fix? The citizens in our state need to decide if they want to fully support education...."
Oh dear me, compromise? But, hmmm, she makes sense.

Okay, here's a little one:
Business & Technology: Saturday, June 02, 2007
Techno-gifts for your favorite geeks, By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News
Of interest to me here, among this list dads-n-grads gift ideas is the Flipstart PC (only $1,999), a "knee-top" computer, halfway between a laptop and a Blackberry. You use your thumbs to type on its little keyboard. It is cute, but a little too pricey to indulge in any hard-core lusting for.

Local News: Sunday, June 24, 2007. Set lesson plans stir controversy, By Linda Shaw, Seattle Times education reporter
The same old debate: is middle-of-the-road, safe vs. creative, curriculum that is standard across the board best to ensure the greater educational good? Or does having rigid standardized lesson plans squelch all passionate teaching that might result in passionate learning? What's your take?

Finally, though I've got lots more clippings since I'm compulsive about that, here's a fun one about Wikipedia, which is always an interesting topic:
Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits by Katie Hafner, The New York Times, reprinted in the Seattle Times, August 19, 2007 (you might have to be a subscriber to NYT online for this link to work. If you aren't one, sign up: it's free.)
More evidence that everywhere we go, we leave footprints...so no more goofing around, you Wikipedia punkers. Wikipedia (there's a mug shot with the article of Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Foundation founder) can now trace edits to their sources, using "WikiScanner" software. Actually, here's what the article says about who it can trace: "In general, changes to a Wikipedia page cannot be traced to an individual, only to the owner of a particular network." Wales says Wikipedia "has a policy that discourages such 'conflict-of-interest' editing," referring to changes made to the Orca article by someone at SeaWorld. Here's another quote:

"Internet experts, for the most part, have welcomed WikiScanner.
"I'm very glad that this has been exposed," said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School. "Wikipedia is a reliable first stop for getting information about a huge variety of things, and it shouldn't be manipulated as a public-relations arm of major companies."

Eeenteresting...

Confessional dean gets a column!

2007-07-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

Having fallen behind reading "Confessions of a College Dean," I was perusing today through recent postings and saw that College Dean, aka Suburban Dad, has got a strip on "Inside Higher Ed" at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/blogs/confessions_of_a_
community_college_dean. Congratulations Dean! Now I wonder how much longer he will be keeping up his blog space, but, in my self-absorbed way, I was pleased to note that he has taken his robust assortment of links with him to his new gig. Woo hoo! So it's a step up for all of us, too, as long as we measure up and he keeps us on his list. So thanks for the continuing exposure. I get a great many of my hits from CCCD.

Obviously, I haven't been inspired to write here recently--perhaps partly because I've been focusing on a new blog: http://seattlepoems.blogspot.com. It has developed into a concept which has yet to take off, though these are early days and it is summer: I hope for it to be a venue for a virtual writers' group. So I'm not far away from my roots here, which are in testing alternative means for learning, collaboration and communication.

As I do here, at the new blog I find myself stumbling upon stuff and posting my reflections on it online, hoping for input from others. So I copied out (with proper citation, I think) chapter "assignments" from a book by John Redmond, called How to Write a Poem (see citation at above link). If no one else finds them interesting, I will benefit from having them easily accessible as I go back to try to do some of them.

I also came across some text in the book that I posted for one of our writing-instructor/poets here, who recently created a campus exhibit, with a science-instructor/artist colleague, comprised of poetry, abstract art, and decomposition containers. She regularly develops and teaches coordinated study courses with science and math fellow faculty--non-traditional mixes (yin and yang?). Redmond uses several poems by Czech immunologist/poet Miroslav Holub to illustrate his text. So what better model for the happy marriage of perhaps NOT opposing fields of human endeavor?

Anyway, hooray for communication and connection, whether via poety, blogging, or a new column in Inside Higher Ed!

A bit of regurgitation (sorry)

2007-06-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

Bullets are from notes I took from a session at 2007 IT Education Futures Summit: Inspiring Faculty for Tomorrow’s IT Workforce, held at Microsoft, May 18th. The session, called "Everything Just Changed: Office 2007," was by Corinne Hoisington, from Central Virginia Community College (there's a reference to this session in my previous posting).

New in Word 2007:

Built in speech recognition (with Vista)
Font default changed to Calibri 11 pt; live preview of fonts (shows in your actual text)
Tab instead of menu based, which shows relevant options all at once
Paint Shop Pro integrated into Word – upgrade from previous tools
Selecting an object activates a contextualized ribbon (this is copied from how Macromedia has always done it)
“Smart Art” tool – Visio type layout and processes
Ribbons can be hidden by clicking
Translation screen tip – hovering over foreign language text pops up a translation
References tab – citation and bibliography – styles wizard
Charts & graphs – Word/Excel integration – automatic graphs from Excel data
Easy margin resets – default narrower
Publisher integrated into Word
Document templates – lots of resumes
New file format (.docx) creates a file 75% smaller
Compatible with more formats (Works, Mac, etc)
XML file is easier to recover if corrupted
PDF included
.XPS opens in any browser (generic xhtml file)
Publish options, including blog
Word 2007 requires 67% fewer clicks than 2003 to do the same things

Impressive! and an excuse to create some support training on our campus...

Gaming on the job

2007-05-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Okay--we've heard about how the U.S. military is scoring new recruits with a computer war game. (Does it let the player experience looking around for his own blown-off limb? I guess I should go play it myself and find out, at http://www.americasarmy.com/.) But now this strategy of engaging the current generation is getting to be main stream.

"Generation Y plays games on the job," in today's Seattle Times Job Market starts off with the example of Cold Stone Creamery's training game, and quotes its 20 year old employee/player as saying, "It's a very fun game." The article goes on to say about these newbies to the workplace that:

Employers are developing computer simulations and games and combining high-tech with high-touch approaches to harness their enthusiasm and energy.

The article characterizes the Gen Y worker: "they type as easily as they talk," having grown up with instant messaging, and "are impatient with long explanations." Also:

They want immediate rewards. They are willing to do grunt work if it's clear what they get in return and how their job relates to the bigger picture.

Next are programs for mobile devices, like phones and iPods. Is education keeping up?

Not as a pan of all classrooms, but just last night, on a Netflix disk of Girlfight, I saw an example of a bad one. The theme of the movie is not at all about education, which makes this inadvertent peek into that high school student's world all the more dismaying.

It showed students slumped in their seats as the teacher paced the front of the room, only breaking into his lecture to chastise students passing notes. Were the words he was spraying out over his students' bodies sinking in, or would students have really learned the subject, perhaps less in breadth, if they were up doing something?

Oy--we all lecture, and lecture has its place, as does learning to listen, take notes, summarize, synthesize, all those good things. But how about letting the learner out to play once in awhile?

On a different topic, and because I'm anticipating having to go look up--as I have to do every time--APA style for citing online news articles, I heard a dynamic lecture on Friday, by Corinne Hoisington of Central Virginia Community College, about Word in Office 2007. Corinne started off with a loud yell--something like Robin Williams' "Gooood Mornin' Vietnaaam!" Startled us. Granted there was no hands on, no self discovery, but her presentation incorporated a demonstration, with interaction with a live person at a distant location. It had that multimedia thang goin' on.

And one thing I learned about Word 2007 is that I'll never have to figure out style format again, because Word has a citation wizard. I've taken on this topic of citation crutches before, and had a comment by a faculty member in support of letting it be automated. So I'm just going to rejoice about it and not grumble that I had to learn it, and back in my day, and so on. Anyway, my most favorite lazy way to cite to have the entry written out for me right on the web page or publication so that all I have to do is copy and paste. Hey, I'm with Gen Y on that, and a lot of things.

Rose, B. (2007, May 20). Generation Y play games on the Job. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved May 20, 2007, from The Seattle Times, Web site: http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?
slug=geny20&date=20070520&query=generation+y+plays+games

A final note: I just noticed that APA's hanging indent doesn't really work in HTML because text width is not set. So I'm not going to bother with that little detail.

Another pass at Reform Math

2007-04-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

When it comes to Math, I'm talking through my hat. But I am an advocate for Constructivist Learning. It has been the learning theory that I have applied to my teaching all my career. Throw in the concepts of Authentic Learning, and Discovery and Collaborative Learning and you've created a learning environment in which students acquire new knowledge and skills in a way that is meaningful to them and that they are likely to retain. That's not to say there is never a place in education for memorization, which is in itself a valuable skill.

There's a battle among Math educators over Reform Math. I'd love to have comments here with illumination on both sides of the argument. (Come on, Math teachers: disprove the stereotype that you don't like to write!) Meanwhile, here's the latest article in our local paper, written by a columnist, not an educator. Yet a convincing argument is made. Read it online by clicking below.

Ramsey, B. (April 22, 2007). New-age math doesn't add up. Opinion, Seattle Times. Retrieved April 27, 2007 from http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=sundaymath22&
date=20070422&query=new-age+math+doesn%27t+add+up
sundaymath22&date=20070422&query=new-age+math+doesn%27t+add+up

NOTE: If you've read this far, please read Tony's comment here. It is far more substantive than anything I have written, or can, on this topic.

The Art of Plagiarism

2007-04-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, plagiarism is one of the dirtiest words in academe. In this Net Gen age, though, copying and pasting comes very naturally: we all do it all the time. Of course, as students learn to construct their papers out of a synthesis of other people's "intellectual property," they must also learn that citation is essential. There's no debate about that. The web is even starting to give users a hand: many sites are now offering links to pre-written citations in the various styles. (Though Google Books http://books.google.com/ doesn't do that.)

But there's another side to the "plagiarism" issue that has been touched on in this blog: to what extent can ideas and concepts be exclusively owned? Battles (losing battles) continue to rage over illegal downloading of music and video. We're starting to see capitulation by the artists and broadcasters, or perhaps a "beat 'em at their own game" mentality: the free music on MySpace and full length videos of TV shows on network web sites, as examples.

Today on KUOW's "Weekday" I heard an interesting interview with writer Jonathan Letham http://kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp?Archive=04-18#10, who takes the argument a step further and says that art has always depended on "borrowing" works--and even beyond just clear references: to downright stealing word for word (or whichever the medium). Shakespeare did it, T.S. Elliot did it, classical composers have always done it, and so on. Letham asserts that artists naturally build upon a cultural foundation and that no idea or work can be purely original. But he does demonstrate that a new original piece can be made out of a collage of works one doesn't own and didn't create.

It seemed like a very Net Gen kind of conversation. Current culture, as evidenced and fostered by social networking on the web, seems to be moving toward a kind of collectivism, that concept of the global village. It's a good thing that pedagogy is bending with that trend by supporting instruction using the tools today's students use, and by facilitating learning environments based on collaboration.

Listen to the show on the web site, or grab a podcast.

Weekday. (April 18, 2007) Host Steve Scher. News from Canada and Author Jonathan Lethem on Plagiarism. KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio. Retrieved April 18, 2007 from http://kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp?Archive=04-18#10.

Security Revolution?

2007-04-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

What a sad time we live in. What can be said about the tragedy at Virginia Tech except that it is becoming, even in scale, a norm in our society. It occurred to me as a I watched news coverage of the massacre that perhaps we are entering a new epoch following the Industrial Age and the Information Age: a Security Age.

I won't try to comment on the negative repercussions of the rise in fear, whether real or hype: that's a topic for another day. But I'll pass along a link to an article that I was reading online yesterday about on-campus cell phone instant messaging as a way to communicate quickly and en masse with students. One TV news program tonight mentioned a university that has an SMS alert system already in place.

Here's the article I had been reading about campus texting: http://campustechnology.com/articles/46694/. I'm sure there will be a lot more on this to come.

As a side note, the NBC news with Brian Williams program I'm watching as I write is doing a segment on the role social networking had and is having, from recording and broadcasting events as they happened from cell phone video to YouTube, to the flurry of texting all over the world. Facebook was a source for pictures and information about some of the victims. Does this support us in time of fear, or propel, feed the fear?

4.24
Here's another Campus Technology article just in my inbox (title seems a bit light, considering the context): http://campustechnology.com/articles/47608/

Paul McCloskey, "Messaging Firms Atwitter Following Virginia Tech Massacre," Campus Technology, 4/23/2007, http://www.campustechnology/article.aspx?aid=47608

(If one link just above doesn't work, try the other. I snagged the citation from one provided with the article, but I think the link is to an archive, whereas the first one is to the current location.)

Does educational software work?

2007-04-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Rather, the question should be: is educational software effective as one tool for learning. I listened to a rather fuzzy discussion on this topic on KUOW today on "The Conversation." The fuzziness was a result of the show's host not knowing anything about the topic, such as the particulars of how there are different types of software, how teachers use it, or what expectations should be of its efficacy.

The show was based on a study just released:

The Department of Education's research arm found that students who use math and reading software in schools don't do better on tests than students who don't use the software.*

But the discussion seemed to be around the question of whether computer-assisted learning "works," as though it could substitute for a human teacher or be compared to one. The guests and some callers to the show pointed out that nothing can replace good teaching, which is true, but I don't think the point was made that technology is just a tool and that whether it is effective or not depends on the humans that implement it.

Though one of the guests, Mark Schneiderman, Director of Education Policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, perhaps interestedly represents the pro-technology side of the equation, he made a reasoned case for educational software as a tool that is as effective as how it is used, both by the trained teacher and the facilitated learner.

The discussion did not touch upon the different types of software that can be used to support learning. Whether the study focused just on computer-based learning type of software was not clear from the radio program, but, of course, there are many forms of technology that can be used, ranging from passive/receptive involving reading screens or listening to online lectures, to more interactive such as activities and games that can be delivered via the web.

One caller, a retired teacher, recommended the book How People Learn.** He said that teachers he knows refer to it as their "learning bible." It is a book that has been raised as a good resource by Highline faculty as well, and is one on which we will base a discussion series in the near future.

Listen to the program for some interesting points on this topic.

*"Does Educational Software Help?" (April 5, 2007) The Conversation, KUOW 94.9 Radio. Retrieved April 5, 2007 from http://www.kuow.org/programs/theconversation.asp.

**How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (2000)
Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Retrieved April 5, 2007 from The National Academies web site at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html/.

The Age of the Snippet

2007-03-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

The cover of Wired magazine (Wired - 15.03) this month is striking. It has a very 3D picture of a brightly colored bag of chips, labeled "Snack Culture! brand," and in a star burst callout "Now with Mini Movies! Song Snips! Micro Games! & MORE!" Then, at the bottom of the bag, "Best consumed 24/7." Right. It's the Age of the Snippet, as epitomized by YouTube as well as every customizable portal page that delivers little bits of information and entertainment via digital print, audio, video, chat, games, etc.

It looks like this is how our culture now consumes media (except on NPR and PBS, perhaps). Is it a consequence or an accomodation of our "new" short attention span? I would say it certainly relates to the pace and density of culture now, added to the myriad of new means of media delivery and the speed at which they work. (Think video i-Pods, text messaging, and TV on your cell phone.)

Another interesting phenomenon is "convergence": TV with the net with your phone with print, and so on in an ever tightening mesh. As I read the Wired magazine mentioned above, I sometimes have trouble distinguishing the advertising pages from the articles. Which is merging with which? As in the case of people willingly watching "Infomercials," do people really care? (Do people care that the movies they watch are now riddled with product placement?)

Snippets and convergence. Some teachers now want to deliver content in all of a variety of ways on their course web sites: text, audio, video, picture-in-picture moving screen captures and slide presentations. This is great! It makes learning material accessible to all, whatever their learning style (unless, of course, they are pre-Net Generation and aren't comfortable navigating a web site, let alone coping with multimedia all over the screen).

Modularized delivery of content has come into its day. Especially since learners have such a dizzying selection of media (even in textbooks, with their graphic organizers, multitude of illustrations, and web links), breaking material into manageable and logical organized chunks creates a good balance of stimulation but not inundation.

It will be interesting to see if the Age of the Snippet is here to stay. Or will society eventually cycle back to a slower pace at which we'll be less jittery and able to focus for longer periods on what we are consuming. Is "snack culture" our fare from now on, or will we re-embrace "slow food"?

Teaching Math through online culture-based lessons

2007-02-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

While catching up on some newsletters that were starting to choke my email inbox, I ran across an article about a set of learning objects for teaching Math through culture. Associate professor Ron Eglash at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed these web-based lessons targeted at underrepresented students in the fields of Math and Computing. The link is in the article citation just below.

McCloskey, P. RPI Prof Develops Culture-Based Web Teaching Tools. Retrieved February 28, 2007, from Campus Technology Newsletters web site: http://campustechnology.com/news_article.asp?id=20286

Here's a quick link (also provided in the article) to Eglash's "Culturally-Situated Design Tools: Teaching Math through Culture" site. http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/csdt.html Unfortunately, I couldn't get the simulation applets to run in either Firefox or IE7. Nonetheless, these are wonderful examples of teaching within authentic contexts that are relevant to students.

True or not? and does it really matter anymore?

2007-02-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

There was a storm in a teacup not too long ago on YouTube. It was about a vlogger called "Lonelygirl15" who was revealed to be an actress rather than a real teenager who was sneaking behind the backs of her strict parents to make videos on her bedroom computer's web cam and post them on YouTube. The story was so big (for its 15 minutes) that it was covered by traditional media like television news shows and the New York Times as well as in the "blogosphere." Here's how the story is covered on citizen journalism site "Journalistopia" :
http://journalistopia.com/2006/09/13/youtube-phenom-
lonelygirl15-revealed-as-hoax/
What's interesting is that while many "youtubers" felt duped, to some it didn't matter whether she was real or not: they were happy to watch either way. (Soap opera meets reality TV meets YouTube?)

So here are a few things to check out on this topic:

In today's Seattle Times I read an interesting article about "virtual unreality," titled in the print story "Oh, what a tangled Web we're weaving." (online version cited below)

Rushfield, R. (Feb. 19, 2006). More and more, you can't go by appearances when you're surfing sites. Business & Technology, Seattle Times Retrieved February 19, 2007 from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/
2003578602_btwebfakery19.html

[Note date discrepancy: I'm sneaking this in...
Here's another article on this does-it-really-matter-whether-it-was-real topic:
Baker, M. (February 22, 2007). Breaking up is not so hard to do: Split getting lots of YouTube hits, but was it staged? Seattle Times. Retrieved February 28, 2007 from
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/
web/vortex/display?slug=breakup22&date=20070222&query=
breaking+up+is+not+so+hard+to+do

It's like those videos on the TV show "America's Favorite Videos": some seem to be an authentic, serendipitous capture of a funny moment, while others seem obviously staged. I tend to be annoyed by the latter, but I haven't got much tolerance for those things anyway. So many of them show people being stupid and/or getting hurt. I guess such sources of humor have always been around--burlesque and The Three Stooges. All that's new now is that anyone can make their video available for the raucous "entertainment" of the world. Citizen journalism?]

Have I written yet about a good place to find out how to cite internet sources in APA style? Try APAstyle.org (a bit obvious?): http://www.apastyle.org/elecsource.html#71

Oh, and speaking of YouTube for education, I ran across this article/podcast that lists a number of tools that allow for "capture" of YouTube vids--either to bypass YouTube being blocked, or just for transportability:
http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604076

YouTube's Dark Side

2007-01-31T17:37:00.000-08:00

"The age of YouTube." That was the second mention of YouTube within the first ten minutes of tonight's CBS news (which I'm watching as I write). It was with reference to a slip by Senator Joe Biden who announced his candidacy for the presidency today and immediately got caught with his foot in it: a comment interpreted as subtly racist about his opponent Sen. Barak Obama--with the video being posted on YouTube (stolen from Fox News http://youtube.com/watch?v=RcX_xfuivbs). On the day he announces his candidacy!

Just a few minutes earlier I had heard this term: "YouTube Terrorism." It was used by a reporter on the story in Britain of 9 people being arrested on suspicion of plotting to kidnap and kill a British soldier for the purpose of posting the crime on the internet. (Google, what have you gotten yourself into?) Is YouTube a bottle that spurts genies?

Well, we've known the internet has a dark side for kids (for society?)--the least, perhaps, of which being copyright violation and plagiarism. A lot of focus has been on protecting kids from exposure to pornography. It seems the pornography of violent acts is an equal or greater threat. And the greatest threat of all may be to people's privacy--and to their sense of the need for privacy.

These changes are unreeling so quickly, isn't it dizzying?

(2007, January 31). The CBS Evening News, Weekdays editions [Television broadcast]. New York.

Peering Blurrily...just peering blurrily

Can we eclipse the Apocalypse?: Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution

The Joy of Quiet... and of carrying a smaller purse

Open-Sourced Civilization: the Beauty of Collaboration and Love of Self-Sustaining Work

"Wow": Tracking language development and the spread of mass conversation

Passing our Problems Along

I BELIEVE Rebecca D. Costa that what's happening to society is due to OVERLOAD

DWTS twangs the gender continuum

That TED vid for Christina

TED TalksYasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

What is a Fact anyway? And Who sez Scientists know what is True? True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

The problem of envisioning future tech: anachronisms (PowerPoint and texting) in "A Visit from the Goon Squad"

More on Personalized Content: Facial Recognition technology

Will you be a Spotify espouser? Or stay loyal to Pandora.

Was optimism (if that's what it was) justified in Shampoo Planet?

More on anonymity

Anonymity online has to go?

"Super Sad True Love Story" and Prescience

Like Shteyngart predicted about the future of literacy...

Virtual shopping with a smartphone

Are you a "plagiarism fundamentalist?"

The impulse is growing stronger and stronger...but

The Dangers of Algorithmic Personalization on the Web

huh

The Many Ways In Which Technology Is Screwing Us « Thought Catalog

Further on the folly of filtering

Chris Hedges as a sort of inverse Glenn Beck with his book "Death of the Liberal Class"? No--not.

What What? TED Books

Stay in Line, You!

http://wimp.com/simplelife/ - URBAN FARMING!

"I don't want stuff" -- a new paradigm

"We need more poets." For love of Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets

Shteyngart is observant

Scary Stuff: Olbermann, Unscrewed Brains, and Revelationists (Please Vote)

Actually a Cog

The river side

Trim the technology fat and stop flying around

I've been on LMS auto-pilot

tumblr. Really?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

Practice is all there is to it

Just take a look at Facebook if you don't believe it

Seattle's New Bartering

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Technology In Higher

Link to Using Web 2.0 in Education Resources

Dr. Alice Christie's Using Web 2.0 in Education Resources

Teaching with SocialNetworking

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

No mourning death of messy ink-on-paper

Sim City = Real Life?

Rocketboom explains Twitter

Stuff - will come back to fill in and cite

Horsey cartoon says it all?

Email the new essay?

Society transforming before our eyes

New blog to follow

Trees winning out: print newspapers a dying breed

Face me Book and Twitter me Timbers!

Obama supports net neutrality

not ed-geeky but culture trend, perhaps

Try Tokbox right here! Live video from your web site

Online SOCIAL word processing, spreadsheets, and lots'o'stuff

Generation Y (Net Gen, Millenials, you name it)

Is there any hope for us under Information Overload?

english teacher sez hey!

Our lives on stress

Living lightly

The web is not for us Pt 2

The web is not for us

TeacherTube

Feels like Fall

Confessional dean gets a column!

A bit of regurgitation (sorry)

Gaming on the job

Another pass at Reform Math

The Art of Plagiarism

Security Revolution?

Does educational software work?

The Age of the Snippet

Teaching Math through online culture-based lessons

TED Talks
Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?