Help This Kitty

There's a disease on campus, and it's spreading. It's spreading right now off campus and indeed throughout the world. Symptoms include wild outbursts of derision, thinly veiled hostility and refusal to acknowledge alternative viewpoints. What's the name of this diabolical disease you say? For lack of a better snarky name, I'm going to go with wiki-phobia.

Wiki-phobia (n)- The irrational hatred of wikipedia, as conveyed to your helpless students, while preaching the advantages of trekking to a library to discover facts out of a physically worn-out book written by a bunch of old white guys with a limited viewpoint of the world.

I'm no utopian, I am quite aware of the dangers of relying on just one source, including wikipedia. Why is it however, that we are willing to over-emphasize the flaws of new media approaches like that of wikipedia and not the flaws of old media.

Professors are losing a crucial opportunity to make their students aware of the flaws inherent in any form of human recording of the world around them and collective history. Instead, most professors' commentary on the subject of sourcing consists of: "Scholarly Sources Good! Wikipedia evil, bad, dogpoop!"

It's quite amusing really, seeing how full of themselves most of my professors seem to be. Forgive my use of language, but I've spent four years in an educational facility telling me that you cannot contribute to history if you don't have a degree. I'm a first generation American, 1st generation to graduate high school and 1st generation to attend college.

I didn't magically appear on campus one day. The skills I learned from my mother and grandmother got me to this point, and their knowledge and input about the world and history made it possible to be where I am today. If we're going to educate about being aware of your sources, then let's do it, but targeting one medium of knowledge is counter-productive to the goals of an educational institution.

What Motivates Productivity Online?

Response to "The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams"

Online teams is a reality in my life, even outside of college. I intern at NARAL Pro-Choice America, and I'm working with 2 people in different time zones whom I've never met to put together a conference call for dozens of our affiliate organizations.

This is probably the highest form of online team work I've ever done. Our communication is solely through email and the occasional conference call. Frankly, I feel more responsible to people I haven't met than my best friend.

In fact, I work in a small department at my internship, and one of my colleagues who I work on projects for is based in Chicago. I've only met her once, and only for 5 minutes at that. Our relationship is kept up through email correspondence and GChat. Outside of the workplace, she frequently comments on my facebook page, which has developed kind of a a closer relationship with us, built on 5 minutes of real time and hours of online time together.

Of course I am much more productive with online teams at my internship than my school. Theoretically they are both the same, I am participating in both to further my career, but the different is in the short term I'm paying AU, but I'm being paid by NARAL. Being paid is a key reason for my quick correspondence online.

Perhaps It all comes back to the biggest motivators: Money and/or fame. Without those, would productivity (anywhere, let alone online with a team) exist?

Second Life Tea Parties

So I barely understand Second Life. I'm struggling enough as it is to get my character to have the right hair type. I mean seriously, how much harder could they make it? I was hoping for a user interface a little more similar to SIMS.

Naturally, this is as frustrated as I was when I first discovered blogging, or tweeting, or facebook. Now I'm obsessed with all three of those things. I feel over social networked. I love Second Life as a concept, but I feel overcommitted online. We all have to recognize our limits, but a program like SecondLife makes me wonder if I'm actually interacting with people or playing a game. Is there a distinction? The human race after all is a playful creature.

Anyway, I decided to look up some ideas about Second Life as a political tool. I don't feel like commenting about them, but I wanted to share them with you all because I found them enlightening. Thank you Institute for Politics, Democracy, & The Internet! :

Fewer logistical nightmares and more timely political events . – In Second Life, a laptop, a free hour or two, and an in-world venue quickly moves the event from conception to execution.

Shadow political parties and shadow conventions. – The official meetings and conventions of state or national political parties are often unwieldy beasts. We might see the official party organizations holding open meetings every so often in Second Life. Or, if they choose not to, we might witness activists organizing parallel meetings in the metaverse, where time is spent plotting the takeover of the official party apparatus.

Metaverse fundraising . – Not all too long ago, the cutting edge in raising money online was having a bat graphic that was colored in as the contribution dollars piled up. By doing away with many of the bonds of reality – time, space, physics, and (to some degree) social constraints – Second Life has blown the doors off of the old models of fundraising.

Reaching out to early adapters . – Second Life opens up a wide range of possibilities for the execution of political advertising. At the least, we might soon see political ad firms setting up shop in Second Life, running virtual galleries to display their wares.

Umm, Your Ego is Showing

You don't get a special prize for getting to 1,000 friends.

Job searching is not about friending people who sound interesting, but about nurturing meaningful relationships with relevant individuals in your preferred profession. I use linked in to connect to people who I authentically want to work with in the future. I also use social networking to find out volunteer opportunities or fun events that potential employers of mine are holding. There is nothing more important to finding a job then volunteering for, interning for, or being a regular face at a company/institution.

LinkedIn has not been particularly appealing to me, mainly because I've long since decided to utilize my facebook page much like a LinkedIn page, where I market myself.

Apologies for the short post this week. I think I'm coming down with something and I find it difficult to focus on academic work right now.

Homo Sapian Pride: The Fun Side of Humanity

You can't help but feel proud to be human whenever you check out flash mob accomplishments. We are social animals and we enjoy very much group activities. Oddly enough, watching all 25 of the flash mob videos reminded me of Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and how he compares humanity as a cross between the peace, fun loving Bonobo and the warlike, patriarchal chimpanzee:

"In particular, he says, we can learn as much about human evolution and behavior by studying the sensitive, peace-loving bonobo as by studying the more violent chimpanzee—both of which share more than 98 percent of our DNA. In this interview, de Waal explains what the ape he calls the "make-love-not-war" primate can teach us about who we are..."

Flash mobs are a manifestation of our bonobo side, the fun, amazing part of living and being a human that exists and thrives despite, the war, inequality and violence of our chimpanzee roots.

Just some food for thought.

Have Corporations Gone Overboard with Advertising?

The rise of "conversational media", defined as a two way model of advertising between consumer and producer, is a direct result of years of pent up frustration with traditional advertising having over-saturated every sector of a consumer's life. This pent up frustration recently in the Brazilian city of São Paulo took the form of a complete ban on public advertising:


Courtesy of Walker Art Center

São Paulo's conservative Mayor, Gilberto Kassab, stated that his opposition to outdoor advertising was rooted in his desire to reduce pollution in his city:

"The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution... surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city's residents, with more than 70 percent approval."

Conversational media is the great hope for advertising agencies increasingly facing market challenges like the decline of the traditional magazine/newspaper industry and the rise of the commercial-skipper DVRs. This media platform is simply a band-aid for the industry, which seems stuck in a cycle of over-saturating consumers in all possible mediums and seeing what sticks.

Consumers are not terribly content with the current state of advertising affairs:

71% say there are too many ads on TV.

44% say they skip ads more often than they did a year ago by turning down the TV, changing the channel, or fast-forwarding through commercials.

Over one-half of Americans (56%) say there are too may ads on the Internet

Courtesy of Marketing Profs


Just some food for thought.

Polemical Overdose: Lay off the Craziness Keen

This Picture Sums up Keen's mentality in his manifesto "The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes".

Keen is indeed a romantic writer, one who cannot thrive literarily unless he feeds on stark contrast and manufactured controversy. Well, ok I'll concede, he grasps certain struggles and rivalries that have sometimes bubbled up over the years between the "blogger" and the "the professional reporter." I must also point out however that he uses a powerful magnifying glass to blow the issue into historic proportions. In his rush to prove a point he fails to acknowledge successful efforts of making reporting a partnership between reader and reporter.

These entities have created very successful partnerships, most recently with the June 2009 Iran election protests, where young progressive Iranian reformers protested what many see as a stolen election by the theocratic regime. These protests were indeed the largest Iran has seen since the Iranian Revolution.

In this event Iranian social media provided primary footage and documentation for the traditional world media establishment to aggregate. Social media forced traditional media to respond earlier than usual to this story, in effect ensuring that traditional media would provide their consumer base with the most up to date information and developments.

For the first few days of the protests, it felt very surreal for me as a media consumer to see the Iran elections dominate social media coverage, yet hardly any mention in traditional media sources like CNN or the New York Times that I pay attention to. I remember the campaign to change people's Twitter Avatar pictures green to show solidarity. I still have that greeen avatar to date.

National media sources, and even local American media as you will see below, were able to access this video and primary reporting for free from social networking. Previously these media companies would have to pay up large sums of money for reporters, cameramen, and security for their staff on the ground.

These are still important functions of a news media organization, however more often than not conflicts tend to breed restrictions to on the ground media reporting. When this happens and traditional news media cannot use their usual reporters, turning to social networking allows them to continue reporting on the issue with up to date information.



Keen is way too polemical for my tastes. The relationship between traditional and social media is more complex than "Is it good or bad? Part of the solution or part of the problem?" Keen mainly wants is for someone to tell him how important he still is. Indeed, someone should do so immediately, before we are subjected to another self-aggrandizing piece by him.