Spent much of the day on IM with students. One (anonymous) grad student, in a discussion regarding the expectations of The Academy, commented: “But I am always very interested (from the beginning) why you enter academia. I think you are the person flying in the sky.”
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the disaffected academic!
From a Buffalo craigslist job posting:
“I am looking for someone to help me start a blog….if you know how to do it, please me.”
Are those two different jobs?
(Via Amal.)
Been looking for a way to make money from blogging. Figured selling used furniture is a good start, if not particularly sustainable. Want a cool velvet sofa? Bid for it on eBay, and if you win, come pick it up in NYC. If you mention the blog, I will throw in a beer, or beverage of your choice (that happens to exist in my flat at time of arrival).
Can you tell that for a short time I wrote ad copy? No, I didn’t think you could.
So, since people keep asking, my better half, Jamie Halavais, soon-to-be-esquire, did pass the New York State bar exam. And yes, she did do well enough on the multi-state that she can eventually be waived in to the D.C. bar. And no, I don’t yet know if she is also sitting for the California Bar.
She’s not done yet: still has to pass the “fitness and character” bits. She’s got her quarter mile down to an acceptable level, and I think she’s a slam dunk for the “character” part. After all, Scooter Libby made it through, and was a managing partner in her law firm [cough] before joining the White House staff. If he passed, I suspect she’ll be fine.
Syriana is the next in Participant Pictures’ series of… well, I’ve called it “propaganda” before and I’ll stick with that for now. They produce films with a “message” without being overly cloying. Their tag on the associated site, participate.net is “Movies have the power to inspire. You have the power to act. Participate!”
“What is this,” some no doubt say, “I don’t want politics with my movies.” Like all good propaganda, they tell the truth, and like all communication, it is the partial truth. They wear their politics on their sleeve. Yes, they are advertising, but not for Coke or for FedEx, but for issues that they think need attention. This is entertaining storytelling.
Syriana was not the best film I’ve seen recently. It doesn’t come together neatly, and the narrative needed more trimming to make it work on film. The acting is solid, but not great. But in all, it is both entertaining and enlightening. Even if it is “merely” propaganda, it may cause someone to think about the issue, to see the world through the screen. Even if it makes them angry, I think that is a good thing.
Lazarsfeld and Merton, among many others, worried about how the mass media could be used to guide through guile, to herd masses toward social action subtly. They worried because the mass media seemed largely and inevitably to be shaped by entrenched business and government interests. Here we have an example of the media industry creating strange new wealth that may be used to undo these entrenched powers. Even if the shift is subtle (perhaps especially) it is important.
Other films propagandize as well, it’s just not as clear what they are selling. Just before the film started, a commercial for the new videocasting services supported by Samsung cell phones appeared. It shows scenes of people lying around in public spaces staring at their phones. As if this is something new! It shows people as disengaged out in public space as they are when they are at home on the couch in front of the TV. Is this their vision of what their technology will allow? Where do you want to zone out today?
This is the most obvious counterpoint to the Participant films. Movies that encourage inactivity, that provide an escape. Bread and circuses. Many who write and produce movies have no problem creating distractions, and see themselves providing what the audience wants. But sometimes, what is wanted and what is needed are two different things.
So, go out and see Syriana. It’s entertaining. It has some beautiful shots of Morocco. And it makes you think; and you might find that thinking can be its own escape.
Interesting brief article in Queue on IBM’s Dogear social bookmarking tool for the enterprise. It appears to be a system like del.icio.us, but with the ability to assign groups and to set up levels of privacy.
They skip over the most interesting and difficult part: How to get folks to use it! They casually mention that they built RSS right into the system, as if that was an immediate sell. I think it could be used to great effect in classes and in academic meetings, but it seems to have had a lukewarm reception in these venues.
In particular, the Association of Internet Researchers meeting encouraged tagging for the conference. First off: not sure that an academic conference encourages tagging. It seems to me to be something that has to happen over a long period of time. Second, they gave folks too many options: suggesting del.icio.us, Technorati, and Flickr tags, to an audience among whom (ironically, I think) tagging is not a common practice. In all, the effort fell flat. But it had the standard “let’s do it and see what happens” vibe. Nothing wrong with that vibe—it is very Web 2.0—but as I said, the value of tagging something for a fairly broad conference seems limited to me, especially (and this is key!) if it isn’t integrated into the whole.
I’ve also had my classes tagging this semester. Since the class “home page” is an aggregator (like this one) it’s easy to pull the RSS from del.icio.us and integrate it with the standard stream. Yet only those who already knew about tagging are tagging.
I’m now thinking about the Cyberporn and Society course for next semester (yes, it is a little late), and how to better integrate tagging into the course. I think an important step is to provide more of an overview of what tagging is all about and how to do it so that students have a better idea of what it is.
It is always a trade-off in a course: how much time do you spend talking about blogging/wikis/bookmarking/etc. and how much time do you spend with the actual substance of the course. In other words, what is the ROI (return on instruction) for focusing on the “ways of doing” rather than the “ways of knowing.” I have generally shied away from “teaching the tools.” Set up some expectations for product—I always thought—and students would teach themselves the tools.
Recently, I’ve been reconsidering this a bit. It’s a truism that we are never teaching, but hoping our students learn to learn. It strikes me that certain kinds of tools (how to use a library, for instance) have a very high long-term ROI. While my “don’t teach the tools” made sense when we were dealing with Flash or GoLive (v.1, yikes!), when it comes to social computing, it may be something worth really focusing time and resources on.
Sure, some of you may say “duh”! But that’s a bit of a new direction for me.
One of my gred students, Kevin Lim was interviewed for a story in the Buffalo News about pirating Black Friday sale fliers for the internet. You may have seen the earlier story in the New York Times. I was interviewed for the story as well, and it was actually a longish interview. This is one of the ones I wish I had recorded, because I had more to say on it.
Basically, the reporter (Michelle Kearns) asked about the legal issues. IANAL, but I fake my way through a media law class. Clearly, the fliers themselves are copyrighted materials, and the logos are protected by trademark. The author of the bf2005 site, Michael Brim, claims that he is only posting “rumors” and is therefore in fine shape.
In the article, I am quoted as saying “Price information is not something they can own.” I may have said this, but it was probably followed by “once it is released.” Some retailers have been trying to leverage the DMCA to make even released pricing information “ownable.” But I have a feeling that plans for pricing might be a bit more defendable. Since, for example, a list of customers may be protected as a trade secret, it makes sense that a list of prices could be considered similarly.
I tried to push on the larger issue, which is that this is an ongoing trend toward forcing corporations to be more transparent, and empowering customers. I talked about ScanZOOM, Scout Pal, and similar systems that will provide for distributed, mobile “Total Price Awareness.” I also talked about computer hardware as the leading edge on this, and why people budget their hardware at 10-20% above the lowest Price Watch listing.
The reason they do this is similar to the real reason Walmart is worried. It’s not just that customers may find cheaper options online while shaping in their physical store, it is that they may find more expensive items online and decide it is worth it. I know that sounds strange, but I suspect it is the case. I don’t buy my computer equipment (or much else, for that matter) from the lowest priced seller. Price is perhaps one of the most important factors in a purchase decision, but certainly not the only factor.
So yes, I think we are in for an interesting time, but it’s a lot bigger than just Black Friday. It’s about people taking charge of their economic lives, of consumers hacking the retail structure. And it will matter way past this Friday.