a thaumaturgical compendium

I’m sometimes put in the position of being asked by those in traditional media institutions what they can do to defend against the incursions of the internet. It’s rarely put exactly like that, but something similar. I try not to get too excited, because where they (rightly) see a potential threat, I see a lot of opportunities. And, to avoid sounding like a complete nut job, it’s always nice when you can point at institutions doing it right. The New York Times and the BBC, for example, have continually attempted to innovate their way into networked media. Some of these attempts have failed, naturally, but they have managed to demonstrate that they are not just relevant, but essential to the media ecosystem.

I think it would be fair to say that I was a skeptic of the Bryant Park Project when it started up. Inherent to any project that tries to make the image of an organization more hip, it smacked of trying too hard. After all, NPR has a market psychographic, and they should stick to it. Despite this skepticism, I found myself listening to the show on my commutes up to Connecticut, and found it engaging, amusing, and enlightening. As a radio show, it succeeded brilliantly, I think, at reaching a demographic that was on the edge of NPR already–a group of educated GenXers who won’t be dead (mostly) in the next decade. That they jumped into social media with both feet, allowing it to pervade their program without the programming being necessarily about social media, made it a great example to bring up when people asked the “what to do?” question: go see what BPP is doing.

Unfortunately, it looks like BPP won’t be doing much of anything as of next month, which is really a shame. As the 200+ comments on this posting suggest, BPP had assembled a loyal and interested following. They also suggest that the following was deeper than it might have been wide, but there is no way to know this. Given another year, I suspect that BPP would have brought more non-NPR listeners into the fold; it’s too bad we won’t get to see that happen.

On a personal note, I feel guilty now for not listening. Now that it’s summer, I’m not making the commute up to school, and I generally don’t listen to talk radio while I’m working (too distracting). But I’ll make an exception for the rest of the month, listening to the last of their shows.

This sort of post has now become a staple, but here are some things I’m doing instead of blogging. I’ll try to post a little bit about these projects as they progress.

* Finishing up my new book, Search Engine Society. I’m putting the finishing touches on the index. All of it was desperately out of date the moment I wrote it, but that was inevitable. Luckily, Polity has been very good about turn-around timing on this. It’s due out in October, if the gods of printing allow. Indexing is more annoying than I thought. Can’t we just Google it?

* Research for a paper about Digg, and ratings. I had originally planned on writing this up in the form of a Dr. Suess book, but I think I’m headed for something a bit more traditional at this point. This actually follows a line of research from my dissertation, lo, so many years ago.

* Research for a paper about the use of hyperlinking in the rhetoric of extremism (and particularly racism) on the web. Again, this is a project that I’ve been thinking about for about a decade, but I’m only now getting things together for it.

* Early stages of planning to take the initial ideas I presented in a paper at NCA last year, about collaborative filtering, netroots, and the public agenda, and apply them to the presidential election. I want to finish this up sometime in, say, November.

* Organizing materials for my next book. Will be working on it over the next year or so. There are a three separate ideas I’ve been working on, but I think I’m going to look at the nexus of networked communication, learning, creativity, and government.

* I’m revising my “Intro Interactive” course. No, really. This will be the first time I have revised a course rather than starting pretty much from a clean slate. Very exciting. Hoping to outsource some of it, and interview some friends and former students to get a look at the interactive industry.

* I’m rewriting “Communication, Media, and Society” from scratch, trying to provide the means for doing my “students design the class” thing and still having it work for an online version.

* Early stages of planning for my spring courses: “Web Programming” and “Something Else.” There are several possibilities for my special topics, including: Search Engine Society (duh!), Surveillance, Virtual Worlds,

* I’ve been doing some prep on a major project, which will be my top priority when it launches later this year. Laying the foundation and doing some planning over the next few months. I’ll announce it formally on my birthday later this month.

But I haven’t been blogging. I’ll try to do better. Oh, and if I owe you something (refereeing, emails, invoices, money, the head of your sworn enemy), I’ll get to it. Just a bit bogged down right now.

Although few people know this, you were supposed to be paying taxes for all that stuff you ordered online if you had it delivered to New York State. That whole renewal of a the “tax holiday” for the internet? Doesn’t matter if you live here (or many places, it turns out).

And to make sure that you scofflaws out there who aren’t reporting your online purchases don’t keep doing so, a new law actually makes retailers charge the tax. So when you buy from Amazon, you get sales tax tagged on your purchase. Amazon has sued the state over this tax (saying that it is a regulation of interstate commerce), but for now, I have a more practical issue. There’s nothing that says I can’t go over to Jersey or Connecticut to do my shopping, and no reason I wouldn’t have things delivered there. Indeed, for Amazon, it makes sense for books to go to my office (in Connecticut) rather than my home (in New York). But what happens if I then bring one of those books home?

Or, what about those who do not have a legitimate address in Connecticut? Can they have their orders sent to a rented address (Mail Boxes, etc., etc.) and pick it up once a month. This certainly makes sense to me: the sale occurred “in” Connecticut, and you carried goods you own back to New York. The lines of cars with New York plates at gas stations Fort Lee suggest that many people engage in interstate arbitrage. I’m reminded of the tax hole that exists (existed?) in Portland, Oregon, which is just across the border from Vancouver, Washington. One state is sales-tax-free, the other is income-tax-free, making for an interesting cross-border flow. Yet, there are indications that any such workaround may not be legal.

So, next question. Would it be legal to set up a reshipping service in one of these neighboring states? Could I set up an operation that picks up goods from Newegg’s Edison, NJ warehouse and delivers things around New York City if I wasn’t Newegg. In other words, rather than buying goods delivered from Newegg, I purchase them undelivered (EXW, as it were), and then contract a separate entity to pick them up and deliver them to me in New York. That just feels wrong to me–it seems like it is a fairly direct an obvious attempt to evade a tax by decoupling the purchase and the shipping. And yet, if I hire a taxi to take me from New York City out to an address in New Jersey where I had something delivered, that doesn’t seem that strange, and on a large enough purchase–say, a television or a diamond ring–it would save a great deal in tax. That holds even when it is a question of choosing a sales tax in White Plains (7.88%) or Paramus, NJ (6%, or free for clothing) over that in New York City (8.38%), leaving aside the online issue.

Or, is your tax home determined by where you actually claim residence? That was the case when we bought our car in New Jersey. Because we lived in New York City, we were required to pay NYC tax. But this seems to be specific to automotive purchases.

Anyway, I find the whole thing too confusing. Do I have to worry now that by having books delivered to my office from Amazon, I’m illegally evading tax? Or, should I start having all my friends’ books delivered to my office and charge a “handling fee”? And we haven’t even touched eBay yet.

As an aside, I don’t think that online sales tax is necessarily a bad thing, but requiring online retailers or consumers to keep track of the tax policies of states and municipalities around the world is just stupid. If this is the way we are going, we need a federal “online sales tax”–or better yet, a federal “VAT” for all sales.

Never thought I would encourage sock puppets on my blog, but Kiki & Bubu (with a guest appearance from Trekkie Monster’s cousin) explains that the seeming shift of ownership to workers is just another version of false consciousness. I don’t happen to agree entirely, but it’s an interesting way of presenting the message.

No, no, not me. Or at least not except during the summers and weekends. But there is a fun-looking one-day conference on May 16th called Going Solo, all about the process of becoming a successful freelancer in a world that seems to be moving us all in that direction. They have some well-known speakers lined up and are looking for some other possibilities.

I would love to head out to Lausanne for the day and spend the rest of the weekend skiing. School’s out by then, but I’m afraid the Falcon 50 is scheduled for its annual, and I really can’t be bothered with commercial carriers these days.

Don’t have time to tag your own walls? Outsource it!

Send a Message is an interesting site that allows you to dictate a message to be spray-painted on the Palestinian wall. Full employment for Palestinian graffiti artists. Besides, remember back when the Berlin Wall came down and Bloomingdale’s was selling chunks? Maybe in a few hundred years, when they knock down this one, it some part of your message can sit in someone’s living room.

Regardless of which side of the wall you sit on, it is hard not to appreciate this as an interesting way to call global attention to an issue on a person-to-person basis.

(Via Josh Spear.)