The Whole World Is Watching

Last month, images out of Iran that showed street violence and clashes between political groups and police and protesters were praised by advocates for Internet freedom who were captivated by the possibility of a revolution that would finally bring about a Western-style democracy in the theocratic country that has been a longtime opponent of the U.S.

But as Randy Cohen of The Ethicist points out in "The Power of Pictures," encouraging the dissemination of some kinds of graphic images on the Internet while censuring others can make President Obama appear hypocritical, particularly when he praises images of "Neda" dying on YouTube while opposing the release of pictures showing detainee abuse of those held in U.S. custody.

Certainly, although there was some outcry about this story of an online video of a woman being flogged in Pakistan, it's harder to raise objections when the violence shows the shortcomings of the government of a political ally. In the case of our major economic trade partner, China, events described in the Telegraph's story, "China riots: Twitter and YouTube frustrate 'censorship attempts,'" can be more difficult for the U.S. to manage through conventional diplomatic channels, although -- according to the New York Times -- "In Latest Upheaval, China Applies New Strategies to Control Flow of Information."

Unlucky Breaks

Travel is an area in which social media that use distributed networks can quickly broadcast consumer discontent with a company or agency. For example, in the Virtualpolitik book, I wrote about how multiple rich media or RSS-enabled sites on the Internet are used to express dissatisfaction with TSA passenger screening procedures. Airline horror stories can also be rapidly disseminated online, and even various memes involving the film Snakes on a Plane could be seen as part of the collective online mockery of norms involving air travel.

Now, according to "Smashed guitar, YouTube song — United is listening now" on a travel blog for the Los Angeles Times, the band Sons of Maxwell is combining free publicity for their music with anti-corporate revenge by releasing a YouTube video called "United Breaks Guitars," after baggage carriers for the airline damaged some of their musical instruments during a tour.

(Thanks to Brook Haley for the link!)

Who Gives a Truck?

The remarkable thing about painful childhood memories is the fact that they often concern relatively trivial matters rather than the real tragedies of life. For example, I still feel a pang in my heart when I remember the circus marionette that broke off when I dangled it out the car window and how it was dashed to pieces in freeway traffic. And I still feel guilty about not giving a prized crossword puzzle book to the girl in the next hospital bed because I rationalized that her brain tumor would prevent her from solving the puzzles on its pages. And I still feel a profound feeling of alienation and abandonment when I think about ice cream trucks and their unpredictable courses.

I grew up in the hills over Pasadena miles away from local commerce, parks, and clusters of residential kids. Most of our neighbors when I was growing up were retired couples or middle-aged gay Republicans, and so ice cream trucks never ventured up the windy roads to come to our street. One day, however, a single disoriented truck did accidentally show up in our neighborhood. I was so excited to see this symbol of suburban normalcy that I begged the driver to stay parked while I ran to get money. By the time I came back, the truck was gone. I spent hours chasing the sound of what I thought was the echo of the truck's tinkling tune in search of it.

Last week, while walking in my neighborhood, I came upon an equally amazing truck. It was a truck for Calbi BBQ, a company that specializes in combining two of my favorite Los Angeles cuisines: Korean food and Mexican food. Customers can enjoy tacos, burritos, and quesadillas made with Korean-style beef, kimchi, and tofu. Again, by the time that I returned with my wallet, the magical truck was gone. It turned out, however, that the truck had a website, where Calbi BBQ enthusiasts could find out where the GPS coordinates of the truck could be tracked on an interactive Google map or one could look for information on the company's blog or Twitter feed.



It turns out that the Calbi truck actually has an older, more famous mobile cousin: the Kogi Truck, which according to an NPR story, "Tweeting Food Truck Draws L.A.'s Hungry Crowds," also uses ubiquitous computing technologies. In addition to the Kogi tribute on YouTube above, you can also check out their Flickr stream and Twitter feed.

The Lives of Others

One of the remarkable things about Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg's The Future of Learning Institutions in the Digital Age is its willingness to tackle the "mythology of technology that its virtues, vitality, and values are 'free'" (5). In a time in which "institution" can seem a dirty word, they repeat the importance of "institutional support" several times and emphasize the fact that digital learning requires labor, capital, material resources, and organizational structures aimed at sustainability. Unlike manifestos that reject institutional frameworks, the authors remind readers that "our traditional institutions" in higher education are notable for their "endurance and stability." However, Davidson and Goldberg describes how the book also served as a novel "writing exercise" that challenged conventional academic publishing norms, like many of the projects at the Institute for the Future of the Book, because it was vetted through a process of online comments facilitated by the Commentpress digital toolset. I found myself very sympathetic to the mix of innovation and pragmatism that the pedagogical philosophy of this book represents.

Nonetheless, after a rapid and enthusiastic reading The Future of Learning Institutions in the Digital Age, I was left with two possible criticisms.

First, although this book claims that its "primary focus is higher education," it was remarkably light on specifics. Given the tendency of philanthropic institutions only to fund K-12 initiatives that focus on what I have described as the "exoticism of the young," I was looking forward to a monograph that addressed the culture of college campuses, where academic scholarship and new social computing practices have had a particularly contentious relationship. I will confess that some of this attention to the subject on my part is also self-interested. My new book project, Early Adopters: The Instructional Technology Movement and the Myth of the Digital Generation, focuses on the higher education scenarios that I began writing about in conjunction with a talk at Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education, when I first wrote about how knowledge paradigms and information paradigms differ. Furthermore, I've promised to write about local experiments with "interdisciplinary pedagogy" in which Southern California as a site for "regional advantage, to use AnnaLee Saxenian's term, for the upcoming DAC conference. Unfortunately, their "Portfolio of Virtual Learning Institutions: Models, Experiments, and Examples to Learn and Build On" contained almost no examples of work done for college credit. The Gamelab Institute of Play, Quest to Learn, the New York City Museum School, and the School of the Future in Philadelphia.

Second, I found myself thinking about the "others" mentioned in a passage about the transformation of "modes of organization, structures of knowledge, and the relationships between and among groups of students, faculty, and others across campus or around the world" (14). I noticed that these "others" were largely constituted as off-campus others, who might be "strangers" who could "remain anonymous" (16) as they participate in life-long learning, contribute to wikis, serve as audiences for faculty blogs, and enter into symbiotic information-exchange relationships with those on campus remotely. Yet one of the challenges to digital learning in higher education is precisely the fact that these "others" are often not far away. They are librarians, instructional technology specialists, and other members of non-tenure-track academic underclasses, who contribute much to initiatives for digital learning but are further marginalized by existing reward systems. Among friends and colleagues in the region, this last group includes book authors, bloggers, and editors who have influenced my own work.

As Clark Kerr once said, the university really is a "multiversity." It's easy for bomb-throwing guest columnists like Mark C. Taylor to say that we should "End the University as We Know It" by terminating tenure and dissolving departments. What's harder to determine is how digital culture can make campuses both better environments for learning and more just workplaces for those who never received the privileges that Taylor wants to end.

Who Doesn't Love Virtual Currency?

As the creditors of the State of California begin to receive IOU documents rather than checks, because the fiscal year has begun without a resolution to the budget crisis in the legislature, online speculators are seeking to buy up the notes promising future payment in hopes of cashing in on interest, despite the fact that the state's credit rating has dropped to BBB status.

According to "Wanted on Craigslist: California IOUs," people posting to the megasite for online want ads are looking for the state's registered warrants. Given the scope of transactions for other kinds of virtual items on the site, including game currency and inventory items for everything from World of Warcraft to Mafia Wars, this emergent economy is hardly surprising.

A Wee Kirk O' The Heather

A Vision of Britain Through Time offers several slices of the political, social, and aesthetic landscapes of particular regions of the country. Visitors to the site can chose a location and then search for census data, historical maps, or text from centuries of travel writing to get a richer image of the local area.

Thanks to Robert Folkenflik for the link.

July Surprise

I've written about the "Downfall meme" before here and here. Already there is a version that commemorates the resignation of Alaska governor Sarah Palin over the Fourth of July Weekend.

Ready or Not, Here Digital Publishing Comes

I've been thinking about the reflections of two Facebook friends, who have been writing about the relationship between scholarship and the Internet and the fact that the practices of digital publishing are already here among people who read and write books about computational culture, with or without the participation of academic presses.

In "Anderson's Wiki-versy," Siva Vaidhyanathan writes about the borrowings of Wired editor Chris Anderson to create parts of Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which were revealed on a blog for the Virginia Quarterly Review. Vaidhyanathan is less concerned about what he calls another "moral panic" about textual poaching than he is about the fact that mainstream books that are cited by academics are becoming even less likely to contain notes as publishers embrace models that cut costs and appeal to the greatest common denominator in the reading public.

Ian Bogost takes a different approach in "Digital Objects: Speculative Realism and Digital Media," where he argues that it is the blog rather than the wiki that characterizes the main mode of thoughtful writing practice today. Bogost explains how philosopher Graham Harman takes part in lively philosophical exchanges online and how Google books and Amazon.com also serve as a kind of citation index to see who else out there might also be involved in the scholarly conversation.

The Tweetest Memories of Her

Librarians are discussing the recent announcement on the Library of Congress's Twitter feed that all the tweets that reference Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be collected for posterity, as part of their mission to record the Zeitgeist around her public confirmation hearing. The ABA Journal noted the necessary succinctness of the message, and The Hill's Twitter Room placed the LOC's decision in the context of the widespread adoption of Twitter by legislators in a remarkably short time.

Based on having interviewed archivists at the Library of Congress, I've expressed concern in the past about the scope of the web capture program, given that much social computing involves rich media files rather than plain text and services that make content much harder to scrape. As a text feed, Twitter raises far fewer technical problems, but these kinds of publicity events may also feed into the company's increasingly high-profile attempts to monetize their unsustainable business model through a quick sale to a software giant by getting free advertising for the service from the news media covering fast-breaking stories.

(Thanks to Sean Lawson for the link!)

If Countries Were Computers

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Reboot Britain campaign is its use of figurative language to represent a nation as a computational device. One could also "scan Britain's system," "defrag Britain's memory," and "consolidate Britain's files." I wouldn't want anyone to "limit Britain's users," however.

Maybe Facebook is the New Poison Umbrella Tip

Reader Michael Thomas points out a great story in the Daily Mail,
"MI6 chief blows his cover as wife's Facebook account reveals family holidays, showbiz friends and links to David Irving," which suggests that the status-checking location-mapping culture of social network sites can wreak havoc with the security culture around officials in clandestine government services. With the new default privacy settings on Facebook set to favor disclosure to all in one's network, the mistake made by the spouse of the head of Britain's intelligence service is certainly understandable.

Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site's 200million users who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network - regardless of where in the world they actually were.

There are fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder may have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.

Lady Shelley Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law - who holidayed with him last month - is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving.

Immediately after The Mail on Sunday alerted the Foreign Office to the astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material – which could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists - was removed from the internet.

For more about the official web presence of Britain's intelligence services, you can check out this Virtualpolitik entry about MI-5 and MI-6. And for more about how Facebook is set no longer to be a "walled garden," go here.

Getting Out of Dodge

As the Washington Post explains in "Sarah Palin's July 4th Message Posted to Her Facebook Account," the recently resigned governor of Alaska is using her notes on the popular social network site as a way to communicate with her base while she is out of the public spotlight.

It's interesting to see how the tone of her latest message moves from a meek request for the reader's indulgence to a complaint about the liberal media and blogosphere that she sees as persecutors, including the online wags who Photoshopped her family to appear like demons from hell.

If I may, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the last 24 hours and share my thoughts with you.

First, I want to thank you for your support and hard work on the values we share. Those values led me to the decision my family and I made. Yesterday, my family and I announced a decision that is in Alaska’s best interest and it always feels good to do what is right. We have accomplished more during this one term than most governors do in two – and I am proud of the great team that helped to build these wonderful successes. Energy independence and national security, fiscal restraint, smaller government, and local control have been my priorities and will remain my priorities.

For months now, I have consulted with friends and family, and with the Lieutenant Governor, about what is best for our wonderful state. I even made a few administrative changes over that course in time in preparation for yesterday. We have accomplished so much and there’s much more to do, but my family and I determined after prayerful consideration that sacrificing my title helps Alaska most. And once I decided not to run for re-election, my decision was that much easier – I’ve never been one to waste time or resources. Those who know me know this is the right decision and obvious decision at that, including Senator John McCain. I thank him for his kind, insightful comments.

The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the “politics of personal destruction”. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.

She's also using Facebook to promote her political action group, SarahPAC, where she is soliciting funds for another national run.

What's also amazing about Palin's Facebook page is the lack of moderation and the brawling style of multiple voices engaged in polymorphous flame wars about religion, sex, money, and everything else associated with her campaign for vice president.

Michael Jackson vs. The Internet

The chaotic web-based system that encouraged over a million fans to compete for several thousand tickets to Michael Jackson's memorial service in the Staples Center in Los Angeles has already received a lot of negative press, as the cash-strapped city tries to figure out how to handle would-be lookie-loos, and fans are encountering tiered forms of participation in the singer's legacy. (As though the strain on the very Internet created by Jackson's demise weren't enough to drive former listeners away from their keyboards.)

Meanwhile MichaelJackson.com is soliciting online memories from fans. Although viewers are encouraged to flag offensive postings as inappropriate, there are still a number of computer users who are advertising pornography or suggesting that the pop star should go to hell.

Mass Frames

This rock video uses the mechanism of the web cam to create an effect much like stadium fans making large-scale displays by holding up cards on cue. In the era of mass games from North Korea and spectacular Olympics from China, it is interesting to see a Japanese band using their distributed fan base to create these kinds of pixelated images at the scale of the computer screen.

(Thanks to Allen Glazier for the link.)

When Flowers and Candy Just Won't Do

The short digital film World Builder Bruce Banit also contains some creepy implications about how both doctors and male lovers shape the world for passive, unconscious patients, so it was interesting to see it linked to the main web page for Cyber Therapy 2009. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about rhetorics of empowerment and disempowerment when it comes to medical applications for virtual worlds technologies by looking at individual case studies in which Second Life is used for support groups, counseling referrals, and patient advocacy organizations. I would argue that the virtue of the virtual has more to do with collective knowledge networking than it does to individual cave experiences and that health is about conscious sociality.

Tuning In, Turning On, and Dropping Knowledge

This video explains the work of Dropping Knowledge, a group that solicits provocative questions from its international audience and then poses them to its "table of knowledge," which includes celebrities like director Wim Wenders and actor Willem Dafoe.

Pay to Play

Mike Allen of Politico.com broke a major story about his former employer, The Washington Post, this week after a health care lobbyist shared an incriminating flier that showed that the prestigious newspaper had included on their invitation to an "intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon" during an "off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth" a promise to provide "a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds" for $25,000 each or $250,000 for all 11 planned "salons." Now Politico is reporting that the embarrassed publisher has canceled its plans for the dubious influence-peddling pitched for the event. They were too late, however, to forestall the inevitable YouTube parody of the event.

If a Classroom Falls in a Forest

An article in today's New York Times, "Facing Deficits, Some States Cut Summer School," portrays a grim picture of how many school districts are cutting summer school programs despite federal monies designed to keep the K-12 educational system running for full-year sessions.

I am on the advisory board of SOS Classroom, which attempts to ameliorate the crisis. You can also follow their Twitter feed to learn about how they offer tools for tagging and organizing free educational content on the web that addresses state content standards.

When Summer School was canceled for LAUSD in the summer of 2009, there was an outpouring of concern for students in the country’s largest school district.

At the same time, we realized that the Internet was making available an unprecedented number of free educational resources. They just needed to be collected in one place.

Our goal is to collect and organize the very best of these resources by enlisting the help of educators, parents, and students online. We offer these resources as a life preserver to students who might otherwise spend their summers sinking.

The students of Mark Marino at USC hope that they have reached critical mass and that parents and educators will soon be active content-creators to the site.