Need I say more? (Source: DailyGalaxy)
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Archive for March, 2007
Ciao! I though I’d alert all the readers out there that I have a new article posted on Understanding Media about the issue of “authenticity” and youth marketing. The site also has a short interview that explains a little bit about where my perspective comes from. Here’s a snip:
The Authenticity Paradox and the Perils of Youth Marketing
As a veteran of youth counterculture, I’m watching with curiosity the growing importance of youth voices as a gauge for the so-called “real,” not in the philosophical sense, but in the “keeping it real” sense. Marketers are not concerned whether or not adults think what they see is “real”: it’s the skeptical teen audience that is more challenging.
Technorati Tags: media literacy
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It’s no wonder that obesity and diabetes are growing so fast in the US:
* 34% of All Food Ads Targeting Children or Teens Are for Candy and Snacks
* Half of All Ads Shown During Children’s Shows Are for Food
New Study Finds That Food Is the Top Product Seen Advertised by Children - Kaiser Family Foundation:
New Study Finds That Food Is the Top Product Seen Advertised by Children
As the fight against childhood obesity escalates, the issue of food advertising to children has come under increasing scrutiny. Policymakers in Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and agencies such as the Institute of Medicine have called for changes in the advertising landscape, and U.S. food and media industries are developing their own voluntary initiatives related to advertising food to children. To help inform this debate, the Kaiser Family Foundation released the largest study ever conducted of TV food advertising to children.
The study, Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States, combines content analysis of TV ads with detailed data about children’s viewing habits to provide an estimate of the number and type of TV ads seen by children of various ages.
The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor - New York Times:
Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.
If you grew up with LPs then you may remember that record covers had many utilitarian values, such as seed sorting and for organizing other loose biological material. With CDs we lost that handy cardboard storage device and alas have not found too much to do with a jewell case, but the concept of a record changed in some ways for the better. It became a 70 minute set-piece rather than two divided sides. Perhaps the best example to take advantage of this was Radiohead’s OK Computer which is the most perfect stream of an hour plus of music as you will ever hear in a lifetime.
Now the NYTimes reports that we may be witnessing the death of the album format altogether due to the popularity of song downloads. Maybe so. As a subscriber to eMusic.com (note ad on the right sidebar, hint hint) I behave both ways. Usually I get turned on by a song I hear through streaming radio, my favorite being KEXP and KCRW. I then go to see if eMusic has it, and if so, I click through the album. If there are three or more songs that sound promising, I download the whole thing because as a musician I prefer the whole album concept and assume the artist does too and there is a logic to the group of songs that are collected in the “album.”
Incidentally, if you are a bit of an album geek, you should read the 33 1/3 book series. It’s a bunch of short books about classic albums. You can get started with “33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Volume One (33 1/3)”, and then move onto one of the many, Erik Davis’ Led Zep IV being one of the best.
(Here’s a nice little article about the series from the Chicago Trib)
Technorati Tags: 33 1/3
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Everybody must watch The Daversity Code (by the people who made The Meatrix).
Technorati Tags: DaversityCode.com, bio diversity
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[youtube]A7os_UPGl-Q[/youtube]
Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling on future cities. Here he surveys contemporary Belgrade, but demonstrates how the present future composts the past. What he writes is very similar to what I see in Rome. Life goes on, cities mutate, people adapt and change their environments.
(Via BoingBoing)
Technorati Tags: Bruce Sterling
A clever marketing trick: make a commercial from a fictional product in your book that is unusual, strange and sexy. Add YouTube and the blogosphere, mix and you have a meme. Additionally the Web tie-in is similar to what the ABC series Lost has done with its show by constructing a parallel universe on the Web that features characters, companies and false histories that coincide with the show. In the case of Lost, the program has also devised games that are like treasure hunts which use its various Web sites and video games for generating clues. It’s a vastly more interesting form of entertainment than we are normally accostomed to because it goes beyond the normal boundary of the program, thereby expanding the initial ecology of the media piece. In the case of of Michael Crichton’s book, NEXT, this is a very interesting development for books, his position on global warming not withstanding.
Visit the book’s fictional company at NEXTgencode.
Technorati Tags: Lost, Michael Crichton, NEXT, NEXTgencode
This nice little animation of Alan Watts commenting on the folly of education and other things. Very nice. Enjoy! (Thanks Rob!)
Technorati Tags: Alan Watts
Using the term “digital ethnorati,” Steve Wilmarth from The Center for 21st Century Skills presented at South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin. Here is a Flickr slide link to his interesting Digital Ethnorati panel presentation.
Also, check out AfroGeeks.
Technorati Tags: afrogeeks
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Need to know what’s emanating from the techno-humanosphere?
Technology Review: 10 Emerging Technologies 2007:
Start Slide Show with PicLens LiteAs always, Technology Review’s annual list of emerging technologies to watch comprises projects in a broad range of fields, including medicine, energy, and the Internet. Some, such as optical antennas and metamaterials, are fundamental technologies that promise to transform multiple areas, from computing to biology. Our reports on peer-to-peer video, personalized medical monitors, and compressive sensing reveal how well-designed algorithms could save the Internet, simplify and improve medical diagnoses, and revamp digital imaging systems in cameras and medical scanners. Nanohealing and quantum-dot solar power demonstrate the potential of nanotechnology to make a concrete difference in our daily lives by changing the way we treat injuries and helping solar energy deliver on its promises. Precise neuron control could help physicians fine-tune treatments for brain disorders such as depression and Parkinson’s disease. And single-cell analysis could not only revolutionize our understanding of basic biological processes but lead directly to predictive tests that could help doctors treat cancers more effectively. Finally, by combining location sensors and advanced visual algorithms with cell phones, mobile augmented reality technology could make it easier to just figure out where we are.
The Global Urban Real Estate Boom - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com:
From San Francisco and Seattle to Moscow and Shanghai, prices for prime residential property are surging, even as overall national numbers in some markets continue to be depressed amid worries of global recession and a real-estate bubble. The triumph of the glamour cities turns conventional wisdom on its head—for quite a while, experts including Yale’s Robert Shiller have been predicting that these cities, having been hyped the most, would likely fall farthest, fastest. The decoupling of national and local real-estate trends, which were once much more closely linked, reflects the lives of the new “superprime” property buyers themselves, roughly 50 percent of whom are expatriates, according to the global-property research firm Jones Lang LaSalle. While globalization has allowed money, but not necessarily people, to roam the world more freely, Cañas and his colleagues are an exception—they float on a cushion of international capital, largely immune to regional concerns, and are flush with cash.
I found this article fascinating because when I lived in New York I saw on the ground exactly this phenomenon. As rents and property values grew, the amount of money being made by my friends and colleagues was going down. There was a “Disneylandificiation” going on in Manhattan, and I noticed the same thing in LA, San Francisco and Seattle. I knew locals weren’t driving the economy. So what gives?
I feel we are seeing the manifestation of what McLuhan described when he said all the megalopolises of the world were now connected by air travel which are now like sky subways. It is one continuous metropolis, networked by the global financial elites. Who are they? I’m not sure, but the article describes many coming from finance and insurance, maybe entertainment too. I’m now wondering if cities will also be a bit like walled city states with airports serving as the equivelent of castle gateways of medieval times. Only those with passports and papers and the means to travel by air will have access to these playgrounds. As for the service sector, they will continue to be illegals and a growing undereducated underclass. This is only one scenario, though, and I hope workers, artists and people who traditionally innovate continue to find their niches in beautiful and safe places.
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Time Magazine is being “webatized” (my term). Check out this interesting feature from Pentagram that examines the process of its design change:
New at Pentagram: New Work: TIME Magazine:
Paula Scher, who collaborated with Hayman on the redesign prototype, explained part of the thought process behind the project. “We created a system that we thought would resonate with today’s readers. It’s full of quick bits and relevant info, but still retains the spirit of TIME. We used the display typeface Franklin Gothic that was part of the history of the magazine, and revisited the grid used by Walter Bernard,†the legendary editorial designer.
(Via Bagnews Notes)
Technorati Tags: Time
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Writing about the need to shift our economic paradigm, Adbuster’s Kalle Lasn has a good overview of how this kind of change happens in the real world. My only beef with the arguments in the extended article is his use of old paradigm activist tactics, i.e. disruption, protest, etc. Though I think those tactics are useful, I wonder if they are in keeping with emergent practices of networks and decentralized relationships. Is it possible to compost economics from within? Read “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” by Yochai Benkler and tell me what you think.
True Cost Economics : Paradigm Shift:
PARADIGM SHIFT
This is how scientific progress is supposed to happen: a theory, a paradigm, that has worked quite well for many years suddenly becomes problematic. Contradictions emerge; the theory no longer seems to predict reality. The scientific community senses the moment and rises to the occasion. A flurry of experiments is conducted, information shared, papers written and conferences held. Out of this intellectual turmoil, a hot new theory emerges. It is subjected to rigorous scrutiny and tested in myriad ways. Then, if it passes muster, it is finally accepted as the new norm, the new theoretical framework, the new “truth.” The scientists who came up with the breakthrough are nominated for the Nobel prize. The community settles back down, but now with a greater understanding of how things really are.
This is a myth, what the scientific community would like you to believe.
Thomas Kuhn, in his classic 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes how paradigm shifts really happen. They are almost always protracted, ugly, messy affairs. They unfold like vindictive putsches. The old guard protects its turf jealously. The dissenters are ignored, stonewalled, refused publication and tenure, and ostracized in every way.Kuhn’s most profound insight is that in the real world, contrary to the way scientific progress is supposed to happen, an old paradigm cannot be replaced by new evidence, or facts, or “the truth.” It can only be replaced by another paradigm. In other words, a scientific community will not change just because its forecasts are wrong, its policies no longer work, or its theories are proved unscientific. It will change only when a new generation of scientists grabs the old-school practitioners by the scruffs of their necks and throws them out of power.
Technorati Tags: adbusters, economics, Kalle Lasn
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This is an amazing tool that “feels” the blogosphere’s emotions. Go to the site and click on “Open We Feel Fine” and see what happens. It’s quite an amazing voyeuristic view into the netropolis’ networked feelings, kinda like Vim Winders’ angels hearing everyone’s thoughts in Wings of Desire.
Start Slide Show with PicLens LiteMadness, the first movement, opens with a wildly swarming mass of around 1,500 particles, emanating from the center of the screen and then careening outwards, bouncing off walls and reacting to the behavior of the mouse. Each particle represents a single feeling, posted by a single individual. The color of each particle corresponds to the tone of the feeling inside – happy positive feelings are bright yellow, sad negative feelings are dark blue, angry feelings are bright red, calm feelings are pale green, and so on. The size of each particle represents the length of the sentence contained within. Circular particles are sentences. Rectangular particles contain pictures.
CteULike is an interesting self-organized library system for researchers and academics. You can create your own library of documents to share with others or simply find articles that others are referencing. Very cool. And it’s free.
CiteULike: Frequently Asked Questions:
What is CiteULike?
CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there’s no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There’s no need to install any special software.
Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.
Technorati Tags: CoteULike
“We report. You Decide.”
Wondering where your news comes from? One of the underlying principles of a “propaganda environment” is an information complex in which the values of the system are internalized. Remember that traditional media are corporations in the business of selling programming, including news. One of the criticisms of traditional media (as opposed to networked media or citizen journalism) is that they generate their own reality: they define what is “information,” not the reverse (i.e. the Fox News slogan, “We report. You Decide.”). Only rarely do the carefully orchestrated presentations of news get unhinged: natural disasters and major events like 9/11. I found it curious, though, that within 12 hours of the airplanes hitting the WTC, news companies had already edited amateur video into a narrative that looked like a film trailer. This is an example of how events are made into packages.
Anyhow, below is an interesting map of the interlocking interests between news companies and other major multinational corporations. For a detailed map of corporate board rooms, go here. The following is a snapshot that is a couple years old, and some of the members will have changed by now, but you will get the picture.
Project Censored Media Democracy in Action:
A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:
Start Slide Show with PicLens LiteNew York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark,
Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette,
G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody’s
Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft,
McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo
News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM,
Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble,
Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette,
Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo,
Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America
Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target,
Pepsi,
AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton
Imagine that! A movie trailer for a book
In case you haven’t noticed, here at Media Mindfulness science fiction is very popular. Here’s another movie trailer for a sci-fi book, this one for Greg Bear’s Eon. I like this trend, although I hope the images from the clip don’t spoil the ones from your imagination. I remember seeing the Hobbit animated and being horribly disappointed.
Technorati Tags: Greg Bear, eon