Mediacology

I just came across this excellent mind map of the “all things open and free” from Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation. Truly amazing.

Via collectivate.net.

In the digital media class I teach we have been talking about the “consumer sublime,” which is the idea that people seek increasingly more stimulating media to “awe” their senses in the same way we once encountered the sublime within nature. The clearest example is comparing the experience of going into the Grand Canyon versus [...]

The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives – NYTimes.com:

Indeed, a new generation of smartphones like the G1, with Android software developed by Google, and a range of Japanese phones now “augment” reality by painting a map over a phone-screen image of the user’s surroundings produced by the phone’s camera.
With this sort of map it is possible to [...]

The New York Times – Video Library – Magazine Playlist

Click the above link to see what I consider to be one of the coolest presentations ever using simple desktop tools (the content doesn’t much interest me). The potential for this kind of vlogging is incredibly appealing because it allows for addressing the audience via webcame [...]

I suggest you go and read the full post from Palms Out who are claiming that Google is removing posts from Blogger (which it owns) that contain copyright violations in the form of song files. Scary.

Palms Out Sounds:

For all of you who are wondering what has happened with Remix Sunday, let me offer a brief [...]

Is Google Making Us Stupid?:

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described [...]

Dig the graphic!

Eric McLuhan, son of the late great Marshall, updates the master.

NowPublic @ Vidfest 2008: Dr. Eric McLuhan, Interviewed by Michael Tippett | The News is NowPublic.com:

11:40am – Tippett: It would be helpful for you to explain the concept of the “Global Village”?
McLuhan: It’s an uncomfortable place; everyone knows everything about you. You’re always [...]

“True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society” (Farhad Manjoo)

I just finished True Enough, which challenges the conventional thinking that new media democratize information and will lead to greater vetting and truth. On the contrary, the author argues that new media encourage the retreat into reality tunnels. The greatest benefit of the book is [...]

Will new media compost traditional capitalism? What follows is an interesting case study of independent microradio and wireless technology in Nepal.
What McLuhan Could not Foresee » P2P Foundation:
While much smaller in size and economic power, other developing countries also have novel approaches, which are of the greatest significance. Nepal is a case in point. Electricity [...]

You can watch it for free on Frontline’s Website here.

Technorati Tags: frontline

Charles Baudelairer’s character of the flaneur has been celebrated and vastly discussed as the archetype of Modern Media Man: he grazes the sights and sounds of the new urbanity, a casual consumer of the senses. He is somewhat disengaged, his focus meanders and samples. As a “Bourgeois dilettante,” he’s a no where man. While the [...]

Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the [...]

Internet before the Internet: Paul Otlet’s early vision of future communications.

Technorati Tags: Paul Otle

Is the video Web becoming technological glossolalia? It seems like most new ventures these days are speaking in tongues. Hulu, Bebo, Vuguru, Miro– you’d think the Internet was becoming a tiki bar drink menu. I don’t have a point in particular, but I’m just curious about the spate of nonsense words being used for viral [...]

When I was a freelance journalist many years ago I remember there was a small but significant change in new contracts: I was no longer a “writer” but a “content provider.” This was in lieu of the coming shift in which what ever you wrote for newspapers was to be resold by the parent company [...]

This is a clever piece of user generated PR by Google who asked users to submit videos on how Gmail travels around the world. The compilation is a nice summary of the positive aspects of media, which at the core is to communicate (I could do without the soundtrack, though). I think media critics focus [...]

As the article below indicates, there is extensive hype about NewTube (a placeholder name until NBC Universal and News Corp. come up with a brand identity), which is essentially the big media response to YouTube. Although considering that google now owns YouTube, it’s getting harder to view Internet behemoths as the “little guy” anymore. But [...]

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.

We Feel Fine / Movements:
Madness, the first movement, [...]