YouTube Shifts Our Semiosis

"Now with the advent of the internet we have the first medium that is oral and written, private and public, individual and collective at the same time." Derek de Kerckhove - from The Skin of Culture, 1995.

And, as Tom Scocca describes in The YouTube Devolution from The New York Observer, we have a medium that preserves and shares moving visuals, clips from TV, movies, and home videos that are searchable and replayable in a way we humans have never seen before. For a world-wide audience too, as I described here. YouTube allows us to find and watch as many times as we want videos - in a manner similar to how we can find text(s) in libraries or through Web search engines.

Scocca says:

Memory has always been a shaky witness. But writing was checkable, to one degree or another. There could be differences of taste or opinion, but there was the text lurking, waiting to settle the question. If you told someone else a piece of writing was good (or gorgeous, or moving, or persuasive), that claim would have to survive the other person’s reading of it.

NYO - Off the Record

And ...

The Internet left writers more exposed than ever. If you were published from the mid-90’s onward, you ended up in a text-based panopticon: At any time, someone, somewhere, could conceivably be reading something you had written.

NYO - Off the Record

(I love the word "panopticon" - it is so brutal, and so descriptive of what the Web is.)

Writing text led to the development of indices and, consequently, to libraries, and the Web is not the enemy of libraries but part of their natural evolution.

These opportunities represent, in part, a surprise victory for library science. As we plunged into the digital age, one of the great fears was of format obsolescence: People would throw out old-fashioned paper in favor of electronic archives, only to suddenly find that they had all the works of human knowledge stored on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies and nobody was making floppy drives anymore. But with Web video, people are raiding their personal, inaccessible stashes of VHS tapes, winding through them till they find the important bits, and transferring them from a near-obsolete medium to a current one.

NYO - Off the Record

YouTube is a bold new step into the culture we humans are creating with our media -

YouTube stands as the opposite of old television because, above all, it’s easy. It doesn’t demand that you install a player; it doesn’t crash your browser. It embeds in blogs and plays there, freely.

NYO - Off the Record

YouTube and similar sites are taking us into a new semiosis, away from text which demands analysis and a distancing objectivity, the stalwart standards of our academic culture, into the sensational media that provides the experience without demanding the analysis.

I recommend Scocca's article - The YouTube Devolution.

technorati tags:Scocca, YouTube, semiosis

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Grey's Anatomy - My TV Fav

ABC.com: Grey's Anatomy

I watched two back-to-back episodes yesterday evening. I'd seen both before, but I still totally enjoyed them. Why? Because they show people behaving badly but trying to do their best. And they might be simplified psychologically, but they aren't widely inaccurate, as many TV shows are.

Take Meredith, the central figure. She has a difficult but brilliant mother with Alzheimer's, and Meredith has to struggle to be responsible. she's no plaster saint, but she's understandable, and she tries!

The same thing with her love interest and his wife. The situation's is acknowledged, but all three try to behave with as much grace and ethics as they can, and their struggles are heroic, IMHO.

Then there's Sandra Oh as Christina. I absolutely love her. She's beyond difficult, and she knows she is, but she accepts herself, and still works at becoming more human. The way she connects with her friends and Preston Burke enthralls me. She's my favorite character/actor in the cast.

Dr Bailey is my second favorite. I guess I like testy women who take no prisoners. She (the character) is blunt and firm, yet ethically-based, rather than power-hungry or ego-biased. She is a really positive female role model.

I like the men too, especially George as he surprises himself as he develops into maturity. In some ways he's the most overtly immature, but all the characters in this show are facing their developmental challenges and trying their best in human (as well as surgical) terms.

Watching the episodes for the second time through the summer re-runs, I see that this was a fully thought out set of episodes, with character consistency clearly evident. As you can tell, I like it a lot!

tags

Grey's Anatomy

TV

Design and Ugly MySpace

the show with zefrank - 07-14-06

The video linked to the page linked above (did you get that?) Anyway, the video with the image shown below is amusing and insightful. zefrank, as this blogger calls himself, gives the big picture of what is currently happening with design, and tells us why. It the accessibility of the tools! When design tools were rare, expensive, and demanded a high level of skill, a small group could define what good design was. With the democratising of the tools, the small group no longer rules. A new definition of good design is emerging as more and more people play with the new tools.

Or that's what I thought he was saying/showing.

Link to his blog post and see what you think!

technorati tags:zefrank, MySpace, design

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An Artist Reports From Beirut

Mazen Kerbaj sends out words, images, and music from Beirut at http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/

This appears not to be a political site, but rather stories and descriptions of being in the middle of a war the blogger doesn't want to be part of.

To avoid the spin of more political blogs, and to see how it feels to be in Beirut now, check out this blog.

tags
Beirut
Blog_art

For Your Entertainment!

Play films - Focus on Animation - ONF

Canada's National Film Board has produced some amazing animated films. Here, for your personal enjoyment, you can watch some of them. I like to search by title - on the left, and check out the description, on the right, before I play them.

The Big Snit is especially topical right now!

technorati tags:Canada, Animation, National_Film_Board, NFB

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Generosity

Steve Rubel says in his blog Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence and I agree.

The generosity dynamic that exists in the blogosphere is really important.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

Being generous is an act of creativity. In an interesting way, blog generosity is, in my opinion, a good metaphor for how generosity works in life-off-the-Web.

There's no way around it. You have to lavishly dish out links, advice, news, ideas, commentary, freebies, you name it. It's up to you.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

When you help people connect with others or ideas relevant to what they want to/need to do, you help them create by linking them. That can happen on the Web, and, as I said before, in life-off-the-Web. This is also the pattern that makes a good teacher or learning community member. I think it is more innate or socially patterned in some people than others; I also think it can be learned.

A major difference between generosity on and off the Web is that in life-off-the-Web generous people can be burned. I remember, in my late twenties, feeling really ripped off by a few people whom I had been friendly and generous to, but who just didn't bother to help a mutual friend when it would have been easy to. I started feeling like I had been designated "the server of others" by them. I decided to try to limit my generosity to those who I had received generosity from, or whom I had seen being generous to others.

Maybe I'm making an artificial distinction between life on and off the Web. Rubel also notes about selfish bloggers and reacts much like I did -

They focus solely on themselves and not an iota on others. I have unsubscribed from all of these blogs. They're just not worth my time.

Micro Persuasion: Only Generous Bloggers Influence

Targetting  my generosity is the choice I make. I don't want to throw my energy into the service of the greedy and neglectful. I try to be conscious of receiving generosity, and only welcome those who also share.

technorati tags:generosity, Rubel

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Out of Left Field

The dream comes again, but this time

there's a space for me, and the powerman

listens.

I hide my nakedness and offer

the one I fear for

as champion.

I am afraid

I am required.

technorati tags:poem, dream

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

If you like

• the bar scene in the original Star Wars,
• the tragic musical monster of Phantom of the Opera,
  
• Jedidiah, the Gyro Captain in Road Warior,
• Johnny Depp channelling Keith Richards,
• Orlando Bloom's cheekbones,
  
• Keira Knightley's feistiness,
• a fantastical plot,
• lots of explosions, and
  
• nasty villians,

and you don't require

• characters with depth, and
  
• a meaningful plot,

then this movie is for you.

technorati tags:Pirates, Dead_Man's_Chest

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The New Social-izing

The online culture is socially-driven, but it's a different kind of socializing. In some ways it's a million Speaker's Corners, where some have megaphones of varying amplifications, and some speak (write, record&play) in a soundless chamber.

The aggregate is beginning to have power, even though many individuals may not. Chris Anderson, in the large megaphone he is editor in chief of, Wired, writes about People Power and says -

Now we have armies of amateurs, happy to work for free. Call it the Age of Peer Production. From Amazon.com to MySpace to craigslist, the most successful Web companies are building business models based on user-generated content. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the second-generation Web. The tools of production, from blogging to video-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup. This is how we people amuse ourselves, writing into the void for the pleasure of writing to find out what we think. Is it work? School and business have taught us that writing is work, and there are certainly skills and mind-work required (I believe) but is writing about what we want to write about really work? Or is it the equivalent of the social chatting for pleasure rather than the formalized, constricted, purposeful 'social' interaction of  meetings or political interactions?

Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, too, but in those days labor was just that: labor. Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory floor or in a cubicle. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy.

Wired 14.07: People Power

We like to express ourselves in writing as well as in speaking.

This isn’t amateurs versus professionals; it’s each benefiting the other. Companies aren’t just exploiting free labor; they’re also creating the tools that give voice to millions. And that rowdy rabble isn’t replacing the firm; it’s providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere.

Wired 14.07: People Power

Yup, even if we don't write/talk strongly enough to be heard individually, we can make enough noise together to talk back to the powers-that-be in a way they can choose to hear. And that's something, I guess.

technorati tags:peer_production, Wired, Chris_Anderson

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Popular Culture: Crazy & The Devil Wears Prada

Here's my current favorite song/video - "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley - the link is to YouTube and begins playing immediately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgKUnhCANTY

I enjoy the visuals & the lyrics as well as the music itself.

_______________________________________________________

The Devil Wears Prada - no spoilers

• Anne Hathaway is good at doe-eyed naif-ness
• The boyfriend is mostly one note.
• Stanley Tucci is believable and likeable
• The romance plot is standard, as is the business plot
• The clothes are fairly restrained (for the fashion business setting) and beautiful

BUT

• Meryle Streep is beyond amazing!

I totally enjoyed the experience of watching it.

technorati tags:Crazy, Gnarls_Barkley, Meryl_Streep, Devil_Wears_Prada

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Long time, No Write

My life is distributed in blogs. I have two main blogs, one that is a space to be kind of a PD person, making suggestions about how to operate on the web and informing people about what I have gleaned from my Bloglines collection. Another overlapping one is more academic in nature, aimed at teachers who are interested both in scholarship and in educational technology. Plus I belong to a couple of communities that have blogs, and there's a course blog. Then there's this long=neglected one.

Since last I wrote here, I have retired from college and started teaching occasional courses at university. And today, I just pulled myself out of a contract that I am just not suited for. I feel badly, but I hope I've learned that if my intuition says I won't like something, I should listen. 'Cause my intuition knew, but I used my willpower against my intuition, and that was dumb. As I've now proven to myself, and probably to others.

So here I am, feeling better, slightly poorer, but still in a wonderful place in the universe! Which blog do I use to proclain my psychic news? I think it might become this one.

Plagiarism - in the web world

Found someone plagiarising text for a school-assigned website. When I googled, the student's text was found on at least five other sites. The student used someone else's text word-for-word, but so had others outside the school environment!

We know about peer-to-peer with music and movies, we wink at image re-use, and cut-and-paste is leading to more and more plagiarism. Is intelligent, meaningful, and well-designed content, irrelevant of its sources, the way of the future?

In this new communicative space with its ease of reproduction, what rules are appropriate? And what is the relevance of a source when cropping and altering have been applied?

Keeping Up and Choices

Spent the day reviewing Stephen Downes emails, catching up.

There is so much, and developments are exploding possibilities.

I can't try everything; I have to chose what to play with. Stay with a limited JotSpot, or shift to Drupal? Be serious about using Backpack to plan, or let it drift away? I have chosen to commit to Furl, and it's working for me. FLickr, to a limited degree too. I should start looking at the urls posted by others who have matching urls to what I've chosen - using the social web.

I need to learn more about trackback, and use the Creative Commons.

Never enough time!

No Change

Nothing has changed;
everything has not changed.

Did I not get what I wanted, or
did I not get what I wouldn't have wanted?

Is that rationalization,
the self comforting herself?

And if so, is it self-deception, or
merely constructing a different ending?



Cassandra: Blind and Mourning from http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Cassandra.html

An MIT Survey on Blogging!

Doesn't take long.

Credo

My Class Wiki

See the new banner one of the students made

Stress - Good or Just Stressed

Why do I find it so hard to plan? I suspect that trying to plan a multi-threaded experience with all the threads in place from the beginning could be the problem.

I'm planning a course with many learning filaments woven into a complex cord that I hope leads students out of a labyrinth into an open space where they can see their own path.

Poetry may be possible again, after so many years.

Solo Images

Solo Images, originally uploaded by Semiotic Explorer.

Or to show you a larger size, as I set up another small tutorial ...

In the Halls of Academe

What are we selling our young? Who are we selling our young to? Is this subliminal seduction with multiple repetions of an act (a suggested act?) at the edges of consciousness - what we almost ignore?