Author Archive
Is this real?!
My friend linked me to this and it seems too unreal.
I remember someone did something on twitter…
the main comic site is www.penny-arcade.com. They do comics on mostly games and some random tech and geeky stuff. Random, I know but entertaining
it can also be seen here if the gallery thing doesnt work.
update to the one laptop per child thang
There’s no info on whether it will feature linux or windows however.
What are they?
flash mob
Recap
In my last post I spoke about Improv Everywhere and to what extent it fit this ideal of mass, anyone, anywhere participation. At the end of that post, I came to the conclusion that ultimately, these flash mob groups that make claims of mass, anybody, participation are inherently closed.
“we cause scenes”, we are a closed community: Improv Everywhere
Quick Recap:
In my last post I wrote about my mixed experience with Critical Mass. To summarize, I went to one of their gatherings, spoke with a few people and wrote about my experience riding with them accidentally last summer. They present themselves as a leaderless organization that promotes bike rider rights and the reduction of greenhouse gases. I found that many of the participants were unaware of the real reason behind the madness (the madness of mass cyclists in the streets)
This Past Week:
Now I turn to Improv Everywhere. Their catchphrase is “we cause scenes”. It was founded by Charlie Todd, a teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, comedian and New Yorker. At a glance, Improv Everywhere seems to be a group that is open to input from the public (for new prank ideas) and encourages scenes of “chaos and joy”. However, under closer examination, Improv Everywhere is rather closed off from the public with a hierarchical structure with Todd as the God.
Clay Shirky on Colbert
Did anyone else see Shirky on the Colbert Report tonight? I’m not sure if it was a new episode or not but it ran on comedy central around 11. Shirky was promoting his book, “Here comes everybody”. I just happened to notice because Shirky wrote one of the responses to the article we read for last week.
flash mobs: entirely too literal
In my last post, I talked about the different types of flash mobs, highlighting the groups ImprovEverywhere and Critical Mass. At the end of last class, I intended to become part of Critical Mass, as they meet on the last Friday of the month at Union Square which coincided nicely with my travelogue. I was unable to participate in the event. However, I did go to the meeting place (union square north) to see what the deal was. I may have been better off by not participating however, Critical Mass is known to have run ins with the NYPD for disrupting traffic flow. In 2004, over 250 members of Critical Mass were arrested by the for disrupting traffic during the national convention.
something silly. nothing academic here
have you ever thought of trying to rip off insurance companies? check this out. just remember that next time you smoke, you could be sued for arson. to read it, just click on the article until it gets big enough to actually read
My Response to Cory Doctorow’s response to Lanier’s response to wikipedia
Response to response to..
In his response, Doctorow said:
“We’re bad futurists, we humans. We’re bad at predicting what will be important and useful tomorrow. We think the telephone will be best used to bring opera to America’s living rooms. We set out nobly to make TV into an educational medium.“
He brings up a good point. The internet was created for military purposes and look what it has become today. In the same way, wikipedia was created to be a continuously updated, free, user updated encyclopedia (according to wiki) yet it is being thought of as a hive mind or the next step for collective knowledge. I think that Lanier is looking at wikipedia a little bit too much on the surface when he thinks that the individual mind will be lost in a collective, hive mind (the zerg from starcraft comes to mind..im a nerd). Clay Shirky points out, in his response, that beneath the surface, wikipedia is still run and managed by administrators; that is not just anyone can go in and change an entry, it has to be approved and etc first. Doctorow also mentions this when he talks about the gatekeepers to different mediums. These people keep things on track and keep wikipedia from running rampant with rediculous facts. Otherwise, wikipedia could turn into something like the urban dictionary which is basically a big crack at ebonics. Another way Doctorow claims that wikipedia moves away from a true hive mind is that there are “those “history” and “discuss” pages hanging off of every entry” where people challenge and discuss the entries. Even the Borg from star trek had individual minds within the collective. I’m not too worried about wikipedia stealing my individuality.
flash mobs
For my next log, I decided to pull back a little and look at different kinds of flash mobs, rather than just ImprovEverywhere. I found a variety of different kinds that range from strange to very serious. One site, flashmob.com is an open forum where anyone can post a flash mob event that people can attend. However, judging from the types of events that are posted, I cannot imagine that the turn out to the events posted here is very high. However, I am going to investigate further and see if this is actually an effective way to get a mob going. It seems that flash mobs are more successful when they are organized in a way that people feel that they are part of a community. Flashmob.com features an anonymous, unstructured way of mobbing. ImprovEverywhere provides a community and a certain degree of fame (they list the “agents” used in each event).
Another group, critical mass seems to be a mix of flashmob.com and ImprovEverywhere. Critical Mass meets on the last Friday of every month to promote bicycle riding and to protest the huge amount of cars that people drive in urban areas. There is a specific goal and purpose yet there are no specific people mentioned. ImprovEverywhere is much more open about publicizing the people involved. If I find the time, maybe I will participate in critical mass or post an event on flashmob.com and see what the turn out is..
Another way flash mobs are used are for purely pranking purposes as featured below on a silly japanese tv show
