Brief
update to the one laptop per child thang
There’s no info on whether it will feature linux or windows however.
Final week: Wikimarathon, Digital Divide and Postnationism
The next week would be our last, so I want us to go on a wikimarathon and get the process we discussed in class going. The main focus in my view would be to discuss our work this semester through the themes - meaning not make this deliberately a summary of the course, repeating information which is already in the blog, but work on a manual addressed at the embed researcher. Write theme pages and then refer to the your travelogues with links from it. No need to repeat what we already have on the blog. Ideally we will have a theme which refers to several different travelogues to make its point.
Please continue the good work here: http://www.mushon.com/spr08/nmrs/wiki/ (don’t forget to log in)
Before you do anything, please log in and provide your real name (or something we can cross reference with the blog). Now you are welcomed to start editing.
More discussion can happen on the wiki discussion pages, here on our blog, or on Max’s weird chat thingie… (any chance we can embed it in the wiki’s sidebar?)
Please make sure to each make at least 20 edits this week, or in other words, make sure you edit so much that you stop counting. This wiki is what we leave behind this class and will be what you take with you from it.
Required Reading:
Frost, Catherine “Internet Galaxy Meets Postnational Constellation: Prospects for Political Solidarity After the Internet†(a pdf will be emailed to you, please do not share.)
Required viewing:
Nicolas Negroponte, â€Interview with Riz Khan” Al-Jazeera October 2007:
For Stephanie & a volunteer:
- Read the article and view the presentations
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday (the 27th), ideally running some threads between them.
- Add to the themes covered to the wiki (hint: look at the title for this post)
- Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Brief: The New Media Embed Program Manual + Ubicomp
We will now embark on the last assignment of the semester:
During the next two weeks we will gather our knowledge and compose a collective manual for the New Media traveler. It will include some lessons you gathered both about your own travelogues and about others, browse your author pages to recap the semester and the three travelogues for that matter. Other notes and tips will be about your own ideas of how to publish, when to publish, how to compose a post, what will users read? what would they comment on? Does or how do rating works? How does chat works? How does it fail? The importance of context, image vs. video, on participation vs. authorship… Moreover, each one of you presented a reading in class, try to contribute your takes from that reading into the NMEP manual. We will try together to finish the class with the essence of what should an embedded reporter consider while exploring new media environments.
Reference: military journalism, travel guides, tutorials, cooking recipes…
Like many other things in this class, this is an experiment… It will become what you make of it, and it starts right now. Please point your browsers at http://www.mushon.com/spr08/nmrs/wiki/
Before you do anything, please log in and provide your real name (or something we can cross reference with the blog). Now you are welcomed to start editing.
You are welcomed to propose some structure on the wiki discussion pages, here on our blog, or on Max’s weird chat thingie…
Please make sure to each make at least 4 edits this week (from creation of full pages to typo corrections
Recommended Reading:
Required Reading:
Brian Holmes - Drifting Through the Grid: Psychogeography and Imperial Infrastructure
Required Viewing:
- Bruce Sterling’s presentation in the Innovation Forum:
Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.
For Patty & a volunteer:
- Read the two articles and watch the presentation
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday (the 20th), ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Wii did it! (part 2)
This post is just showing the two videos I uploaded to the wiimote project community, you can see the original post here:
http://www.wiimoteproject.com/wiimote-whiteboard/needs-pen-advice-for-class-demo-t717.0.html
This video is basically a troubleshooting video which is commonly posted on the board in hopes of someone helping out. I followed the advice that was provided to me (sort of, I found better advice) and made an infrared pen that actually works and is detected by my wiimote and computer. You can tell because in the video you will see the infrared bulb glowing, something that is invisible to the naked eye.
My second video I submitted to the videos forum of the community to show my amateur demonstration of a few simple wiimote hacks. I posted it in the community here:
http://www.wiimoteproject.com/tech-chat/amateur-video-by-me-t729.0.html
You can download the wii play the drums app here: http://www.thisisnotalabel.com/My-Wiimote-Drum-Kit.php
Xbox takes a hint…
Before I make my post of the week…
Updates: I bought a bluetooth usb adapter yesterday, Pens should be here by Monday (I really hope), My laptop is having trouble hooking up to the projector so it anyone wants to vonunteer installing a couple programs I need to use, let me know, although I’m not even certain what experiment I’ll be doing if I do it.
In recent news, Xbox 360 is stepping it up with their functions. After blu-ray took over, looks like they felt like they needed to do more. So, they decided to use similar technology the wii uses in motion detection:
Brief: Concluding the Travelogue & Tactical Media
That’s it, we will be concluding our third travelogue next week and will need you to write a closing post. This post will be an article of sorts on the subject you researched with your intervention being the ‘experiment’ you were using as a form of investigative journalism. You may take a few more days to conclude your intervention or continue it (you don’t have to stop if it doesn’t make sense to, this is beyond the class’s scope now).
Next week, will be all about Tactical Media which is a term you run into in previous classes but will go much more into next week.Â
So over the next week we can expect you to:
- Report more from your travelogues and reflect upon it.
- Write your final article, use the formatting tips, if you’re using images, use captions too.
Recommended Reading:
- De Certeau, Michel “The Practice of Everyday Life“
Required Reading / Viewing:
- Wark, Mackenzie “Strategies for Tactical Media” (I have a slightly better formatted PDF for you if you want one, email me)
- The Yes Men, The Dow/Bhopal Case:
Optional Viewing:
- The Yes Men: The Movie
Brief: Going Meta on Yourselves
Hi Class,
On the III Travelogue front:
- This week you will be going meta on yourselves - meaning, you will be writing about your intervention and what you’ve learned for it. With some of your travelogues, your intervention might still be ongoing and with others you might still (currently) still be before the the launch of your intervention. Anyway we want to know how you summarize your action, and when applicable how do you summarize the responses to it within the environment you explore.
- If this is in any way not clear, comment here with your questions.
- Plan your time of posting in advance, as you know, it is crucial to your posts readability.
- Comment on each other’s posts.
Recommended Reading:
- The introduction from Alexander Galloway & Eugen Thacker’s The Exploit: We-are-tired-of-trees
Required Reading:
For Nick Stergiou & Natalie:
- Read the article and the interview
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday (the 6th), ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Brief: Interventions & Interfaces
Hi Class,
We discussed a bit of it today, but we’ll be diving deeper into interface next week with an article by… me. We will also make some more progress on the travelogue and start raising the pace of it towards its conclusion in three weeks.
The coming week is the intervention week, we want to get the full documentation of your action now:
- If you haven’t started your intervention, post about your plan, your objectives and your expectations.
- Try to document your intervention as much as you can. Use links, images, audio, video, screenshots, screencasts. This time, it’s not going meta on that other media environment. This time you’ll be documenting your own travel in the context of that environment–In that sense, you are stepping in front of the camera.
Recommended Reading:
- Mushon Zer-Aviv, “Interface as a Conflict of Ideologiesâ€
Required watching:
For Kati & Max:
- Read the article and watch the introduction
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday (the 23rd), ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Travelogue interventions through the brake & the Cult of Wikipedia
Hi Class,
Next week we’re braking but we’ll be back in two weeks with much more development on your travelogues and a serious critique of Wikipedia.
The main goal of your travelogues over these coming two weeks will be:
- Define the nature and social norms of the media environment you are traveling through
- Try to study and expose to us previous interventions in the environment, were they led by individuals? (Google Adwords Happening) by groups? (WoW Funeral Raid) or by those in control of the environment itself? (ebay’s change of terms)
- Try to asses what type of intervention would help you better understand the environment, or maybe even make that environment better understand itself. Maybe your experiment will even change the nature of the environment or disrupt it in an illuminating sense.
- Start your intervention, if it fits, let us know about it.
Recommended Reading:
- Jaron Lanier - Digital Maoism
Required reading / watching:
- Choose one of the responses to Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism
- Write your own response to the response
- Watch the very short film from (good old) Adam Curtis - The Rise and Fall of the TV Journalist
For Karina:
- Read the article and watch the short film
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday (the 23rd), ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Brief on Common Based Peer Production and Virtue
Hey class let me just apologize in advance for the late post i didnt realize till just now that I am responsible for the discussion of the reading today in class so here is my brief.
The article explores and talks about a system that is emerging especially through the web, the system is this type of open source forum that allows mass amounts of people to contribute to the creation of free software or information. Its a system that is not owned by anyone and is a collective effort; collaborative project.
One of the arguments made in the text is that this type of collaboration fosters virtue in its participants. Because participants are free to participate as little or as much as theyd like and control the content that they share or contribute, the virtue that essentially comes out of this is that of liberation.
When I first read this article my first thought was about Wikipedia which the article does talk about how it has grown over the years and one of the more well known open forums. However, this entire article raised the question for me about authenticity? While it may be considered a great phenomena that so many people can come together and contribute information and ideas to create a “whole”, with no owner or manager how can the information presented on something such as wikipedia be trusted. I feel as though the information found on wikipedia can not be used or taken as truth unless further research is done to back it up, in which case what is the point of wikipedia?
