Brief
Brief: Third Travelogue - first report
Hi Class,
I hope & believe my absence from today’s class has not stopped you from getting some ‘Free Culture’ today.
For next week I will be back with you in full force, charging directly into the third travelogue. What I want you to do for next week is the following:
- Present your new media environment destination through a post. Include your initial assumptions for the nature of this environment and its culture. Try to define what norms are officially or unofficially defined within this environment and what possible practices might be used to work with or against these practices to learn more about their nature.
- Comment on at least three posts. If you think your post is worth reading, rate it, if you think others are too, rate them too.
Recommended Reading:
- Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue* by Yochai Benkler * Helen Nissenbaum
- The Wealth of Networks - A presentation by Yochai Benkler.
Next Class discussion on CBPP will be lead by Ana & Jill which is required to:
- Read the article and watch the presentation
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday, ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the articles in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Looking forward to seeing you next week and reading you through the week.
good luck!
Wordpress, I curse thee
I wrote a brief update last night going over the readings and film that we are going to discuss in class today, and when I published it I was met with a dialog screen asking if I was sure I wanted to edit the entry (the page was unformatted and looked like a bug of some sort). I clicked no, the page froze, I went back, the entry was gone. I tried to check the main site, the site wouldn’t load, and the entry isn’t here or in my saved drafts this morning.
-_-”
Obviously it’s too late to recreate this entry now, and I’m not entirely sure if I was supposed to post it in the first place, but I apologize and will do an amazing job discussing the reading in class today. I swear. For real.
Brief: Free Media, Free Class & the 2nd & 3rd travelogue
The Second Travelogue
As todays class was burned by ConEd (though 9 of us met and had a good class with some interesting discussion)
- For next week, finish your travelogue. If you are done, focus on the next one, if not, you have an opportunity to further investigate.
- Comment on and rate posts.
The Third Travelogue
while we’re still working on the 2nd, it’s time to start thinking of our 3rd travelogue.
This time we will go on a third travelogue and raise the ante one notch further. While the third travelogue will be similar in approach to the second one, this time you will do more than research, you will become involved, and to a large extent document your own actions within the media environment of your choice. Some of you have started your travelogue with a specific premise and have ended much further from there. This is a good process that we would like to see more in the upcoming travelogue. This time you will navigate your own path through this media environment, attempting through your action, to achieve insights otherwise unavailable to a passive outsider.
For next week:
- Choose a couple of options for a new media environment to explore through your third (more involved) travelogue. Post briefly about your ideas so we might help you decide.
* I permit working in pairs on this one, but this means the expectations from your shared travelogue will be twice as high as we would expect from you individually. - Post 3 comments (or more) to your fellow students posts.
Next Week’s Class - Free Class
Meaning - you are free from my presence but the class goes on as usual. The agenda for next week is:
- Required viewing: Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture†presentation
- Recommended reading: Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture†afterword (pp 273-306)
- Discussion of Steal This Film & Taking the You out of YouTube led by Gavriela and of Free Culture / Creative Commons reading / viewing led by Harold and Jakob.
- Selection of a default license to our blog based on discussion in class.
- The first introduction of your 2nd travelogues through the commentator > author procedure.
- Reading together of the brief for the following week which will be published on the blog
Some House Cleaning
- Go through your posts to the blog so far and make sure non of them is filed under the Uncatagorized category. Add tags to your posts for better archiving and make sure your contributions to the blog are satisfactory.
What is a Cluebot?
If you read my last concluding post, I discovered a little thing called a Cluebot when I attempted to spam on a south park wikipedia article. Just wanted to quickly describe what a cluebot is and how it helps prevent spam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CLUEBOT
In relevence to my spamming attempt, this is what basically happened:
“Scoring system
For pages which have had a lot of text added in the last change, the bot will score the additions based on this list, and then score the removals on the inverse of that list. If the overall score is greater than -100, the bot sees the edit as constructive and does nothing, if it scores less than -100, the bot sees it as destructive, reports it and possibly reverts it.”
If you click “this list,” you will reach a page of code that contains a bunch of vulgar words that each have a set amount of points. If the score is more than 100 points, the cluebot will automatically revert the page (within a second). It’s way more complicated that what I am saying here. The page is basically a new language for only the cluebot to understand.
The cluebot, also, has the ability to report open proxies found on vandalizing IP addresses.
If a page has been vandalized more than 30 times in 48 hours, it will request an admin, who also has the option of turning the cluebot in case it malfunctions.
I tried to find a video of a similar example of something like this occuring, but here’s an article instead about Steven Colbert and the Elephant incident:
(his account named stevencolbert was banned from using Wikipedia since)
Just thought this was interesting, if you go to the elephant article today and look at its history you will also notice that people are still vandalizing it thanks to Steven Colbert.
Brief: concluding the 2nd Travelogue
In next week we will conclude the journy we started two weeks ago, each of you with her own brave path through different media environments. We have started some very interesting journeys here, but there is still a long week ahead of us. This is what you should expect to achieve during this week:
By Friday Night:
- Post at least one report from your journey.
- Comments at least twice to other posts on the blog
By Monday Night (preferably earlier):
- Publish your concluding post and try to look back at your journey and the path you’ve gone through. Try to situate your experience within this media environment and ask some questions about its own culture.
- Post at least another two comments on other travelogues, mark posts with hearts, so we know what you guys want to talk about next week.
Required Viewing:
Recommended Reading:
- Jenkins, Henry “Taking the You Out of YouTube?â€
Gavriella:
- Read the article and watch the documentary
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday, ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the articles in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
- Enjoy.
Danah Boyd Essay on Socioeconomic Differences Between Facebook & MySpace
Mushon was right… that Danah is good.
Brief: Travelers Log #2 - Feb19th
I have decided to change the rules of the game but keep the main principle the same. For now lets put the two groups idea aside and try to all manage our group attention. For next week you are all getting the same assignment and as a group we will try to decide together which posts to discuss. The new rating module I added might help us (and it might as well stand in our way, we’ll have to see).
Anyway…
- During this week post at least once to the blog reporting from the new media environment you have embedded yourself in. Please be sure to format your posts in a way that would make it accessible to scan through before reading or would make it inviting enough for the rest of the students to read and hopefully comment. Use images, titles, block-quotes, links, video embeds, audio or whatever you think might make your post more appealing to read and provoking to discuss. Foster the discussion on your post and try to learn from it. These post should be mainly reporting on your experience from within the environment you chose. No conclusions are necessary yet.
- Comment on at least 3 times posts (at least).
* You are welcomed to post and comment whenever, it will be up to your strategic decision, depending on your reading of the blog’s dynamics (with the obvious goal of having your posts and comments contribute to a live discussion on the blog and in class)
Recommended Reading for next week:
- Clay Shirkey: “A Group is it’s Own Worst Enemy“
- Dana Boyd: “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?†(available as audio as well on the same link)
Doron & Eric:
- Read the three articles
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday, ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the articles in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
- Enjoy.
The Power of OO
After listening to someone in class mentioning Google as a trend, I remembered a short article I read.
This may not exactly be the reason google is popular. Maybe an interesting coincidence or current fad:
http://longorshortcapital.com/the-renumerative-powers-of-oo.htm
“Even phonics count in Johnny’s eyes… YouTube, Bluetooth. And HD-DVD was no match for Blu-Ray.”
-Quote from Ryan Director of Product Development for Uloop.com
Bluetooth
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
This is probably more from marketing standpoint than technical. Perhaps psychological.
How’s mooshon.com sound?
A week without Google
For Next Week:
Experiment: A week without Google
In the coming week starting from the end of this class we will attempt to lead a whole week without using any Google service. Not Google Search, not Gmail, not Google Video, not Google Maps, not Google News, not Google Groups, not Youtube, notBlogger, not Google Calendar, not Google Docs… you get the point.
It’s not going to be easy and hence we will not attempt to create an unfeasible challenge. We will keep a promise to each other to follow some rules:
- Whenver we are passively exposed to Google content (an embeded Google video, map, and so on…) we post that link to del.icio.us using the tags ‘nmrs’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘ambushed’ (+whatever else you want to include)
- Whenever we break and use a Google service, we report about it to the blog, as a comment on this post.
- If we totally break altogether, we write a post about it as soon as we decide to pull out, summarizing the experience.
We will also try to support each other in the process by:
- Every time you are about to use Google, and find a way around it, try to propose the alternative to the class by tagging the alternative with the tags ‘nmrs’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘dodged’.
- Share tactics on the blog. Work together to try to make it.
This is trust based only, but the student who will manage to take this challenge on and make it through the week will win the class’s medal of honor.
Good luck,
we’re going to need it.
Brief: New Media Traveler’s Log (2)
For next week:
- Come up with a subject for your second log, the first chapter in MCC’s Media embed program or The New Media Traveler’s Log.
- This time you will embed yourself as an agent in a media environment you are familiar with. It can be a web service you use, a cellphone application, a media phenomena you are familiar with (telephony hacking, or Google Bombing for example), a social networking site, a media art movement, a mailing list, an audiovisual music scene you’re involved with, whatever, in or out of the web.
- You will develop a networked research, consisting of a thread running through different parts of your chosen environment. You will have to develop your own process of travel and navigation on one hand and log and report on the other.
- We will continue with the process of reports & comments (group1/group2)
- You are getting an open ticket with a know first stop, and a known return address (grp1: Feb 19th, grp2 Feb: 26th)
- For next week we will just write one short post introducing your desired ‘travel destination’. You will present it by yourself, you are encouraged to comment on one another.
- Feel free to explore and surprise yourselves.
- Check my email exchange with Stephanie for more clarification.
- Post a short (~2 paragraphs) description of your chosen topic (no need to comment, but feel free to feedback on each other’s posts)
- Follow the rules for the class challenge - A week without Google
- Suggested reading:
Alexandro Ludovico, “Interview with Christophe Brunoâ€, Neural Magazine
Cory Doctorow “Scroogled”
Tom Owad “Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists†- David:
- Read the three articles
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday, ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the articles in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
- Enjoy.
Remember! You’re not allowed to Google it!
