Listing entries tagged with General

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crickets   07.04.2006, 8:23 AM

Happy 4th.

Posted by ben vershbow at 08:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
tags: General

mass culture vs technoculture?   12.20.2005, 8:54 AM

It's the end of the year, and thus time for the jeremiads. In a December 18 Los Angeles Times article, Reed Johnson warns that 2005 was the year when "mass culture" -- by which Johnson seemed to mean mass media generally -- gave way to a consumer-driven techno-cultural revolution. According to Johnson:

This was the year in which Hollywood, despite surging DVD and overseas sales, spent the summer brooding over its blockbuster shortage, and panic swept the newspaper biz as circulation at some large dailies went into free fall. Consumers, on the other hand, couldn't have been more blissed out as they sampled an explosion of information outlets and entertainment options: cutting-edge music they could download off websites into their iPods and take with them to the beach or the mall; customized newcasts delivered straight to their Palm Pilots; TiVo-edited, commercial-free programs plucked from a zillion cable channels. The old mass culture suddenly looked pokey and quaint. By contrast, the emerging 21st century mass technoculture of podcasting, video blogging, the Google Zeitgeist list and "social networking software" that links people on the basis of shared interest in, say, Puerto Rican reggaeton bands seems democratic, consumer-driven, user-friendly, enlightened, opinionated, streamlined and sexy.

Or so it seems, Johnson continues: before we celebrate too much, we need to remember the difference between consumers and citizens. We are technoconsumers, not technocitizens, and as we celebrate our possibilites, we forget that "much of the supposedly independent and free-spirited techno-culture is being engineered (or rapidly acquired) by a handful of media and technology leviathans: News Corp., Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, the budding General Motors of the Information Age."

I hadn't thought of Google as the GM of the Information Age. I'm not at all sure, actually, that the analogy works, given the different ways in which GM and Google leverage the US economy -- fifty years hence, Google plant closures won't be decimating middle America. But I'm very much behind Johnson's call for more attention to media consolidation in the age of convergence. Soon, it's going to be time for the Columbia Journalism Review to add the leviathans listed above to its Who Owns What page, which enables users to track the ownership of most old media products, but currently comes up short in tracking new media. Actually, they should consider updating it as of tomorrow, when the final details of Google's billion dollar deal for five percent of AOL are made public.

Posted by lisa lynch at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)
tags: General , aol , consumers , history_of_interactive_media , motors , technoculture

there goes the neighborhood   08.29.2005, 6:54 AM

Playboy Magazine is going digital. On September 13th, readers will be able to recieve the digital edition instantly, on their computers. According to the website, this new format will allow you to "zoom in to see every detail and archive your issues so you can access them anytime, anywhere." Ah, progress...

Posted by kim white at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)
tags: General

penguin classics, the complete collection...if only   08.26.2005, 3:06 PM

I was listening to a story on NPR called "Loading Up on Penguin Classics". My son was running around the living room screaming, so I didn't hear most of the broadcast. In my digital thoughtspace, I assumed "loading up" referred to software. Imagining an entire library, 1,082 classic titles, as electronic objects, stored neatly on my hard drive, is enormously appealing to my minimalist aesthetic and my nomadic digital worklife. However, as it turns out, the Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection is being offered as a 700 lb. load of paperback books (delivered free to anyone who can afford the shelf space and the $7,989.50 price tag). If only Penguin could catch a vision of THIS century and start making digital versions of the classics. I need screen-based books, audio books, lower pricetags, and I don't think I'm alone. Penguin, are you listening? I'm clearing out virtual shelf space now, make me some ebooks!

Posted by kim white at 03:06 PM | Comments (7)
tags: General

deadline for panliterary awards extended   08.03.2005, 9:16 AM

Drunken Boat, international online journal for the arts, has extended the deadline for its First Annual Panliterary Awards in Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Web-Art, Photo/Video, Sound. Submit up to three works. Winners in all categories will be featured in a subsequent issue of Drunken Boat, and will be invited to perform at future multimedia events and performances with all expenses paid. All other entries will be considered for publication.

Deadline Extended to: August 15th, 2005
Judges: Annie Finch, Sabina Murray, Alexandra Tolstoy, Talan Memmott, David Hall, and DJ Spooky

Posted by kim white at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
tags: General

the paperless hospital   07.28.2005, 6:10 PM

For all the advances in medical science, it's incredible that the methods for organizing and distributing medical information have not kept up. A vast amount of medical error, both prescriptive and diagnostic, comes down to problems with the flow of information. All too often, the information doesn't flow fast enough, or different information flows to different people, or the information can only flow to one person at a time, slowing down treatment and opening the door to infection.

The Guardian has a fascinating profile (via Smart Mobs) of the Oklahoma Heart Hospital (known as OK Heart), which has the distinction of being one of the first hospitals in the world to go entirely digital. A central computer connects to bedside screens in each room where patient records can be instantly called up. Consequently, doctors, nurses and pharmacists are always on the same page - the same digital page - greatly reducing the length of patient stays, and minimizing error. Of course, technology alone will not transform medicine - it's the people that ultimately determine the quality of care - but the case of OK Heart is a compelling one.

There is a practical reason for using technology this aggressively: the longer you stay in hospital for the same treatment, the less chance you have of getting out of it alive. While the average stay for serious heart patients in the US is five days, the OK Heart average is 2.7 days, and falling. Doctors don't have to chase x-rays and MRI scans, which are in the patient's record before they get back to their room, and nurses don't chase the doctor's notes, which are transcribed remotely as soon as they are dictated.

It is a dramatic transformation in working practices: at the Indiana Heart Hospital, a digital hospital that runs along similar lines, internal research shows a reduction of 85% in medication errors, avoidable delays down by 65% and reductions in the cost of updating records by 45% compared with paper-based hospitals. Doctors also cut the time they spend updating records by a third.

It's also worth visiting OK Heart's website, where you can a watch a fascinating June webcast of surgeons at work on an Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. The surgeons talk the viewer through the procedure, while diagrams appear to the right for clarification. It's a highly informative program and suggests how much the medical sciences will benefit when digital textbooks can bring the operating theater directly to the student.

Posted by ben vershbow at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

korea's ubiquitous dream hall   07.25.2005, 1:58 PM

What if short-range time travel were possible, affording you a glimpse of the near future? What if it were as simple as buying a plane ticket? For anyone looking for tangible clues as to where today's info tech proliferation might be leading us, a Korean Air jet to Seoul might be the closest thing to a time machine currently available. Over the past decade, South Korea has emerged as the ultimate high-tech society, making our own gadget-crazed culture look provincial by comparison. A huge portion of the Korean economy (domestic and export) is devoted to information communications technology, Korean cities lead the world in broadband penetration, and nearly three quarters of South Koreans subscribe to cellular phone services.

And that is only the beginning. The government recently announced its vision for "u-Korea," a plan to achieve "ubiquitous communications" across the country through a blitz of products, services and infrastructure, as well as computer literacy programs targeting rural areas and the older generations that have been unable to keep up with Korea's evolution toward network totality. An article in the Bangkok Post describes the initiative (via Smart Mobs).

Among the planned "ubiquitous" services are internet telephony, digital multimedia broadcasting, and enhanced wireless broadband coverage that can be enjoyed at speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour. National Computerisation Agency (NCA) president Dr Chang-Kon Kim says the goal is for total broadband coverage across the country by 2007. When all of this comes together, Koreans will find themselves living in a totally wired society where handheld devices (a cross between a powerful PC and a mobile phone) are the keys to the environment.

To offer its citizens a window into the future, the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has set up the "Ubiquitous Dream Hall," an exposition space in downtown Seoul where visitors can explore the predicted technologies and begin to imagine new ways of life that might develop around them. There you can see a household where appliances, smoke alarm and stereo system are all wired into the same network, and family life centers around an interactive television; or a cafe where cappuccinos are ordered on wall-sized touch screens, then delivered by little service robots; or a car that instructs you where to drive; or a new form of interactive street advertising in which images on the floor change in response to pedestrians' footsteps. The Dream Hall also features an exhibit charting the development of household and communication technologies over the past 30 years, projecting u-Korea into a historical continuum. Whether ubiquitous communication will result in a better life for Koreans remains to be seen, but the government is betting it will be a surefire strategy to keep the economy booming. I'd be concerned for Korea's sanity.

See also in Ohmy News, Korea's citizen newspaper:
"International Citizen Reporters Get a Taste of IT Korea"

"In the Future Your House Will Nitpick You"

Posted by ben vershbow at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

report to congress: johnny can't write   07.09.2005, 10:03 PM

The National Commission on Writing released its third report to Congress on Tuesday. It quantifies just how much poor writing skills are costing taxpayers. According to the report many state employees must undergo remedial training in order to bring their writing skills up to state expectations. This training costs taxpayers $250 million a year and that does not include the incalculable cost of lost productivity. This report was part of an ongoing evaluation of our nation's writing skills. The Commission's first report to Congress, The Neglected "R", called for improvements in writing education. Its second report, Writing: A Ticket to Work...Or a Ticket Out, A Survey of Business Leaders, examined the impact of poor writing skills on the private sector.

What does all this mean for the future of the book? Emerging technologies get a lot of air time on this blog, but very little has been said about writing itself. Clearly poor skills will have a negative impact on the future book, but what role, if any, are electronic technologies playing in the deterioration of writing? Certainly our reading behaviors are changing (see featured thread) but what of our writing?

Posted by kim white at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
tags: General

the future of new york: can you stand the heat?   06.30.2005, 5:27 PM

Heat and the Heartbeat of the City, a site created by Andrea Polli and commissioned by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence web site. Has created a multimedia narrative that imagines the impact global warming will have on the city. The site presents sonifications (sound compositions created by the translation of data to sound) by Andrea Polli and a series of video interviews with Dr. Cynthia Rosenzwieg regarding the dramatic climate changes that will take place over the next 85 years. The project focuses on Central Park, "one of the country's first locations for climate monitoring. As you listen, you will travel forward in time at an accelerated pace and experience an intensification of heat in sound."

Posted by kim white at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

total recall: managing the memory machine   06.28.2005, 10:24 AM

Bodies in Motion: Memory, Personalization, Mobility and Design, A conference currently taking place at Banff explores the possibility of "total data memory." The conference gathers together nanotechnology researchers, medical researchers, and historians to examine the vast realm of memory materials gathered from increasingly ubiquitous devices such as: sensors, personal recording devices, and surveillance technologies. The conference imagines a world where information will be gathered by everything around us. Our clothes, the walls, we may even find sensors embedded in our bodies. This plethora of information could be used to construct an exhaustive virtual history. But is that something we want?

What drives the contemporary desire in the technology world for total data memory? How does data memory sit beside new kinds of memory capacities in other materials? Memory is closely linked to histories and the interpretations of history. Some of the best mobile experiences combine local memory, histories and place. What models of memory and mind are used in designing technologies that remember? What are the ethical implications of memory machines? What does this mean in time of war, increased security? How do we include the need, capacity, and desire to forget? How do we include trauma?

Marvelous summary of the questions facing us in the coming age of total recall.

Posted by kim white at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)
tags: General

GooglePorn.com?   06.24.2005, 11:07 AM

They say that porn drives technology, but could it possibly figure into Google's expansion into online payment systems? Would that be the end of the cute, cuddly Google we've all come to know and love - our most constant companion on the web? Sam Sugar, author of the adult industry-watching blog SugarBank, says Google would be foolish not to capitalize on this massive underground market, routinely shunned by "respectable" services like PayPal. In an open letter to Google's CEOs, Sugar lays out his arguments and explains how porn could catapult Google to the cutting edge of ecommerce, in much the same way that it helped VHS outmaneuver Betamax.

Banking is a perennial thorn in the side of even the largest and most successful adult websites. All adult companies are overcharged by merchant banks poorly equipped to deal with transactions they consider to be 'high-risk'.

Before PayPal withdrew from offering billing services to adult companies (around the time they were acquired by eBay), they were the preferred customer choice for the websites that offered them as a payment option.

It's hard to justify PayPal's withdrawl on 'moral' grounds given the volume of pornography sold via eBay. The logical assumption is that PayPal's decision to ban adult transactions is due to an inability to handle them well. What is beyond question is that their decision loses them billions a year.

Consumers don't find adult websites easy to trust, and would welcome the ability to buy adult material without sharing their financial information with companies they're unsure of. Google is universally trusted and so, when you launch the Google billing system, the adult industry will rush to use it.

(via Searchblog, who reports that Google already owns GooglePorn.com and similar domains.. intrigue!)

Posted by ben vershbow at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
tags: General

uncyclopedia: the inevitable wikipedia parody   06.09.2005, 5:02 PM

Uncyclopedia is "the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Its definition of "book" is actually kind of interesting: "Bound Offline Organized Knowledge."

Posted by ben vershbow at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

Bayesian news by email   06.06.2005, 10:42 AM

Another interesting prototype from BBC Backstage: news feeds delivered by email with Bayesian filtering. In other words, you can flag the kind of messages you want to receive more of, and the kind you want to receive less of, purifying the signal, as it were. This kind of filtering was first developed to deal with spam. Here's what it looks like in your mail viewer:

Posted by ben vershbow at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
tags: General

a literary map of manhattan   06.04.2005, 5:04 PM

Maps maps maps. Everyone's playing with maps as interface (see here and here). Check out this multimedia feature at the NY Times. Doesn't go very deep, but fun all the same. Each item was reader-submitted over the past month - a collective effort to map the rich fictional life of Manhattan. They should do one of these for Brooklyn.

Reminds me of Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Each of the red dots below links to a story or article set in that location.

Posted by ben vershbow at 05:04 PM | Comments (1)
tags: General

80 years of the New Yorker on disc   06.02.2005, 5:19 PM

The New Yorker has never seemed terribly interested in going digital. Despite maintaining the obligatory website, with a smattering of free content and online features, the magazine exists somewhat apart from the daily swarm of the web. The print format still works quite well for them, and they have the legions of loyal subscribers to prove it.

But their latest publishing project does take them into digital territory. This October, in a big legacy move, the venerable weekly will release 4,109 issues - every single page since the February 1925 founding and the 80th anniversary issue this year - on an eight-DVD set. "The Complete New Yorker" (see NY Times story) will go for about $100 (though Walmart is already listing it for $59.22), and will also contain a 123-page book with an introduction by editor David Remnick. A big improvement on microfilm, the discs will allegedly be searchable by computer, though how granular the search is remains to be seen. For it to be more than just a collector's item, it should be fully structured and offer fine-toothed find functionality. Remnick confirms, however, that readers will have the option of browsing just the cartoons (as many of us do).

Posted by ben vershbow at 05:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
tags: General

ELO site gets makeover   05.24.2005, 1:38 PM

The Electronic Literature Organization, whose mission is to "facilitate and promote the writing, publishing, and reading of literature in electronic media," has a new site designed by Nick Montfort of Grand Text Auto.

Posted by ben vershbow at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

a big bang theory for media   05.23.2005, 5:35 PM

Future generations, living comfortably as digital natives, may look back on the twentieth century as the big bang moment in the history of media. The big bang theory, by now a household concept in the annals of cosmology, speculates that the universe began some 13 or 14 billion years ago in a massive explosion of matter from an original, super-dense, super-heated singularity. What does this have to do with twentieth century media? More than you might think. Industrialization and the development of telecommunications resulted in the centralization of communication forms into a kind of super-dense, super-heated singularity of their own: the mass media. Its power to drive a consumer economy through advertising, and blanket entire populations with messages and imagery has been so impressive, so all-consuming, that in a very short time it has come to seem all but inevitable.

But much to mass media's surprise (and horror), the singularity has exploded. With the web barely a decade old, it looks like the reign of mass media is turning out to have been only a brief interlude between a pre-electrified world, and a vastly uncertain digital horizon. Generations for whom radio and television were wondrous novelties assumed a passive posture, letting the transmission waves wash over them. But subsequent ages, reared in the super-heated forge of the mass media, have grown increasingly impatient with the paleolithic norms of the TV network, the daily newspaper, the cineplex, and the publishing conglomerate. They want more diversity, more choice, more mobility, and more opportunity to contribute in the very forms the media taught them. Totally decentralized, the internet is a different kind of animal, and since it can absorb and copy basically any kind of media, it is perceived by Big Media as fundamentally hostile to its interests. Consequently, they are doing everything in their power to preserve the models that worked so well for them when the universe was still young and galaxies (chains, affiliates, imprints) were still within their grasp: suing file-sharing services, going after DVD pirates, and slapping all sorts of nasty DRM (digital rights management) on the little downloadable content they are tentatively trying to sell. But in the end, it's a losing battle. Trying to hold still in a swiftly expanding cosmos will prove at first uncomfortable (as it is now) and eventually impossible. The universe is moving outward. Later, we'll tell our grandchildren what it was like to watch the big bang and the brief, brilliant age of the mass media.

The Wall Street Journal ran a free web feature today - "How Old Media Can Survive In a New World" - examining the crisis facing mass media, asking influential observers in each industry what might be done to adapt to the decentralized laws of the web and how to profit from media that has no physical dimension. It serves as a nice snapshot of the explosion in its current phase.

Posted by ben vershbow at 05:35 PM | Comments (2)
tags: General

valuing nonmarket production   05.10.2005, 3:12 PM

As the mother of a toddler, I'm keenly aware of how grueling the 24/7 unpaid work of parenthood really is. A friend of mine sent around a mother's day email that added up all the little things we do and arrived at a salary of about $131,000. Slave wages compared to the figure in Jennifer Steinhauer's Times article, The Economic Unit Called Supermom which came up with "an estimated $707,126 annual paycheck."

Problem is, no one will ever pay me $700K to do what I do for free. So is there any point in speculating about the market value of mothering? Perhaps there is. Steinhauer tells us that In 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted its first-ever Time Use Survey, which examined the doings of 21,000 Americans over a 24-hour period. "There were a number of economists who were interested in valuing nonmarket production," said Diane Herz, the survey's project manager.

Many social scientists have explored the "social capital" gained by participating in these otherwise uncompensated activities. Social scientists argue, for example, that test scores go up in schools where parent volunteerism is highest, and that crime is reduced in communities with high civic participation. "Social capital is usually defined as the networks and relationships we have, as well as the trust and sense of mutuality that arise from them," said Amy Caiazza, a study director working with Ms. Hartmann.

So this got me thinking about digital networks and I started wondering how much web content is created, nurtured and maintained without compensation. And how apropos the term "nonmarket production" is for most web activity. The networked book, for example, relies on free contributions and other forms of non-commercial support. What does this mean for the future of books? Does the web have the potential to turn the book industry into an unpaid labor of love?

Posted by kim white at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)
tags: General

publishing bigwig fears change   05.10.2005, 7:02 AM

From Sunday's Observer: "Oh no, it's the death of the book ... again". Robert McCrum pokes fun at Nigel Newton, CEO and co-founder of Bloomsbury, British publisher of the Harry Potter books, for remarks on what he calls the "Napsterisation" of publishing - i.e. digitization - and the threat it poses to "the cultural and intellectual tradition of the past 600 years."

McCrum rejoins: "Before we allow Mr Newton and the merchants of doom to seize control of our cultural imaginations, it's worth recalling that Gutenberg was a vital part of the Renaissance. Gutenberg and our own Caxton were eventually followed by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton.

"Delivery systems evolve. Instead of whingeing about Google, we could celebrate the extraordinary technology that will bring a cornucopia of hitherto inaccessible material before a bigger international audience than ever before."

Posted by ben vershbow at 07:02 AM | Comments (0)
tags: General