Web 2.0

OpenTO
Brian Gilham map created from OpenTO data

Notes from North of 49ºN

Toronto Mayor David Miller recently unveiled the opening of city datasets on the OpenTO website, ushering in the city’s new era of Gov 2.0.  In less than an hour, the above map of the city’s wards  was generated from the shapefiles.  According to Now Magazine::

“Basically, OpenTO amounts to the city offering up puzzle pieces and the public putting them together. It costs taxpayers next to nothing, creates a wing of local government in which citizens can participate directly, and makes everything more transparent.

At present, not a whole lot of data sets are available. But now that some have been liberated, it won’t be long before others follow.”

While it is true that there isn’t that much data available right now, it’s clear that there are great possibilities here.  The openness of the data will allow crowdsourced analysis of urban questions facing Toronto, which is a hotbed of urbanist activity.  This ostensibly can create more knowledge for use by Toronto’s Planning Department, as well as grassroots activists, non-profits, entrepreneurs, and corporate interests.  The transparency has a flipside.  While transparency of data can serve to “keep the city honest,” in the future, as more data goes online, how will individual citizens’ privacy concerns be addressed?  For example, should data on ex-convicts {or the like} be listed for public use, such as Megan’s Law databases in the United States?  What about data on abandoned property?  While this could assist in redevelopment, it might be used for more nefarious purposes.

While data openness is a hallmark of Web 2.0, in terms of policy, what parameters should be in place?

Twitterversion:: @mayormiller’s OpenTO offers #Toronto’s database access, offering Gov2.0 transparency& crowdsourcing opps. #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2tfw

Song:: The Planners Dream Goes Wrong – The Jam

Alleged destruction as a result of Pranknet
Alleged destruction as a result of Pranknet

Crossposted on Rhizomicon.

Just a short blog, as I’m on the road en-route from Toronto to San Francisco for ASA. So, I got into Iowa City around 9PM last night and I saw a tweet from CBC, linking to a story on the “mastermind” behind Pranknet, Tariq Malik. The Smoking Gun goes into great deal outing Pranknet {with media clips} and their nefarious activities and BoingBoing and Canoe.ca have a short articles on the matter.

In a nutshell, Tariq and others used Skype to make various prank phone calls getting unsuspecting people to do destructive things based on appeals to authority for chatroom audiences. In a sense, it’s reminiscent of the Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience. It also reminds me of ethnomethodological “breaching experiments” but this isn’t about social science, this is for the “lulz.” See this NYTimes article on “lulz” and “malwebolence” that a friend forwarded to me last summer {HT: Terri}.
Tariq wanted to build an audience based on his comedic “genius,” but since being outed, he’s cowering in his mom’s Windsor, Ontario apartment.
Twitterversion:: {Twitter is was down, 6 August 2009 9:55 CDT}  Canadian Web 2.0 “terrorist” outed by The Smoking Gun http://url.ie/26mf & http://url.ie/26mg #ThickCulture #CBC @Prof_K

"Non" Québec Sovereignty Referendum Celebration, 20 May 1980 - Tom Haythornthwaite
Québec Sovereignty Referendum, 20 May 1980 - Tom Haythornthwaite

Notes from north of 49ºN

In California, identity politics is a way of life.  Ask Pete Wilson, ex-Governor of California on how Latino politics can derail a career, as detailed in a LA Times magazine article from 2004.  The same article highlights Republican concerns with shifting demographics::

“Many Republicans view the mushrooming Latino voter rolls in the same way a person looks at a growing mole: One hopes it’s benign but fears for the worst.”

Unlike in California where immigration is resulting in dramatic demographic shifts, here in Canada, a hot-button issue is Québec separatism that stems from centuries-old disputes.  The province of Québec has a distinct francophone culture when compared to the rest of predominantly anglophone Canada and this cultural divide naturally affects politics at both the provincial and federal levels.

Currently, at the federal level, Canada {with a variation of the Westminster parliamentary system} has a minority government {plurality of parliamentary seats} with Conservative Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.  Minority governments tend to be unstable.  Indicative of this, the Conservatives had a scare last December when Stephen Harper angered the other parties, bringing the country to the brink of Constitutional crisis.  Recent polls in Canada showed that about half of the voters wanted a more stable majority government, where one party has a majority of the seats.  Moreover, recent polls indicated that support for the Conservatives is dwindling, likely leading to a situation where the Conservatives and Liberals have close to the same number of seats, further deadlocking Parliament.  An article a week and a half ago by the Montréal Gazette brought up a controversial argument::

“Quebecers more than others have it in their power to break this log-jam, by taking a more active hand in national governance instead of ‘parking’ their votes with an increasingly irrelevant Bloc Québécois. Had Quebecers voted for national parties in the same proportion as other Canadians in the last election, we would have a majority government. The instability of minority times makes the government of Canada weaker, which serves the sovereignists’ interests but not the public interest.”

This assumes that Québec voters are more interested in federal governance than Québec interests.  In Québec, the Bloc Québécois {BQ} is a political party associated with sovereignty for the province.  Its raison d’être is promoting the identity politics of francophone Québec at the federal level.  While I’ve noticed the BQ numbers slipping since the 2008 election on the ThreeHundredEight blog, the Gazette’s line of reasoning is unlikely to lure enough Québec voters to the Conservative or Liberal camps.  According to an EKOS poll, the federal vote intention in the in Québec shows a plurality of support for the Bloc::
Federal Vote Intention-July 2009
Federal Vote Intention-July 2009 EKOS

The 2008 federal results in Québec saw BQ making a strong showing with 49 ridings {seats} of 75 in Québec and 308 in Canada. The map below shows Bloc in light blue, Conservatives (PC) in dark blue, Liberals (LP) in Red, and New Democrats (NDP) in orange. The Bloc is strong throughout the province, while the Conservatives have support in a few rural areas, and the Liberals and NDP have appeal in or near the cities of Montréal and Ottawa.

Federal 2008 Election Results by Ridings in Québec
Federal 2008 Election Results by Ridings in Québec
The relative popularity of the Bloc introduces a challenge at the federal level, one of identity politics.  Last month, Liberal Party of Canada {LPC} leader Michael Ignatieff showed how hard it is to manage perceptions in Québec as the leader of a Canada-wide party. While promising restoring funding to the arts and appointment of Québecers to cabinet posts, he also said he has no plans to give Québec any special powers, if elected as Prime Minister. This opened the Liberals open to criticism in the province by rival parties.
“It’s the same good old Liberal Party of Canada that wants to put Québec in its place.”
–Pierre Paquette, Bloc MP Joliette

“It shows that he’s not only been out of Canada for 35 years, he’s never known anything about Québec except what he learned at Upper Canada College and, frankly, I’m not afraid of him a bit.”
–Thomas Mulcair, NDP MP Outremont
The nuances of the issue of sovereignty and its manifestations is far too complex to go into here, so suffice it to say that concerns of Québec as a distinct society are far from settled. According to Andrew Cohen’s The Unfinished Canadian, Québecers are more likely to be ambivalent towards the idea of a federal Canada, which isn’t that surprising. Stephen Harper has done precious little to appeal to Québec, while Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, in my opinion, doesn’t help things with statements like::

“The best possible Canada is a Canada where Québecers are in power…The Bloc Québécois is not a solution for a better Québec and Canada.”–Michael Ignatieff, 3 June 2009 at a Montréal fundraiser

While Ignatieff may have had his reasons, the Bloc represents a set of meanings to many Québecers and I fail to see the upside of antagonizing the Bloc. The tories went after the Bloc earlier in the summer, accusing the party on being soft on pedophiles because they didn’t support tougher legislation on minimum sentencing for child trafficking. The ads haven’t affected polls and the Conservatices are still falling behind. Having appeal in Québec requires subtlety. As stated above, Harper hasn’t done much to appeal to Quebecers, but Conservative writer Bob Plamondon in a Macleans article gets at the heart of the matter. Harper needs to understand culture in order to build social capital::

“I don’t think it was so much that those specific policies were abhorred by Quebecers…because in the scheme of government activities, they are relatively minor issues. But they spoke to larger issues—does Stephen Harper understand Quebec and can he be trusted? I think Quebecers drew the conclusion that he’s disconnected from them. They couldn’t identify among Harper’s team a particularly strong lieutenant who had near-veto power over what went on in Ottawa with respect to those matters that are of particular concern to Quebecers.”

I don’t see that happening, but I can see him using fiscal controls on Ottawa as an appeal to Québec and fiscal conservatives in other provinces.
While the Bloc’s fortunes have waxed and waned over the years, the party is currently in an era of resurgence.  The Bloc’s clout with almost 16% of Parliament representing a culturally distinct region is a good case study for California legislative politics, if we assume Latino political identity strengthening.  Latino population does not equate to a homogeneous population with similar political interests, as there is diversity within.  The question remains: Can there be a strong Latino political identity that spans regions and demographic categories?
Web 2.0 & Politics
In the francophone Québec blogosphere, the following catchy Bloc video went somewhat viral in 2004 in the pre-YouTube era, as part of the “un parti propre au Québec/a party proper to Québec” campaign.

Videos like this show how parties can energize voters and generate buzz for a campaign.  Given how 41% of younger voters under 25 support the Bloc {see above table on federal vote intention in Québec} and how Bloc support skews younger, I expect to see more Bloc use of Web 2.0 in the future, i.e., more use of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and possibly MySpace.
What about Web 2.0 and Latino voters in the US?  Pew Internet research does show that in the US,  Hispanics tend to be younger and online less than other ethnicities.  Nevertheless, Hispanics 18-29 are online the most for the ethnicity at over 60%, although this percentage is lower than black or white counterparts.  Latino cell phone owners are more likely than their white counterparts to send/receive text messages, at 49% vs. 31%, respectively.  Given that Latinos trend younger and the younger Latinos are online the most, I expect to see greater usage of social media targeting them, using online and SMS {texting} media.  Brandweek is citing 65% use of social media by Latinos, particularly with MySpace and MySpace Latino.  The challenge will be politically engaging Latinos in a way that’s relevant to them.
While many of the following issues may be unpopular due to their divisive nature, is this the globalized political reality we’re in?
  1. How will globalization shape California identity politics?
  2. Will culture serve as a political rallying point?
  3. Strengthening of identity politics caucus/coalition powerbase{s}
  4. Use of cultural distinction socially & politically
  5. Strategies of mainstream politicians/parties to negotiate with or combat a caucus/coalition
  6. Use of Web 2.0 & SMS technologies & social media to politically engage electorate in a culturally-relevant fashion
Twitterversion:: As California grapples with identity politics, what can be learned from #Canada, #Québec, & Bloc Québécois? http://url.ie/24zz #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Tricot Machine -L’Ours {Montréal, QC}

Crossposted on Rhizomicomm.

Most people don’t know who Carl Malamud is and probably don’t care, but he’s the guy who wants the US Patent & Trademark Office and the National Archives and Records Administration to offer up its bulk data for free.   The idea is by allowing open access, non-profits and third-parties will use new technologies like Web 2.0 to create wikis and applications, allowing for better transparency and value-creation.

Web 2.0 & the Free

Yesterday, I blogged about intellectual property {IP} in a global context with pricing pressures towards the free.  In an era of piracy and difficult enforcement of IP rights, what’s an IP producer to do?  The “work” must be a part of a model that generates value.  Today, in my inbox I received an announcement from the God Help the Girl project, a “story set to music” envisioned by Glasweigian Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian fame.  There was an announcement about a BBC4 documentary on the band airing in the UK and a mention of how fans can “subscribe” to the music on their website::

God Help the Girl subscription
God Help the Girl subscription page

Those familiar with B&S know of Stuart Murdoch’s entrepreneurial roots.  The band starting off as a college course  project and going viral in 1996-97 is a story that DIY indie rock legends are made of.  So, it should come as no surprise that Murdoch is on top of the  Web 2.0 concept of the “free.”  Sure, you can hear the track “Funny Little Frog” on the site and see videos on YouTube for free, but the die hard fan can experience God Help the Girl directly in their mailboxes and inboxes for $47US in North America or £40.50 in the UK.  The idea here is to go beyond the song as a digital commodity, but the creation of value and meaning to people that gets them to subscribe.  The “free” stuff is the hook.  The danger is offending fans with a seemingly-blatant cashgrab, territory in which The Pixies have ventured in.

Gov 2.0

While some corners of indie music are catching on to Web 2.0, what about government?  Will the government see that they would serve the public good by creating value through the availability of free access to Federal databases?   The Obama administration has promised openness and transparency, but what are the current realities?  Unfortunately, the US agencies in question that Malamud is fighting aren’t always interested in free.  There are prohibitive paywalls for annual subscriptions to the federal regulations and patent databases to the tune of $17,000US and $39,000US, respectively.  The US government isn’t making a lot of money off of this, which begs the question why the high prices?  It makes one suspect that the corporate interests have a vested interest in maintaining an information oligarchy with the government’s support.  While this may be a case of negligent gatekeepers, I’ve heard anecdotal tales of US Department of Labor data being suppressed for political reasons and have seen access granted to “restricted” data based on social ties.

Opening up these databases will likely see a flurry of usage, usage of data that’s public.  If Malamud gets his way, in the future if you need government data on such-and-such, there’d be an app for that.  Ideally.

Canadian Example

Up here in Canada, I came across a data barrier with respect to Federal electoral ridings {districts} and postal codes.  So, if a non-profit is interested in doing an advocacy campaign where voters can e-mail Federal candidates for Parliament, there’s a pricetag on that public data.  The cost from Statistics Canada is $3,000 CAN, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s sufficient enough to be a barrier for many nonprofits and smaller colleges.  A UK company, Advocacy Online, is utilized by some organizations needing this data, turning the cost barrier into a revenue stream for them.  Should this data be free?  Wouldn’t that serve the public good, as we would see more and more usage and possibly more civic engagement?

The handwriting is on the wall regarding the power of data access in Canada.  In the last Canadian federal election, VoteforEnvironment created a mashup of election data, riding data, postal code data, and Google maps.  This allowed users to make better, data-driven choices about strategic voting, where voters make their choices on the basis of how their vote affects Parliamentary makeup, not on the basis of party.  The implications according to CBC are compelling::

“If every green voter followed the website’s suggestions (as of Saturday), it says that instead of electing a Conservative minority of 141 MPs to 73 Liberals, 57 Bloc, 35 NDP, and no Greens, the electoral result would shift to a Liberal minority with 109 MPs to 97 Conservatives, 53 Bloc, 46 NDP, and one Green.”

Here in Toronto Centre, when you punch in the postal code on the VfE, voters get a summary and their anti-Tory recommendation.  Ex-Dipper Bob Rae has a safe seat as a Liberal candidate, so the recommendation is to vote your conscience.

Toronto Centre federal riding
Toronto Centre federal riding

Tim O’Reilly has a few interesting ideas on Gov 2.0.  It’s a time for fewer barriers, including those of cost.  If any data should be free, shouldn’t it be public data?

Twitterversion:: Will free access to Federal data enable #Gov2.0, increase transparency, & civic engagement?Implications for US & #Canpoli http://url.ie/23qx @Prof_K

Song:: Funny Little Frog – God Help The Girl

Office Space scene "The Going Away Present" of printer destruction
Office Space scene "The Going Away Present" of printer destruction

Over on OpenSalon, Mary Elizabeth Williams did a post on author’s social media e-sponses to negative reviews .  At first, I was amused by the spirited rejoinders.  Williams cites Ayelet Waldman’s response to Jill Lepore’s review of Bad Mother in the New Yorker, was allegedly a succinct “The book is a feminist polemic, you ignorant twat.” My favorite was Alain de Botton’s response to Caleb Crain’s review in the New York Times on the latter’s blog::

“Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.” [Emphasis added]

I chose to show the full comment, not just the last sentences in bold that many are quoting, since I wanted to provide context and show that it wasn’t just a two-line virulent jab.  Some might call this churlish, but I saw it as a writer showing he has the chops as a writer to defend his book against criticism.

I do understand why Williams offers her advice of being careful about ranting at critics.  Such angry behaviour can make can one seem shrill and immature, although I do enjoy the sheer drama of it all.  Publishing, as it stands today, is hypercompetitive and there are influential gatekeepers like critics.  I wonder if these interactions in social media are showing how the “authority” of the critic is being decentered.  Social media allow for dialogues and will expectations shift, in that critics will have to justify their reviews to authors and audiences alike.  Interestingly, Caleb Crain chose not to respond to Alain de Botton’s comment, only offering an unsatisfying::

“Folks: Thanks for all your comments. A broad range of opinions have been expressed, and I’m going to close comments on this post now. all best wishes, Caleb”

That said, I wonder what the future of publishing and criticism are, given Web 2.0 and beyond.  The critic serves a winnowing function, granting {or taking away} legitimacy and status.  Will this function be replaced by an increasingly intelligent Web 3.0 with “crowdsourced” reviews?  What are the implications for acadème and peer-review journals?  Will the “wisdom of the crowd” topple the institutional fiefdoms controlling knowledge?

I know critiquing work can be tough.  While not that in-depth, the act of reviewing Soderburgh’s The Girlfriend Experience was illuminating for me, particularly after seeing how many reviewers were taking the easy road.  I’ve done peer-review for over 15 years now and have been through the double-blind review process, as well.  I’ve always tried to be constructive with my reviews, even with what I see is a flawed manuscript, offering citations and {hopefully} theoretical or methodological insights.  I’ve read that Will Ferrell is very constructive as a colleague, often taking the time to help others work through something not working with their comedy, and I’m trying to pattern myself after this.  My take is that if you can’t be constructive and if you tear something down without backing it up, you better be prepared to fight it out and social media is the perfect venue for this.

Song:: There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics (Cd) – Of Montreal

 

Video:: Office Space “The Going Away Present”

Twitterversion:: Authors using #socialmedia to lash out at negative reviews. #Fail or #Web2.0 decentering of critics as #gatekeepers in publishing? @Prof_K

Cover of Douglas Coupland's Souvenirs of Canada

Notes from North of 49ºN

I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of nation, of late.  In summers past, the 4th. of July, Independence Day in the United States, meant being in northern California and perhaps heading to Point Reyes and seeing the tug-of-war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach.  The past three years, I have observed Canada Day, celebrating when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario became a federation, a dominion with ties to the UK.  Two adjacent countries, which appear to have similarities, but have key differences.  Population is one differentiator. At confederation in 1867, the US population was around over 10 times that of Canada, 38,558,371 to 3,625,000 {1870}.  The twentieth century would see the rise of American dominance, not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of media and culture.

American culture is readily evident in Canada.  On television and in major cities like Toronto, with the prevalence of brands like Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, and Subway.  A quick scan of the TV listings shows how popular US television content is in anglophone Canada.  Canada is aware of this and requires broadcasters to show Canadian content {Can con}.  The CBC, the Canadian national public broadcaster, is a flagship network of the nation, where, through its mandate, the network’s goal is to be a cultural touchstone for the nation.  I’ve blogged about the future of the CBC television on this post:: Will Globalization Kill or Make the CBC Relevant Again?, which touches on how the CBC is struggling to remain viable and relevant in the shadow of big media players in the United States and fending off challengers within Canada.  Unlike the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster, which is funded through household television licences, the CBC gets funding from the government, but also is subject to market forces through selling ad time, both sources being historically uneven.

The question I have is whether the role of a national broadcaster is even important.  I don’t see the United States as having the equivalent of the CBC, let alone the BBC.  PBS and NPR are, in my opinion, a loose confederation of programming, as opposed to a network with a strong identity, let alone an entity fostering a conceptualization of the United States as a culture or a nation.

The ideas of Arjun Appadurai and Benedict Anderson come to mind.  Appadurai speaks of globalization in terms of flows.  Flows of finance, ideologies, technologies, people and media, each with the suffix scapes.  Mediascapes have two components::

  1. The flows of capacity to produce and disseminate electronic information
  2. The images of the world created by these media

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities discusses nation as an abstract entity, where meaning is shared within and the mass media address its citizens as a public.

Borders are often permeable under globalization and Canada has seen flows of media flood across its southern border, but what has this done to Canadians’ notion of nation?  Can Canadian content policy and the CBC help to reinforce the imagined community of Canada?  Does nation even matter?  Is Canada to Canadians “our home and disparate land,” as stated in today’s Vancouver Sun?  What about shared Canadian experiences such as Hinterland’s Who’s Who::

I think we need to remember that the context here is capitalism.  Media is flowing, media full of American meanings and ideals, as entertainment content to generate revenues.  In light of this onslaught, I think it is important for Canada to preserve its identity by creating content that increases Canadian cultural knowledge and awareness.  Why?  Without a national identity, i.e., an imagined community of Canada, meaning becomes increasingly derived from imagined communities of brands.  If our Diderot unities reduce to the constellation of brands we surround ourselves with, can we be citizens or are we just consumers?

I think nation does and should matter.  In Benedict Anderson’s words, nation::

“…is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the inequality of that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep. horizontal kinship.”–p.7

I feel that the CBC should be a symbol of Canadian community, one that communicates and is interactive with all electronic media.  I see it as a part of the cultural infrastructure and one of the few entities that can actively bridge the country’s east-west divide, but I’m an idealist.

Song:: Dreamer – Jenn Grant {Halifax, NS}

Video::

Video Extra:: jPod clips of “Cowboy” aired on CBC, Winter 2008.

Twitterversion:: #Canada, national identity, & #Media. Globalization blurs borders, but does #nation matter? #Appadurai #BenedictAnderson http://url.ie/1xu6 @Prof_K

2214745739_7de89c7ef4
Marshall McLuhan Way, Downtown Toronto, ON, Canada

Crossposed on Rhizomicomm

McLuhan Way is just down the street from me, so perhaps it’s my inspiration.  I remember reading Marshall McLuhan‘s Understanding Media over 14 years ago in a seminar on the Internet.  The hot/cool media continuum perplexed many of us and some say technology has rendered the concept obsolete.  In terms of hot/cool, where does the Internet stand?

  • Hot media are high-definition.  Media that fully-engages one sense of the audience member:: print {visual}, radio {sound}, film {visual}, & the photograph {visual}.
  • Cool media are low-definition.  Media that require more active participation from the audience member to interpret::  Television {visual with limitations in the 1960s},  telephone {sound of a relatively poor quality in the 1960s}, and comic strips {cheaply reproduced mass-entertainment}.  The video game as a hyperreal construct, where the audience/player must fill in gaps of this representation of the real.

Reading is engaging in hot media and is a solitary experience.  Reading, contrasted with speech, forces an isolating consciousness, perhaps one overly-immersed in the individual.

How does Web 2.0 fit into all of this?  Well, new technologies trend towards the hot.  The iPod engages us, bathes us in a bubble of sound of our choosing.  What about this paradox?  New technologies are higher-definition, engaging us more and more, but also allowing us to be interactive with others {social media}.  Moreover, there is convergence of the technologies.  The smartphone {MP3 player, telephony, Internet web surfing} is a stunning example of multisensory engagement that also allows us to communicate and share with others.

What happened?  Is the singularity of media, where all media is converging, making it all lukewarm?  The continuum is shrinking to a singular point, as in the multimedia experiences of the smartphone.  Has technology sped up our communications, so that there is the appearance that time has folded upon itself.  We read text or see a video and now we can immediately respond to others.  We read a tweet from Twitter and immediately respond to it.

So, bear with me as I think out loud here.  Let’s assume that media are approaching singularity.  As you go up the cone, technologies converge and the user is collapsing hot/cold, engaging both simultaneously.

conic11
McLuhan Conic:: Rough ideas for understanding trajectories for social media. ~Kambara

Let’s assume that at the circular base of the cone, along the diameter is the continuum from hot to cold.  Perpendicular to that diameter is another continuum, the institutional semistructures, rigid {controlling} versus chaotic {open}.  The base would have 4 quadrants, each with prototypical examples::

  1. Hot & Rigid- Old “big media” {print, radio, film, etc.)
  2. Hot & Chaotic- Engaging content in unstructured/uncontrolled  databases
  3. Cool & Rigid- Newsgroups
  4. Cool & Chaotic- Synchronous unmoderated chat

The origin will be “lukewarm” and semi-structured.  The origin is somewhat of a normative assumption.  Individual user experiences may vary and may not even be contiguous.  I know I need to refine these ideas and construct a better diagram.  Nevertheless, I think this concept might be valuable in thinking about how people’s use of technologies is likely to evolve.  Where would you put the following::

  • Facebook {social networking site}
  • Twitter {microblogging}
  • YouTube {video filesharing}
  • Hulu {long-form professional videos}
  • Google {all things data}

Where are they moving towards -or- how could they better provide value?  Of course, despite McLuhan being gone for quite a while, I half-expect this to happen to me::

Twitterversion:: Can #MarshallMcLuhan ‘s hot/cold continuum inform #socialmedia? #sociology #web2.0 http://url.ie/1wys @Prof_K

Song:: “Suspect Device” Ted Leo & the Pharmacists-lyrics

Tweeting sans Twitter ~Ludwig Wendzich on Flickr
Tweeting sans Twitter:: "Paper-PC=Twitter" by Ludwig Wendzich on Flickr

Back in April, we had a lively discussion here on Twitter and language.  I recently saw that the dictionary team at the Oxford University Press is on top of the sitch.  Here’s some of their observations::

“Since January OUP’s dictionary team has sorted through many random tweets.  Here are the basic numbers:

Total tweets = 1,496,981
Total sentences = 2,098,630
Total words = 22,431,033
Average words per tweet = 14.98
Average sentences per tweet = 1.40
Average words per sentence in Twitter= 10.69
Average words per sentence in general usage = 22.09”

Verbs in the gerund form are pretty popular, as well as informal slang like “OK” and “fuck.”  Most common word on Twitter & general English:: “the,” with #2 on Twitter being “I.”

The OED folks seem to just be reporting some of their analyses, which I have no problem with.  They’re not indicting anyone and even end the blurb with “Tweet on.”

Now, enter the shrill cassandras at HigherEdMorning who report on the above with a post, “The Hidden Problem with Twitter.” Talk about framing.  That title is priming the reader to be wary of Twitter, but there’s more.  The image used in the article decries the lament of every frustrated educator who has endured reading a crappy essay::

Image from "The Hidden Problem with Twitter" post
Image ~ "The Hidden Problem with Twitter" post

They report the OUP observations, but finalize their Twitterproblem trifecta with::

“So here’s the question: Is Twitter – along with instant messaging and texting – contributing to the destruction of language skills among college students?”

Twitterfail?  I actually have a big problem with this.  It’s taking observations and drawing inane conclusions that would pass muster in the most laxed ethnography course and would be a social science epic fail.

What gets really interesting is the discourse that follows in the comments.  I urge you to take a look {there were 69 as of 3:18a on 18 June}.  The interesting thing, to me, is how the social aspect of technological use creeps into the dialogue.

Baloo559 Says:

Twitter, instant messaging and texting ARE contributing to, let’s call it degraded language skills, by providing a set of forums in which these degraded skills are accepted and encouraged. I believe acceptance is primarily a function of the youth of the majority of contributors. They lack experience with more formal language and don’t seem to grasp the subtly and nuance that come with its complexity. Degradation is encouraged by the fact that even the best texting phones or IM clients are poor writing instruments. 12 keys are inadequate as are one eighth scale, not quite QWERTY keyboards. Further encouragement comes from the satisfaction developing personalities take in expressing themselves in creatively alternative manners, especially if it tends to confuse authority figures.”

Not everyone is a naysayer::

Catherine Politi Says:

Did the abbreviated wording used in telegrams destroy the English language? I don’t think so. Neither will Twitter, or texting in general – as long as schools continue to stress good language skills in the classroom. As an English teacher and student of linguistics, I realize that English and all other living languages are constantly evolving, so Twitter and its “siblings” will affect English, but not to necessarily destroy or devalue it. As for spelling, well, English is a terrible model for spelling, so maybe these mediums will improve it!”

and this comment makes an interesting link to dictation::

Jill Lindsey Says:

I believe that Twitter, messaging and texting language is just like the dictation shorthand from the last century. My mother wrote in shorthand and it just looked like a bunch of symbols to me but she and others skilled in it decoded it with fluency. No one but Golden Agers know or use shorthand anymore, but now we text. It is simply a new shorthand for a new context in a new age. Formal language is constantly evolving too. Think of the transition from Olde English to American English. Change does not have to mean destruction of language- its just evolution. Just like shorthand was a symbol system for more formal language, so is texting- the meaning is conveyed through a symbol system and translated in our minds. Spelling is just agreed conventions- those have and will continue to change over time. The only problem of concern should be when the meaning one is trying to convey cannot be discerned by the reader. We have to have common understandings for any symbol system to work- formal or informal.”

Whenever I see criticisms of youth or youth culture, I tend to look for ad hominems and finger-waving.  Damn, fool kids.  The Cisco fatty meme brought out a bunch of such anger.  So, when it comes to Twitilliteracy, JRB offers his 2¢::

jrb@msu Says:

As long as texting is treated like vocal dialects, I have no objection. Cajun, Cockney, etc. are fine but rarely get transcribed unless the accent is essential to the story. Likewise telegrams – they serve a purpose but we don’t ever see “telegram text” in written stories or formal correspondence.

But when this sort of “abbrev-speak” traverses the chasm into formal writing I think we risk losing a substantial chunk of our discreet and collective cultures, so much of which are recorded as written words (not wrds). Just as learning a second languange [sic] enhances the developing brain, so does an understanding of the colorful and deeply descriptive nature of the written word.

SS I think you miss a key point with using text speak for formal communications – sometimes, like it or not, we _have_ to adhere to a minimal level of decorum, and frankly students who cannot adopt such probably have an issue with authority which suggests ther are not the best candidates for a good old fashioned college experience (where the instructor still wields authority) – perhaps they are better suited to informal cloud-based learning, just before they step out to that job at Burger Queen.

Bitter, much?  Clearly, this gets people into a lather, but what plays out is a culture war of sorts, where technology and the social collide with a normative vengeance.  What strikes me is a reduction of the “other” to a stereotype and having no interest in contextualizing what’s going on here with Twitter.  There are also a lot of assumptions about an ideal orthodoxy, in terms of psychological information processing, learning, and expression, let alone the hegemony of English usage online.  Going back to the OUP report, what about non-English tweets or tweets by non-native speakers?  So many questions, but I’m a social science geek.

So, is this no big thing?  While many think this is just a tempest in a teapot, I think these debates are just a tip of the iceberg in an increasingly globalized world.  I think Novia in the first pic. will do just fine despite Twitterish communication.  Oh, for all the n00bs, BFF 4 realz=Ben Folds Five.

Twitterversion::  #newblogpost #Twitter kllng English lang-still! SmOnePlsThinkoftheChildren‽ HighrEdMorn takes OxUnivPress stry&stirs pot. http://url.ie/1qqo  @Prof_K

Song:Battle of Who Could Care Less – Ben Folds Five

Video::

bff

So says Mark Taylor in a New York Times op-ed.

Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

His piece questions the efficacy of graduate education, but many of his prescriptions could also be applied to undergraduate programs.  The gist of his concerns is that we’ve tilted so far in our graduate training toward academic specialization that our product has become idiosyncratic, unrewarding, and irrelevant to the larger society. This graduate training spills over to undergraduate teaching by reproducing a structure that keeps academic work in departmental silos. Here are a few of his suggestions for transforming the university:

Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network.

I personally love the use of the complex adaptive network metaphor. Some of my students are working on a project where they would gather our faculty’s research interests, code them and conduct a cluster or network analysis to determine cross-disciplinary commonalities. From there you could create learning communities of faculty and students that could then be linked to similar clusters around the world.

This complex adaptive system approach to developing a curriculum seems to be where our students live. I’ve had 2-3 students inquire about getting a Ph.D. and they all are drawn to interdisciplinary programs. Knowing what I know about the biases in academia, I’ve tried to encourage them to go for more traditional disciplinary-based programs so that they have more flexibility on the academic job market, but to little effect.

I submit that our challenge is that Web 2.0 has stripped from the academy it’s monopoly on knowledge. Young people’s unfettered access to information (of both dubious and stellar quality) places greater demands on the university as an institution to be as flexible as Google in how we organize knowledge and information. When an institution comes to a student with a major checklist or an undergraduate curriculum checklist, an increasingly common response is to see it as an arbitrary set of hoops to jump rather than a carefully considered set of courses. In other words, it looks like Yahoo circa 1996 (i.e. knowledge organized in pre-selected categories).
.

Instead, our students expect the academy to have the same customizability, flexibility, and functionality of the Web searches they do everyday.

Which leads me to Taylor’s second prescription:

Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed.

I’m inclined to agree with Michael Berube on this one — we should be careful not to conflate department with discipline. People can still operate within the structure of a department and pursue an interdisciplinary agenda (like a political scientist blog hosted by a Sociology association). I think completely untethering academics from disciplinary moorings is probably a bit too extreme and unnecessary in my view. There are some real benefits to being rooted in a “discipline.” You could accomplish Taylor’s goal by increasing the number of joint appointments or developing “programs” or “emphases” that get at the same objectives. Besides, if we abolished departments, what type of evaluation/peer review process would replace it?

Despite these reservations, I think the academy does require a serious rethink in no small part because the nature of idea dissemination has changed so radically. The larger question might be whether we should try to respond in kind or should we take William F. Buckley’s advice for budding conservatives and “stand athwart history yelling stop”!

I’d be curious to hear what others think.

The Cisco Fatty meme served up a cautionary tale for all the denizens of Web 2.0.  It might be me, but I think people need to lighten up.  The  Andrews v. FedEx incident is a good example highlighting this need.  In this one, a VP tweeted this candid gem on his impressions of Memphis, where FedEx headquarters are located::

“True confession but i’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!'”–James Andrews

The FedEx employees were outraged.  Didn’t this clown hear the Cher cover of this Marc Cohn song?  How dare someone insult fair Memphis!  Here’s a response sent upstairs to FedEx management::

“Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.”

The rest is predictable.  Finger-wagging by bystanders admonishing Andrews, an apology, and a statement by FedEx saying they are “moving on.”  Commentors on the story nailed it, in my opinion, by noting how this is a tempest in a teapot::

“People who live in small cities are always trying to prove something. They exhibit irrational pride for their little slice of nowhere. Seriously. Who cares? If James said he would die if he had to live in LA, no client would even take notice. Of if they did notice they certainly wouldn’t care. They definitely wouldn’t ship it to a gaggle of senior leaders at both companies. But talk about Memphis…..and it’s ON.”–Adrants commenter

“James Andrews had to fly into Memphis yesterday for a client meeting with FedEx, and observed, correctly, that Memphis is a hellhole…

James Andrews will never make the mistake of being honest again.”–Gawker commenter

Enough of this boring stuff, what about a political candidate with “embarrassing” Facebook photos on a private page.  Now we’re talking.  Ray Lam, a 22 year old NDP {far-left party} candidate for local office in British Columbia {False Creek-Vancouver} had the photo below surface.

bc-090422-ray-lam-facebook
Ray Lam, Ex-NDP BC Candidate-False Creek, 4 years ago at a Pride event

Lam resigned his candidacy.  Of course, let the media circus begin, along with the finger-wagging and admonishments.  The fact of the matter is that the photos of the openly gay candidate were from 4 years ago and from a campy Pride celebration.

The BC Liberals {centre-left party} were quick to jump on this Facebook faux-pas.  His opponent, Mary McNeil was shocked and outraged.  She made a statement sent to media outlets, which, of course, contained links to the Facebook photos.   In her statement, she said, “…These photos are offensive and demeaning. I’m surprised that Carole James and her NDP caucus think these photos are acceptable.”

The British Columbia Liberal Leader, Gordon Campbell was quick to point out::

“This was public information. It was on the NDP website and they have some responsibilities in terms of that. … They were totally inappropriate pictures and the NDP has some questions to answer for.”

Good point, Gordon.

Oh, wait, remember your Maui mugshot for that pesky 2003 DUI::

CRIME-Premier-Charged
BC Premier #03-02659

No resignation for a DUI, a situation which could have endangered the lives of himself and others, but there MUST be consequences for risqué photos.

In my mind, there are two issues.  (1) Do the private lives of politicians really matter?  If so, (2) the nature of Web 2.0 and subsequent iterations will make sure all dirt will have its day.  I’m not 100% sure what was on Lam’s Facebook page, but I do know the technology poses challenges for managing perceptions, as one can get tagged in photos by others.

Should we get over it?  Are we degenerating into a culture of optics?  We can say that issues of values and character matter, but are we just setting up a situation where only the squeaky clean can withstand the scrutiny in media singularity.

I guess Edgar Friendly would never make it as a politician.