We’re leaving together,
but still it’s farewell,
last brief of the semester,
who can tell?

Wiki Marathon

In the last few days we’ve started to see a lot of work on Wikipedia. This week, we’re heading for Venus (so to speak) by doing more work on Wikipedia both along the same lines of edits we’ve seen this week and by each editing (at least) 3 articles based on somebody else’s travelogue. So for example Harris would be editing articles about Kotex and Elizabeth will be editing articles about Facebook… After editing a page based on someone else’s work, make sure to comment on their relevant travelogue posts with a link to the Wikipedia article and your specific change.

Your 2¢ – Better Late Than Never

And maybe we’ll come back
To earth, who can tell?

So we’ll (I’ll) be coming back to review your work through the semester to grade you accordingly. One of the things I will be looking at is your performance on the weekly summary comments discussion, but it’s not too late to still go back and comment on the ones that you didn’t get to comment on in time. I don’t expect flawless stats, but if you feel like you could’ve done better, you can definitely still effect your grade that way.

Optional Bonus Round

With so many light years to go
And things to be found (To be found…)

If you have time, interest and motivation (and you want to better your grade) you are welcomed to choose any of the topics proposed this week and publish a summary for us (along the lines of the weekly summaries). The summary can be posted after Sunday 4pm (but before Tuesday 4:55pm), and you will not be required to lead the class on it next week. For those who accept the challenge I promise to up-grade you generously.

Changing/Ruling the world from the comfort of your laptop

Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

Next week’s reading will focus on the potential (?) of Postnationalism presented by the networked public sphere

Required Reading:

• Frost, Catherine Internet Galaxy Meets Postnational Constellation: Prospects for Political Solidarity After the Internet (handout)
• Catherine Frost’s response to Mike Linksvayer on the post Collaborative Futures 3
• Harris’s summary + your comment

Recommended Reading:

• Digital Power and its Discontents – Morozov & Shirky: An Edge Conversation

Optional Extra:

• Responses to Digital Power and its Discontents – Edge Reality Club: Jaron Lanier, Douglas Rushkoff, George Dyson, Nicholas Carr

Harris:

• Read the essay & articles and view the presentation
• Optionally Highlight and annotate the reading to help its accessibility for the rest of you.
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class.
• Think of questions to lead off the discussion
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.

The 80′s are back, did you notice?

Wikipedia, here we come!

This one is a group assignment. And by group I mean the whole class. At this stage there is much we learned that others can benefit from. While Wikipedia has been a great reference for us now is the time to give back. During the next two weeks you guys will become devoted contributors to Wikipedia, basing your contributions on the knowledge you have gathered in this class through the reading we did, the travelogues you conducted and the discussions around them. Some Wikipedia pages that should expect to hear from us (just suggestions, you are welcomed to come up with other ideas):

• Topics we discussed through readings: trust, community, CBPP, open source, social software, network theory, interface, fun, representation/simulation, control, remix culture, game theory, copyright laws, biomedia…
• Topics we discussed in class: video mash-ups, Twitter, digital identity, Ushahidi, corporate responsibility, e-waste, transparency, iTunes store, Kotex…
• The author pages for the individuals we’ve been reading in class this semester
• What does “New Media” or “Digital Media” stand for anyway?
• Some new pages that are not there yet.
• You name it…

To get started:

• Sign up to Wikipedia (if you haven’t yet)
• Send me your username so I can start following your changes (I intend to combine them into an RSS feed, maybe Leslie can help me)
• Learn the MediaWiki syntax (if you don’t already know it)
• To start a new page simply write its name after the wikipedia.org/wiki/_______ and then, when it says the page does not exist yet, edit it to bring it to life.
• Make sure to link between the pages using this syntax [[Page_Name]] or link to external links using [http://www.somesite.com the text you want to be linked]
• When saving, write what was the content of your change, so others can easily track it
• Use the talk pages to coordinate when it makes sense.
• Use the class blog to mobilize others to help you edit specific articles or to consult  and share tips
• Track changes through the new sidebar on the blog or through RSS feeds.
• Enjoy…

Some Tips:

• Feel free to link to currently non-existing pages like that: [[Eyewriter]] if you think it makes sense for someone (maybe even you, but not necessarily you) to write them, and then for someone else to help edit it.
• Work on pages together, start something, learn how to use the talk pages, make some subheadings that you think should be filled by someone, invite them to help you, even comment on their posts with something like: “Hey Jimena, I am working on this page concerning the way art organizations use social media and I thought you might have a lot to add to it” – that way this assignment will be a collaborative class effort that draws on what you’ve guys been doing together.
• Check out the History pages to see what edits have been made on a page.
• Follow the feed of changes so we can track what’s going on through the week

* I’m expecting each of you to make at least 20 edits this week, or in other words, make sure you edit so much that you stop counting.

More Topics in Digital Media

In the line of next week’s topic, I want us to also challenge my own decisions as the professor leading this class. Through this 14 week course we’ve been trying to cover many “topics in digital media” both those introduced by the weekly readings and those you brought up with your travelogues. But 14 weeks is not much and I am sure there’s only so much my limited selection can cover.

For next week, each one of you would recommend another “topic” and propose materials for it (recommended/required). Try to think about it as a “What if this was a 25 rather than a 14 weeks course?”. To make sure there are no repetitions please comment on this post with your topic as soon as you choose it. Some of the topics can be extensions going deeper into some of the things we have talked about (for example: user generated content).

So the way it would work is:

1. Comment on this brief with the title of your proposed topic (soon before someone else grabs it)
2. Write a post in the new “More Topics” category using this format:

Next week: Education is not what it used to be

Required Reading:

• The Impending Demise of the University by Don Tapscott
• MyUniversity.com? Personalized Education and Personalized News by Cass Sunstein
• The summary + your comment on it

Recommended Viewing:

• My University.com, My Government.com: Is the Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy? presentation by Cass Sunstein
  (you can play it in the background, it’s not very visual)

For Dan:

• Read the articles and view/listen to the presentations
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class.
• Think of questions to lead off the discussion
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.

T4 – Final week:

Focus on crafting the concluding post. Either way, each of you please comment 4+ times this week on your friend’s posts.

Cleanup:

Since the class will be done in three weeks from now, I want us to do some preparation work towards the final assignment:

• Click on your author link on our sidebar to review all of your past posts.
• Make sure that every post is assigned the right category (1-travelogue, 2-travelogue, fyi…)
• Make sure you are using tags to describe the themes your travelogue deals with (privacy, journalism, art, chat roulette, Haiti, economics…) feel free to use several tags on any post. Try to use tags that have been used before, this will help us make the tag cloud more representative of what we’ve been doing this semester.
• I am adding a ‘related posts’ plugin which will do some networking based on the tags that you use, probably between your own posts but possibly between yours and others.

Required Reading:

• Decoding the Future with Genomics / Juan Enriquez (Video)
• Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity / Gary Wolf
• Comment on Ryan’s summery

Recommended Reading:

• Review of Eugene Thacker’s Biomedia / Nicholas Ruiz III

Optional:

• How Technology Will Transform Us – Ray Kurzweil’s TED talk
  

Ryan:

• Read the review, the article and watch the talk video.
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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.

Enjoy!

Travelogue (extended)

We’re deep in Travelogue 4 with some really fascinating researches proposed and some very interesting ideas for uses of the media. The rich posts are sometimes more time consuming, both on the producer and the consumer, so I want us to have enough time to explore and comment on them. That’s why I will do two things: Firstly, we will take an extra week for this travelogue, so feel free to dig deeper and not yet conclude your research next week. Second, I recommend you guys to post by Sunday (preferably earlier) and leave Monday and Tuesday for commenting. Here are some optional deadlines:

By Sunday: Post your new rich travelogue post. Remember, the content needs to be mainly non textual. By that I mean, non-typed posts. Verbal podcasts are legit. Including transcripts is more than recommended.

By Classtime: Comment on at least 4 posts. Rich comments are also legit (though not a must).

Next Week’s Topic

Required Reading:

• Book Excerpt: “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” – What Games Aren’t / Raph Koster
• SIMULATION 101: Simulation versus Representation / Gonzalo Frasca
• Nadine’s Summery + 1 comment (at least)

(Very) Recommended Listening:

• The Core of Fun – Presentation at Etech / Raph Koster

[podcast]http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/ITC.ETech-RaphKoster-2007.03.28.mp3[/podcast]

Optional Extra:

• Kriegspiel booklet – by Alexander R. Galloway and Mushon Zer-Aviv

Nadine:

• Read the two articles and listen to the talk.
• (if you want) Highlight and annotate the article to help its accessibility for the rest of you (one § highlights shift can include more than a single highlight range).
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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.

Play,

Enjoy.

This is the “define your question” phase. I want each of you to publish a post titled with your question and using your medium of choice. I expect one or more post from you this week. For some it would be a weekly audio / video / visual / locative post, and for some just an update on your longer (video/software…) project (ask me if you feel unsure about what’s expected from you). Either way, each of you please comment 4 times this week on your friends posts.

Some important tip for video & audio podcast

• Video / Audio Formats – iTunes (for both Mac & PC) has an option to ‘save for ipod & iphone’ (for video) & to ‘convert to MP3′ (for audio). Both of these options will make your podcasts compatible with most podcasting devices and more accessible by all of us. By the way, to subscribe to our podcast feed use this link with iTunes (or other podcast aggregation):

  http://cultureandcommunication.org/tdm/s10/feed/podcast

• Be casual, not too casual – I think the recommendations on this site might be relevant both for screencasts, vodcasts and for podcasts. Either way, building a bullet-pointed scenario cannot be a bad idea, as it would leave you some more freedom from the tight text while keeping you on the right track. Remember, you are not making an audio-book.
• You are beautiful – But ask yourselves, do we really need to see your faces? Maybe we do, but maybe the frame can be better used to support your content visually, screencasts are a good example for that, when they fit. If you don’t really have anything to show, maybe video is not the medium you need, maybe stick to voice only… think about it.
• Slideshows – are visual supplementary to presentations. They are great to review after you’ve seen the presentation or if they are accompanied by audio. To use them as a standalone series of textual bullet points is an interesting experiment, but it does hold its own challenges.
• Support your media – rich media is rich, but it can’t do everything, for example, it usually cannot link to a site. If you want us to get more informed, link to the relevant content in your posts.
• Share your experiences – Feel free to comment on this post, or even write a whole new one if you think there are other things you’ve learned that others can enjoy from.
• Add to the Resources page – Some of the titles there are still unpopulated, we want to document the techniques you are using so they can be shared by all. Please edit the page.

Required reading / viewing / assignment:

• Are We In Control Of Our Own Decisions? TED presentation by Dan Ariely
• The Death Of The URL by Chris Messina
• Social networking, new governing By Andrew Rasiej & Micha L. Sifry
• Read the summary.
• Use ShiftSpace to post a critique of an interface. This could be anything from Wikipedia’s editing syntax, through Google Chrome’s Universal Search-bar to lobbying as an interface to democracy. (reading the paper or summery will help you better understand this assignment)
• Post a permalink to your shift on our blog (as a comment here, or a new post) with a paragraph about your intervention.
  Here’s how you can reach the permalink to your shift:
  

Recommended Reading:

• Mushon Zer-Aviv, Interface as a Conflict of Ideologies (April, 2007)

Optional:

• ShiftSpace Presentation at ITP

Juliette:

• Go through the materials
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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.

Enjoy!

You already know the drill, you choose an environment and start exploring, trying to surprise yourselves and to come up with new perspectives and understanding of the issues and debates within the new media discourse.

What do I mean by richer? We are going to extend our weapons of choice. I mean we are going to use more than text for our posts:

• Audio (podcasts)
• Videos (vodcasts)
• Slideshows
• Comic strips
• Flash animations
• Software
• Annotated Maps
• Annotated webpages
• Your medium of choice here

The post itself would use “rich” media as its leading medium for the post (with text used to fill in the blanks), the comments are still textual (Not to say you can’t post a video response if you so wish).

I want YOU to be the producers of the rich-media you post (no: “Look what I’ve found on YouTube. Done”).

For the class after Spring Break (March 23rd):

• Choose a subject. If you want our feedback on your ideas, post them by Saturday 4pm, so you can still create the content in time.
• Post a short introduction post to your travelogue using the rich format. Try to present both your area of research and the media of choice.
• Refer to the how-to page to learn more about how to post different stuff. If you have questions, search the web, if the web has answers, share them with us.
• If you still do not know how to post your thing, email me, I am very open to adding plug-ins to our WordPress. If you want me to do that, email me after researching the plugins. (I recommend you try to solve things by yourselves prior to asking me for help)
• I am open to collaborations (in the price of higher expectations).
• Post 4+ comments to your fellow students posts. Try to give constructive feedback on both content and use of media.

Required Listening + Reading:

• Networks – The Science-Spanning Disciplines / Anna Nagurney
  make sure to follow her presentation slides too
  [podcast]http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/ITC.MF2005-AnnaNagurney-2005.05.01.mp3[/podcast]
• Read Part 1 of The Principle of Notworking Geert Lovink: Multitude, Network and Culture (up to page 11)
• Comment on the summary.

Recommended Reading:

• Review of The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (2 reviews + 1 response)

For Leslie:

• Read the article, the essay and watch the introduction
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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.

Enjoy, and see you next week!

Enjoy!

Let’s conclude our 3rd travelogues and start minding the digital media around us.

Final research post – by Friday the 5th:

• Post your final research post(s) based on the process you’ve been leading in the past 3 weeks.
• Try to develop some insightful conclusions / questions / critique of your explored environment.
• Comment on at least 4 posts.

Research conclusion (/product) – by Monday the 8th, 4pm:

• Imagine we’ve never read your previous posts, think of them as your process and at this post as the final product to the level that this post could be reprinted (so to speak) in another site out of the context of an accumulative student research work
• Post your concluding post for this travelogue.
• Comment on other students posts as you see fit.
• Be prepared to discuss your favorite (/most note-worthy) travelogues in class.

Required Reading / Viewing:

• Adam Greenfield at PICNIC08: The Long Here, the Big Now, and other tales of the networked city:

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• Dan Hill, The City As A Platform
  (The first part is fun but can get slightly tiring, feel free to fast forward to the second part starting with: “This somewhat banal sketch of an average high street is very deliberately based on the here and now; “)
• Read and comment on the summary.

Recommended Reading:

• Julian Bleecker, Why Things Matter – A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things

Niharika:

• Go through the materials.
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, ideally running some threads between them (you can use some wiki or collaborative writing software to write the post and then publish it under one of your names).
• 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.

Enjoy

Wed, Mar 3rd – CC Salon NYC: Opening Education

Eric Frank, Neeru Paharia & more

The Creative Commons Salon NYC is back in action on March 3rd at the Open Planning Project’s uber cool penthouse space from October. The theme for this salon is “Opening Education”, and if you don’t really know what that means, think CC licenses as applied to various learning contexts and you’re off to a good start. To learn more, come by for a good time and free (as in beer) beer.

THE DETAILS (RSVP for updates!):

Wednesday, March 3rd, from 7-10pm
The Open Planning Project
148 Lafayette St
Between Grand & Howard
New York, NY

Thu, Mar 4th – Collaborative Futures Book Launch & Talk

Michael Mandiberg & Mushon Zer-Aviv

March 4, 2010; 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
Eyebeam – 540 W21st Street, New York

Upgrade! NY presents:
Collaborative Futures Book Launch & Talk
a book about free collaboration written collaboratively in 5 days

Watch the live video stream on March 4 at 7:30PM (EST) and participate in the discussion!

Over 5 days in mid January 2010 the Transmediale festival locked 6 writers and 1 programmer in a Berlin hotel room to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, and ended the week with a book.

Transmediale Artistic Director Stephen Kovats will be on hand to join Eyebeam Senior Fellow Michael Mandiberg and Eyebeam Honorary Resident Mushon Zer-Aviv, to talk about the process of writing the book, and some of their discoveries in the collaborative process. Stephen Kovatz will also talk about the ‘Futurity Now’ concept of TM10 in general and particularly in the context of the Collaborative Futures book sprint.

Fri, Mar 5th – Trolls Among Us: From Phreaking to Trolling

Gabriella Coleman

ITP
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Why have geeks been compelled to protest the Church of
Scientology vehemently for nearly two decades? This talk starts with
this question to  present a cultural history and political analysis of
one of the oldest Internet wars, often referred to as “Internet vs
Scientology.” During the 1990s, this war was waged largely on USENET (a
large scale messaging board system), while in recent times it has taken
the form of “Project Chanology.” This project is orchestrated by a
loosely defined group called “Anonymous” who has led a series of online
attacks and real world protests, often using a variety of media, against
Scientology. I argue that to understand the significance of these
battles and protests, we must examine how the two groups stand in a
culturally antipodal relation to each other. Through this analysis of
cultural inversion, I will consider how long-standing liberal ideals
take cultural root in the context of these battles, use these two cases
to reveal important political transformations in Internet/hacker culture
between the mid 1990s and today and finally will map the tension between
pleasure/freedom (the “lulz”) and moral good (”free speech”) found among
Anonymous in terms of the tension between liberal freedom and trollish trickery.

For the next two weeks we will be charging directly into the third travelogue. We will also be making a serious critique of Wikipedia and the peer production and 2.0 that we just loooove so much.

By this coming Sunday 4pm:

• Based on the feedback you got, decide on your third travel destination.
• Dive into the new media environment destination through a post laying out the current events or the relevant timely reference that points into your travelogue. Title your post with the initial question you want to inquire into. 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 norms to learn more about their nature.
• If you’re into Twitter (or interested to try it out), you might want to experiment with live micro-blogging as a research tool. If you come up with interesting results and methodologies, share them on our blog
• Comment on at least three posts.

By Tuesday:

• Optionally keep us in the know about your progress, this can be a short update or a longer one, or even a short reference to your recent travel (new finding based on comments you got, a new interesting fork or implementation of ‘Live Stories’, a call for action from your new friends in the “Tea Party” movement or whatever) and where next does it direct you.
  * Posting a second time this week is encouraged but not required, remember not to over saturate your audience’s short attention span and generally valuable time.
• Comment a lot more (at this point I hope you don’t need numbers, numbers will always betray you, you can only trust people…)

Required reading / writing:

• The Digital Given–10 Web 2.0 Theses by Ippolita, Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter
• World Wide Mush – Jaron Laneir (in the WSJ)
• Read Jimena’s summaries.
• Choose (at least) 2 of the following:
  • Laneir’s Op-Ed
  • any of the 10 theses
  • any of the responses to Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism (from the required reading)
• Write (at least) 2 responses to the points/response/theses as a comment to Jimena’s post (feel free to comment beyond that, we have some pretty provoking ideas to discuss this week)

Very Recommended Reading:

• Jaron Lanier – Digital Maoism
• Responses to Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism

For Jimena:

• Read the articles & responses
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday at 4:00pm, run some threads between them.
• Be prepared to present the article and lead the discussion in class. (make some notes for yourself, even share them in a post)
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.

Please RT!

On February 9th Google have unvailed Google Buzz, a service that involuntarily transforms every Gmail user’s private contact list into a public social network. While Google has suffered from privacy concerns in the past, Buzz is considered by many angry users to be crossing a line. Many loyal Google users including myself have hence chosen to disable the service. I present a list of reasons why you and your contact list should do that too.

Read on (and feel free to comment) here: #BuzzOff: 10 reasons to turn Google Buzz off

Very nice work on the second travelogue, I think many of you went through a really interesting journey and came up with some interesting treasures to show the folks back home. I also think we managed to develop a pretty good level of discussion and I hope this continues and even intensifies in the next travelogues.

Speaking of which, we will now launch the third travelogue in which we up the ante by adding a requirement – this time we will be doing some live reporting.

• The target destination of your next travelogue will fundamentally involve current events – meaning it will focus on a story that is evolving as we speak/read/write/comment and through the process of you writing the posts. (Nadine’s Ushahidi travelogue and Harris’s Lying experiments are both great examples of that)
• I want you to surprise us, ideally you will find a story which have had little or no coverage yet, or provide a unique perspective on an event going on right now.
• I do want you to do your own leg (/eye/finger) work but if you want more inspiration there are a bunch of sites and services that cover trending topics in the field.
• More examples: I had a student cover a user strike on e-bay, following the site’s change of terms and conditions. Another student has tried to research ‘Improve Everywhere’ by becoming a member. Another one researched the ‘Don’t Date Him, Girl’ site and ended up creating a big controversy there, which was actually quite revealing (she ended up actually creating the story she was covering).
• What is New Media? I didn’t try to have us answer this question yet for a reason, but if you need some reassurance to your ideas of what falls in the scope of our research, Wikipedia provides a fair definition:
  

  New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies described as “new media” are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, interactive and impartial.

  This means new media is more than just the websites, web-applications or the internet at large. While it’s fair to say that the web offers the widest variety of subjects within new media, it will be great if we cross to other aspects of it (mobiles, wearables, location aware, bio-computing, gaming, free and open-source software, electronics, surveillance, network cultures… so much more)

• Do not hesitate to embed yourselves in the travelogue if it makes sense – meaning, you can be more than a spectator/anthropologist you can become a part of the environment you are exploring, maybe even change it.

For next week:

• Choose a couple of options for a new media environment to explore through your third (more involved) travelogue. (optionally:) Post briefly soon with your vetted options so we can help you decide. (Required:) Write an introductory post to your new travel destination including your proposed mode of operation.
  * 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 5 comments (or more) to your fellow students posts.

Required viewing & reading:

• Watch: The Wealth of Networks – A presentation by Yochai Benkler (also available as audio).
• Read: Excerpts from The Success of Open Source – by Steven Weber.
• Read & comment on: Honieh’s summary

Recommended reading:

• Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue* – by Yochai Benkler & (our) Helen Nissenbaum
• The Cathedral and The Bazaar – by Eric Raymond (available in tons of other languages and formats online)

Optional extra viewing (which Honieh can but is not required to summarize):

• Yochai Benkler: After Selfishness – Wikipedia 1, Hobbes 0 at Half Time
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

Honieh:

• Read and watch this week’s materials
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4:00pm, including your takes on it.
• Be prepared to present the material in class (prepare bullet points, even post them as a part of your post).
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
• Enjoy.

good luck!

By Friday 4pm:

• If you got any feedback in class, summarize it in a comment on your own latest post.
• Comments at least twice to other posts on the blog

By Monday 4pm (preferably earlier):

• Optionally, post again some time this week with more findings (you don’t have to)
• 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.
• You should not assume the readers are familiar with your previous posts so try to make this post stand for itself.
• Post at least another three comments on other travelogues.

Required

• Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture presentation:

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog: Toward a critique of the social web
• Joost Smiers: What if We Would Not Have Copyright? – from MyCreativity Reader (pp. 193-205)
• Read and comment on Harris’s summary

Recommended

• Steal This film 2: Trial Version
• Jenkins, Henry: Taking the You Out of YouTube?

Harris:

• Go through the materials
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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.

you can go back to using Google now*

Travelogue 2, week 2:

Here goes:

• Ask a question:
  In the next 36 hours (before 6am Thursday morning) publish a post with your main question as a title and a one paragraph description in the content.
• By next class time post at least once (more) to the blog reporting from the new media environment you are researching. Please be sure to write and 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 would help you get your message across and might make your post more appealing to read and provoking to discuss. Foster the discussion on your post and try to learn from it. After describing your environment first, you now go further in, trying to challenge your own preconceptions about it. Do not hesitate to change your initial focus if through the process you discover a much more interesting story on your way to your initial travelogue destination. (No conclusions are necessary yet)
• Comment on at least 3 posts (at least).

Remember: 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)

Weekly Topic: Networked Groups and Social Networks

Required reading

• Danah Boyd: Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? (available as audio as well on the same link)
• Clay Shirky Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
• Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Event Video/Audio)
• Elizabeth’s summary + at least one comment on the readings and analysis offered 
  

Recommended Reading

• Clay Shirky: “Sharing Anchors Community” from Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
  (I will lend the book to Elizabeth, but recommend you all try to read it, it’s a realy great book).

Elizabeth

• Read the articles and watch the video
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday at 4:00pm, 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.

Hi Mom,

I am sorry but I won’t be using my Gmail this week. It’s for class… an experiment. Don’t ask…
Anyway, until next Tuesday please email me at yourson@some-other-obscure-email-service.com

I promiss it is not personal, I still love you and dad. But I have to do this.
I hope you can understand and will still love me even after a week without Google.

Your son,
Son

For Next Week (until Feb 2nd):

Experiment: A week without Google

In the coming week starting from the end of this class we will attempt to make it through a whole week without using any Google service. Not Google Search, not Gmail, not Google Talk, not Google Video, not Google Docs, not Google Maps, not Google Earth, not Google News, not Google Groups, not Youtube, not Google Video, not Blogger, not Picasa, not Google Calendar, not Google Checkout, not iGoogle, not Google Translate,not Google Voice, not Google Chrome, not Google Wave, not Google Sidewiki, if you have an Android phone, you are not allowed to use Google services with it, talk and text only… you get the point. (for a partial list of what you are not allowed to use, go here… while you still can…)

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:

1. Whenever we are passively exposed to Google content (an embedded Google video, map, and so on…) we post that link to delicious.com (this is how to post to delicious.com) using the tags ‘tdmcc’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘ambushed’ (+whatever else you want to include)
2. Whenever we break and use a Google service, we report about it to the blog, as a comment on this post.
3. 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:

1. If you use Gmail, please make sure to set a forward on your email to another email service (either on or offline). Please do that as the first thing you do after this class, and not later than 8am tomorrow morning.
2. 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 ‘tdmcc’, ‘weekwithoutgoogle’ and ‘dodged’.
3. Share tactics on the blog. Work together to try to make it.
4. Previous classes found the use of this Firefox plugin useful, so if you find you just can’t trust yourself use it to block any Google domain. In the options add the following urls:

   *.google.*
   *.youtube.*
   *.googlegroups.*
   *.blogspot.*
   *.blogger.*
   *.gmail.*
   *.picasa.*
   *.google-analytics.*
   

   (am I missing anything?)(I know I am)

This is trust based only, but those of us 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)

Come up with a subject for your second log–your own free-formed New Media Travelogue.

• This time you will research a media environment of your choosing. 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 happened with Obama’s Blackberry? Is Google pulling out of China? What is the anthropology of LOL Cats? whatever, it’s up to you.
• 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.
• This Travlogue will continue for 3 weeks

By Sunday 4pm:

Write one short post introducing your desired ‘travel destination’. You can suggest more than one idea and have us help you choose on the comments and in class.

By class time:

Comment on at least 3 other posts, ideally giving feedback and reference to more info on your fellow student’s subject of research.
Feel free to explore and surprise yourselves (and us).

Class Topic: Privacy, Google & Panopticon 2.0

Challenge:

Follow the rules for the class challenge – A week without Google

Required Reading/Listening:

• Cory Doctorow, Scroogled
• From On The Media:
  http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2008/09/12/segments/108969
  &
  
  http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2008/09/12/segments/108972

• Facebook’s move ain’t about changes in privacy norms / danah boyd

• Dan’s summary + at least one comment 
  

Recommended Reading:

• This Week In Google 25: The People’s Republic of Google (mins: 02:00-53:36)
  [podcast]http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/twig0025.mp3[/podcast]

Further optional reading (Dan, you don’t have to summarize this one):

• My general thoughts on Google in China (written long before the January showdown) / Siva Vaidhyanathan

Dan

• Read the articles and listen to the audio segments
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm, 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!

1. Watch Adam Curtis’s The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom
2. Each choose one topic that stood out, intrigued, irritated, disturbed or made you tick in any way and try to discover the discourse around it through research and expand it through your own commentary.
3. Write at least one posts to the class blog before Sunday, 4pm. Make sure to include references and links where needed and to expose the discussion in an enticing post that would make the rest of the class interested enough to discuss it.
4. Choose at least three of the posts published by other students in the class and comment on them (in the post’s comments section).
5. Be prepared to present the posts you chose to react to next week to the class.
6. Additionally: Write a short comment to the Trap post about how do you see the relevancy of the trap to the new media discourse.

Required material:

• The death of the news / By Gary Kamiya
• Brooke, Clive and Ethan at Aspen / Brooke Gladstone, Clive Thompson and Ethan Zuckerman [from 'On The Media']
  
• Alexandra’s Summary
• Comment to the text and panel and to the ideas expressed in Alexandra’s summary

Suggested Material:

• Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over / Jay Rosen

Alexandra:

• Read the two articles and listen to the On The Media segment
• Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday 4pm
• Be prepared to present the article in class
• Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
• Enjoy.

See you all next week.

I have embedded all the files here in the blog but in case you have a problem watching or prefer the option to watch it in full-screen, I have also uploaded it to my server, where you can download it as a Quicktime video.

Part I:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part III:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And now, discuss: Why do you think I have found this video relevant to our discussion of new media? What kind of lessons / ideas did you draw from it that might extend our discussion?