Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Changes in travel

When I moved from Florida to Seattle, and then on to Alaska, in 2001 I started a blog to keep my family and friends informed. We were in an accident the second day, and even though I took digital photos we had to go to Kinko’s to load them onto a computer and email them. Internet wasn’t common, there was no such thing as wifi or broadband. Our only hope of connecting was a local phone number for a dial up connection through one of our provider—but the catch was that we had to check for the numbers before we were in the location and write them down to bring with us.

Even after paying for time at the copy shop to get the photos up there, hosting was hard to find. The blog I was using didn’t offer space for photos, and when I tried to upload them to a site I had hosting space on my account was frozen for pulling it from an outside page.

Fast forward to my road trip out of Alaska, through the Yukon, into Portland and then across to Pittsburgh over six years later. Wifi or broadband in every hotel and most places we stop for coffee or food as well. Cell phone coverage through the entire trip, plus cell phones that send photos and videos and audio clips. GPS to find what city will have dinner and an available hotel room.

Wow, things are so much easier now. 

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Exploration after my presentation

A participant in my media agendas presentation (yes, there were a couple) made an excellent point that I need to explore further. She said she has been reading alternative media for their positive coverage of things such as the government as opposed to coverage only of mistakes. Past research has shown that mainstream media has a bias toward negativity, but it’s more than that. My research was limited in that I stuck to established categories that show links between topics in the media and in public opinion polls. Although they were broken down into many subcategories, the categories themselves are very general.

Is there a difference in the topic of what government has done right versus what it has done wrong? I would say yes. Especially if it’s not the same policy being evaluated from opposite sides of the political spectrum, which would make it more a matter of framing. 

reading: Cult of the Amateur

I’m not sure how much more I can read, and I’m just starting. If it doesn’t flesh out into something more than the desperate ranting of a man frightened of losing his imagined cultural control, I may not make it to the last half of the book.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Nielsen fails to support web strengths

I was shocked and angered to see Jakob Nielsen’s response (below) to a student highlighted in his April 21, 2008, Alertbox email:

I WON’T DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Last week I got this email:

“My name is Donald Duck, and I am currently a junior psychology major at Duckburg College. For my senior thesis, I would like to conduct some usability studies in the process of redesigning my old high school’s website. In making this my senior thesis, part of what I have to do is find out what research is currently being done in the field, in order to build upon it. I do not know much about usability or interface design from a research perspective. I am wondering if you might be able to point me in the right direction for where I can get started learning about this field.”

Sorry - I am not going to do your homework for you. Even today, there is such a thing as the library. Or search engines that rapidly will turn up articles such as “Usability 101” to serve as a starting point for online research if you can’t be bothered to crack open a book or research journal:  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

What good is a usable site if you refuse to connect with the readers? The ability to contact people otherwise remote is at the center of the internet’s democratization of networking. Unless more than the name, “Donald Duck” is surely not the sender, was edited by Nielsen, it appears that the student was asking for resource suggestions to start researching not a 250-word essay to plagiarize.

On top of that, although I am an avid fan of libraries—why discount the student for contacting the most notable primary resource on the topic rather than relying on secondhand information watered down by publishing houses and buried in the stacks? Yet another thing that a usable internet gives us is access to the source.

Nielsen was flat out rude and inconsistent with usability—on top of which, he downplays his own site by referring to it only as a source to use as a last, lazy, resort. Poor form.

Pandora’s support for middle-class musicians

Just got out of the SNCR forum presentation by the creator of Pandora, Tim Westergren. I remember loving Pandora back in 2000-2001 when I worked in Tallahassee. Then it disappeared. Then it reappeared. I’m glad it’s back, even though it’s nowhere near as awesome in its new formation (can’t click through more than a certain number per hour, ads) ... at least they are able to keep it up and running.

The parallels between news media and music were touched on, and that got me thinking. The internet has definitely made a more (genuinely) democratic means of networking available, moving away from leaders and toward multiple centers rather than following one big talking head. That scares the shit out of the people who like working in the crumbling network structure based on figureheads and fraternities. But it excites the hell out of me. Why let one corporation take 90% of the insane profits of the 1% of musicians who make it, all the while keeping down 99% of the people with music (or art or news or whatever) in their souls when that insane profit can be split up amongst all of the people who want to work at making and sharing music—giving them all enough to live even if no one gets filthy rich? Fuck the man. Here’s to the many.

But, conversation kept meandering away from music and opportunities for independent musicians toward business models. It seems like a lot of the people at this conference are here to be told how to make money with XY&Z—even at the expense of attending a later presentation on Net Neutrality, which could make or break their ability to even use social networking.

I’m going to enjoy going to the smaller presentations on the two tracks that everyone else is missing. (I’m also thinking no one will show up to mine tomorrow, because not only am I not going to tell them how to make money but it’s the last session and it’s beautiful here, who wants to be inside?)

Monday, April 21, 2008

Birthday Wanderings

Yesterday I turned off my cell phone for almost half the day as a birthday gift to myself. I headed out to the big, downtown library to get some reading done. The research I’m presenting this week was done a year ago, so even though I have it all prepared, I wanted to read up on anything related from the past year.

Somehow I passed the library and figured I’d just go over that next hill to see what was there, it turned out to be a part of Schenley Park I hadn’t been to yet. When I pulled up to a pond with a fountain surrounded by trees dripping with magnolia blossoms, I knew I needed to be sitting at a picnic table in the 70-degree sunshine being scoped out by a squirrel instead of inside an air conditioned library.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Google News

I’ve had “media psychology” in my google news since 2004. Typically 4 or 5 headlines show up that are slightly related. Today was the first day when there were more headlines in this category than any other. 

Friday, April 11, 2008

Movie Madness: Filming Shelter

Shelter is being filmed in Pittsburgh now, and will soon be taking over Braddock. At some point they will be in Mayor John’s house, the Braddock library, and even in Jodi’s bank.

They offered Mayor John a part in the film, I think he’ll be meeting Julianne Moore and wheeling her on a gurney. Cindy told me her sister went to school with Moore at JDHS, so that’s an interesting twist.