Honest to Blog Pt 2

My new project....

http://www.honesttoblogpt2.blogspot.com/

Hmm....

Occasionally there are some moments when I wish I was back in the class. It normally happens when I find some great picture or little article/news story that would have been great for a blog post or a teaching day or something. I guess during the semester I just became attuned to noticing applicable articles etc. 

I know that I can still post on the blog to share whatever I've found but it doesnt really seem to matter anymore now that no one is reading them constantly.....oh well. I guess I'll still post in the hopes that someone might see. Anyhow.....

This is America Happening

Color Palate

More Thoughts...

Some Thoughts at the End of Class...

Final Project

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Get-A-Cluetrain Manifesto

At the beginning of the class in September, I made a rule for myself that I would never use the blog for ranting or mindless drivel. I did so because I hated reading it when other people ranted so i figured they wouldn't want to read my rantings either. But after that class today, I'm making a new rule...let the rantings begin. (But only when absolutely necessary)

....

I wrote the previous paragraph directly after our most recent class on Thursday. I was angry and eager to vent. However, I (luckily) realized that while it would have made me feel better, it wouldn't have accomplished anything other than possibly make the situation worse. Since that class, I've had time to think over what happened and to work towards making a constructive critique rather than an angered rant. Therefore here are a few of my thoughts about that class and the subsequent points others have raised in the wake of the class...


The Get-A-Cluetrain Manifesto

1) (The best) classes are conversations.

2) Classes consist of human beings, not mind readers.

3) Expectations are best delivered from instructor to students when conducted in a normal human voice.

4) Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically necessary and should sound open, natural, and uncontrived.

5) People recognize what is expected from the sound of the instructors voice.
...
9) While the internet is enabling new forms of class organization it has not fundamentally altered how we, as students, have been trained to converse and exchange knowledge.

10) That is not to say that we are not striving to get smarter, more informed and organize in riskier ways. Participation in this class has fundamentally changed me.

11) People in classes like this have figured out that they get far better information and support from the resources than from one another...so much for professional rhetoric about using each other in an open source network to accomplish something.

12) There are secrets. What may work for the goose may not necessarily work for the gander.

14) One goose may not speak in the same voice as the rest. They direct their conversation at one intended audience and may sound hollow, flat and literally un-gooselike to the rest.

15) It is the homogenized sound of mission statements and brochures for rubber tubing that seem contrived and artificial.

16) It is the act of speaking without saying anything, of talking a lot but saying a little.

17) Those who assumes that all conversations are the same are kidding themselves. Those who assume that we are afraid of criticism are kidding themselves as well. It is only when those criticisms attack a lack of creativity (that we were not asked to apply) that a sense of annoyance is created.

34) Companies must share their concerns with their networked communities

43) Creativity and the desire to take risks only happen when the conditions are right. You cannot force or demand creativity. The best you can do is suggest it and those willing to take that risk will either take on the challenge or not. You cannot assume that by asking for it once, the desire will resurface again and again.

45) Anger tends to route around misunderstanding.

46) This class organizes students in many meanings of the world. Its effect has been more radical than any class I have experienced so far.

47) While this scares me witless, I should not resist the urge to improve these networked conversations.

48) When students are constrained by the fear of failing and ingrained rules, the types of conversations they participate in all sound remarkably like a boring recitation.

50) Today, conversations can be hyperlinked without being "creative" in their form. It is possible to learn a lot without creating something risky. Participating in something risky does not necessarily imply taking more from the experience, from the text. Respect for knowledge gained should win over respect for risks taken. Especially when that specific risk taken doesn't amount to any higher degree of understanding.

62) Students do not want to talk/listen to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in conversations that actually mean something.

64) Conversations that give access to information, plans, strategies, the best thinking and genuine knowledge. I will not settle for an abstract monologue "chock-a-block" with ear candy but lacking any substance.

73) You're invited, but it's my world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with me, get down off that camel!

Group 3's notes on readings for 12/4/08

Chapter 5

• Fort Business => once you enter the office the old hierarchy of business wants you to conform and have no connection to the outside world. That was then.....now they only way to succeed is to make as many connections to the outside world as possible while still remaining locked in the castle. Innovative workers should strive to lower the drawbridge.
  
• hyperlinks/networking - use all that you have, try to get into and have as many networks as possible
  

Chapter 6

• the system of command and control is a hard mold to break; get free from the assembly line method of organization
• the human voice is primary attractor

Chapter 7

• irony is the most common form of internet communication
• create a parallel infrastructure controlled by people acting in their own self interest
• human spirit is the casualty of a job
• invisibility and ignorance are powerful weapons
• no 'grand plan' for the internet

Get Down Off that Camel

A few things: Logistically, the 95 theses bother me, immensely. As introduced in the forward, the point of the book and theses is to present the some of the most fundamental issues of business operation in networked world in a clear, concise way but with humor. Frankly, there is nothing clear or concise about the theses and they're not funny either. It is as if there were drafted in a paragraph and then split up line by line. So while some of the points can operate on their own, the majority depend on previous lines for context and explanation. I hope the actual chapters are not put together in this haphazard manner.

A few I liked:

73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

Map of Online Communities

Click Here to Start

Ok, so I know that this is may seem infantile and I know that this is coming from a non-theorist/newbie in general...but I really don't think that the chart is that hard to comprehend. After the discussion in class (and the more interesting one that happened out of class) I went back and read and re-read the section entitled America (On Civilization III). The more I read it, the more I came to understand that the Fig. C is a pictorial representation of the entire chapter, but not one that hides a deeper meaning depending on how you read it. I believe that in the paragraphs within America, Wark sets up exactly how he wants you to read and analize the chart. He starts off in [052] by defining the x-axis of the 'graph'. "History is a story and geography an image of this topography, in which the boundaries are forever being expanded and redrawn." Wark defines the x-axis as time and each column as a specifc medium that "opens toward certain [specific] possibilities". But media that have been transformed through time. Each medium allows for a certain outcomes but each is also the starting point for the next, chronologically.

"The world of possibility is the world internal to the algorithim. So: a passage, mediated by the novel, from the topic to the topographic; a passage, mediated by television, from the topographic to the topological; a passage, medited by the game, from the topological to as yet unknown spaces..."

Fig. C exists to show the progression of media through time but with examples to show the direct application. The levels mentioned in the chapter parallel the changing complexity of the media and the thought processes/questions needed to achieve that new medium. Life gets progressively more complicated as the once straight lines of the place then of the map are folded onto one another to create a new space. "The line makes topics, maps them into the topographic, then folds the topographic into a digital topology...At each level of the actual unfolding of the line across the world, it offers a glimpse of the virtual in its own image." The simplicity of the story and the line is lost to the complexity of the game. "The question of the form of the game cannot be separated from the question of the form of the world - of gamespace."

Gamer Theory

Firstly, I like this book...I think. But I don't really think that it is conducive to the types of discussion that we are used to having. Judging from many posts and comments, it is a pretty good assessment to say that the majority of the class is confused and/or frustrated with the book. I am definitely among them. While I realize that I am judging this book from a place of very far down on the theory totem pole, I don't think that some aspects of this book are really as complicated as some would have us believe. I do understand that some of the points require a different kind of thinking and application to comprehend them, they are not necessarily hard.

Class Blog 11/18/08

12:06 - the human element. how are you?

12:08 - if gamespace is __ how does the critique work?

12:16 - Paragraph 23. bring back the human aspect back to the gamespace? Wark is critical of the digital in that there are only two choices - yes/no, 0/1...theres no room for maybe. Challenge the digital binary to get more from it. Digitization is the further establishment of stark choices. The largest problem w/ digitization is that fact.....no fluidity, no freedom to move between choices. We have to work on the gap betweent the 0 and the 1. Space within the binary.

The Right Way for E-Waste

For the Digitally Deceased, a Profitable Graveyard

There is something poignant about the process, the systematic destruction of these unwanted, in some cases never used, components. One more reminder of our disposable society.

Finding ways to dispose of America’s increasingly large stream of e-waste is difficult: an estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses every day. In a 2006 report, the International Association of Electronics Recyclers estimated that about 400 million pieces of e-waste are scrapped each year. And while some prominent manufacturers, like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have agreed to recycle their own equipment, such programs have so far made only a modest difference.

Ms. Kyle’s organization estimates that there are roughly 1,100 businesses in the United States and Canada that dispose of used electronic equipment, but that only a small percentage try to do it in an environmentally friendly way.

The company’s pledge to recycle with minimal environmental impact was another reason Hempstead was sold on e-Scrap. That impact could be enormous — for instance, the picture tubes in computer monitors and television sets can contain up to 10 pounds of lead, a toxic substance.

“We have a zero landfill policy,” Mr. Feinstein said, “and so do all our vendors.” He said he visited MaSeR periodically to ensure that the material was fully recycled.

Insult

Why Osama Doesn't Have A Facebook Account

Why Osama Doesn't Have a Facebook Account:

Al Qaeda may have been a pioneer in exploiting new media to spread propaganda and recruit members. But now, many experts feel the terror group is falling behind. Despite all the hand-wringing in U.S. intelligence circles, Osama & Co. don't seem to be comfortable with Web 2.0-style applications. Marc Lynch explains why, in a must-read post. Here's a snip:

Social networking: one of the biggest problems for a virtual network like AQ today is that it needs to build connections between its members while protecting itself from its enemies. That's a filtering problem: how do you get your people in, and keep intelligence agents out? An AQMonster.com database would be easy pickings - an online list of all the 'explosives experts' would be a gift to intelligence, no? An AQFacebook or AQSpace might create an identifiable universe of jihadist sympathizers, but again would probably help intelligence agencies as much as AQ. Perhaps an AQLinkedIn model, where members need to be recommended by a current member would reproduce the low-tech approach of allowing in trusted members and keeping out unknown quantities. This could potentially strengthen the 'organization' part... but at the expense of a greater distance from the pool of potential recruits who would not be sufficiently trusted to join. Overall it's hard to see how AQ could adapt social networking without creating such vulnerabilities. Its rivals, on the other hand, have no such problems - Muslim Brotherhood youth are all over Facebook.

Mobile, Mutable, Mixed and Mashed

Live Blog of Class 11/11/08

12:12 - media available to forward/send, tag/archive, searchable

12:18 - Bruns and Becky, Brandon, and Corey

12:32 - threat level? Really?...just say no. have had polarized news a while now. debate requires conflict. Bruns views ultimately require homogenity. problem is that mainstream media produces polarization and if they would simply get out of the way the population would naturally move together. blogs dont need to appeal to the masses.

12:37 - what about the social networking sites?

12:41 - if a group reaches consensus, any outlier who comes into that rhelm with a different view point they will be seen as a troll. Shirky and power laws

12:43 - myface and spacebook :). facebook is not for deliberation but for linking, expansion, forwarding of information. accessibility.

1:10 - Tools, France, or games?


Final list:
-- link/org
-- circulation -> advertising, forwarding/sending
-- niche networks
-- user generated, engaging
-- tag archive, searchable, accessibility
-- updating frequency
-- YouTube
-- don't forget the useless, playful, absorbing

Generation O

Presidential Election Delivers on Promise of New Generation of Voters

"Government under Mr. Obama, they believe would value personal disclosure and transparency in the mode of social-networking sites. Teamwork would be in fashion, along with a strict meritocracy."

"The point is that that communication technology is the tool that makes all things possible, from hook-ups and pop songs to protests or the president of their choice."

"There's a lot of attention deficit with this generation. You have to keep people engage and active because its a highly technical society and there are lots of ways to distract our minds."