Media
Media
A Message to ABC about the Presidential Debate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 04/16/2008 - 22:08Submitted at http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346:
I hope you are truly ashamed for having produced the worst Presidential debate on television. Some of us want to hear the possible next leaders of the free world talk about real issues.
What you did was a grave disservice to our country.
If you found the debate as vapid as I thought it was and believe that we as American's deserve better, I would strongly encourage you to find your own words to express your displeasure with ABC's handling of the debate.
Victoria Lindsey, Erin Markes and Avery Doninger
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 13:11Three teenage women provide very different insights into the use of the Internet by today’s youth.
Yesterday, Erin Markes, 19, appeared in court in a child dependency hearing to find out if she would get her four year old son, who suffers from lissencephaly back from the state. She entered a formal denial of her child neglect charges at the hearing and another hearing is scheduled for May 5. Ms. Markes is also scheduled to be arraigned on charges of child neglect on April 16th. Led by members of the Lissencephaly Network, there is a petition to Exonerate Erin and Give her child back.
While others have been using the Internet to plead Erin’s case, Dianne Fitzgerald, president of the Lissencephaly Network, and the person who started the petition reported that Erin had made use of the networks online forum to seek help in how to care for her child.
The second young woman I would like to highlight is Avery Doninger. I’ve written a lot about her case. She is the student that referred to ‘the douchebags at the central office’, was banned from the ballot on a school election and now is awaiting a ruling by the Second Circuit on her case. While the word ‘douchebag’ may not have been the best word to use in the blog post, it was part of an effort, including a mass emailing, to get people more involved in the school district. The response by the administration seems to be more about trying to discourage student involvement that it is about choice of words.
This leads us to the third young woman online. Victoria Lindsey, according to some other girls was ‘talking trash’ online. She was severely beaten, with the beating being video taped and placed online. The girls doing the beating are now facing twenty years to life in prison. For details, see the blog post on ProgressiveU: Victoria Lindsey Beating and the commentary by Shelly Palmer on Jack Meyer’s site, What We Can Learn From Eight Florida Teens.
Each of these stories tells us a little bit about how the Internet can be used for good or ill and how people may respond appropriately or inappropriately to content online.
So, my thoughts go out to Erin, Avery and Tori as they all deal with their moments of fame, amplified by the Internet.
Bong Hits 4 the Dalai Lama
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 04/09/2008 - 16:42The social media coverage of the torching of San Francisco cannot pass without comment; there is so much to talk about. Over on Twitter, Ruby tweeted, “Social media tipping point: there is so much micro-coverage of the SF protests that the media will have less leeway to get it wrong.”
This gets to a common talking point about social media. As more and more people can snap pictures or stream video from their cellphones directly to the web, the whole world starts watching in a whole new way. Perhaps the revolution will be televised afterall.
Andy Carvin has been providing great play by play on Twitter about the torch, pointing to qik videos of the protest, posing interesting questions and retweeting other fun comments from the microblogosphere. “Anyone wanna place bets when the first Free Mumia sign will be spotted at the SF torch protest?… retweeting @sacca: Ha! The Pro-China folks are being Rickrolled at high volume from an office window above Embarcadero!… retweeting @rockbandit: "I'll be honest. Its weird being at a protest in SF and not hearing 'no blood for oil'"
Andy wondered if he was “the only one who feels bad for the torch runners who may have dreamed a lifetime for the opportunity to run.” There is so much tied up in all of this. When Kim was a teenager, she had opportunity to either ride with the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team or go to college. She chose college, but has a special place in her heart for those going to the Olympics, and I suspect for the torchbearers.
Yet the torch bearing ceremony has always been a lightning rod for protests. The famous Bong Hits 4 Jesus case was about students who unfurled that banner during the passing of an Olympic torch. Now, I’m reading in various reports that the modern Olympics didn’t have a torch ceremony until 1936. The Associated Press puts it this way.
The Olympic flame wasn’t part of the ancient games, and the torch relay didn’t become a fixture in the modern Olympics until the 1936 Berlin Games, when it was part of the Nazi pageantry that promoted Hitler’s beliefs of Aryan supremacy in the world of sports.
So, I wonder, will the bridge will be carried by Dustin Hoffman the wrong way across the upper level of the Bay Bridge; “And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know.”
Blogger's Notebook #vw2008
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 10:57There is so much interesting stuff at Virtual Worlds 2008. I need to find some time to sit down and write about all of it in a good format. I also need to find a chance to rest a little. I was up late late night and early this morning. On top of that, I don't want to miss anything. The keynotes, panels and discussions are fascinating.
So, quick thoughts that I hope to get back to: 3DConnection, the 3D mouse by Logitech. Very cool. Needs a little work in a few areas. Has some very interesting potential for some sort of vMTV, Guitar Hero, DDR, machinima mashup. I wanna play with that.
Qwak. When I first got here, someone asked if anyone really uses it. They have a booth here and I learned a little bit about people using it. Then, I was at a panel where a guy talked about great success with Qwak as a gateway drug to harder core virtual worlds. Yup. Qwak is another one to keep an eye on.
Barbie Girls, Neopets, Virtual MTV, and the coming VLES. Generation Avatar. These folks get virtual worlds in a way that Linden Lab just doesn't. Linden Lab needs to find someone they can steal from one of those groups if they want to make Second Life into what it can and should be. Meanwhile, all the educators in Second Life, they need to connect with the folks at the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME). I don't know how much ACME is looking at Virtual Worlds, but it is an area that needs a lot of focus.
Plenty of other notes. A discussion with Pathfinder Linden, folks from VastPark, and others.
SLNN and the Washington Post
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 18:24Today, Dana Milbank wrote this column about yesterday's hearing on Capitol Hill about Second Life. He had a very different perspective than I did, and I wrote this comment on his column:
As the business editor for the Second Life News Network, I also attended the hearings of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, or at least I assume it was the same hearing. You can read my coverage about it at SLNN.COM
The hearing I attended addressed issues of businesses like IBM and Chevrolet using Second Life. It talked about government agencies like NOAA and NASA. It talked about non-profit groups like the American Cancer Society and the autistics.org.
Issues about consumer protection, child protection and terrorism were addressed. Since this was a hearing of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet issues of broadband penetration, the digital divide and net neutrality were also key.
The witnesses that I saw were not goofy characters. They included an executive from one of the most successful companies in the emerging virtual worlds market, as well as a vice president of research at IBM. Half of the witnesses had Ph.Ds.
People have suggested that if you want serious news and meaningful explorations of the issues you should read at the Washington Post. If you want goofy characters you should read the media produced by people in Second Life. Looking at this article and my article, I would like to suggest that perhaps this is backwards.
