A Foreseeable Risk of Substantial Disruption
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/30/2008 - 04:33Thursday was a bad day for me. I received an email from a media watchdog organization declining my job application. I received an email from the DNCC declining my application to be a blogger at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, and I received a copy of the Second Circuit of Appeals decision to uphold the District Courts denial of the Doninger’s preliminary injunction motion. Yet all of these tied together into a fairly consistent theme.
In the rejection letter from the media watchdog organization, I was told that they “needed someone with more traditional journalism experience”. I can see why they say that. They are a fairly traditional watchdog organization. It is important to them that their watching of the media does not create any substantial disruption of the media landscape.
The rejection letter from the DNCC didn’t give any reasons other than that “Several hundred great blogs submitted applications.” It suggested that I check out “The Big Tent” organized by “DailyKos, ProgressNow, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and the Wright Group… with some of the most well known faces in the non-profit and political world, as well as food, drinks, entertainment.” I’m not sure that well known faces and entertainment being gatekept by people making their name by writing about crashing gates is going to bring about any substantial disruption.
In 2004, bloggers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston were a substantial disruption, at least to the media narrative. People wanted to talk with and about bloggers about how they were changing the media landscape. Subsequent research found that the bloggers, myself included, didn’t really bring about any substantial disruption in the media landscape, but at least coming into the convention there was a foreseeable risk that that might occur.
Many great blogs have been credentialed this year and the Democrats have chosen to have a blog credentialed to sit with each State delegation. This could bring a whole new perspective on the convention, creating a new foreseeable risk of substantial disruption, but I worry that it may not. It may be just part of the new generation of political media, the new boys on the bus.
I’ve often commented about blogs being passé. They are so 2004. “New Media” is being replaced by “Social Media” and I wonder how much the bloggers of 2008 will have moved beyond 2004 style blogging. What role will streaming multimedia, microblogging and lifestreams fit into the picture? That may be where the real potential for a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption of the political media process exists this time.
All of this takes me to the Doninger case. The Second Circuit wrote that “Because Avery’s blog post created a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption at LMHS, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion. We therefore affirm the denial of Doninger’s preliminary injunction motion.”
The substantial disruption that Avery’s words in the blog post are accused of creating a foreseeable risk of, is citizens in the school district getting more involved the school and thereby in the community.
I disagree with the court that this sort of ‘substantial disruption’ is something the existing political structure should be protected against. Instead, the ability to create this sort of ‘substantial disruption’ is exactly what our Constitution is supposed to be protecting the right of each of us to participate in.
The candidate at the Democratic National Convention most likely to become the Democratic Party Nominee for President is running on the slogan “Change We Can Believe In”. We are most likely to see a candidate at the podium who says, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
This candidate has brought many new people into involvement with the political process, similar to how Avery worked to get more people involved in the politics surrounding her high school.
So, I am frustrated. Unlike Barack Obama or Avery Doninger, I am not managing to generate a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption to current media and political status quo. Yet looking at the successes of Barack Obama and Avery Doninger, I continue to have hope that I may yet contribute to such substantial disruptions.
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Where are you? Mixed groups for Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 09:56I had a wonderful weekend ‘horse camping’ with my wife and youngest daughter. I am finally home, in front of my computers and trying to reconnect and sort through thousands of emails.
I have spent a little time digging through the emails to the Group Psychotherapy mailing list and wanted to hit on several of the themes that have come up. In the discussion about online therapy, Charlie had a great line,
'Where are you?' which can be taken in so many ways. Either as a demand, a simple request or a plaintive cry.
My initial reaction is that ‘where are you?’ can also be a question showing caring, connectedness. I want to know where some of my friends on the list are. I think about Toby and her mother and her Aunt. I think of Ofra and her grandchildren. I think of Sheila, and too all of them I think of asking them ‘where are you?’ as more of an emotional, psychic temperature taking. A telling of the other, I care, I want to know how you are doing. I suspect this may be part of the aspect of constant partial attention that I talk a lot about.
Digital natives need to feel constantly connected with their friends. Perhaps some of it has to do with the age of many digital natives. Teenagers spend time trying to define their identity. Identity is tied to the groups we are part of, and as people work on defining their identity, they need to feel especially connected to their groups.
Carol had a wonderful comment about this saying
I wonder how many old issues of inclusion and exclusion get activated when one is "invited".
...
the facebook phenomenon feels very "junior high" to me when it comes to internet networking
Yeah, that sounds about right. It is probably amplified in cases because all we have is the generic text asking someone to be a friend, with perhaps a little added personal text. There is the ability to write it off as if the person didn’t get the request. There is less of the shuffling of the feet, looking away from the person out of embarrassment, shyness or fear. So, we send more messages to be connected. We explore new ways of using text. We put up pictures of ourselves on Facebook and join groups to define ourselves and the idea of simply leaving Facebook or not putting up personal information just isn’t realistic. This gets back to a discussion from Computers, Freedom and Privacy last week that I want to explore more.
However, I want to get back to the emails from my friends on the Group Psychotherapy list. In the discussion about whether of not therapists should add clients as friends on social networks, or accept friendship requests from clients may require another variable in the calculation. Are the clients digital natives? Are they digital immigrants? Is there a digital aborigine in the mix? Is it some sort of mixed group?
I suspect that accepting or declining friendship in a social network may have very different meanings to people who have grown up in a digital world, where everyone is on social networks and everyone is everyone else’s friend, from people who have come to online social networks later in life and experience them as a foreign way of connecting and communicating.
To push this a little further, Marv commented,
we encourage patients to choose therapists with knowledge of their qualifications, although it¹s startling to find how many new patient¹s are choosing therapists based only on internet research.
As I read this, I wondered how important is it for a therapist to understand the culture that a client is part of. I’m sure this is a topic that people can run a long way with. How much must a therapist understand digital culture when dealing with digital natives? Perhaps this goes back to some of the questions that Bob deals a lot with.
So, I post these as ideas for my friends to ponder.
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 06:00
The Sojourner
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/27/2008 - 08:06For the past few days, I’ve been offline, camping with my family. Before that, I was at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference for several days, and before that I had various software programs to write, websites to build, and a trip to Virginia to bring my daughters home from college. So, last night, I sat down to an email box with over 2500 unread emails and 3500 spam emails.
I deleted the spam with only a minimal glance to make sure nothing fell into the spam box by mistake. I scanned the unread emails and found around 500 that I moved off into folders which I might read someday if I ever have time. For all practical purposes, I’ve deleted them. Then I glanced through the remaining emails to see if there were any of particular importance. If I’ve missed yours, I apologize, please be patient.
The one email that particularly caught me attention was simply titled, “The Sojourner”. Soj, as she was called, has been a key part of the fabric of Second Life for nearly four years. She was part of Brigadoon, an early support community in Second Life. The first time that I recall meeting her was last February as she worked on bringing together support groups in a health care coalition.
In subsequent meetings, she spoke about her own struggles recovering from three different strokes. She spoke about how important Second Life was as a community for stroke victims. As I opened the email, I wondered what great new adventure Soj was setting off on now.
The answer struck me with grief. From the The Tribute to The Sojourner, A True Second Life Heroine, 8/18/2004-5/25/2008, I learned of her passing.
I immediately logged into Second Life and went to the memorial that has been built for her there. Along the pathway, there are all kinds of monuments to her work. At the center is a large area covered with candles. There are so many, so close together that the effect is overwhelming. It takes a special effort to read the candles.
I wandered around reading the inscriptions floating above one candle after another. People talked, should we move the candles and spread them out? Yet it was felt that it was more appropriate that the effect be overwhelming. The contributions that Soj has made to Second Life and to so many people here was overwhelming, as is the grief of so many people that loved her deeply.
I took a picture of the candles in a special way that captured to chaos of the text. I wandered from candle to candle copying down the texts. I saved much of it on the Wiki and others have checked candles and added additional texts.
I only knew Soj for a very short time and the words that I can share pale in comparison. There are many great tributes to Soj and a couple jump out at me.
From your first day in SL when we met
You had a Dream
I am glad i could help you get it started
so long ago in a place called Brigadoon
You will be missed here.
-- Coos YellowknifeOne Short Sleepe past, we wake eternally,
and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
-- John Donne.Soj, you got your second set of wings! Godspeed.
Rest In Peace, The Sojourner
Horse Camping
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/26/2008 - 16:00Years ago, when I was Fiona’s age, our family would gather up tents, sleeping bags, flashlights, all the kids and everything else that was needed for a family vacation to go camping in the woods. We would usually drive in our old blue Dodge van to some state campground on the seashore and spend the week sleeping in tents and swimming in the ocean. Sure, there were bugs, and sunburns, and the occasional meal that somehow ended up with some sand in it. There were probably other complications that my parents kept well hidden from us kids, but all in all, it was the sort of idyllic experiences that inspired poets.
Kim’s family didn’t camp, so her idyllic childhood memories revolve around riding. When she was young, she would get on her horse and explore the riding trails of Connecticut. This was often done with friends from Pony Club and she grew up sleeping near her horse during those wonderful childhood experiences.
This weekend, we had the opportunity to mix these two experiences into something new for us and wonderful for Fiona. The folks at the barn where Fiona is riding go horse camping as often each summer as they can fit it in.
They invited us to join them this weekend, so I put the carrier on top of our little Toyota Prius and loaded the car with our tent, sleeping bags, clothes, food, and Fiona and our chocolate Labrador Barley. We headed off into the quiet corner of Connecticut, the wooded northeastern part of the state where woods and horses abound. I was concerned as I drove up. It seemed like the perfect weekend to go camping. Would the campground be full? The Department of Environmental Protection says “The Lost Silvermine Horse Camp reserves 22 campsites for people and their horses. The facilities are basic – campers are responsible for cleaning sites and carrying out all trash.“
Turning off the state highway to a paved road and then along a few unpaved roads, we eventually reached the horse camp. The sign advised that the area was for horse camping only. Soon we saw the horse trailers and our friends and their horses. To our surprise there were only four horse trailers there. Two of the trailers were our friends. One trailer was some other friends of our friends, and the fourth was someone we didn’t know. We parked at a small site that had about enough space for our car and our tent, and was right across the dirt road from our friends and their horses.
The weekend, with assorted trail rides and shared meals and trips to an ice cold swimming hole surpassed the idyllic memories of my childhood. Sunday afternoon a couple horse drawn wagons passed through the campground with a group of young riders on horseback amidst the wagons. As Fiona waved back surrounded by a group of Jack Russell terriers, I couldn’t help but wonder if we looked like modern day gypsies to these visitors.
Yet there was one dark cloud on the horizon. Our friends have been camping in this primitive campground for a decade. They have encouraged friends to come, but too many people cannot abide the bugs of camping, or the lack of an electrical hookups and modern plumbing.
Some people seem to think that this pristine campground is too wonderful to keep pristine and they want to begin a large scale renovation of the camp, trying to replicate larger camps in other states “and eventually create a campground suitable for large scale camping that would encourage tourism to the area and increased use on the trails, including having the space to which to host Competitive and Endurance events.”
We wondered how people in the quiet corner of Connecticut would feel about this potential influx, the demands on the local communities to improve roads and offer increased law enforcement. We wondered about the environmental impact of such a large project, yet mostly, we were just sad. We talked about major league sports where the cheap bleacher seats where regular folks could sit and watch a lazy summer afternoon ball game had been replaced by the sky boxes for corporate executives and worried if similar gentrification was coming to the beloved basic horse camp.
The lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” came to mind.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lotThey took all the trees
Put ‘em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em
So, Fiona got her first trail ride at a pristine primitive horse camp in the woods of the quiet northeast corner of Connecticut. Hopefully, she will get a few more chances to enjoy the natural surroundings before it goes upscale. In addition, we will keep our eyes open for other horse camps just in case this one gets destroyed.
