Future social media could be the new “one small step for mankind”

My dad once told me how important it was for his generation to see humans walk on the moon. He believed that that single event would change the world forever, and humans would stop stupid things like war and poverty from continuing to happen because it wasn’t Americans on the moon, but citizens on Earth. That helped make the world just a little bit smaller.

Death to the libraries… and everything not copyrighted

We could soon be approaching a world where the mighty power of the copyright rules all. Instead of death plus 75 years for copyrights, it could be for infinity. Creativity would be completely stifled if no one could use others’ materials. The first major casualty of this type of world would be the public library. How can a person check out a book that isn’t allowed to be viewed without purchasing first? Your local Blockbuster movie store will have movies, games and now…books to rent.

“Lending libraries in particular are in jeopardy if publishers take the same hard line that the music and movie companies have taken, because in a pay-per-view copyright regime, lending becomes impossible.” (Gilmor, 219)

From pandit to pundit, and all the problems along the way

We are currently in the midst of a transformation of what a pandit is. Its definition is a “respected scholar,” but I personally have very little respect for most of them. In the ’30s, the “punditry” was a small, select group of intellectual white men who discussed the major problems of the day. Back then, though, this country was isolationist, so very few of them supported taking any action against Nazi Germany as it began its blitzkrieg of Europe.

Investigative journalism is getting a new name: blogs

I visited my parents last weekend and spent some time watching a segment on a local tv station online titled “Does it work?” The show’s purpose was to take products shown in infomercials and to test them to see if the claims made about the product was actually true. Some of the products worked, some did not. One of my first questions about the show was if the makers of the products or the public relations firms that represented the products had had a hand in determining which products worked and which didn’t. In other words, did the companies represented on the news show use their advertising dollars as a way to manipulate the outcome of the product, whether positively or negatively?  

 

Reporter covering Iraq mold blogs and stories

I remember when a military reporter from the San Antonio Express-News embedded with our unit in Iraq for a month, and along with his normal stories for the News section of the newspaper and Web site, he also published a blog. He used the blog as an extension for his news reporting – he wrote about his impressions of Iraq: the sights, smells and sounds of war. But he went beyond that, and wrote stories for his blog that wouldn’t be printed in the newspaper. For example, he wrote a story for the front page about two helicopter pilots who were about to turn 60 years old, were best friends and roommates. In his blog, though, he wrote about their experiences in Vietnam, and how they felt about the current war.

 

The ‘public beta’ without the ‘right spirits’

 

In 2005, the L.A. Times decided to try something revolutionary for an elite news outlet: they created a wikitorial, posting questions and comments from Times op/ed writers regarding the Iraq war, and let the readers write the commentary, with each person logging in next having the opportunity to change it however they seem fit. This is the model by now famous (or infamous) wikipedia, and needless to say, the blogosphere was excited to have an elite, paternal newspaper delve itself into the bowels of the everyday person and allow this type of interaction.

 

Journalism came first, blogging came second, third came…blogalism?

I wonder if the natural outcome of Shirky’s article about the mass amateurization of publishing is to now wonder what’s going to happen when blogs and Webzines become the scribes of the 1400s or the journalists of today. Will blogs themselves allow for their adaptation to the future?

 

Rewriting history is only a few blogs away

After reading Stefanac’s chapter on the brief history of open discourse, I am fascinated to think about how different the world would be if we had computers, the Internet and most importantly, blogs, since humanity’s beginnings.

 

Imagine if instead of Jesus passing on his knowledge to only the 12 disciples, he went online, went to his blog Web site, and posted his thoughts and feelings for the thousands of persecuted Christian and Jewish followers throughout the lands.

World War II soldiers would love e-mail

I remember reading a book about the life of Ernie Pyle, who was a famous World War II combat correspondent. His gritty, realistic stories into the lives of the men fighting that war captivated a newspaper-dependent nation thousands of miles away. Mothers and wives hoped that Pyle would find their son or husband and write about him. Because the story was printed faster than mail, it was the fastest way for women to find out about their fighting men.