Media

Day 2 of ELI. Great talking yesterday with so many folks passionate about technology in higher ed.The power to connect specialized knowledge with technical expertise is infinitely empowering. I see so many folks truly passionate and willing to listen to new ideas on education. It is encouraging. As a student, day-day interactions in formal education can get quite depressing at times. As a technophile, I am always looking to find new ways to engage my subject matter, to add meaning to new information as it comes into my mind. I believe that is the challenge of any true learner, adapting our external world to our internal dialogue. A favorite quote of mine that has always inspired me states,

"The reasonable person adapts themself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to them. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person."

CNET has accused Apple of over hyping their recent product launch.

CNET is right to be upset, but the culprit is not apple. Apple has a legal obligation to make money, and part of that involves advertising and promotional work. The fact that CNET uncritically swallowed the press releases and media bulletins whole and unchallenged is surely CNETs fault and not Apples?

If we assume that the role of the news media is anything but to deliver eyeballs to their paid advertisers, then this reflects significantly worse on CNET than it does on Apple. I suspect that one of the reasons that peer-driven news sites such as slashdot and digg are so popular in the tech community is that they don't carry this same kind of bias to the same extent. Of course, if the stories they digest carry a prevalent bias it's very hard to make the case that they're completely unbiased, but they certainly have a different balance.

Not a lot to relay here.  I expected more on participatory, journalism, citizen/grassroots journalism, and with all the talk of flickr, maybe photo journalism ;)  Those seem to be among the more interesting sweet spots for the intersection of the social web and the media.  A few web sites were thrown up, but there was little to no discussion or elaboration about them.  Most tools and practices are still very primitive, but they'll get better.   The one site that wasn't mentioned, but is most interesting to me is IndyMedia ... an organic, transnational organization that has at least a little bit of history to it.  

The discussion again seemed very focused on what has happened/is happening today.  I would have love to have heard more about future hopes and fears.  No one mentioned interactive TV ... it will be interesting to see if/when the cable/satellite industry joins with major media to make this happen and what the dynamics will be.  It will be driven by the internet, by software and technology, but I wonder if it might not manifest itself in the way that many people expect it might work.  Perhaps they'll all move too slow and the inertia that is forming on the Internet will be the only force that shapes the way that media is produced, aggregated, distributed and consumed in the future.  I'm not convinced of that yet.  In an era where kids are growing up with fast paced, game based interfaces that provide constant interaction and feedback, I'm not convinced that we'll be poised provide the richness that folks of the future will want with the current pace of change in infrastructure ... computer prices will have to drop, Internet2 will have to become ubiquitous, screen prices will have to drop radically, screen sizes for mobile devices will have to change ... a lot of this will happen overtime, but I suspect the sleeping giant that is major media, cable and satellite companies will awake with strong will to redirect some technology its way ... but maybe not, maybe they're too bound to quarterly profits to invest during this time of disruption.  

There was a little talk about remixing and open/closed content.  

As far as I could tell there were no meaningful projections on when the two will begin to blend together in a more meaningful, pervasive way.  There was also no talk of interdependencies required to facilitate greater investment and attention ... costs of screens, size of screens, the digital divide, etc.  Again, very, very little about the potential risks involved if these technologies get hijacked.  Does society at large really understand the risks?

I would have also been interested to learn about the rapid spread of memes etc.  Does that make us more susceptible to propaganda and brash decisions?

Someone from OSTN, the cable industry might have proven an interesting addition to the panel.  Of course, this was a topic that could have easily gone on for several days.  

For those of you that don't know about OSTN, you might be interested in this podcast with Internet2 driven service.