Category Archives: Media Space

Items to Keep

This is an important post by Mark Bernstein on what people have covered at the most recent Tinderbox weekend. I know people who want the tool and examples are critical.

I use Tinderbox to track what I need to cover in British Literature and am noting structures and arguments for things that need to change relevant to the college’s committee and governance structure. Everyone loves the maps because they can “see” how complex even a small college’s workaday is.

He writes:

Now, we’re munching warm bagels and preparing to hear Matt Griffin’s account of using Tinderbox in screenwriting — including a feature film in Sicily where he was using Tinderbox each night to rewrite scripts for the next day’s shooting.

Arresting Attention

Three programs are holding my attention on TV. Heroes, a filmic hyperspace, Avatar, an animated epic whose characters and story are just charmingly wonderful, and the newest rendering of Doctor Who. Burns’ War is also right on. If you listen, all these programs share common features. Time is either a character or a force.

Now, this is just me, and a little bit about my own habits at the screen, but I wonder if we need new approaches to media space, such as the regular guy who works at Dunkin’ Donuts. This dude wakes up in the shoes of a dictator and must learn what and what not to do for his short time as coffee guy and life or death maker. I can see his face. One moment he’s pouring coffee, the next he must decide on clubs or bags of rice.

On Mission Statements

Steve Collins writes about Tunxis’ mission statement and makes interesting associations to Harvard

In a word: sort of. Tunxis has created a mission statement that succinctly states the goals of the College but is, I believe, very generalized and somewhat vague. By definition, a community college seeks to provide an affordable education to a broad range of students in a convenient location. Tunxis’ mission statement simply restates that basic premise then adds a few words about “fostering the skills necessary to succeed.”(1) There is no further explanation or clarification. To my way of thinking, that comes up a bit short. To expand on this point, I’d like to contrast it with portions of the mission statement released on Harvard’s web site.
With its reputation and long history, Harvard could have simply rested on its laurels when preparing a mission statement. Instead, it opens with this general declaration of purpose:

In brief, Harvard strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. (2)

The statement then continues with a detailed description of just how Harvard will carry out this plan for its students, encouraging them to “respect ideas and their free expression,” “to rejoice in discovery and in critical thought,” “to pursue excellence,” and to “assume responsibility for the consequences of personal action.” It goes on to say: “Education at Harvard should liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead.” And finally:

The support the College provides to students is a foundation upon which self-reliance and habits of lifelong learning are built: Harvard expects that the scholarship and collegiality it fosters in its students will lead them in their later lives to advance knowledge, to promote understanding, and to serve society.

Note that there is no mention of cost or convenient location. Instead, the focus is on learning for the sake of learning, on the many benefits that a good education can bring to the life of a student, and on the lifelong consequences of the Harvard experience. The statement acknowledges the development of the individual student and the college’s potential for helping them realize their personal goals in life. It recognizes the individual’s place as a member of society as well, and promises to support them as they go on to become potential leaders within that society.

iPhone Good News

First of all I think the iPhone is a necessary device for a lot of reasons, especially as I continue to wrestle with game controllers, preferring keyboard controls to moving things about with the thumb. And it’s a good thing that people like Mark are taken with the device and its possibilities.

And in this post it’s already playing a role in Tinderbox:

We’re trying a new Tinderbox feature. What happens if you give a Tinderbox document its own email mailbox?

One thing that happens is that I can email notes from my iPhone right to my Projects database.

On Haptics

Gizmodo has a comment on haptic feedback issues related to the iPhone.

I’ve always been critical of small keyboards. Small keyboards and the human hand. Hm.

Apple will be pressing a fairly deep design/use/habit. It will be interesting to watch how the design changes inputs and feedback models on other devises, readers, and architectural embeds.

But iPhone isn’t a first in this: Microwaves, the iPod, and the Prius.

Memory and the Web

Dan at if:book writes:

I won’t pretend to be the first to see in the Internet parallels to the all-remembering mind of Funes; a book could be written, if it hasn’t already been, on how Borges invented the Internet. It’s interesting, however, to see that the problems of Funes are increasingly everyone’s problems. As humans, we forget by default; maybe it’s the greatest sign of the Internet’s inhumanity that it remembers. With time things become more obscure on the Internet; you might need to plumb the Wayback Machine at archive.org rather than Google to find a website from 1997. History becomes obscure, but it only very rarely disappears entirely on the Internet.

One important element of social memory here is the idea of historical presence: the meaning we give to events, objects, and actions. I don’t know what is on the web until I encounter it or add to its bulk. We add to the network, but the network exists to degrees of use, otherwise it stores, without filter, unlike memory.