Internet Time

The lastest on weblogging from Colin McEnro in the Hartford Courant makes this often made case

. . . the blogosphere does not merely resemble the American frontier. It is the frontier. The blogosphere is Deadwood, where you earn your rep by what you can do, not by your class and family connections that mattered so much back in Boston. In Deadwood, the language is vulgar and combatants are quick to go for their guns. The lowliest man can rise to be mayor.

I would suggest that it’s time to move on. I would argue that the tiered nature of the system proves its maturity. I’d like to hear a few new ideas.

On another note, I hadn’t realized the extent to which the 2008 elections had worked their way into a frenzy. I heard Wolf the other day explaining the Primary system, a system he will simply have to explain again and again and again, I would assume (this is why perpetual elections are good for business). I have absolutely no interest in the 2008 election, however, and have no wish to “learn” about the candidates. But for the national press, this is easy stuff. No need to put a lot of thought into filling that 24 hours. The script’s already written.

Housekeeping

A few housekeeping things going on here. Lots of trimming and simplification.

On another note. I opened up my first Vista machine yesterday. The system looks pretty good, with spitting image Mac widgets on the sidebar. But what gets me about Vista is the four-tier system. My mother-in-law, who wanted a basic machine, received the Basic Vista version. But this is a symptom of something, bloat perhaps on the higher end premium system. Even Basic started up slow and ungainly and I’m not sure why.

Why can’t an operating system just be that? Nevertheless, I’m running out of room to be worrying about that sort of thing.

Evaluation Issues

I’m currently writing up and editing standards of evaluation for the Shakespeare course. As I think about symmetry in the lines and how observing and analyzing the plays at this level provides insight into performance, I’m reminded of the importance of the ability to read beyond the text, especially for readers so immersed in their present. So many things are key–intoning diction, playing with the metrics, imagining gesture and image, and considering the consequence of characters in their context.

How would I speak to some gray shade parked in my chair? What if the sun went dark or the night kept spinning over where the sun once shined?

Lear where are you when I need you.

Technology and Context

Alec Couros leaves me a nice note and asserts this:

We must help students to understand what is worth reading, how to find the relevant voices in the huge raving river of information, and then be able to engage in conversations with what they have learned, and who they have learned from.

I agree that a great deal of critical power is important to solving infoglut. Software like Feeddemon helps.

But I would suggest that the habit of change and critical powers are relational in a new media world.

Specifically, let’s take Shakespeare on as an example. Online search tools provide effective drills into Macbeth. Additional software such as Diigo and Tinderbox provide analytical tools, as would a pencil and notebook.

The new media thinker must, however, be aware of the tool. Both Macbeth and the tools used in engagement must be evaluated deeply, just as I must evaluate a router in carpentry work. A router is, conceptually, an opportunity to create.

My goal is always this: to teach people in a particular course to teach themselves (and to beat me at my own game).

Fun and Games

The Libby trial isn’t fun and games. So what to make of this New York Times article, For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder. Yup, professional journalists takes things like corruption and outright lying with the soberness they deserve. NYT can’t even determine whether the title of the weblog should or should not be hyphenated.

We’ve been watching the Firedoglake coverage of the Libby trial and find it smart and much more devoted and detailed than any network or cable reportage, which, of course, would rather drag dead women around the screen than worry about real investigating and avoid pissing off those to whom it now shares dinner, parties, and jokes.

For the Times “Liberal Bloggers” are fun and fodder. Can you hear me laughing?

Why Mustard Caps are Important

I’ve wanted to knock this one out for some time but needed a few moments for research. The latest innovation in bottled fluids is a total failure. I’m talking about French’s Mustard.

A few years ago, the cone cap went to a snazzy new silicone nipple design. Read about it here: News Perspective 07/02 .

Perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the new package design, however, is the bottle’s closure, created by French’s packaging engineer, Dave Maus, specifically to address the issue of crusty caps. Explains Veriga, “The cap incorporates a silicone valve that creates a vacuum seal that sucks the mustard back into the bottle after use.” Advantages, he says, include fresher mustard, less dripping and the elimination of the “gook” on the cap.

I enjoy mustard on bologna, hot dogs, burgers, fries, and use it for cooking. But the recent nipple design is hard to squirt, inaccurate, blobs around the nipple, and is even more crusty than the cone design. People complained about the cone design because regular use left a crust at the rim. But all you had to do was thumb the thing or wipe it off with a napkin.

Why is this a problem: because the latest from Microsoft will not download and update a machine with ease and simplicity (and why must it cost money?), and as everyone knows, mustard and Microsoft are ubiquitous. Just ask the recent apple commercials.

Simplicity of use and design is always an excellent standard to work from (and end with). The subject may be mustard bottles or rockets. Either way, a re-design (Dell) shouldn’t be so blatantly neglectful and absurd as to result in the very thing a company (or country, for that matter) tries to avoid: BS.

I want my cone mustard bottle back and my 8100 keyboard planted onto a new, slimmer, lighter, and sleeker PC, else I’m dashing for the smaller, sleeker, lighter (yet given to smudge) black MacBook (because the MacBook Pro is too damned big. It’s a laptop for bleep’s sake).

Read/Write Web and Learning

Mark Bernstein turns us on to Hypertext 07 and to opportunities for hypertext artists. Another of his posts lead me to Weblogg-ed and Couros, a digital literacies weblog.

All of these issues reflect tight subjects of mine, especially the integration of tech into teaching and learning. My emphasis has always been on what I would call a natural integration of technology into practice and into life, lines that are often hard to trace, given that technology accompanies us and emerges around us. In school I never thought about chalk or blackboards as technology until I had to spell words in front of people in a class room or had a presentation thwarted by a plug. I’d never really thought about school as technology until I learned about its shaping over time.

I’ve seen many examples of overload on people in educational setting and I’ve come to think that overload is typically the result of forced use of technology. If I create a game environment that teaches, how much of this kind of load could a student take if all her/his courses expected deep immersion in a learning environment.

Will people soon be overloaded with the read/write web, or is one of the keys to new media literacy: knowing what to cut out of one’s field of view?