11D

How Technology is Ruining MyProse

Often, bloggers and blog commenters will express concern that these rapid posts and dashed out sentences are trashing our ability to write long, nuanced essays. Or that easy access to spell check has wrecked our ability to spell. Or that google has diminished our attention span.

I would like to note the impact of computer industry's use of compound words with random capitalization (ie. WordPerfect, PowerPoint, iPod, MySpace). I sometimes feel compelled to turn perfectly normal words into computer software spelling (ie. BabySitter, PlayGround, HomeWork, HangOver).

Online Needs Offline

A couple of weeks ago, I registered as a volunteer for the Obama campaign. I identified myself as a political science professor. After I filled out the online form, I surfed around his website for a while. I was pretty impressed. A political website that was saavy enough to use Digg? Cool. Turns out that the Obama campaign has hired one of the Facebook founders to coordinate their online efforts. But as cool as the website is, nobody has called me yet to make phone calls or stuff envelopes. That's a problem.

Obama's website also features one of the most annoying aspects of the Internet age. The lack of a phone number and real bodies at a desk to answer questions. When you click on the Contact Me button, you get sent to a FAQ page. I wanted to track down some internship opportunities for students and am now too annoyed to deal.

Supermarket of da Future

Germany has developed the supermarket of da future. I'm loving the automated wine tasting.

Laura Is

When a tower of ungraded blue books sits on my coffee table mocking and shaming me, I have found it ever so beneficial to completely ignore the ungraded papers and instead use that time for catching up on all the technology that I've missed out on over the semester. Yes, it's high time that I learned about Twitter and text messaging. Priorities are a key to success.

Well, I'm about three years behind on the text messaging thing, but I haven't had any need for it. If I want to talk to my friends or hubby, I call them. I'm not meeting up with the kids at the Peach Pit on the spur of the moment. No one really needs to know where I am at every given moment. However, my 20 year old babysitter only communicates via texting. She doesn't answer phone calls or e-mails, so I had to learn. It was super easy and then I spent the rest of the week pestering everyone I know with messages. "what r u doing?"

I signed up for Facebook last summer during a Catch Up With Technology Procrastination Fest. I noticed that some of my friends were using twitter to up date their status, so I HAD to sign up for twitter and link it to Facebook. Maybe I will try to send a twitter via my cell phone today and link it to Facebook. I could blow hours of time with that one.

Twitter is social networking software. You key in a sentence or two about what you are doing. It is the equivalent of the status update on Facebook. I suppose that teenagers use Twitter and Facebook status lines in the same way that they use texting - to alert friends of meet up points and to nervously make sure that your friends don't forget you.

I'm amused by the 30 and 40 something use of twitter and facebook status. The best status announcements don't just say "I'm eating food at a restaurant." The best ones must convey irony, ennui, and oblique references to 80s music. "I'm eating day old sushi in Chinatown while considering setting up a Depeche Mode fansite." They aren't supposed to announce the really big things in your life, but the weird minor stuff. You aren't just "I'm eating a sandwich". You are "Assembling the best grilled cheese sandwich and declaring it king of all sandwiches."

I'm amused by the elegant use of a sentence. It's modern Haiku.

I actually don't update my status all that often, because it takes a lot of work to be clever and ironic, but I'm enjoying the status of others.

Ten Ways That Technology Has Changed Parenting

When I'm not teaching, I'm parenting. Again, another occupation that's pretty much hands on. Can't really get a computer to potty train a kid. Though that would be awfully nice and I urge you geeks out there to work on such a program. However, there are still many ways that parenting has changed in recent years, too, due to the Internet and technology.

Ten Ways That Technology Has Changed Parenting:
1) Websites that tell you where the pervs are.
2) Parenting and special education list-servs.
3) Mommyblogs.
4) School comparison websites
5) Parenthacks
6) Increased school budgets for computers and teacher training for computers
7) Um.. getting stuck...

10 Ways that Technology Has Changed My Job

It's hard to imagine a more stodgy, traditional profession than academia. Tweed jackets with patches on the sleeves. Yet, our job has changed radically in the past five years due to technology.

Ten ways that technology has changed my job:

1) Job blogs and job wikis.
2) Laptops in the classroom
3) Powerpoint (more here)
4) Conference wikis
5) Rate My Professor
6) Journal blogs
7) Textbook blogs
8) Class websites
9) Academic blogging
10) Online classes

Here's a few more:

11) Endnote and .pdf files. Wahoo! No more file cabinets.

12) Google Scholar

John Edwards on MySpace

Edwards aired a live campaign dialogue at the University of New Hampshire on MySpace this afternoon. MySpace viewers could send in questions that would be answered by Edwards at that event.

We watched a bit of it in my media class, and the students were very impressed. Myspace and Facebook are their primary venues for information. Edwards definitely has a leg up on campaigns and technology.

I'm reading the article on Facebook in the Atlantic.

Was McCain Sleeping?

Blogging has been super slow lately. Teaching is taking its toll. I'm in the process of stockpiling lectures and revising an article, so I'm super busy. Also, I've been scratching the political debate itch in class, instead of here.

During a lecture on classical liberalism, we got into a great discussion about what Karen Hughes should have said to the Saudi women in 2005, as a lead into Mill's justification for a representative democracy.

The State of the Union was a big topic of discussion in all my classes. Most of the students watched it, and I pumped them about their impressions. Many people thought that Nancy Pelosi and Hillary were suppressing waves of nausea throughout the speech. They were amused at the back slapping and hand clapping. A number of students pointed out that McCain looked like he was sleeping. Image, as we talked about in my media class, can be more important than content.

Apparently, a lot of people picked up on McCain's closed eyes. Tom Zeller writes in today's Times that McCain may have just blown his campaign as video clips of the sleepy McCain hit YouTube.

It is, perhaps, also no surprise in the age of YouTube — where unscripted video clips have become political Molotov cocktails — that a “McCain sleeping” snippet was uploaded to the Internet and was being discussed and linked in short order.

Whether the original intent was political sabotage or simple humor is hard to say, but either way the clip went straight for Mr. McCain’s Achilles’ heel: his age. He is now 70 years old. By 2008, if elected, he would be the oldest president to move into the White House.

So a video of the elderly statesman appearing to doze during the president’s speech — and particularly during a portion of the speech where terrorism was being discussed — seemed to put questions of his fitness for office in stark relief.

McCain's gang retaliated by uploaded videos of him clapping and looking alert. They said that he was just reading the speech on his lap and not asleep at all. Politics in the YouTube era. Excellent fun.

The YouTube Guys

I'm fascinated with the YouTube Guys, and so is everyone else.

How cute is the third guy? He was one of the co-founders of the company, made a fortune by the deal, but really just wants to continue along with his graduate studies. "On Wednesday, during a walk across campus and a visit to his dorm room and the computer sciences building where he takes classes, Mr. Karim described himself as a nerd who gets excited about learning. "

The video where they announced their merger with Google is so young and giddy that I'm just happy for them. The Times compares their merger announcement with big money mergers. "A user calling himself Skandmn seemed to sum up the YouTube community’s view on the deal, critiquing the video in the comments section: “Apparently when you become a billionaire, or close to anyway, you become a perpetually smirking idiot. God I hope that happens to me some day."

I heart giddy geeks.

Is You Tube Worth 1.6b?

Steve and I have been debating the sale of YouTube.  Steve thinks that 1.6 billion dollars is a whole lot for a company that just started up less than a year ago and has yet to turn a profit. He said that the "guys on the street" are saying that this smells of the 90s internet bubble.

1.6 billion is big money, but YouTube is a really interesting product.  It brings together several of the different hords of people on the Internet.  It attracts the MySpace, social-networking types.  It has something for the serious wonks and political wingnuts with clips of political officials making errors.  It has something for the people who are too busy to watch TV as people record the highlights of the Daily Show.  My brother just spent hours on YouTube catching up on the whole Borat thing, since he's too lame to have a TV.  It's the perfect outlet for scandal; the next time Paris Hilton gets caught with her knickers down, it's going to show up on YouTube.  People also feel more comfortable expressing themselves through video than word-based blogs. 

OK, now watch this.