onfocus

Laura Gurak gave two talks today at OSU and both were weblog-centric. She described the UThink weblog project at the University of Minnesota, and the exclusively-online weblog academic journal she edits. She also mentioned a system for describing the features of any electronic discourse grouped into the attributes speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity.

Because I somewhat obsessively note books that are mentioned in talks, I have a list from her talks today that I give you with no context whatsoever:

• Victorian Internet by Tom Standage
• Electric Rhetoric by Kathleen Welch
• Network Nation by Hiltz and Turoff
• Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle
• Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel
• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
• Yale Web Style Guide

Some other interesting reading that she mentioned—

• CultureCat (by Clancy, a Ph.D. student in her department)
• The Web Credibility Project at Stanford
• Educational Blogging by Stephen Downes

I met and had lunch with Laura today where we discussed everything from weblogs (of course), to disruptive academic technologies, to the tyranny of templates, to tech avatars.

I've been working in and around (and publishing my own) weblogs for so long now that I've had glasses and glasses of the blog kool-aid many times over. I already know the benefits of sharing stuff freely in a public way, even though my writing isn't perfected and polished here as I would strive for in a book or article. It was really surprising to me to hear resistance to the concept of weblogs from the OSU faculty.

Update: The OSU Barometer covered her talk: Leading Internet scholar addresses blogs in education

It's late notice now, but Laura Gurak—editor of a scholarly journal about weblogs called Into the Blogosphere—is speaking at OSU tomorrow in MU 206 at noon. The title of her talk is Steering Technology or Technology Steering?, and is about managing technology in our personal and professional lives. She's the author of Cyberliteracy, and a book about online protests, Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace. It looks like she has a weblog at LauraGurakBlog. Her talk is open to the public.

I took a break from my TV-fast to watch Frontline tonight. It was another excellent program about the media by Douglas Rushkoff called The Persuaders. It reminded me of this quote by Marshall McLuhan:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commerical interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.

I think McLuhan's point is that anytime we consume electronic media, it's giving control of our senses over to a third-party temporarily. Right now you've entrusted me—some random guy in Oregon you probably don't know—with your eyes and attention. Your nervous system is processing this post and evaluating these words. Once *every* message entering our consciousness is paid-for by a commercial interest, we've given away our ability to have an authentic culture. What's hopeful about this view of media is that the choice is ultimately ours; we have some power over how much control over our nervous system we give out.

Saturday sk and I went to Portland to hear Scott Andrew drop some folkpop on the Red and Black Cafe. It was good to hear an extended set of Scott's tunes, and it was great to witness the energy he pours into performing. (Scott's take: Tour Diary: Portland, OR, and Matt's photo: Red and Black Cafe.)

The TV reduction is going very well. We moved the TV out of the living room entirely, and we've rearranged the furniture. It's amazing how peaceful a room becomes without the dark, reflective screen sucking away the energy. I watched the McLaughlin Group on Friday night, but nothing since then.

Of course the election was the biggest topic of coversation with equally-stunned friends over the weekend. My strategy is to make positive changes here at home, and then I'll think about how they can be extended to the outside world. sk's strategy is to do more volunteer work in the community, and make a difference in some areas that will be affected by the election results.

I haven't taken any photos lately, but I need to get out with the camera while the fall colors are here.

Some stuff about the election that, if you read my blog, you've probably already read; but I'm posting here anyway:

• David Weinberger: Terms we need to re-own
• Matt: 5 stages of coping
• Greg Knauss: There is a divide in this country...
• Harper's: Electing to Leave
• Mena: Canada 2.0
• Leonard's reaction roundup: Nov 3

I feel terrible. My first resolution under the final reign of Bush: watch much less TV. I've already been cutting back, but I think it's time to eliminate the box from my daily life as much as possible.

nope, it was the obscenities.

What this site lacks in actual posts, it makes up for with thoughtful silence. I'll be holding my breath all day tomorrow. Hopefully when I finally exhale it'll be a sigh of relief instead of a steady stream of obscenities.

ps. what matt said, vote.

You know all those political video clips you've downloaded over the past couple of months? The group of folks at Internet Veterans for Truth has a good collection of them in one place. Let's Blogroll!

More info at waxy: Internet Vets for Truth.

Server moved. New DNS settings propagating. It's good to be back online.

This site is going to be down for a few days while the server physically moves closer to home. This site should be back up on Wednesday, October 27th. I set up a temporary blog*spot blog in case I *really* need to blog during this time: onfocus II.

The Newshour with Jim Lehrer is the only nightly newscast I've seen that tries to seriously cover the media itself. (And they do it infrequently.) Last night they had a segment about fact checking. It mentioned that being "balanced", or having 1 fact-check for one side and then 1 fact check for the other side in coverage isn't accurate if one side is actually lying or exaggerating more than the other. It's great to see this kind of critique happening on a major newscast because it helps viewers evaluate future news coverage they see (including Newshour coverage).

Related? Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD.

Thanks to Oregon's mail-in ballot system, I voted early last night. (Actually, I dropped it in a ballot-box at the courthouse.) The only drawback to Oregon's system is that I don't get one of those "I voted" stickers.



(And I didn't vote for Kodos this time.) It was especially gratifying to vote for Kerry and against Oregon's Measure 36.