Blogging and Online Journalism: New Media, New Challenges, New Ethics
> The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University
> and the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism announce "Blogging and
> Online Journalism."
>
> On April 7 & 8, 2006, BOJ will bring together a small group of successful, highly motivated
> students with some of the leading figures in journalism and media
> ethics for an intimate, in-depth two-day exploration of one of the
> most interesting and dynamic areas in applied ethics today. After a
> daily keynote address on a topic of general interest, participants
> will break up into workgroups. These workshops will feature
> presentations by invited scholars and by student participants, with
> discussion and critique of the presentations.
>
> Presentations and workshop summaries will be published on the
> Institute website.
>
> Participation is limited to 25. Students interested in participating
> should send contact information and a brief paper on one of the
> workshop topics to ethics@ohio.edu by January 20, 2006. Participants
> will be selected on the basis of the paper they submit. Please visit
> the "STUDENT CONFERENCE" section of ohio.edu/ethics for submission
> requirements.
>
> Travel grants (travel, room, and board) are available for a limited
> number of participants. Students interested in applying for travel
> support should indicate this in their application.
>
> Keynote speakers:
>
> Dan Gillmore (author of "We, the Media")
> Clifford Christians (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain)
>
> Workshop topics and leaders:
>
> Friday, April 7
> Martin Kuhn (U North Carolina): Blogging Ethics
> Fernanda Viegas (MIT MediaLab): Privacy and Accountability in Blogging
> Jan Boyles (U West Virginia): Rhetoric of Political Bloggers
> Sandeep Junnarker (Columbia University): Blogging investigative
> reporting: The Videoblog
>
> Saturday, April 8th
> Mark Deuze (Indiana University): Typology of Online Journalism
> Bob Benz (Scripps Company): Reality Constraints of Online Journalism
> Bernhard Debatin (Ohio University): Online Journalism Ethics
>
> -------------------------
> Kathleen Evans-Romaine
> Assistant Director
> Ohio U. Inst. for Applied and Professional Ethics www.ohiou.edu/ethics
> office: 740 593 9802
> cell: 740 590 2410
New Journal
Thought I would share this with everyone, especially Heath who cannot seem to get away from the artifact idea! ;)
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Artifact - a new journal from Routledge
Artifact is a new international, peer-reviewed academic journal
treating the impact of computerization on design.
VISION
The computer has had a profound impact on the look, feel, and
function of our everyday world. As a tool, the computer has
become indispensable for the design professional, profoundly
changing the design process. As a design material, the computer
is extremely versatile, enabling intelligent objects and processes.
As a medium, the computer transforms our understanding and stores
our experiences. The combined impact of these forces is changing
the relations between humans and our technology in unprecedented
ways.
Artifact does not draw an artificial line of demarcation between
the virtual and the physical. It strives to illuminate the problems
and possibilities in their interaction. The journal does not frame
digital design as a design discipline such as industrial design or
graphic communication. The unique role of the computer as tool,
material, and medium, makes digital design an integrated element
of almost any design project today, with designers in all fields
and disciplines using digital design in some way.
Artifact assumes an open position. The journal strives to promote
transdisciplinary design research. It will not create or maintain
disciplinary boundaries. Rather, Artifact will encourage cross-
fertilization, interconnections, and crossbreeding among different
scientific disciplines, the design industry, and the arts.
PUBLICATION
The journal appears in both a print version and a digital version.
The journal is published using a 'Web first' concept. Each issue
is first published on the web. The year's issues are gathered
together into a full paper volume published at the end of the year.
In some cases, web technology will mean that the web version
supports special interactive features and links that can only
appear in the print volume as illustrations and references.
SUBMISSION
We welcome contributions which seek to understand and reflect the
different aspects and impacts of virtuality within the field of
design from theoretical or applied perspectives. Artifact brings
contributions in the form of academic articles, book reviews,
design case post mortems, and design company profiles.
To point to possible directions, we have selected themes for the
first four issues of Artifact:
- Volume 1, issue 1: What is an artifact?
- Volume 1, issue 2: Soft artifacts. Tracing 'soft movements'
in several creative domains, notably architecture and
digital film.
- Volume 1, issue 3: The third place? The ontological status
of objects and events in computer games.
- Volume 1, issue 4: Digital design processes. What impact
has digital technology had on the design process?
The themes are not meant to be exhaustive. We hope they will
trigger ideas and encourage submissions from a range of
disciplines.
Deadline for the first issue of Artifact is 18 November. Articles
will be published 1 March 2006. However, contributions addressing
the theme of the first issue may be published on-line at a later
date and appear in the print volume.
Please send submissions and queries by e-mail to Ida Engholm at
or to Charlie Breindahl at
.
Articles should be sent as attachments in Microsoft Word .doc format
or as PDF files. Please send articles with a cover letter containing
full author information. Articles should be prepared for double-
blind review using anonymous format and full references in APA
style. In addition, we welcome suggestions for design case post
mortems, book reviews and designer profiles.
Heath's "Porn" Site
http://myweb.usf.edu/~hhooper/
English 'must reflect technology'
We've got another report on our side! While I am a proponent of teaching writing to students with and without an emphasis on technology--whatever meets their needs and gets them to think critically about what they read and experience--it looks like the UK schools are acknowledging that "schools should take advantage of the range of texts now available to teach the language, including online." Full BBCNews article is
here.
That might be obvious to some of us who rely heavily on technology as students and teachers, but it's always good to have the big name reports behind you. Hawisher and Selfe's work has been advocating technological literacy in the US for years now but this looks like a national curriculum change in the UK. And it's a curriculum that describes its aims as to give "'substantial weight to personal, social and emotional education,' and value knowledge which falls outside traditional subject boundaries." Can we say party hearty time for the narrative? ;)
What I found interesting, especially with Ryan and me being in a course in the History of Rhetoric, is that "the report also said English needed to take account of the higher profile of the oral language in society. Speaking and listening skills are vital at work and should no longer be given second place." I sure as hell know that I didn't receive much training in speaking, so I would have loved this, although I kind of prefer winging it in an extemporaneous setting rather than giving a formal presentation.
Anyway I thought it was a good news piece to share on the blog because it brings us back to a pragmatic discussion. All of the readings we've done have emphasized the theories of new media and [a la Zuboff’s Smart Machine], how the computer “has now become a universal media machine—a tool used not only for production, but also for storage and distribution” (Manovich 4). This BBC article is evidence of the education system paying attention and reacting to this “media machine,” so I am looking forward to more of those types of discussions tonight!
And then I read something else.
So, now, Manovich seems to be confirming many of the things that Hansen was saying. Sure, the death of the artifact, the reality of representation, etc. etc.
However, what seems to be emerging, (and this is rightously creepy) is the death of the mediator, rather than the medium. What Manovich's analysis proposes, I think, is that in a post-symbolic world, mediation will not be necessary. But it is this mediation that creates human subjects, right? So what we're really talking about here is the (edit: potential) death of the human subject?
The kind of interactivity allowed by new media is such that it takes us further and further away from our bodies, while telling our brains that the digital objects that we interact with are the same as analog objects. At what point do we leave the analog bodies behind for digital ones?
Ahh, I don't know. It all sounds a bit too William Gibson to me. Still, it's kinda scary.
Why does it matter?
So it's all become clear to me. Well, sort of. While I was reading Hansen, I was thinking about how hard it is for me to read for long periods of time on the screen. I looked at the introduction and saw that it was 18 pages long, so I figured that printing it would not be a problem. Copying and pasting the piece of text wouldn't be a problem either. I am, after all, seeing pages on the screen. Hansen argues that the artifact is becoming less and less relevant. He's saying that the .pdf's we are reading for class that I am printing on real pages and trying to copy and paste onto this blog have become the artifact. Except here's the problem: while we're all looking at these .pdf's as actual (virtual) pages, it's taking a lifetime for my .pdf to print out because the computer is reading the .pdf as an image and sending it to the printer in that format. My copying and pasting is not happening because the .pdf is an image and not a piece of text. It really doesn't matter whether or not we "see" these new artifacts because the computer is not processing them that way.
And another thing
Rebecca Blood's brain works better than mine. I want to go back and edit posts as new ideas come to me, 'cause this way it's just going to be a jumble.
First, Hansen uses big words that confuse me. Second, I wish I had discovered this earlier. Sorry that my understanding's subject to evolution as I read.
Anyway, so I was thinking about what I was thinking about before, and that tablet PC (Which, I was told this weekend, is NOT the future. I think they were jealous.) really jumbles things up with the ability to write on pages. Now, from what I can tell, you're not really writing *on* the digital page-photograph, but instead on top of the page in a program that attaches itself to the page-thing. That's just really messing with me.
But how does the embodiment of a digital image differ from the embodiment of analog image? It goes through one more step of mediation, yes, but does this change the actual mechanism of embodiment? Am I really missing something here? Probably.
Help me out. Sometimes this sounds like McLuhan on steroids, that the medium is the only thing and even its message is fuzzy, and other times it sounds like as long as we think of an image as something (i.e. a book page) then that's what is.
Now, wait a minute. Maybe that makes sense. So we think of a digital object as a thing and interact with it as such, while the medium has a subtle effect on who we are as human subjects. The medium effects us while we look the other way, processing the (insignificant?) images.
And voila! Everybody's right. Cog. Psych and Philosophy skip happily down the lane with one another.
Wow. I think I just completly mischaracterized Hanson to suit my own needs.
Links from the weekend
Here are two links from I guy I met this weekend that I thought were nifty. One, you've probably already heard of:
www.narratives.org
The other is what one of the guys from the above site is doing.
www.roanoke.com/multimedia/crooked/interactive.html
So, yeah, about this death of media stuff
Hi everybody. Sorry I've not been able to post more. Much, much to say about this weekend, but I guesss that'll be more approoriate for class.
Anyway, I'm sitting here reading some of the pieces that have been posted, and I can'[t get over the fact that we're reading copies of actual books in a digital form. Were we to print them, we'd be printing out not copies of actual pages, but instead digital photographs of book pages.
This strikes me as freakishly odd for some reason. Of course, this kind of thing is about to blow up, what with digital libraries and whatnot. Also, with the ability to search .pdf's, these digital copies become far more convienient that hard copies.
But I can't get over the idea that something's being lost in the transition. This would be the introduction of the impurity of perception, if I'm reading all this right.
Ok, so, if a tree fall in the forest, it makes a sound. The sound waves are created, etc. etc. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but what Bergson's saying is that the sound only takes on the meaning of "tree falling" if we hear it and assign it that meaning. However, in doing so, we lose out on what the actual sound itself embodies, that being the unmediated moment of the creation of the actual sound. Or the unmediated moment of the tree falling. Or something. I think my brain just melted.
Back to the digital book page. So, we've got the 010011010 version of the page, which is not an actual copy of the page, but instead a photograph of the page, and a digital one at that. So, like, a representation of a representation and on and on and on. Does this mean that the digital copies takes on the properties of a photograph, with all that that entails, or that it remains a page? Would Bergson say that we percieve it as a page, when instead we should be looking at it as a photograph? Or a string of code?
So what does turning something into a .pdf do to it, and does it matter?
What do you guys think?
My problem with cyborgs
I know I'm about to get slaughtered on this post, but i really can't see the creation of "cyborgs" as this great shift toward equality. From what I understand in the Haraway piece, cyborgs can help us break the tyranny of Western dichotomies, right? I disagree. I can't see how we're ever going to break free from the constraints of the linguistic structure that sets up and allows for the dichotomies. Identities are shifting, sure, but their shifting from one thing to another. Hybrids simply take old things and sew them together.
Think about the T-1000 in The Terminator 2. He had the potential to change into anything, but could actually only shift into something he had *touched.* I think that's very telling.
I'm starting to think of major structural/identity shifts as something akin to Stephen Jay Gould's concept of evolution. I know I'm dumbing it down, but from what I understand, Gould thinks that a whole bunch of change occurs all at once due to radical environmental stress, out of which some modifications stick and move forward.
I think the same thing happens to our cultural structure. A radical event happens, such as the invention of the printing press, or the Internet, which sets the stage for change. So far, so good, and I doubt the left would disagree with me so much. However, I seriously doubt they'd agree with this: Whatever change happens occurs in spite of our best efforts, and is quite possibly accidental.
Sure, the printing press allowed for people to more easily disseminate ideas and increased literacy, thus setting the stage for the Enlightenment. But I think we only understand the mechanism in hindsight. I think it just kind of happened. As McLuhan would say, the medium changed things, not the message. I'm not entirely sure how much control we have over what "cyberculture" will do to us, and if we're thinking we're in control, we may do ourselves harm.
The thing about cyberculture that really bothers me (as you can see in previous posts) is that we're essentially at the mercy of programmers. Those who know, understand, and can manipulate the code are the ones in control. Computer code is the new Latin (or French, depending on your epoch.) And there, probably accidentally, is where I think the next major structural shift will come from. It's probably already happening, but we won't know the results for the next fifty years or so.
Where does this leave us? I have no idea. But I think, if I want to stay true to the stuff I just typed, maybe I should go back and start studying Pong.
See y'all in class.
NPR pieces
I just listened to the NPR things. I was reminded of something Ryan said last week, that we only have room in our brain for around 30 close people. Once our 'noggin starts getting crowded, we start kicking things out, I guess. Apparently, our brain isn't the limitless supercomputer we thought it was.
I find it interesting that we choose acting in a virtual world over something important to survival. Don't we experience pain so we know when something bad is happening to our bodies? I wonder what makes the brain short-circuit the survival mechanism to give over processing power to something pleasurable?
I also wonder how this fits in to the "only depressed people overuse the internet" idea. People stay in a virtuall world to avoid the pain of the real world? OK, that's overly simplistic (and trite) but still, there seems to be something there.
Finally, is anyone out there bother by the fact that in a virtual world we need not really fear a potentially benevelont God, but instead fear the all-to-human programmers?
BTW - Second Life: http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2005/07/secondlife/
Second Life, Part Deux
Funny that you mention Second Life. I noticed that the other day when I was trolling through the apple site and thought the same thing. It's a free community now, and somehow, there is an exchange rate for currency earned in the game. I'm not entirely sure how it works, other than that the programmer is a god within an environment of many gods.
Somebody other than me should check this thing out. From what I understand, it's free to download as well as play. Sadly, I cannot run it on my year-old computer. What is this world coming to?
Second Life
I got this from Rocketboom. Remember what Ryan was talking about last week, how it would be cool to have an online house you can invite people to? Second Life does just that. I haven't gotten a chance to play because it costs money, but basically you can create business in this world, make friends, live in your community. It's like the sims but you're playing with real people. Here's the link to the Web site
http://secondlife.com/ For information about it go to
http://www.idealworldmovie.com/
