Media Technology 2008

Wired…article

NYT…

“To the actors it is a simple issue of equity: equal pay for equal work, regardless of the medium.”

“Grand Theft Auto IV is such a simultaneously adoring and insightful take on modern America that it almost had to come from somewhere else. The game’s main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstar’s leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture. Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup.”>”Grand Theft Auto IV is such a simultaneously adoring and insightful take on modern America that it almost had to come from somewhere else. The game’s main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstar’s leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture. Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup.”

Sorry to post so much, but this blog is absolute money. Here Barack Obama says that kids are spending too much time watching TV and on video games. A professor is disappointed by Obama’s stance on video games.

Also, according to Ian Bogost, social networking and youtube have taken over the role of video games in this election cycle.

When browsing Wikipedia, I discovered that fellow Blue Hill Mainer Noel “Paul” Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary) gave the copyright to one of his songs to the Public Domain Foundation. Pretty cool.

Wikipedia Link

This is a SciAm Article about a new piece of hardware that allows its users to control their avatar by thinking.

see you later,
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Hey Guys, This is a really cool article from NYT. Phillip M. Parker uses a team of computers to compile public information from the net. He then frames all the pertinent stuff into books for consumers. This seems to be one of the more important changes to the way that we link to together information and is certainly a function of the “wealth of networks.”

“Comparing himself to a distant disciple of Henry Ford, he said he was ‘deconstructing the process of getting books into people’s hands; every single step we could think of, we automated’.”

A more non-political example of Benkler’s argument concerning the audience-orientation of certain media is this Levi’s jeans commerical that alludes to a homosexual couple. From my experience, this commercial was only shown on the more liberal, youth-orientated stations such as Bravo and MTV. I don’t know if most of you have seen this, but I thought I would post it anways.

In one of their best (in my opinion) segments to date, The Daily Show w/Jon Stewart looks at Al-Jazeera English and tries to give them a helping hand by “americanizing” the broadcast by adding graphics, banter and new music.

Video Link

Here’s a link to an interesting clip of renowned tech guru\analyst Walt Mossberg discussing how the US Government needs to get involved in bringing high-speed internet to the masses, as well as his thoughts on the future of internet multimedia…

Video Link

The bulk of Benkler’s book for this week focuses on how network culture impacts our political processes. What issues and arguments seem particularly relevant to you, especially in light of the ongoing campaign that many people are referring to as the “YouTube Election”? Do you see evidence of increased autonomy and freedom emerging around politics in the networked ecology?

From today’s New York Times, the lead singer of OK Go discusses net neutrality, tying nicely into a number of Benkler’s arguments.