Why All the Media Has it All Wrong about Google's YouTube
YouTube
is just the latest salvo in the case of media eating itself big time. So much more is coming: collaborative editing, dynamic documentary, hyperfilm, panopticon, WikiPedia Media... Imagine what this can mean for Shifting personal, local and global consciousness!
Democratic Transparency in the YouTube Age
What I love about Web 2.0, the new "social media web" in which everyone can be a card-holding publisher and not a silent spectator, is that there are thousands of simultaneous viewpoints on any event or subject. It is with such holographic triangulation, I hope and pray, that greater truth san be resolved out of the mists of chaos, uncertainty, and unfair and unbalanced reporting.
Republicans Begin to Ask "Is Bush an Idiot?"
I try to make my contributions to Shift in Action non-political. This one is presented more as an exercise in examining the influence of recursive media in our geometrically-growing media culture. By recursive, I mean that media segments are now increasingly featuring other media segments, which are then "YouTubed" and featured on websites, which are then blogged about in a cascade throughout the blogosphere. Now you are reading a blog about all that.
Joe Scarborough, that formerly reliable apologist for the right on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, (former Republican Congressman for Florida) now posits the question Bush himself settled for the rest of us years ago: Is Bush an Idiot?
It is telling in this time of increasing tensions, approaching mid-term elections, rising gas prices and falling poll ratings that Republicans are finally beginning to wonder out loud. Scarborough has a fascinating blog about it on HuffPo yesterday and has assembled a montage of Bush gaffes that would make the Daily Show proud, especially since it includes the Daily Show, (YouTube below):
What is a Mashup?
Mashups
are one of my favorite things - synthetic creativity born from the creativity and generosity of open technologists whose works are available on the web to be cross-pollinated with other technologies or datasources to produce brand-new things. It is an ever-accelerating artform in the World Wide Mesh that promises endless Darwinian generative possibilities.
Looking into Another's Soul by Scanning their Library
Isn't it fun to come to somebody's house and scan their bookshelves or their CD collection to peer into their souls? It's like a holographic UPC code, the soul signature of a person expressed as an array of what interests them and what you share or don't share. If the library belongs to a potential love interest, you might raise your eyebrows at finding How to Turn Your Ex-Boyfriend into a Toad: And Other Spells for Love, Wealth, Beauty, and Revenge or The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.
For the MySpace generation, it's love me, love my music. What's my music? Just look at my iTunes Library. That's what the social media application MOG does. MOG slurps up your favorites and posts a summary of your collection to connect you with your similarly-minded peeps.
