One of the most exciting presentations at the recent Share, Share Widely conference was Natalie Jeremijenko‘s student-authored wiki “How Stuff is Made”. According to the website FAQ page, HSIM is a visual encyclopedia documenting the manufacturing processes, labor conditions and environmental accounts of contemporary products. It is collaboratively produced, independent, academic, wiki-based publication. Encyclopedia entries are summative photo essays created by engineering, design and art students guided by faculty who ensure high standards of evidence.
In her conference abstract, “Changing Structures of Participation In New Media Education,” Dr. Jeremijenko claims that the HSIM project provides …evidence that the way we structure participation changes what information is produced, who produces it, and how it circulates. Additionally, the work provides material to question what these changes may mean for learning.
Author Archives: kim white
sharing teachers, connecting classrooms
An initiative in Maine is using technology to provide advanced placement programming to high school students in rural areas. The Maine Distance Learning Project “identifies Maine teachers and schools that are interested in offering Advanced Placement programming to be delivered over distance to students in Maine via the state-wide ATM network during the 2005/2006 school year.”
According to a recent article in Newsweek, Reaching Rural Students, support was provided by the University of Maine. The University set up “a network of cameras in AP classes like Brendan Murphy’s calculus and statistics class. These classes were broadcast to five other schools across the state. 90 other schools have a set up like Carrabec’s. Each site’s classroom has a three-foot television screen split into quadrants, and two cameras in each room.”
valuing nonmarket production
As the mother of a toddler, I’m keenly aware of how grueling the 24/7 unpaid work of parenthood really is. A friend of mine sent around a mother’s day email that added up all the little things we do and arrived at a salary of about $131,000. Slave wages compared to the figure in Jennifer Steinhauer’s Times article, The Economic Unit Called Supermom which came up with “an estimated $707,126 annual paycheck.”
Problem is, no one will ever pay me $700K to do what I do for free. So is there any point in speculating about the market value of mothering? Perhaps there is. Steinhauer tells us that In 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted its first-ever Time Use Survey, which examined the doings of 21,000 Americans over a 24-hour period. “There were a number of economists who were interested in valuing nonmarket production,” said Diane Herz, the survey’s project manager.
Many social scientists have explored the “social capital” gained by participating in these otherwise uncompensated activities. Social scientists argue, for example, that test scores go up in schools where parent volunteerism is highest, and that crime is reduced in communities with high civic participation. “Social capital is usually defined as the networks and relationships we have, as well as the trust and sense of mutuality that arise from them,” said Amy Caiazza, a study director working with Ms. Hartmann.
So this got me thinking about digital networks and I started wondering how much web content is created, nurtured and maintained without compensation. And how apropos the term “nonmarket production” is for most web activity. The networked book, for example, relies on free contributions and other forms of non-commercial support. What does this mean for the future of books? Does the web have the potential to turn the book industry into an unpaid labor of love?
tagging the digital city: a new way to make your mark
Remember subway trains in the 70’s & 80’s; traversing the conduits of New York City’s tunnels bearing the spray-painted “tags” of urban graffiti artists? Taggers, as you may recall, were interested in trafficking their name on high visibility real estate like bridges, tunnels, buildings, landmarks, and subway cars. They were individuals attempting to mark the complex urban landscape in an effort to be “seen.” I think this is the motivation behind the re-emergence of tagging in the context of the internet landscape, which is becoming increasingly cluttered and noisy in the same way that cities are. Tagging is a way to stand out and be seen, it is a way to connect, it is a way to make your contribution last a little longer and go a little further. The fact that these “tags” are useful for organizing things is something of a happy accident. People tag because they want other people to see their work. Because they want digital objects to bear their mark. This is a very human thing. Can we use it to help us organize everything? Maybe. An interesting article in CNN, ‘Tagging’ helps unclutter data: Online search categorizes how humans label things, posted Tuesday, May 3, 2005 gives a good overview of how tagging and social software are being used to organize data. But it also points out the possible drawbacks to this method of organization.
When we think of subway graffiti, we think of the elaborate, colorful calligraphy that ended up in art galleries and coffee table books. I include a picture (above) by Magnum Photographer Bruce Davidson, to remind you that most of it was uncreative and relatively ugly black marker work. Worse case scenario, spammers figure out how to exploit metadata, proliferating their “tags.” Scrawling their signature on every digital object they can access, and doing for the digital landscape what the spray can did for 1980’s New York.
visual politics
Do your political affiliations affect that way you “read” images? A group of graphic designers created Visual Ideology; representing political ideas with images to explore this notion. They pose the question this way: “Given the choice, what images would the general public associate with specific ideas or words? How can one image be more meaningful than another similar image? This project asks viewers to make decisions as to images that best represent their visual definition of political terms or ideas.” I encourage you to try this yourself. After you complete the (often hilarious) visual survey, an interface will tell you exactly who shares your visual politics.
what I learned from laurie anderson
Answer every question with a story. Be wary of rectangles. Ignore genre. Do not be afraid of Melville’s ghost.
I have been inspired and influenced by Laurie Anderson‘s work from the moment I discovered it twenty-something years ago. Laurie was one of the first artists to understand how technology and multimedia can be used by a skillful storyteller to deepen the listener’s experience. Her work explores the mystery and the pathos of these mechanized forms of communication.
Laurie’s song “Language is a Virus,”(dedicated to William Burroughs) had an immediate and permanent effect on me. It made me realize that scrutinizing a narrative is not a complete investigation, one should try to understand language itself; is it friend or foe? Is it an agent that infects us with ideas (both good and bad). Does language, as a virus that must be communicated, fill us with the need for more efficient tools–books, radio, television, telephone, internet, cell phone, satellite radio, pod casting, ebooks, etc. And, if it is a virus, does it destroy the host? Is language a dystopia-breeding agent? The apple in the garden?
Parrot (Your Fortune One $)(pictured above) is an installation that consists of a plaster parrot and a digital recording of the parrot’s monologue. The piece raises some interesting questions about the role of technology in our society. It’s obvious that technology is important, but how important is it for technology to be “human?” The parrot’s voice is computer-generated. When I heard it, I thought of JAWS a software program designed to read websites to those with vision impairment. When you hear that synthesized JAWS voice in the context of someone who is dependent on it for access, it’s poignant. The parrot also sounds a lot like Arnold Schwartznegger, a man known for his role as “the Terminator,” a robot-human programmed to destroy. The parrot’s voice comes across as both comic and melancholy, which suggests a simultaneous levity and sadness in our efforts to humanize technology and to make into our “pet.” Shifting the metaphor from wild and destructive (the terminator) to friendly and tame (the sidekick).
is the information any good?…don’t ask Google
Lately, I’ve been thinking about quantitative data vs. qualitative data and noticing that the web is really good at analyzing, packaging, and delivering the former, but woefully barren when it comes to the latter. The really elegant digital visualizations that I’ve seen work with quantitative data. They can show you, for example, the top news stories of the hour, day, or week; the spatial position and relative frequency of words in a novel; the most popular tags, etc… Search engines also privilege quantitative information; the first site that shows up on the Google list is usually the most popular. But determining the quality of that data is left, almost entirely, up to the user. Returning to a point I tried to make in an earlier post, the web is like high school popularity is not always a sign of quality, reliability, or substance.
Let’s take the news for example: the results of a national survey on media consumption conducted by The Pew Research Center and released last year by the Brookings Institute, suggest “that news audiences are increasingly polarized, fragmented, and skeptical, opting for news outlets that most closely resemble their own ideologies…This shared skepticism not only applies to “opposition” news sources, but to the media in general–more than half of those surveyed said they don’t trust the news media…Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellent in Journalism. “People want to know, ‘Why should I believe that?'”
Why can’t we use technology to answer this need? What if instead of serving up the most popular stories, we created search engines and visualizations that identified the best stories, ranking information according to quality? Programs that answer the following concerns:
• how well-informed is the writer/news agency?
• are they honest?
• how good is the writing?
• how good is the art/photography/video?
• what are their political motivations?
• who are they paid by/owned by?
Many of these questions require investigation and/or subjective answers. Since subjectivity is still a uniquely human form of processing and evaluating, what I am really calling for is a program that helps us organize the veritable sea of human opinion surging about on the web. The news is not the only area where humans need humans to figure out what they should pay attention to. The massive amount of content that is being generated through the web creates an urgent need for filters in almost every imaginable category. Someone needs to design a critical apparatus for our networked world.
the web is like high school
Social networking software is breeding a new paradigm in web publishing. The exponential growth potential of group forming networks is shifting the way we assign value to websites. In paper entitled “That Sneaky Exponential–Beyond Metcalfe’s Law to the Power of Community Building” Dr. David P. Reed, a computer scientist, and discoverer of “Reed’s Law,” a scaling law for group-forming architectures, says: “What’s important in a network changes as the network scale shifts. In a network dominated by linear connectivity value growth, “content is king.” That is, in such networks, there is a small number of sources (publishers or makers) of content that every user selects from. The sources compete for users based on the value of their content (published stories, published images, standardized consumer goods). Where Metcalfe’s Law dominates, transactions become central. The stuff that is traded in transactions (be it email or voice mail, money, securities, contracted services, or whatnot) are king. And where the GFN law dominates, the central role is filled by jointly constructed value (such as specialized newsgroups, joint responses to RFPs, gossip, etc.).”
Reed makes a distinction between linear connectivity value growth (where content is king) and GFNs (group forming networks, like the internet) where value (and presumably content) is jointly constructed and grows as the network grows. Wikipedia is a good example, the larger the network of users and contributors the better the content will be (because you draw on a wider knowledge base) and the more valuable the network itself will be (since it has created a large number of potential connections). He also says that the value/cost of services or content grows more slowly than the value of the network. Therefore, content is no longer king in terms of return on investment.
Does this mean that the web is becoming more like high school, a place where relative value is assigned based on how many people like you? And where popularity is not always a sign of spectacular “content.” You don’t need to be smart, hard-working, honest, nice, or interesting to be the high-school “it” girl (or boy). In some cases you don’t even have to be attractive or rich, you just have to be sought-after. In other words, to be popular you have to be popular. That’s it.
SO…if vigorously networked sites are becoming more valuable, are we going to see a substantial shift in web building strategies and goals–from making robust content to making robust cliques? Dr. Reed would probably answer in the affirmative. His recipe for internet success: “whoever forms the biggest, most robust communities will win.”
the dinosaurs are myopic: publishing industry clueless about the future of textbooks
I spent yesterday in the McGraw-Hill building listening to the textbook publishing industry’s ideas about the future of the book. It was grim. The abysmal lack of creativity and insight, the singular focus on “revenue models,” and the utter disregard for the needs of students and teachers, made for a dull, and sometimes disturbing, day.
The ebook offerings ranged from plain old PDFs, to web-based books, to jury-rigged versions of Microsoft office. The only panel that offered a forward-looking vision of the future and interesting ebook software to go with it was the accessibility panel, moderated by George Kerscher–Secretary General, Daisy consortium–who is blind. This panel included a demo of Dolphin Audio Publishing’s EasePublisher a tool that facilitates the creation of multimedia content that unites text, audio and images. Dolphin and Elsevier were the only companies that addressed multimedia and its role in the future book. While McGraw-Hill is offering PDF textbooks because they are, “the easiest, fastest, cheapest solution.” Dolphin is thinking about how to enrich the learning experience for everyone. They found that when students with no disabilities used their multimedia books, they learned more. Apparently the combination of text (reading), audio (hearing the text read by a human), and image (photos, videos or illustrations that illuminate the material) enhances learning. Designing electronic textbooks that exploit this opportunity seems like a no-brainer. Teachers I’ve spoken to and my own experience with students in the classroom suggests that multi-media ignites student enthusiasm. Making PDF textbooks is like driving a Jaguar in first gear. But after 10 years of experience in the field, McGraw-Hill’s Ginny Moffet believes that: “students only care about the grade,” and “the biggest challenge to the [electronic textbook] industry is the high cost of content creation.” Hmmm, what about making a high quality product that everyone wants to buy, isn’t that the problem they should be trying to solve? It’s clear that the job of making an interesting electronic textbook is not being taken up by any of the old giants. Our prediction (and our hope) is that the future of the electronic textbook will not be directed by corporations, but by small start-ups, or non-profit consortiums of schools and academics. Efforts like the non-profit, Virtual High School, are an interesting beginning.
contagious media: symptom of what’s to come?
Here’s a rare peek into the inner workings of the institute: our discussion about viral media that came out of a debate over what to do with the Gates Memory Project. I’ve excerpted from last night’s email conversation….
Ben starts by saying:
Genesis and entropy are both accelerated on the web. Within moments, you can get something out there and have everybody talking about it. But the life can drain out just as quickly. I think it’s fair to say that energy [for the Gates Collective Memory project] is waning, but by refocusing on a single goal, we can perhaps keep this thing afloat…
Bob replies:
absolutely do not want to stop yet; haven’t done enough to have any lasting impact;
Dan says:
Not to derail the conversation by dragging into the realms of the meta, but might the arc that Ben’s describing (an initial flair-up of interest, followed by declining returns) be interesting in & of itself? It seems like the internet is very good at blowing up interesting things at the moment (viz: the contagious media thing Kim forwarded), but it’s (generally) not very good at sustaining interest (or scrutiny). (A major & significant exception: when a community springs up around something.) Occasionally you get a “where are they now?” thread on Boing Boing or Slashdot or something, but that’s very much the exception & not the rule.
This is maybe something that’s important if we’re considering the future of books. The information arc of the printed book seems to be very different: if there’s not a media circus around the launch of the book, there’s a very slow pickup, lasting, conceivably, a very long time. Electronic media seem to be much more time-sensitive.
Bob replies:
EXCELLENT point!
Dan says:
But not a particularly novel one. Certainly someone’s done some thinking about this? I’m not sure where to start looking . . .
Kim says:
Some ideas of where to start looking:
Eyebeam’s Contagious Media Experiments
Exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art / Chelsea
CONTAGIOUS MEDIA
April 28 – June 4, 2005
Media Lounge
Review/preview of show
Dan replies:
This is kinda the opposite of what I’m interested in here. I think it’s great that the Internet spreads things virally, but these things burn out very quickly: the Peretti’s projects seemed “yesterday” a couple years ago. Nobody checks into blackpeopleloveus.com regularly – people visited once & got the joke (or didn’t). Do we really need a loving history of “all your base are belong to us”? It was funny – and certainly signifies a moment of our collective interaction with the Internet very precisely – but a museum exhibitions seems almost beside the point. You don’t put a pop song into a museum – and I say that with a full appreciation of pop songs.
To carry the pop song analogy further: in a pop-song world, can you have Bach? if you wanted to have Bach?
(I don’t think The Gates really fit into this sort of framework, because there were personal interactions with them. Ben – for example – can tell stories about the gates in a way that we can’t really tell (interesting) stories about the dancing baby.)
Kim replies:
Social critiques like www.whatisvictoriassecret.com which posed women in sexy underware barfing over the toilet really did say something about body image and the way the advertising industry manipulates women. And the Nike sweatshop emails forced Nike to address labor issues. These websites are not built to last in the same way oil paintings and poems are, but I do think they are a significant cultural commentary and a new form of activism. In this sense I suppose, the Gates do not fit, because they have no political goals.
We should also consider contagious media that parodies an over-hyped current event, a good example is this blog written by Brittany Spears’ fetus Don’t forget, the most popular website about the Gates was a parody (the Sommerville Gates). it followed this formula, went viral and got tens of thousands of hits.
I think the contagious media element is important for our project. The Gates themselves were temporary and the material we are gathering is, ostensibly, finite (i.e. Nobody is going to go out and take a picture of the Gates tomorrow). Therefore, we need to draw attention to the project now. I don’t think personal interactions or the potential for stories/complexity prevents us from making at least some part of this project contagious.
I don’t get the pop-song analogy. We do have museums for pop-music. Jazz, Motown, Elvis, the Beatles, they are not trivial and we still have Bach.
Ben says:
I agree it would be interesting to look at the project in terms of its arc – a web arc versus a print arc. It might be interesting also to consider this in terms of closed and exposed. Writing a book is a relatively solitary and contained act (unless it’s built on interviews and field research). But still, a work in progress is usually kept very private and tucked away. Only upon being published does it open up to the world. Our project, however, started with a large number of people and a fair bit of attention, but then gradually contracted to an inner core. Now we try to make sense of that dizzying encounter with the larger world. You could say that print books embody thinking before speaking, whereas the web fosters speaking first and thinking later, or not at all.
As for Bach, I think he’s pretty much impossible in a pop world, except as reduced to a pop song – the played-to-death cello suite accompanying a Lexus gliding across your TV. Someone today with Bach’s genius probably couldn’t impact the development of music in nearly as big a way. Maybe he would just become a scientist. And it’s true, we don’t really put pop songs in museums. Only one of the things Kim mentions is a place, and that’s a museum to a legendary person, not a song. I suppose there’s the rock and roll hall of fame, but that strikes me as going to the taxidermist’s and calling it a zoo. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s a similar entombed quality to this Contagious Media Showdown Eyebeam is hosting. It’s proof that the “all your base,” “blackpeopleloveus” variety of web contagion is passé. Drag racing diseases isn’t subversive, it’s just referential. But I agree with Kim that there continue to be interesting and sometimes powerful instances of contagious media. But a big part of their power is that they come out of nowhere. The minute you announce that something is contagious, you kind of kill its coolness. I wonder if anything worthwhile will come out of that contest.
It’s interesting to analyze all this in terms of trying to make something coherent and lasting on the web. But I’m not sure we need to lob a contagious grenade of our own. What sort of thing are you imagining?
–end of email exchange, conversation continues in the comment field–