the black man has no name! THE BLACK MAN HAS NO NAME!

white people are in trouble! oh no! call....

THE HAITIAN

wait, what?

you know, for as far as entertainment has come, sometimes it's just appallingly behind the curve. i'm sorry to say, nbc's hit supernatural drama heroes is a grade a example of what happens when staff writers become a bit negligent of 200 YEARS OF STEREOTYPES!

let's explore:

for those of you who are not familiar with the show (under a rock much?), heroes is an ensemble drama about people with special abilities living in secret (for the most part) while trying to avoid baddies - the government, creepy siblings and parents, villains (naturally), etc. most are given run-of-the-mill powers: flying, telepathy, super speed...nothing marvel hasn't done to death. however, our man of the hour here (see above, looking all pensive and sexy) is a bit of a wet blanket for the supernaturally inclined. if you're used to defying the time-space continuum with your fancy time traveling powers, standing within 20 feet of the haitian (henceforth known as THE HAITIAN. he's getting his due respect in CAPS, bitches.) will keep you in the present moment. the plug is pulled on your power, like that.

it's no surprise then, that THE HAITIAN would come in handy when dealing with, say, a sociopath intent on murdering you with his thoughts. i'd like to keep THE HAITIAN close, too. however, these white people (former employers, still proving very needy) keep telling him where to be and what to do. nevermind the fact that he quit "the company" two years ago. nevermind the fact that he really didn't have a choice about taking that job in the first place ("work with us, or we ruin your life"). this man has been doing their bidding for at least two decades, and they can't be bothered to CALL HIM BY HIS NAME?! in fact, after four years of broadcasting, we only learned his name LAST WEEK (it's Rene, by the way). maybe someone in the writer's room finally clued in to the fact that when you put a nearly silent black man (he didn't utter a word until halfway through the first season) on the screen who exists only to take orders from the bourgeois...you're only a hop skip and a jump away from some of these famous predecessors.

mammy

a black person to cure all them white folks' problems. it doesn't matter whether youse having a baby or are being threatened by some telekinetic freak, if you got a mammy you'll be fat and happy soon.

sambo

you know, just the other day, i saw THE HAITIAN lounging under a tree taming some wild animals and i thought, "you know what that man needs? A JOB." so i put him to work for some secretive, ethically dubious corporation. he hasn't had a day off since.

the magical negro

he's black. he makes magical things happen. you know, cause when you're from the deep forests of some primal nation, that sorta stuff just comes easy to you.

UPDATE: honorable mention to tv's other favorite semi-silent, magical negro of recent years, mr. ___ eko. not like we know his first name either.

a sensitive aside: Jimmy Jean-Louis, the actor who portrays RENE, is actually Haitian. now didn't that just get all meta for you?

in tv land...everyone is qualified to be a guidance counselor

for all intents and purposes, i'm in a committed relationship with my television. i see it regularly. rearrange existing dates to accommodate its schedule. spend the morning after thinking "i wonder what he meant when he said that last night." etc. etc. the same is true for the little people inside the box. after all the hours i spend with them, through the good and bad, i want the best for them. so, of course, i'm happy when they succeed, regardless of the circumstances. but i can only make certain concessions to a point. i realize going around poking holes in the logic of a fictional world is really a waste of time...but somebody must. right?

as an aspiring librarian, the question i hate the most (yet, have to answer with an alarming frequency) is "oh, you have to go to school for that?". if i, lowly custodian of rare volumes, have to spend 2 years and thousands of dollars learning how to handle the goods, shouldn't someone charged with handling the education and mental health of minors be required to sit in on a night class or two?

so, gentle readers, let us now take this moment to acknowledge the absurdity of "the tv guidance counselor".

according to some fancy pants national association, the minimum amount of training a person must endure is a Masters degree in either Psychology or Education and a 240 on the "152 TExES School Counselor Exam". out of a possible 300. maybe more depending on your state. so, the next time your favorite tv show nominates the town wacko to tell Cast Member A to "pick a safety", i want to see that the props department has done the same for our star.

K.I.T. : a look at the greats


Emma Pillsbury

she wears sweater sets. she's afraid of germs. you win some, you lose some, right? far be it for me to accuse her of being anything other than fastidious (she probably got a gold star in student teaching), but i'm just concerned. her danny tanner-like need for clean must inhibit her ability to dispense relevant advice (does anyone else see the pamphlet behind her desk? "Radon: the silent killer"). also, teenagers are dirty. i think she needs a guidance counselor to help her choose a new career path.


Jeff Rosso

hippie with a heart of gold. this is the man you went to when you wanted some straight talk with a side of reminiscing. he was just as likely to solve your problem as he was to sing you a song. or tell you about his personal conflicts with bullies. or herpes. and, sure, that crosses a line that would make most schools fear lawsuit, but rosso just wouldn't let the man (in this case, a very necessary educational bureaucracy) get him down.



Buffy Summers

Buffy Anne Summers. she saved the world. a lot. apparently that's all the recommendation the administration over at sunny dale high needed before hiring our favorite vampire slayer. now, impending apocalypse aside, i think it's wise to point out that buffy can have some serious, uh, blonde moments. and, if her taste in men is anything to go by, she's not exactly a champion good decision maker. buffy pro's: she'll keep you from dying. buffy con's: attrocious grammar, dropped out of college, may still be suffering from some latent ptsd from that time she was dead. and, oh yeah, a student did actually die on her first day on the job.


Tami Taylor

my biggest problem with friday night lights may very well be that i forget this show is fiction. of course, that may have more to do with my abiding love for one adorable QB1 than with the show's content, but my point remains. all those docu drama angles and that improvised dialogue, it just seems like they are going out of their way to fool me. that said, they blew their verisimilitude to pieces when they promoted tami taylor from mrs. coach to school administrator. i've been told they do things differently in texas, i just wasn't aware that included allowing uncertified nice ladies to coach afterschool sports, advise town bimbos on college apps and rezone school districts. i mean, if that's the case, i may start practicing law in dillon. (my first action: prove that all "saracens" are constitutionaly obligated to marry me at my discretion.)

why i watch gossip girl OR a meditation on Ho Yay!

hello. my name is nicole. and it's been 36 hours since my last hit of gossip girl.

i. am. addicted?

step one is admitting you have a problem. i am, clearly not ready to do that. what i am ready for, however, is admitting that i share the taste of 2.24 million teenage girls across the nation. but, hey, that's not really news.

GG justifications i've used in the past:

1. "you know how i am with series premieres." if i catch the first episode, i'm in it for the long haul. call it a strong work ethic, my sticktoittiveness, or my sheer stubbornness (i will not let mediocre television get the best of me!)

2. "it just doesn't understand Camp." a smart lady once said, "Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp is usually less satisfying." i once replied, "ain't that the motherfucking truth." the monday night bitchery that is GG may succeed in it's over the topness, but if i want 'wink wink nudge nudge' irony i'll go hang out bedford ave. GG never rises above being "less satisfying" than the Grande Dame of all naive teen programming: Beverly Hills 90210 (1.0, thank you very much). now that was a show completely oblivious of its PSA-style transgressions. in one decade they managed to burn, mug, rape, kidnap, shoot, induce amnesia and miscarriage, cult up and coke up a single cast member. all with a happy moral at the end of each story arc. sorry to say, there isn't enough lavender in chuck bass' wardrobe to compete with that theatre of the absurd.

which brings me to my next point...

3. "they're just stringing me along with all that HoYAY!" chuck, patron saint of bad deeds and dandies, needs to lay off the purple. and the exchange of bedroom eyes with his bestie, nate. unless he means it. and he always means it. you wanna know why? well, because he's chuck bass.

observe:

martini's at a pool party? chuck's trying to make a statement and it's not "i'm a suburban wife with 2 toddlers." also, i'm pretty sure "casual touch" ranks high in some 'girls guide to snagging her guy' manual. smooth move, nate.

when i was a little girl, i thought prince charming would come and whisk me away from all of my worldly troubles. seems chuck's had the same fantasy. note: nate's "i can't deal with you when you get like this. can we talk when we get home later?" look. (to non-viewers: they do, indeed, live in domestic bliss. though i'm sure CW execs would call it a "totally male heterosexual city dwelling.")

there is something queer about this scene. ahem, sartorially speaking. red pants, green socks, purple ascot! it's all a bit...off. this unsettling feeling, of course, has nothing to do with, say, chuck's seductive pose or nate's crotchward gaze. no, noo! not at all...

"you say something. he turns and flashes a coy smile in another direction, looking like he's contemplating something big. there's a pause. your eyes meet and, before you know it, you're being drawn in for the big moment, like you were some twinkling star in his orbit. will your world's collide? you should slow down, put a hand out to stop you from your fall. but now that hand is there and grasping. 'this purple suit's gonna get wrinkled,' you think, surprised at how little you actually care."

and with that, i just became nate's favorite erotic fiction writer.

media studies...of a different kind

extra credit? not quite. just turning a new technological leaf this november.

the posts from jan to may were all about what academia has to say about (cue heralding trumpets) "information technologies". but enough with the book learning. im about to school (and be schooled) you on tv.

for this very special occasion i'd like to regale you with a tune i composed. it's written in the key of "i watch too much tv and am concerned that is stunting the growth of my interpersonal skills." little matty saracen was my muse. please enjoy this in an ironic fashion and try not to pity me too much.

(in the style of jenny lewis)

the aftertaste of lonely

take out for two

except on of them is you

tv lights flicker

and i am made sicker

by the feeling

of being

alone

her love isn't so provisional

it's just mine that's televisional

and, oh, i should get out more

but i know i'm such a bore

the real world

dont treat me

so well

(catchy blue grass hook here)

chorus:

do you think there are others

with two dimensional lovers

and those

they would consider

friends

is it fine to feel so homey

instead of just only

creating plots

as means

to my own ends

but i'll have one more sip

and i swear i will quit

this relationship

i've built in my head

i need a new flavor

one i can savor

i'm sick of just only

this aftertaste of lonely

if there's one thing the internet has been missing, it's my opinion. so, let's begin.

Fin

it's the end of the semester already. part of me is completely surprised and the other (sleep-deprived) part of me has been counting down the minutes to this day. all parts of me, however, have been taking stock of the classes i've had this semester, weighing the good against the bad and wondering what i would do better/again. 

of the three classes i had in the last 5 months, i definitely wished they had all been like this one. a necessary evil of the last semester has been finishing up the required classes and, while i've learned a lot in each of them, i feel like i never got to escape that dreaded banking method. learn this resource, the fields in this standard, etc. etc... you know, i pretty much blame this for my lack of sleep (what can i say? dewey keeps me up at night.) thankfully, 680 did not fit that structure. there was so much room for exploration, both in reading contemporary and classic texts and duking it out with their authors in class (i will continue to hold a grudge against postman). and, unlike most of my other classes to date, there was such a process of colaborative learning here! i tease out an idea, jessica rephrases because i just spoke gibberish in class, a classmate responds with an anecdote that really illustrates the point i was trying to make...*sigh * what a great learning experience.

speaking of anecdotes, here's one that illustrates exactly the opposite of the 680 educational lovefest.

prof.: can anyone name anything that seems like it should be included in this list? i will take any answer. just volunteer something aloud.

me: how about [answer]?

prof.: no. that's not right.

always a definitive idea of right and a wrong! no shades of grey. just memorize and spit out answers. those answers, that banked info, only sticks in my brain for so long. to the contrary, i can remember exactly who i stood between when we arranged ourselves in the "agree/disagree" exercise re: postman's statements.

so, thanks instructional technologies for moving me out of my comfort zone and teaching me that old dogs can have fun with new tricks. thanks classmates for remembering my blog posts and mentioning them in class, making me feel like i actually contributed something of value. and thanks jessica for being so attentive and willing to depart from the norm. that has made you a truly great professor (and will make you a great mom, too!)

see you guys, to borrow a phrase from emily, IRL (in real life).

wrong side of the virtual tracks

Social networking sites are a lot like your neighborhood bars. They’ve each got their own atmosphere, crowds, and you choose which one you'd like to be at based on your preference for either of those qualities. This is a great way of assessing the types of (potentially like-minded) people you may meet on these sites; however, this site selection usually gives way to an "us vs. them" mentality. in Boyd’s article, "Viewing American Class Divisions through MySpace and Facebook" the "us" and the "them" become the "hegemonic" and "subaltern" teens - or what the rest of the America would call the "good" and "bad".

 Boyd’s discussion of social networking sites reveals a very scary comparison that is leveled against today's teens. The idea that those who conform to societies rules are good and those that do not are bad can't be good for teenagers as they develop their sense of self and, furthermore, isn't a maxim that is completely true. The fact that this "good vs. bad" dialog has been translated to teen’s online socializing behaviors is even more startling.

 And yet, as arbitrary as this internet-age social code seems, I have witnessed it exactly as Boyd portrays it. I came of age around the same time that Friendster, the first social networking site of its kind, hit its peak. At the time, the novelty of connecting with friends over the internet far outweighed the hipness of its aesthetics or exclusivity. Actually, that’s not entirely true. At the time, Friendster had little to no competition so there were no hipper/better sites to flock to. But, in the years that followed the competition appeared and Friendster was left in the dust. Facebook emerged as the go to place with those for a .edu email account and MySpace was the catch all for everyone else who wanted profiles but lacked credentials. In Boyd’s article she points to a number of reasons for the social divide between Facebook and MySpace (aesthetics, interest in bands, etc.) but I think these elements are all symptomatic of their beginnings. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard student replicating the university’s internal website for profit. The fact that it persisted as a site for “.edu-havers only” for years after its inception is key to understanding its ivory tower outlook today.

 Even now that Facebook has opened its gates and allowed entrance to high school students and the middle aged alike, the elitist current has not flagged. I could write a dissertation on the disadvantages of being Facebook friends with my mother. I could also note the fact that online communication between me and my hometown friends (who still reside in the lower middle class enclave famous for Pat Benetar and the number of pubs per capita we grew up in) is limited to MySpace messages and infrequently checked emails, all for lack of computer access. It may seem like a lot of work must be done in order to change people’s opinions about these sites and the people who use them, but I wonder if that is all that important. In as much as self-imposed caste systems are limiting, they are still self-imposed.

Podcast promo, etc.

i consider myself someone who's familiar with a lot of the new technologies out on the market today, so it was surprising when i realized i had no idea how to work GarageBand on my computer. the scary thing about new programs like this is it seems like you are venturing into a foreign world: new language, customs, etc. the upside in this case is that there are plenty of people who have gone before you, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of youtube videos, webpages, and podcasts (interesting that people use the medium to describe the in's and out's of said medium).

so, now that i've taken in what these resources have to offer me, i've created my very first audio recording. i'm glad i've had this experience to force me to deal with this technological obstacle. for someone who has easy access to these programs it seems a real shame that it's taken me this long to use them. regardless, i really appreciated the fact that after a few tutorials i was able to grasp the major concepts/functions and craft exactly the audio piece i wanted.

the practice of recording my audio and uploading it to my itunes, really made me realize how democratizing technology can be. if i can learn how to do this, with the right tools, anyone else can.

fingers crossed. let's see if this works.

from blog to pod

podcasting is one of those inventions that makes me thankful for technology. this is exactly what technology is supposed to do for us: bring together people from all over to share their views on just about everything with no mediating forces to stop them from doing so. the fact that so much of what is on our airwaves is brought to us by the good people at Clear Channel Communications means that most everything we hear on the radio is profit related. Curtis Fox, in his review of podcasting, mentions the real world constraints of being a cog in the corporate radio machine: padding a show to fill the prescribed segment of time, breaking for messages from your sponsors, affording the massively expensive airtime, etc. podcasting makes these concerns obsolete and, best of all, anyone can do it. i don't know what the average hourly rate is for time on an FM frequency is, but i can't imagine it's something a housewife or college student could afford.

what may be even more significant than the democratization of the medium is the fact that, in podcast form, amateur broadcasters don't have big brother breathing down their neck. the FCC does not police the podosphere...and thank god for that. it's enough that corporations decide what messages i should be bombarded with, having the federal government decide what isn't appropriate for me to hear is beyond frustrating.

popular commercial radio may remind me that its got "more music, less commercials, every hour" than its competitors, but i still feel like i'm being sold something every minute. and public radio may have the content i like (relatively free from corporate brainwashing), but it's not radical by any stretch of the imagination. i just can't win here.

but i believe podcasting can be a real success through its free and diverse content. my only concern is, as podcasting's popularity increases will there be better way to promote and organize all of the offerings out there? efforts like story corp's are a good framework for cataloging personal oral histories, but will places like the paley center for media (which is the brains behind nyc's museum of television and radio) organize large scale efforts for recording our oral history on the web?

google busts

big brother (in this case, google) is watching. some other famous moments caught by the google street view cameras.

• guy passed out drunk
• guy falls off bike
• guy sells drugs

for more, see my new favorite blog: Street View Stuff

[too lazy to give this a title]

from the comics i read to the movies i watch, it seems everyone is talking about universal knowledge and the collective unconscious. the idea that great progress is made in silent and sudden bursts is circulating. turns out the answers to all our problems are simply in the ether...or on google.

of course, not everyone falls into the pro-google category i would claim i belong to. those more "old school" than carr would say that answers not hard-won by tireless research are not truly earned or deserved. that google makes nearly unlimited amounts of data (it's safe to say call any database with one trillion items "nearly unlimited") available to us in a few key strokes has certainly changed our culture. it has changed the path of human intelligence and i don't think this is a bad thing.

carr cites a number of examples where technology threatened a way of life and those that witnessed the change cursed it. you'd probably have a hard time finding a group of people today who think guttenberg was a jerk, but the whole movable type thing didn't go over so well with those that had a vested interest in the hand-printed word. sure, hindsight is 20-20 and we know now that the democratization of information revolutionized the world, but let's learn from history a bit before we go repeating it.

google, yes, makes us lazy. i think that's a fair (ish) statement. with the internet on my phone, and my phone with me wherever i go, i never hesitate to consult the internet when my brain refuses to supply an answer to the question at hand. maybe that's not the best behavior. but what about the positive changes the internet/google brings? carr talks about the plastic brain and i think i've got it because i know my neurons are moving! my hard drive reformatting! i may be easily distracted as of late, but i am able to make faster connections to a wider array of material than ever before. i may forgo a deep reading of article, but when i recall several pieces together i am making quick, sharp choices. i am storing more information and learning how to synthesize more complex ideas at a greater speed and that is a very good thing in my book. the content of these ideas doesn't matter as much as my increased comprehension skills.

carr talks about the threat of people becoming machines too, but i feel this is just a sensationalist way for others to try to scare change off. there will always be the human element, the part of this technological evolution that introduces chance into the equation, and i don't believe that can ever truly be overcome by algorithms. mankind will continue to build smart machines and tell them what they must know, but i have no fear that the reverse will happen.

ps. for someone who claims his attention span is spread thin, he wrote a pretty lengthy article. i wonder if it took him multiple sittings to finish the re-read.

that's so last month. or the problem of obsolete sns's.

last week my friends and i got in to a debate about the "eminent" demise of facebook. they insisted that the sudden emergence and success of twitter was proof that people no longer considered facebook as the source for internet communication and recent (failed) redesigns of facebook were the death throes of the once all powerful site. i disagreed. for several reasons.

to begin with, i don't believe facebook and twitter are meant to do the same things. i would even go so far as to say that twitter is a "social networking site" in the strictest sense of the word. i say this knowing full well that i am not the model user/appreciator of twitter, but i do listen to those that love the site and what sticks out most to me is how unidirectional the messages of twitter seem to be. transactions on twitter seem to clearly fall into two categories, input and output, with little overlap. some people use twitter to glean bits of news from sources important to them (input) but, at the heart, twitter is geared toward the individual who wants to broadcast status messages to an audience (output). sure, followers can reply, but conversation is limited to 140 character snippets and a scrolling home page where new posts replace the oldest. in this way, it's hard for me to think of twitter as a community building site (community implies the exchange of significant content. and, yes, that was a value judgement.) and, as the "networking" part of social networking implies some sort of exchange, i really wonder how this is achieved under such time/space constraints. and, you know, telling 200 followers you had cream of wheat for breakfast hardly seems like a way to build or maintain relationships.

facebook is a horse of a different color. with a number of functions (contact information, messages on the public wall and the private inbox, picture albums, etc.) i don't understand how it is perceived as being in direct competition with twitter. if anything, twitter is simply one element, the status message, extracted from the entirety of the facebook world. now, i should disclose the fact that i think both sites are superfluous. facebook is just as guilty of encouraging the me-centered approach to 2.0 (i tag myself in a friend's picture, i list movies/tv/books that demonstrate my pop cultural savvy, etc. etc. ad nauseum) and i am just as guilty as the next in participating. that said, it fulfills my definition of social networking in that users exchange information. and, successful or not, the redesigns are always crafted with that input-output exchange in mind (you can digg a comment now, see new photos as soon as they are posted, read friends' status messages on your home page the moment they are posted...).

so will twitter kill facebook? not exactly. i think it's important to note how the twitter is keeping facebook on its toes, but i don't take it as a real threat. and while we may be too lazy to read an entire article in the paper (140 character summaries, please!), i don't think were willing to live by status messages alone. twitter's numbers may be rapidly increasing, but facebook has the edge in that this generation (see pew study) love uploading content (pictures, videos, audio...).

but i suppose the golden rule here is that nothing lasts forever. does any body even remember friendster? have all those myspace users run to facebook and never looked back? twitter may have its moment and facebook's popularity may lag (though numbers say membership is still growing) but one day the only places you'll find both sites will be on the wayback machine.

new news

not just on the graduate level...

web based learning has reached our neighbors across the pond. brittain is restructuring it's educational program to include lessons on twitter, wikipedia, et al. at the elementary level. 

proponents of the change stress that children today must have a firm grasp of technology if they are expected to succeed later in life. detractors say this should not come at the expense of traditional (read: print) learning methods.

i think it's safe to say there's room for both. why not assign students the task of researching the victorian era in both wikipedia and a reliable print source? why not have them twitter in (historical) character?

the people have been heard! again.

it seems like facebookers really know how to cause a fuss over changes they don't like. last month they lead a rebellion against the terms of use clause that gave facebook indefinite ownership over all user content (you quit, but facebook holds the info in your profile hostage). this month, facebook users complained that the redesign to the site was no good and facebook acquiesced. apart from confusing regular users (me: "hey, where'd that button go? it was right here a minute ago.), the redesign streamed more details in the public forum (your "friends" see more and more about you on their home page) and made privacy settings difficult to locate. but, no more.

in light of this and our discussion on monday, i think i'll go investigate those privacy settings now.

nicole's blog (brought to you by google)

After a long day at the office, I came home and found Iron Man on DVD on my coffee table (thanks roommate! Thanks Netflix!). A perfect end to a less than perfect day, I decided. I made dinner, kicked my shoes off and settled in for what I thought would be a pleasantly mindless two hours in front of the television. Mission accomplished, or so I thought for the first twenty minutes. I began to feel uncomfortable. Something was gnawing at the back of my mind. Something was out of place…or perhaps it was that everything was in it’s place – and a little too conspicuously. By the end of my two hours in front of the tv I had counted almost a dozen product logos and heard references to a few others… I can now say with all certainty that, superheroes and co.: use Hummers, BMW’s, Mercedes Benz’s, Audi’s and Rolls Royce’s to get to their destinations; tinker on dell computers; get a hold of their friends on the latest LG and Nokia phones; etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Now, I absolutely was not surprised by the looming corporate presence in this sure-to-be summer blockbuster. What disturbed me most, however, was the thought that, “For each product that I barely managed to identify, how many more did I only subconsciously register?”. I mean, it’s not like I set out to count ®’s and ©’s, and maybe I was a bit more keen on these things because of our recent class topics, but such marketing saturated entertainment really makes me question how much of what I do/buy is self-motivated.

I recently finished watching Merchants of Cool and I couldn’t help but be deeply affected by it. I am a part of the generation that was under that documentary’s microscope. At the time it was filmed (2001) I’m sure I fit some of the pop-cultural profiles/psychological landscapes they sketched out. And I’m sure this is no less true of someone outside that generation (no man is an island. We all react with/against our peers in some way), but it hit particularly close to home because I remember those particular popular phenomena as they occurred. Again, the question here really isn’t matter of taste (the 1960’s gave us the Beatles, while the 90’s gave us N’Sync, etc.) but of personal politics and how I transmit/absorb those ideas.

There was an interesting part of the documentary where they covered the work of “cool hunters” – people in marketing who go out and photograph what’s the hippest style of the moment. They report their findings to a client (for a fee, of course) and those clients, in turn, create an ad campaign based on this “newly discovered” trend. This is a system where the “underground” is exploited for profit, and the only reason we pay them any mind is because we see ourselves in the media.

If identities are fabricated and sold by near-omnipotent corporations, are we all a part of commerce whether we like it or not? And is there such a thing as a genuine expression of one’s self? The sad truth is, I don’t think there is. Our outfits are never truly unique because we’ve bought the clothing at a store. Every haircut has been had, every band has a following. We are all apart of some demographic.

So maybe the important thing isn’t trying to form an identity in spite of marketers, but finding others to identify with. Merchants of Cool spent a lot of time discussing the ways in which conglomerates benefit from our participation, but it seems as though there is at least one way we can benefit from our interaction with them.

vision of the future...from the past

in 1993, when the middle school me wished for a phone i could plug in to a tv on which i could chat my friends up, at&t had the bigger picture in mind.

like jessie's video about newpapers on your computer screen (gasp!), it's scary how close this company nailed present day communications.*

*it should be noted that at&t likely had sources tipping them off to these inventions...like the developers in their employ. the marketing is a bit disingenuous (and what marketing isn't?), in that it implies these technologies will simply come about in the future and does not disclose the efforts and money they are spending on producing such products. interesting none the less.

the people have spoken!

hallelujah! tropicana renegs it's new usability-challenged packaging thanks to the internet cries of many. 

i'll never again stand in the freezer section searching, in vain, for the pulp free oj i love!

the high, the low, and everything in between...according to mcluhan

so i've got this annoying co-worker. very annoying. any mention of movies/music/tv/art/radio/smoke signals/the earth's axis is a challenge to her to educate you on the premier example of that genre. i say i thought memento was good, she says citizen cane set the standard for reverse narrative (ok) and orson welles was way ahead of his time (duh) and i really should see the film if i want to anything about anything (i have. and whatever.) i say i find my mom's shellacked crafts kitchy, she says many of the old masters coated their works in a thin varnish to add a luster to their subjects and preserve their pieces (factually incorrect) and have i ever seen a work by rembrandt or vermeer (...my ba's in art history, thanks) because she will have to take me to the metropolitan museum of art and show me one in person (no thanks. and whatever.).

she is a person who operates on the principal that High and Low are definitive categories... and High is the only one that counts. and sure, i exaggerate to make my point here (except for the taking me to the museum part. that's verbatim.) - namely, that i think this is an absurd way of compartmentalizing life/art/media. nevertheless, i'm convinced that if we spend all our time categorizing the good and the bad we miss out on the fact that all things exist on a spectrum. clueless may be emma dressed up (or down, depending on your take) with "as if's" and "whatever's", fine. and it may say plenty about actors/fashion/slang, but what does it say about the culture in which it came about. why then? why in that form? CONTENT vs. CONTEXT, people!

mounting a high horse in defense of culture is a way of aligning yourself with the important. if you can create/label what others should value you are, in essence, saying that people must value you and your definitive opinions as well. this is my problem with my coworker. and with postman. both assert that the old is better because it's old. everything else is derivative and brings us further away from the serious work of art. this is a value statement (subjective!), says very little about the works in question (you claim, popular television programs aren't as good classic literature, but i still have no idea what criteria lead you to make that assessment) and is, quite frankly, so ego-driven it makes me want to poke my own eyes out.

if new is always bad, developing media will never be good. if i never have to change the way i interpret a work, then media literacy is dead. and if that's the case, then our culture, our narratives, will never change.

luckily, mcluhan saves us from this cultural apocalypse. for him, technology works us over - it changes both the form and the content of our media. he says, "there simply is no time for the narrative form, borrowed from earlier print technology. the story line must be abandoned...[television is]...influencing contemporary literature."

finally, change is good! mcluhan, in speaking about television, leaves room for all the technology to come. he recognizes that information and learning are ever changing and that does not necessarily mean that they are not as valid as what has come before. it is a far more democratic approach to media literacy and one that i can completely respect.

all theory of media aside...i'm off to watch the oscars now!

the twitter on twitter

well...if david pogue says twitter isn't the time-sucking, ego-driven, of-the-moment internet phenomenon it appears to be...then may i'll reconsider my stance.

my gripes aside, he does raise the same interesting point that boyd did in her article on blogging. namely, that twitter can be "precisely what you want it to be".

pogue defines his twitter as being useful for somethings that would not "merit a full blog or article post." to that i would say, 'does a blog really have to be that involved in order for you to consider posting it?'

having all of these technologies that do, essentially, the same thing (facebook's status message is comparable to a twitter feed, twitter feeds resemble short musings in a blog post...) seems redundant (eliminating redundancies is what i do. i've got the cataloger's gene.). i can justify having a facebook that displays personal information within a network of people who are likely to need that information (it's been a helpful tool for making dinner/drink dates with old friends. whether or not they showed up for those meetings is another story all together.) in addition to having a blog where i upload content (something more involved than that status message). they connect me to people in different ways.  the facts are on facebook (name, location, phone, email. leave a brief comment at the sound of the tone), the thoughts are on the blog (the who, what, where, when and why of my life. no character limit).

but, it looks like i've just talked myself into a corner trying to define what these technologies are. in trying to make them distinct things, i've uncovered that, yes, they can be anything.

new(s) addiction

someone mentioned http://www.cutethingsfallingasleep.org/ as a type of news/medium postman would not approve of. in the interest of (ahem) research, i logged on for the first time today...

i'll never get any work done again. uh oh.

sticker books don't count

"the campaign for a commercial-free childhood" is mounting a campaign against scholastic inc. saying that book clubs (the single best part of elementary school) should not market video games and other non-book items in their monthly fliers.

susan linn, director of the campaign, says, "The message that children get when books are marketed with other items is that a book in and of itself isn’t enough. And what it does is encourage children to choose books based not on the content but on what they get with it.” (emphasis mine)

judy newman, president of scholastic book clubs counters by saying that "books sold with small items like stickers to help engage children who 'may not be traditional readers.' "

sounds like a good pedagogical brawl is in the works! in one corner: heavy weight james "literacy comes in a variety of  forms" gee. in the other: neil "books are always better" postman.

round one: ding ding.

critical literacy: the what and the how

this week, a lot was said about what literacy is... and what it isn't. and we spent some time talking about the role of librarians as ministers of technology today. And, while i feel that these are important things to define before becoming a literacy minded librarian, i also felt a little left out in the cold. i don't think of myself as a librarian in the making because my interests lie in creating and preserving records - not dispensing them to the public.

that said, critical literacy plays a very different role in my life. to me, critical literacy highlights issues of what information we record and how we interpret its significance/educate others.

the how
friere’s notion of education as a system of economics, and by extension a system of power relations, is fascinating. he describes a pedagogy in which knowledge is capital and it flows only from the top down. and, like hegel’s master-slave dialectic, dominant-submissive roles are constantly reaffirmed by those who participate and never change. students and information are handled as objects, teachers define the scope of our knowledge, etc. but if this system benefits only the few on top (teacher-masters), why do we continue in this way?

how it can change
let’s make the information flow both ways! let’s open our shelves and catalog information according to the knowledge of the masses and serve the greater good…okay, maybe i’m not that radical, but i do believe there is a trend towards truth amongst all those information seeking teacher-students out there. the benefits of developing tools like librarything and wikipedia far out-weigh the drawbacks. we’re much more likely to discover something new by pooling all of the resources we already have. ideally, incorporating a small fraction of the authoritarian 'top-down' method (a content manager at wikipedia wouldn't hurt), while sharing the power between all those who participate, would allow the exchange and evolution of information to happen at unparalleled speeds. (if you don't believe me, listen to ethan hawke and julie delpy discuss collective consciousness. 3 minute mark.)

the what
in 1973, the american psychiatric association decided to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatric disorders. to physicians who praticed prior to that date, i'm sure this difference in human desire/behavior was a matter of medical fact (science is, in fact, still trying to find the 'gay gene'). today, however, this episode in history is seen as an example of the influence of bias over the documentation of the society we live in. now, it's easy to make the case for this one considering how much of a hot button issue homosexuality is, but what is an archivist to do when cataloging far less sensitive matters?

what can be changed
the librarian code of ethics prizes professional neutrality above most things, and for good reason. with authority comes responsibility and, as someone who looks to create information, i should feel a great responsibility for changing the content of what people learn by defining its context. this is what critical literacy is concerned with. if i decree that world religions belong in the realm of myth (a la dewey and his decimal system), i am altering a person's world view. if literacy may be loosely defined as the retention and application of information, critical literacy would require me to consider the why (is this here?) along with the what (does this mean?) and the how (do i learn/teach more?)

begin again

the hardest part about blogging: choosing a title.

i got home last monday determined to whip up the best class blog i've ever created (easy, this is the only one) and i couldn't get past the first step. what do i call this thing? it had to be witty (popcultural references a plus, but nothing too obscure/obnoxious). it had to be something i would remember next week (too many accounts, too many passwords for me to remember these days). and, most importantly, it couldn't contain an alias with some combination of numbers and x's (xXLibrARyRocKsTArrXx680, anyone?)...seven days later and i have a blog i'm not too embarrased to call by name.

one might say, "nicole, you obssess over inane details!" this is, of course, true. but i suppose i'm getting at something else here. namely, technology is rewriting the rules of everyday communication. like the unspoken etiquette of email forwarding we spoke about in class last week, technology is changing the ways we communicate with one another on all fronts. social networking sites ask me to add every detail of my life to my profile; my peers determine the socially acceptable format for doing so (hence, my "favorite movies" really have to say something about me as a person and the name "xXLibrARyRocKsTArrXx680" is so 1998).
rumors abound about the negative impact of texting on language use in teens and parents complain that they just don't understand their kids anymore (maybe not a new problem, but predictive texting is getting the blame for this one now).

in any case, i suppose i'll come to terms with being on the tail end of the "me generation." i'll update my myspace/facebook again (because friendster is so 2003), do the blog thing again (my early days of oversharing on livejournal be damned), and work on getting something real out of this blog two[point]oh! sounds promising to me.

...but no twitter.