Voila! Ze Questions are finished!

The questions for our group blog endevour are finished. Thanks to Carla for getting me started! Do it soon so I can add you to my LIST OF AWESOME TERPS WHO HAVE DONE THIS QUESTIONNAIRE. Here it is!

The Next Blog Challenge

Hey Guys, My poor brain is so tired from writing papers. I'm blanking on any kind of umd related questions type thingies for the blog thingy we discussed. Help? Leave a prompt or question in the comments, and I'll try and assemble them with some of my own by monday. Thanks, Hannah

Why you should be making use of Pinterest

Hi everyone,

This is Michael Kahane and I'll be talking to you later today about Social Network Theory and Virality (with the focus of building a blog audience). I came across this article about how awesome Pinterest is for increasing traffic: Crafty bloggers use Pinterest to swap ideas, drive traffic. I'll be talking about Pinterest a little bit today, but this is a good read.

See you later!

What to blog about...

Well, logically I'd write about the Caps right now, being that they're in the middle of an epic seven game, first round series. Problem is I have this big problem where I don't want to jinx anything by saying a word about it, verbal or written. So I'll keep quiet, keep my thoughts to myself through Wednesday night, and try to do some sort of yoga or deep breathing exercises to help my health get back on track. I probably had higher blood pressure than 99.9% of people in the world today during that game. I can only imagine what game seven will do to me. Go Caps.

Re-New Blog

Hey Everyone,

I finally decided to purchase my domain, so before I delete my blog that appears on the class blog roll, the link to my new blog is here: www.seaofrhymes.com 

Thanks,

Yalabe

A Cyborg Manifesto

Yes, interpreting Donna Haraway's manifesto was a challenge even for the graduate student in the class. Even after reading it multiple times! So I wanted to share with you all a helpful resource that I used in dissecting "A Cyborg Manifesto." It's a website that was put together by an instructor trying to help her students understand Haraway's famous work. I've never used a Cliff note or Spark note or anything of the sort so I have nothing to compare it to, but I found her interpretations helpful as I reread. 

As for tomorrow, take another look at the chart comparing "comfortable old hierarchical dominations to the scary new networks I have called the informatics of domination" on pages 161 & 162. It's been over 20 years since Haraway revised her manifesto and we'll be discussing this chart tomorrow. I have some powerful objections to some of the dichotomies on the chart and am wondering if any of you do as well?

Harry Potter!

Since I haven't read the Hunger Games yet I couldn't participate in the challenge this week. Instead I did a post on Pottermore! Have you guys been on the site yet? If not check out my post on it HERE

New Post! "Trayvon Martin: The Media's Dead Marionette"

Finally got around to my "response" post - it's on the whole Trayvon Martin fiasco.  I'm not really commenting on the ins and outs of the case, but more so how members of the media, corporations, and activists have seen his passing as an "opportunity," and have warped the case into a sordid opportunity.  Read it, if you've got a few minutes!

Laura's Video Challenge

Checking Blood Glucose

Helpful Blog Resource

The Daily Post/ is put out by wordpress to help you think of new posts etc.

Arguing Against Sunstein's Republic.com 2.0

In class tomorrow, Michael Venetti and I will be arguing against some of the points Sunstein makes in his Republic.com 2.0. We will be referencing this Ted Talk and this article to demonstrate why Sunstein's argument that technology's ability to "filter" what people want to experience is a hindrance to society and ultimately our democratic system.

Sunstein argues that this concept of "personalized news" (4) is affecting democracy. He believes the people have a right to be exposed to new information that they might not be predisposed to click on. We believe, however, that the development of technology should not make human beings lazy. Throughout history, those who have wanted to know something would seek it out. Scholars and neighborhood gossips alike had to work to get their daily dose, so why should that change now? People, as global citizens, have a responsibility to the world they have created to keep up with it's goings on. It is not the duty of private corporations to inform people, it is the duty of people to inform themselves.

Stay tuned for this lively debate tomorrow!

Challenge Accepted!

Follow Your Own Weirdness: A Tale of Ezra

I enjoyed Michael's foray into the personal narrative, so I broke from my "observations" and told a little story about my hair, Paris Hilton, Afros, Lord of the Rings, and horses.

Enjoy, and leave me comments pretty pumpkin please. Follow Your Own Weirdness: A Tale of Ezra

In Favor of Sunstein's Republic.com

After reading so many examples of why the Internet is a threat, it’s tempting to write off Cass Sunstein’s argument as overly alarmist. However, Republic.com is less of a persuasive argument than an investigative one exploring three main questions:

“How will the increasing power of private control affect democracy? How will the Internet and the explosion of communications options alter the capacity of citizens to govern themselves? What are the social preconditions for a well-functioning system of democratic deliberation, or for individual freedom itself?" (Sunstein 5)

Sunstein upholds a republican self-government--one that has no sovereign acting without accountability--as the ideal we should protect. In the United States, this type of government is dependent on a deliberative democracy, in which both citizens and their representatives debate and reflect upon varied arguments on the day’s issues. It places a great deal of responsibility on representatives and citizens to seek out different points of view in our diverse country. According to Brandeis, “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” which brings us to Sunstein’s main fear--that the ability to personalize media can lead to what Nicholas Negroponte of MIT called The Daily Me--a collection of media so personalized to one’s own preferences that it leads to fragmentation from the rest of society and to cascades--moving quickly to a certain point of view without deliberation (4, 84).

An institution that must be protected to ensure democracy is the public forum, whether physical or virtual. Freedom of expression is central to democracy because it provides exposure to content that one would not seek out independently (such as newspaper editorials) and provides common experiences, which “provide a source of social glue” (Sunstein 5-6). The Supreme Court protects freedom of expression in public forums such as parks and sidewalks. These public forums offer three protections to democracy:

• Anyone can access them, which promotes shared experiences;
• It is easy to directly address an institution you object to (rallies, protests);
• They offer exposure to a wide variety of people and views, because it is difficult to wall yourself off from unwanted or unplanned experiences.

Virtual places for deliberation, can lead to “enclave deliberation” in which like-minded people speak only to each other. This can empower minorities, but it can also limit the pool of arguments and promote more extreme views, as shown by the 2005 study of conservatives and liberals who only became more convinced of their beliefs after speaking to like-minded people (61). Sunstein writes that “For a healthy democracy, shared public spaces, virtual or not, are a lot better than echo chambers,” because of the tendency to shield oneself from other points of view (95).

Sunstein lauds blogs as marketplaces of ideas and giant online public forums, then goes on to poke holes in both theories. Blogs are an imperfect marketplace of ideas because there is no economic incentive--even bloggers supported by ads are not as motivated to seek the truth as an author of a book would be because there is no financial price for spreading misinformation online. Their readers may not even want an unbiased truth; for example, many political blogs mostly link to other blogs that share their views, and only link to opposing views to discredit them, which limits the number of arguments and leads to polarization. Readers rely on blogs to filter, leaving the responsibility of fact-checking on their own shoulders. This is not to say that all blogs spread misinformation, or that readers are not savvy--but the infrastructure of blogs means that they are not “an incarnation of deliberative ideals" (146) .

Sunstein does not assume that with the advent of the Internet and blogs that public forums or people’s inherent curiosity will disappear--only that the freedom to restrict ourselves to content we agree with is not true freedom, and that we must continue to protect our deliberative democracy (12).

What Walt Whitman would have thought of The Daily Me, from McSweeney’s.