Web/Tech – Page 5 – Don't Gel Too Soon

WELCOME TO NABLOPOMO! HOW I SOLVED THE SABBATH PROBLEM

This is a very exciting undertaking – a blog post a day for thirty days! A little scary, but exciting. For me though, it offered an extra challenge, one that forced me to drop out last year. I can’t work on the Sabbath. Every Saturday I observe Orthodox rules about the kindling of light, whether it be a spark plug in a car, a doorbell or a reading lamp. God told us to rest, and every Sabbath we pray the He be "please with our rest." It’s a pretty big thing. And it’s lovely; beginning with the lighting of Sabbath candles on Friday night and then a festive dinner. I’ve come to love the peace of it even though before we began our observant life I thought it was nuts. It was a great lesson in not prejudging. Ever.

So of course, there was no way that I could post on Saturdays. I can’t use the computer. Fortunately, technology solved the problem. I figured out that if it’s ok to use timers for the dining room lights (it is) then I could set a timer for my post. I’m writing each Saturday post in advance and setting it to be posted on Saturday morning. And I’ll be in Israel for almost half the month so this will also be a great diar. I’m looking forward to this.

WILLIAM GIBSON, NEUROMANCER, THE WEB AND THE NEWSPAPER

I’m a big William Gibson fan. His new book Spook Country —
just arrived and I’m struggling to wait to start it on an upcoming beach
weekend instead of plunging in like I did with Harry Potter. It was
he – and his book Neuromancer,
published in 1984, that led me onto the Internet in the early 90s, well before most of my
friends. Once I dove into cyberspace (Gibson coined the word) I never
looked back.

Neuromancer was Gibson’s first book . Much of his early work was a dark view of a connected
world full of data pirates and megacities ("the Sprawl" in the US and
"Chiba City" in Japan) with skies, in one of his most famous quotes, "the color of television, tuned to a dead
channel."
I believed as I read Neuromancer and then all of his subsequent work that it was a preview of a
possible future and that parts of it were already on their way.

This appeared in Reuters today: U.S. consumers this year will spend more of
their day surfing the Internet than reading newspapers or going to the
movies or listening to recorded music, according a study released on
Tuesday. The report comes from the highly-regarded private equity firm
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, which examined consumer behavior to inform investment strategies. Where would future ad money (hence revenue, hence good investments, I assume) go?

When I began working online, I encouraged clients to include
their URLs in their ads and on their business cards. In the 90s, a major LA newspaper ran ad trailers in local movie theaters. Of course I urged them
to include their website URL at the end of the ad. Concerned about cannibalizing the print product , they declined to do so. I tell you this just to demonstrate how much has changed and how little many thought leaders realized what was going on around them (I also once heard Michael Eisner – on a public panel – call the Internet a fad – but that’s another story.)

The study goes on to report
that TV still rules: “in 2006 consumers
spent the most time with TV, followed by radio, which together combined for
nearly 70 percent of the time spent with media. That was followed by recorded
music at 5.3 percent, newspapers at 5 percent, and the Internet at 5 percent.” It then predicts that this year “the Internet will move up to 5.1 percent,
while newspapers and recorded music each move down to 4.9 percent.”

Except for the fact that it appears to have omitted consideration of the many of us, particularly younger people, who multi-task and have the TV, radio or music playing while we’re online, it makes sense. More and more, our lives are online — and our identities too. More and more the world emerging from the imagination of William Gibson is becoming our world.

Here’s a final thought – a little out there but not totally unreasonable considering the Gibson constituency. Wikipedia tells us "in his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far to suggest that Gibson’s vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the internet developed, (particularly the World Wide Web) after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks: What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"

BACK FROM BLOGHER 07

This post is a valentine. I learned at the Blog Her 07 Conference – in a story telling panel, that a story is a series of unanswered questions – answered gradually over time. But I have to start with the answer today because it informs everything else.

That answer begins with the three women in this photograph – (left to right) Elisa Camahort, Lisa Stone and Jory des Jardin, whose vision led to the gathering of almost 800 women who streamed into Chicago for the third annual BlogHer Conference. From its small beginnings in 2005, this conference and the community surrounding it has become something far more than the sum of its parts. The reason for its success and for the remarkable warmth and commitment to the community from the community emerges from this trio’s commitment to building concept, content and structure from the ideas, perspectives and attitudes of the bloggers — us — ourselves.

It’s tough to describe the high of so many powerful, rebellious women gathered in one place – dressed up, made up (this photo is from Suburban Turmoil) and smart as whips. Why begin with "dressed up, made up?" Because I’m old enough to remember when women only got dressed up when they were dressing for men. Now we dress for one another; our joy in one another’s company is boundless. Most of the women I spent the weekend with are too young to remember that, but for me it’s one of many wondrous facts emerging from this conference. Times have changed.

Then too, the entire conference empowers us. In fact, one of the major BlogHer initiatives is the product of an idea from just two bloggers: Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann (That’s Cooper on the left.) They and BlogHer’s founders have created BlogHers Act and it’s about to become a year-long initiative on global health issues — topic and focus chosen by BlogHers. How did it happen? A survey seeking nominations for topics and then a vote that chose global health. It’s an exciting enterprise — all generated from within the BlogHer community

The rest of the conference was also quite wonderful. Some details:

*That Art of Storytelling panel I mentioned, which I attended almost by accident, was moving in its honesty and support of artfully structured storytelling rather than the impulsive writing that blogging can become. Birdie Jaworski, Claire Fontaine and Ree were the generous, inspiring speaker and their words will stay with me for a long time.

*Another, on branding and promoting yourself and your blog, was fascinating. I’ve been in journalism most of my life and know all the obvious "tricks" people use to get attention, but there’s lots of thought and planning beyond that stuff and, even more importantly, serious discipline.

*Since the Presidential election is [only?] a year away, there was a Get Out the Vote panel too – with some real heavyweights brought together by BlogHer political editor Morra Aarons: Kim Gandy from NOW, and BlogHer’s own Lisa Sabatier (seen together in this photo) and others.

There was a second political panel, Earn Our Votes – also organized by Morra – to select issues women bloggers wanted to see the candidates focus on.

*I co-chaired a Media Training – which I had proposed because blogging women are of so much more interest to reporters but aren’t all experienced in managing those relationships- with Rachel of Sarcastic Journalist. We had great questions – the audience set the agenda for the panel and we got lots of positive feedback, which felt great.

Most of all – beyond the sessions and the very interesting keynotes was the community that BlogHer is. If I write too much about it I’ll get all goopy (I do do that) but in an era of Third Wave and post modern and generational blah blah these few days bring together women of all sorts in a common space, help them find common ground and just plain have a wonderful time – with one another.

If that doesn’t deserve a valentine, I don’t know what does.

AND YOU THOUGHT YOU ALREADY LOVED THE INTERNET

OK. So I’m writing the script for a benefit I have to MC and I can’t find my stopwatch – anywhere. I was a TV news producer for more than 20 years so I have stopwatches all over the place – just not right here where I need one.

You can guess what’s coming, right? I type "stopwatch" into Google and, for the very first post, comes this. There’s just nothing that’s not here, is there? I’m so happy! PS If I knew how to save a web page as a JPEG (I don’t have time to go look it up) I could also show it to you instead of just linking to it. If you know how – let me know. Please.

GETTING EXCITED FOR BLOGHER

Boy is this getting exciting! I’ve been on real deadline rollercoaster and will continue to be but seeing BlogHer at the end of the tunnel makes the journey easier. If you haven’t gone in the past, I’d give it a try – last year was a real blast. Here are a couple of photos from then – just to inspire you (Oh and this is not a commercial; no one asked me to write this…) I think I downloaded most of them from Flickr so they’re borrowed – but fun.

Here’s Cooper Monroe (Been There and The Motherhood), Jenny Lauck (Three Kid Circus) and Mary Tsao (Mom Writes)

Posting during lunch.

Come on – it’s really fun and Chicago is a beautiful city. More here.

PARDON ME, DO YOU THINK THE WEB CAN CHANGE THE WORLD?

I began my day at the plenary session of one of my favorite conferences –NTEN — The Nonprofit Technology Network. It’s a gathering of mostly non-profit activists who use the web to enhance their work. They are sharp, committed and fun.

The main session this morning was off the charts: David Weinberger, from Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. He nay be the best speaker I ever heard – certainly one of the best. Of course he’s funny and sometimes outraged – both very good things — but he also offers really thrilling analysis of our lives online and the role of each of us in making the Web what it is, and what it will be. Read more about him from another admirer, at the conference blog.

I also popped in at "Using Technology to Support Your Mission." Very cool but it turned out to be techier than I wanted, so wandered around running into people. This community is so vibrant and purposeful that it’s a wonderful place to hang around. These are people who don’t think the web can change the world, they know it has.

By the way, beyond what I’m learning in sessions, I can tell you what’s hot by the sessions I couldn’t even get into: The Age of YouTube: Using Video Online to Reach the Masses and Leveraging the Power of Participatory Media. Fortunately the YouTube one, at least, was videoed and will appear on the NTEN website where we can attend without sitting in a corner on the floor and sweating from the major body heat surrounding each of us.

Even so, in all it was a great day; sorry this report is so brief. More tomorrow.

CALLING ALL NEWS JUNKIES

It’s almost Shabbat and I only have a second but if you’re hanging around the web this weekend don’t miss this. It’s the newest Jib Jab video and will tell you all you need to know about why I went from TV to the web. Happy Passover!

HILLARY, THE TONKIN GULF AND 1984

OK, those folks who run TypePad and YouTube haven’t found a way to add this blog host to automatic video posting so I’m hooking a link in right here so you can watch this. I can’t decide what I think – it’s funny and clever and a perfect definition of a mashup but it’s also mean and off-mark. While many, including many feminists, have issues with Senator Clinton – this 1984/Apple Commercial version isn’t representative of most of them. Accusations of opportunism and flabbiness on the war are not the same as totalitarianism. True, she voted for the Patriot Act, but so did all but two Senators – and one of them didn’t vote at all!

Now, I remind myself – we still remember who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska) and that was in 1964 so maybe this vote will last too. Anyway, I don’t know where I’ll land politically this year – I’m really just thinking about the power of the kinds of media manipulation (in the technical sense) that are possible today. How will we ever help newer voters figure out how to determine the truth? Are they so much more evolved than we are in a media sense that we needn’t worry, or is the dismal lack of critical thinking work in current No Child Left Behind education going to affect how people think in the voting booth as well as our educational standing in the world?

Thoughts?

WHAT WOULD BOOK BURNING LOOK LIKE ON THE INTERNET?

If you heard a story of a teacher being prosecuted and facing 40 years in prison for exposing kids to pornography because a porn ad page popped up unsolicited while she was teaching, you’d think it was a joke, right? Everyone understands about pop-ups, right? This story seems as absurd as the legendary Senator Ted Stevens’ "tubes" speech.

Well apparently not. In Connecticut, Julie Amero, a seventh grade substitute teacher, faces 40 years in prison for just such an event. You can read a longer story about it here, on AlterNet.

Fortunately, she at least has some supporters. I learned of this story from Kelly at Mocha Momma — a committed and very gifted teacher herself. She is sending all her readers there for the details. This site’s proprietor, Karoli, not only provides links to backup information; she’s also donating $1 for every posted comment. In later posts, she adds still more info – and links. Take a look at them – and maybe even the fund itself. There’s more information there, too.

It’s a very troubling and scary story – not only for the obvious civil liberties and injustices, but also for what it says about technological expertise among the powerful. What do you think?

TEEN AGE GIRLS AND CELL PHONE STALKERS!

You know all those amused, indulgent stories about teenagers texting and cell phoning at all hours? And how great they are at multi-tasking? Well if you believe this piece, running on AlterNet after appearing in the Christian Science Monitor, (and there is no reason not to) there is, as usual, a very very very dark side to this "cute" phenomenon.

Liz Claiborne Inc. teamed up with the National Domestic Violence Hotline and conducted a survey of teen cellphone use. The survey, conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, reported that "20 to 30 percent of teens who had been in relationships said their partner had constantly checked in on them, had harassed or insulted them, or had made unwanted requests for sexual activity, all via cellphones or text messages. One out of 4 reported hourly contact with a dating partner between midnight and 5 a.m. — in some cases, 30 times per hour. And 1 out of 10 had received physical threats electronically."

Even if half of that is true, it’s scary and sad. You can just imagine a 14 year old girl, inexperienced in relationships, trying to handle this kind of overbearing behavior. What I wonder though is WHY? In an adult relationship we would call this emotional abuse and, often, a prelude to physical abuse. AND I remember when I worked for a youth TV news program, doing several pieces on boyfriends abusing their teen girlfriends. But this is so much easier to hide — and is so scarily omnipresent and unpredictable at the same time, that it just shakes you to your core.

There are days when I wonder what it’s going to take to get this man-woman thing right when even the boy-girl part is so often destructive. And wonder, too, how we help these girls (and I suppose there are boys too) have the confidence to put a stop to it when it happens. Heavy thoughts for a snowy Tuesday.