a follow up on podcasting

The New York Times did a great piece on podcasting that makes a nice follow-up read on our Thursday intro and play. Here's the link.

New toys

fac.etio.us and spid.ero.us

Blogging, chatting, and online communication

I was thinking about our chat this afternoon, blogging, and other forms of online communication (threads, etc) that often happen in classes. Do you think that the attachment of some of these forms of online communication to classes makes them feel more "academic?" For instance, when instructors require students in a class to post to an electronic bulletin board once a week, does that then alter the online space? If you are always required to post to threads in your classes, will you automatically approach the online space as "academic?" And might that affect the ways you teach in those spaces?

I guess I'm wondering if you all view the spaces that we've discussed and inhabited (the chat, blog, audioblog) as somehow less academic than other spaces. Perhaps academic is even the wrong word--perhaps intellectual is a better word. For example, I see a space like Metafilter (collaborative blog) as intellectual, but not necessarily academic. Miller's work (along with most of the other texts we've read so far) seems to interrogate this impetus. After all, he's mixing Gilles Deleuze with Biggie Smalls, Queensryche with Emerson. Do you think that the separation that Miller doesn't see will/does affect the perception of digital media as an intellectual area?

Miller writes, "…it's not so much new ways of hearing that are needed, but new perceptions of what we hear" (17). Do you think that each encounter with digital media requires this new perception? Do we risk superimposing our prior experiences, uses, assumptions on such media? Is this another way that media gets remediated?

ipod cast

Here's a little bit of audio youse folks might enjoy:

mm2k

It's a fairly large file, and there's some backstory if you're interested.

Rhythm Science

In early posts we have discussed how information retreival is coming to the forefront--with the over abundance, dare I say excess, of information available "out there," navigation and organization at least equals generation and creation. Or, say he develops over the course of his book, our conception of creation changes.

Gone: the classical / neoclassical model of creation as the product of the logical mind (judgment) processing observed experience. Imagination as the mirror.

Gone: the Romantic model of genius, the artist as creator, Shakespeare in a closet. Imagination as the lamp.

Not: the individual talent and the burden of history. No stable, determined, consciousness here.

What emerges is an idea of the creator as someone who is worked by, works with, works with/out, works through, works across. The collection is a creation. The passage Jenny highlighted that Spooky highlighted that Emerson proclaimed: "it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent." (68)

Or

"Rhythm science uses an endless recontextualizing as a core compositional strategy, and some of this generation's most important artists continually remind us that there are inummerable ways to arrange the mix." (21)

And for those who have never bounced with phish (or tasted a jimi thing, a purple maze), I offer a few lines from Phish (perhaps I could call them a sampling?):

She whispered words and I awoke
And faintly bouncing around the room
The echo of whomever spoke
I awoke and faintly bouncing round the room
The echo of whomever spoke.

MakeZine.com: Volume 01: The Premiere

O'Reilley's new magazine is out: Make, "the first magazine devoted to digital projects, hardware hacks, and D.I.Y. inspiration."

Academic paper wrangling tool

Folks might be interested in this:

CiteULike

It's an online tool to "share, store, and organise" academic papers. It seems mostly European (notice the spelling of organize), but it can be useful. It is also browser-based, so you don't have to install anything extra.

global connectivity

I’m catching up on the Burnett reading and along the way decided to follow his lead to a site about cybergeography. Although Burnett’s connection failed, I stayed with the idea and came across a cyber “mapping” site could (begin to) understand. Of significant interest to me here was the portion of information addressing census information for “connectivity.” I was taken aback at the level of activity. Apparently, like many of my students, my ideas regarding tech advances internationally need an update.