Hello...I am back again....

I have not posted here for over a year. I had essentially abandoned this blog, which had started as a class project back in November 2009. But the title and subject of the blog captured my attention again in light of the Middle Eastern, North African and Western uprisings and reactions to the negative effects of the globalized economy.

I began watching the uprising just as Egypt became involved. The disturbances, which initially began in Tunisia appeared to me to be an isolated occurrence, as it was portrayed in Western media. I then began following the events on aljazeera.net and presstv.ir and I found the points of view most enlightening.

In my take on history, there have always been reactions to economic shifts and dislocations, however, I believe what is different at this time is the speed with which these reactions to the dislocations are taking place. At the heart of this speed of reaction is the use of the new media. It is not only the new media, but how it is used to enhance local and widespread dissemination of information while bypassing all attempts at centralized control. I foresee a sea change in how the West has to approach its foreign policy in the area. There have been instances, while viewing the news reports and commentary, when I have felt that the West, in particular the U.S., may not have its usual influence over events. I will continue to watch the events as they are reported and periodically make my own comments here.

I will return to comment on continuing events in the Middle East.

Intellectual Property and The Copyright Act

In an article by Eliot Van Buskirk that appeared in the Wired online blog Epicenter, there was a discussion about some of the disruptive effects of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The author speaks about the effects of the two sets of rules that the Copyright Act includes and how Section 304 of the act and Section 203 of the act impact on artists and authors and the status of their copyrights during or after 1978. The effects are reported to begin making themselves felt starting in 2013. The article itself will provide more detail and provide leads to further information.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/copyright-time-bomb-set-to-disrupt-music-publishing-industries/

From my understanding of the article, even the Beatles (or those member of the old group who are left) will feel the impact.

A few Words from Christine Rosen about Social Media

I was able to find an image and only a short bit of video about Christine Rosen. She is the author of the article that I referred to in my last blog posting.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=christine+rosen&FORM=IGRE1#focal=f6ed1627c978cfd035981619097b21e5&furl=http%3a%2f%2fwwww.hmh.org%2fUploads%2fevents%2fChristine%2520Rosen.bmp









I have found that her online articles and this short video that I was able to find, to be very interesting commentary on the issues of new media communication and society.

Childhood Development and Reading

Several weeks ago, I came across an article on the web. It was on a page that I usually ignore, the msn opening page. It is usually filled with a lot of flashing, scrolling, twinkling glitzy fluff moving about the screen. However, I did notice an interesting article title. It was an article written by a Martha Brockenbrough titled "What Effect Reading Has on Our Minds". This article talks about the importance reading to the development of children's minds and the development of their intellectual capacities. The article does not speak of reading from a computer screen, but from books. And that reminded me of another article that I had read that did mention the difference between book reading and computer screen reading. That article was one that I read in the Wilson Quarterly Autumn Fall edition. (Article not available to upload)

The Autumn edition had featured on its cover, a section of articles involving the sugject of the future of the book. It was put forth in one of the articles, written by Christine Rosen, that this process of taking in information during the process of reading a book, whether for work or for leisure, involves a physiologically different process than what is required for scanning for information from a compluter screen.

I was able to find Christine Rosen on the New Atlantic (an online Journal of Technology and Society) publication blog, and on it I found a very informative but lenghty post called the Image Culture. In this article from the New Atlantis Fall 2005 issue, she writes about the dependence on images as a means of gathering information as opposed to thoughtful reliance on reading and discussion of ideas.

Literacy and Education in the Digital Environment

This is a most intriguing post that I found that speaks directly to the idea of the impact of new media on culture.
http://nathancushing.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/are-twitter-and-facebook-making-kids-better-writers/

The concept that was presented in the post that impressed me the most was that referred to the fact that young people who are involved in the social media phenomenon, are actually writing more. The post gives reference to Andrea Lunsford, who is a Stanford University Writing & Rhetoric Professor. I checked out the post's tags (Rhetoric and Writing), and was surprised to see how closely the effects of social media like Twitter and Facebook are being monitored. I also navigated back to an online Wired Magazine article by Clive Thompson. This is the article that discusses Lunsford's project the Stanford Study of Writing. The project examined writing samples of college students and came to the conclusion that about 38% of students' writing took place outside of that required for class work.

According to Thompson's article, further results of the Stanford Study of Writing project attributed the increased writing of students today to their engagement with new social media, that requires the increased use of writing today compared to pre-internet times. Prior to the advent of social media, most writing by non-professional writers, was done in an asynchronous manner, as in letter writing and essay writing. Today's writing habits of students involves conversational and public written communications in chat and discussion threads. This is writing that Professor Lunsford refers to as life writing and she further reports that students are very adept at judging their audiences and adjusting their writing style accordingly.

I found some YouTube video of the Professor. The video is of an interview with the Professor Lunsford and others, and the topic is about the impact of the digital milieu on literacy and how it affects, in particular, younger people as they pursue their college educations.

In Consideration of Blogging

Today I found a blog site that I found very interesting. I was on the http://reason.com/blog and while following a post I came upon this blog http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/. It is a blog that describes itself as a "Journal of American Culture (or Lack Thereof)".

The reason.com blog is I like the way the whenfallsthecoliseum blog is organized, I can easily go straight to the political section without having to wade through a lot of the fluffy stuff. I regard the opinions presented by the blog contributors not as so called experts on the topics but as representative of a good cross section of some of the observers of the status of American culture.

Welcome to My Blog

I would like to take this time to welcome you to my blog and to present my observations on some of the impacts on society that the newest of the media has produced. There are indeed some very positive aspects to being able to have immediate access to both receiving and passing on information, but there is still something to be said about the roll of the mediator, the editor or the gatekeeper. In subsequent posts, I intend to present examples that illustrate how easily information that is not properly vetted can be disseminated.

There is the ease with which very personal and private information can be intentionally or unintentionally passed into the public domain. The media itself, particularly mainstream media, in the absence of the old paradigm gatekeepers can be manipulated by new media savvy individuals.