When you’re fighting your tools, you’re not being expressive anymore.

Dan Mall (@danielmall) on Tools

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Its the difference between checking Twitter once every four hours, or for four hours at a time. Its the difference between texting your friends to stay in touch, and only interacting with your friends through text message. Its the difference between looking at Tumblr for creative inspiration, or letting Tumblr scratch your entire creative itch. Its the difference between watching TV shows you like, and watching TV shows youre supposed to like.

via Offline: missing out | The Verge.

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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

– Sir Winston Churchill

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At the same time as CNN was covering the regime, Bahrain was an aggressive participant in CNNs various “sponsorship” opportunities, with official agencies of the regime often boasting of how their extensive involvement with CNN was improving the nations image around the world. Beyond that, there are multiple examples of CNN International producing plainly propagandistic coverage of the regime, often without any minimal disclosure of the vested interests of its sources.

via CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

The fact that CNN is accepting money from governments is bad enough. However, they have overstepped that grey area into letting it color their journalistic reporting. How can domestic reporting be trusted as accurate and true? For those who still think media bias is a myth… well, you’re in denial.

Thanks to @timcast for tweeting this.

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Yeah, and what’s nice is that it’s genuinely something you can’t fake. Twitter specifically is a fundamentally honest thing. Like you can tell if somebody is on it and using it because they are enjoying doing it. I think it’s just this wall of glass where you can see right through somebody’s motivations for being on it.

And you can connect with people that you, you know, like Edgar, for example. I met him because we, I think, initially we connected on Twitter. It’s like you do meet people that are professional peers that you respect, and you do form like a cloud of people online in this universe that you get to know other people through. You actually end up forming real relationships because of that.

via Noir to near-future: Looper director Rian Johnson talks sci-fi, Twitter, and the fate of film | The Verge.

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NBC has now defended the decision to the Los Angeles Times, telling the paper in an emailed statement that the ceremonies “are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large prime-time audiences that gather together to watch them.”

via NBC insults viewer intelligence, says Olympic Opening Ceremony is too complex for online audience | The Verge.

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Cyberpunk today is mainly like a Pantone chip in the Pantone culture-wheel. “Those pants are sort of cyberpunk.” “That video has a sort of retro-cyberpunk feel.” We know what that means. If someone says “her attitude is very cyberpunk”, I don’t think we’re as certain of what’s meant. I’m not sure what this means, but I do think it indicates something. In a cyberworld, there’s no need for the suffix, and ours is a cyberworld. In a cyberworld, cyberpunk is punk. But it’s not punk if you call it “cyberpunk”.

From William Gibson On MONDO 2000 & 90s Cyberculture (MONDO 2000 History Project Entry #16)

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News and entertainment media once limited to their home regions now find a global audience, bringing with them messages and cultural idiosyncrasies to an audience adjusted to simple media consumption. As these cultural ideas enter transnational conversation, societies passively appropriate them into everyday discourse. Recognising those messages and understanding their effect is imperative to managing each society’s cultural development and identity. In analysing two transnational media events for their messages, this paper reveals the similarities and differences in major media reporting in separate cultural contexts, offering an entry point to the development of a transnational media literacy.

Download the PDF with these restrictions:

Our Foreign Selves: Mapping Transnational Media in a Real-time World by Joel G Goodman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Tufekci makes some excellent observations (extrapolated from a large amount of data) on the benefits of social media. It’s a refreshing counter to the panicky things we hear from friends.

For most people, the choice is not leisurely walks on Cape Cod versus social media. It’s television versus social media.

I worry at times about my peers who feel they must define society and social interactions as one sort of thing: face-to-face conversation. Sorry, but conversations and interactions mediated by technological tools have existed for decades. Non-social media (anti-social media?) like television, newspapers, books, recorded audio, are far more dangerous in creating isolation and blocking out social contact. Social media promote relationships, enable communication, demand conversations.

I’ve heard arguments about the forcing of voyeuristic habits – turning ‘friends’ into objects of observation – and the like, but call bunk on them. You make decisions. If you choose to watch, that’s not the fault of the medium. Place blame and responsibility where it is due.

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