Ephemera

Finally, if you have a chance, view the great work that my AP students have contributed to the wiki that I built for them as my research project: http://hispanismo.pbworks.com/
They have surpassed my expectations in writing in Spanish on three different pages: Trucos, Canciones and Forum, about focused topics that matter to them. Relevant, practical communication is the whole point of taking a world language until you get into college lit classes. You will eventually be able to see their video projects on the Telenovelas section too. It is obviously a work in progress that will see ongoing refinements.

Why did I call this last entry "Ephemera"? We are all here on earth for such a short time. Let's make it count by focusing on what matters most for each of us, whatever that may be. Among those whom I have known and loved are some very special people who have taught me the importance of balance in life--and the essence of taking the long view:
-a D-Day survivor (Utah Beach, Bronze Star, Purple Heart--saw comrades blown to bits), at 89, he is still one of my best friends;
-a German artist whose conscripted father disappeared on the Eastern Front, never to return, when he was 14 years old;
-Survivors of Nazi persecution who were my esteemed professors and friends;
-another of my oldest friends, who lost her father at a young age to a Stalinist labor camp in Siberia while she and her mother endured a harsh Soviet lifestyle alone--they ultimately left Russia with a young child in tow and started a new life here;
These people all have been (or were) wary of totalitarianism and thought control emerging in new guises. Sexy technology and information-handling will never supplant our own critical faculties (unless we let them). You are aware, of course, that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google was the son of Soviet emigres who came to the U.S, claiming persecution despite having received professional educations at state expense. We still do not know how much our every move on Google is tracked and recorded. Ironic? Coincidence?

Everyone needs to have and to express a point of view. Life would be boring otherwise. But we must never forget that there is very little that is new under the sun (in the great scheme of things).

It's been fun--thanks for the wonderful Media Specialists who have helped to make this Blog possible, and thanks for reading!

The Myth of the Global Village

In case you thought that it was not really all about the money...
In developing countries, and our own backyard, a new digital divide is growing. Service access to those who do not generate web-based income is being limited or reduced: "One Internet Village, Divided" New York Times, April 27, 2009: (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=one%20internet%20village,%20divided&st=cse).
Cases in point are YouTube and Facebook, which are trying to limit bandwidth and reduce the quality of service to places that generate lower revenues, mostly in Asia and Africa. Their original business models of "build large audiences and generate revenue through ads" is being challenged. We are fortunate to be in a place where free educational purposes are underwritten...for now..and access is free...for now.
The long-term implications of these business developments will be interesting to follow.

The Library of Congress is on You Tube!

I had already planned to do only one more post to this blog, but the news that the Library of Congress has its own feed on You Tube (since late March 2009) was just too important not to mention: http://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryOfCongress.
I happened on to this today while avocationally searching for an obscure U.S. military microfilm from 1949 for a French historian friend of mine in Normandy. Sitting in my own office beats making a trip to Washington, D.C. to dig in the National Archives and review films on site for him like I had to do ten years ago.
It would seem to me that the media professionals "in the house" can use this development as evidence to lobby for terminating the blockade of You Tube for teachers in MPS system. MPS' ignorance is not bliss for those of us who need that resource for making instruction come alive.
The LOC also has a blog (yawn), Twitter feeds (yawn) and regular podcasts (not a yawn), which include a fascinating and ever-growing collection of digitalized resources like historical recordings of music, interviews and much more.
MPS, are you listening?

Message or Massage?

Now that my Wiki is up and running, just could not resist the temptation to revisit Marshall McLuhan. If you click on the image at left, you can read it more clearly. For those who came of age post-Internet, here is a tutorial: http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/. Lest we think that anything be completely original, McLuhan anticipated not only the demise of print media as we know it, as exemplified by the current painful metamorphosis of traditional newpapers, but also coined the term "Global Village" long before it was a defunct--or was that "de-funked"?--old-hippie store near the West Bank of the Mississippi.
McLuhan's most oft-quoted aphorism (pithy phrase) is "The medium is the message..." The title is usually incorrectly cited, due to a typo which left his influential book being entitled The Medium is the Massage. McLuhan did not object to the typo, and liked the ambiguity. " Mass-age?" ..or maybe "massage" of one's brain by various media...or...? Re "message" vs. "massage" - maybe some of the media specialists (or others) had courses in "Media Studies" or the like in high school or college? Gratefully, I was spared the tortured discourse of academics who specialize in some permutation of "Media/Gender/Cultural Studies" (akin to "21st-Century Intellectual Basket Weaving 101").
But the real message here is about McLuhan and what we have been up to all year in MILI. We are fully-formed adults. Our students are not. We cannot underestimate the force exerted by the new media on the shaping of their ability to reason, on their relationships to others, and their supposed "ownership" of their knowlege and educations. The media that they and we use are the real message and are shaping us in ways that we still do not fully understand.
As for the myth of the "global village," watch for another post. It's really all about the money, always has been, and always will be in the end. You did notice that PBWiki has "gone uptown" with its logo so as to attract more solid, paying customers, didn't you? Very few people in the real world of business would ever take a cute little "pb sandwich" logo seriously for long!

Just when I thought that I hated Twitter...

Just when I thought that I hated Twitter and was determined not to write any more about it, two minutes ago, the following article popped up. It's about a University of Wisconsin neuroscience researcher who found a way to help people with neural injuries communicate via Twitter solely with their brains.
Since I have a student who suffered a severe spinal cord injury last summer, I can see that this would be life changing:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/22/twitter.locked.in/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

2.0 Memes and Cyber-Poverty

There is an old Middle-Eastern proverb that I heard a long time ago, ironically, from a Brazilian: "The caravan passes, and the dogs sit in the dust, barking."
It resurfaced today in a piece on cyberscience-fiction author Bruce Sterling--"Let Them Eat Tweets" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Tweets&st=cse. Didn't know about him before, since I am neither a "techie" nor a sci-fi fan. In case you are wondering, as I was, what "memes" are in a cyber-context--here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme.
I do, however, feel vindicated in not jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and for keeping my cellphone private. (When the inevitable terrorist attack occurs that knocks out the transmission towers, I will still have my land line).
The "law of the pendulum" never fails. If something swings from "cutting-edge" to "mass-market," its value declines. It is Sterling's contention that "Connectivity is poverty," i.e. that most people now cannot afford privacy, and that those of us who cannot unplug are suffocated by the barrage of incessant, often superfluous online communications that run many of our lives these days.
Bottom line: If you are really "All That," then no one can get you on your cell phone and you don't even bother with Twitter unless you are planning to make money from others' use of it, to wit, Oprah. PS--Don't her personal assistants already have enough to do?

Googlelamania, the Brave New World of Intellectual Piracy

Have you ever read a description of the Google HQ lobby? There is a projector wall in the lobby of Google's HQ of searches scrolling in real time. Your searches are not private, any more than your house valuation , the details of its location, your image on "Street View" cameras, or the tracking of your searches for marketing insights.
It's no wonder that our students have trouble understanding the concept of "intellectual property" when we promote the use of Google tools, while Google does not pay a representative portion of the work of news organizations (among other things) that it uses without permission.
For the full reflections on how Google is changing the face of journalism with "targeted" marketing based on an ad model that "understands your history," in the words of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, see today's New York Times editorial by Maureen Dowd: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/opinion/15dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion.
When "editors" and "publishers" become anonymous, and news is "target-marketed" based on the tracking of individual Internet searches, the potential expands for the abuse of intellectual property rights and freedom. Anyone worried yet?