Interrelativity

Category: Media

  • Consistency, Change and Conventions

    Between the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention, and their coverage on PBS (especially the Lehrer NewsHour), I’ve probably watched more TV in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. It seems that change is very much in the air – or, at least, on the air –…

  • Satirization or Assassination?

    The New Yorker published its July 21 edition this week, with a cartoon on the cover depicting U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, in a way that reflects some of the worst fears of what I suspect is a nontrivial percentage of the electorate. On the cover, shown on the…

  • Thingamajiggr II: Attentionality, Surreality and Sexuality

    I attended Thingamajiggr, “a party celebrating the innovative Pacific Northwest tech community”, last night. The party – organized by Waggle Labs and O’Reilly Radar, and held at the 911 Media Arts Center – was fun, and the presentations preceding the party – by John Medina, Scotto Moore, Dan Savage and others – were very engaging…

  • Religion, Politics, Racism and Invisibility: Obama and Wright vs. McCain and Hagee

    Robb’s comment on my post about the Capitol Steps show in Seattle got me thinking – and writing – [again] about some of the religious and racial issues in the U.S. presidential race. I started to write a comment in response to Robb’s comment, but as it grew longer and longer, I decided to move…

  • The Dalai Lama and the Reflectance and Resonance of Greatness, Understanding and Humility

    His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, is in Seattle this week. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see him, personally – I’ve just returned from Florence, Italy (CHI 2008), with a really bad cold – but I just read a report by Ward Serrill in The Seattle Times on connecting Eye-to-Eye with the…

  • Commenting on Validation / Validating Comments

    Ever since my last post, which started out about locked-in syndrome (inspired by The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), but which developed into a revisitation of a frequently discussed topic [on this blog] – "the need for approval … for validation … for appreciation … for mattering" – I’ve been attuned to validation in a…

  • Marketing, Monitoring, Mattering

    USA Today ran an interesting front-page article on Monday about Marketers Take a Close Look at Your Daily Routines, detailing some of the ways and means that companies have employed to better understand the everyday use — and potential use — of their products. Much of the article focused on the monitoring tools and techniques…

  • On Virginity, Vulnerability and Vaccines

    Last night, I discovered of The Virginity Project (via Shel Israel’s blog), a book project in which Kate Monroe is compiling a list of stories about how, when and why people lost their virginity. On the drive in this morning, I heard a segment on NPR‘s Morning Edition entitled "Young People and Sex: Parents, Can…

  • Cyberbullying: Prevalence, Preventability and Politics

    Perhaps due, in part, to things I’ve read, thought and blogged about recently regarding cybershaming and accountability, and the fearful overreactions of parents and other authorities over teens’ use of MySpace, I had a more skeptical reaction to a Wall Street Journal article this week on "Schools Act to Short-Circuit Spread of ‘Cyberbullying’" than the…

  • Monitoring MySpace: Parental and Political Pacification

    The Wall Street Journal reports that News Corp. is planning to offer free software that parents (and others with computer administrator privileges) can use to track the name, age and location provided by any users of that computer who access an account on MySpace. The article reports that "dozens of teens have been molested and…