doin' the epochs: media displaces culture

Op-Ed Columnist - Lord of the Memes - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com --Here's a marvelous piece of good-natured, high-spirited bombast from David Brooks, dancing around the idea of "epochs of intellectual affectation," as he prances through how the pith of McLuhan's thought has now come home to roost for most of us. A snippet:

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.

On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

2234--here's who's been involved in this blogging tonight at WKYC

from Brian Lehman, to all of us:

Brian Layman to collisionbend, Derek, Will, Roger, gloria, Roger, gloria, George, me, Gloria, Derek, will, franpro, Jill, Jeff
show details 9:01 PM (1 hour ago) Reply

http://subsetofderek.blogspot.com/ Derek Arnold
http://Timferris.blogspot.com Tim Ferris
http://www.twitter.com/frampro Joel Libava
http://www.gloriaferris.net Gloria Ferris
http://www.collisionbend.com Will Kessel
http://fsgf.blogspot.com Roger Bundy
http://www.onevotematters.com Brian Layman
http://www.twitter.com/georgenemeth http://www.twitter.com/meetthebloggers George Nemeth
http://laurakessel.blogspot.com Laura Kessel

______________________________________________
Brian Layman
b5media Inc.
www.b5Media.com / www.TheCodeCave.com
Skype: BrianLayman
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/brianlayman
Cell: (330) 858-3446
Fax: (416) 849-0347
TF: 866-652-7189

Daryl says PD reporting on Breuer Tower issue is flawed

Over at Save Our Land, Daryl Davis points out a few flaws in the PeeDee's Joan Mazzolini's reporting skills. It does seem like they're stacking the deck by the way they're manipulating public opinion here.

friendly riders of The Silk Road

The Travels of Dan Moore, III -- Local businessman Dan Moore has entered the blogosphere from the Orient; all May he has been recounting his adventure motorcycle trip as he and an international bike gang of clean-cut, friendly riders with computers and SAT phones tool from Istanbul to Xian, China. This latest post has Dan wiping out and wrecking his computer and then giving laundry tips that are more Erma Bombeck than Heloise, something about composting your drawers. There's some really good stuff here, far better than the typical travelogue. It's not really in a blog format, so I don't know if RSS feeds will keep us updated, but you need to spend some time with Dan and his gang of middle-class, middle-aged marauders. We're now breathlessly waiting for Marge and the cavalry to arrive with new equipment. Stay tuned.

Perhaps Dan can MeetTheBloggers when he comes back intact.

MTB did this two years ago

Alliance Pushes NBC To Open Presidential Debate To Bloggers, Internet -- Presidential Debates -- Interesting developments for copyrights, MeetTheBloggers, and so forth. Around here, we've been sharing the community dialogues for a good while, on our way back to democracy That Kos character, quoted later in the article, makes us remember that he has more to do with being shrill and keeping people at odds than he does with uniting a community for a common purpose, attaining its own best interests. He likes to emphasize the differences, not the commonalities; he's paid best when he harps on the differences and crafts exaggerated distinctions.

CNN has promised to free its footage of sanctioned presidential debates for Internet use and distribution. But an alliance of voters and technology leaders haven't persuaded NBC to do the same.
The Democratic National Committee sanctioned six debates Wednesday. A group of organizers wants the debates licensed as Creative Commons or placed in the public domain so they can be aired legally on YouTube and used in blogs.

The group -- which includes members of both major political parties, as well as Craig Newmark and Jimmy Wales, the founders of Cragislist and Wikipedia -- used the occasion to renew demands that the material be made available without restrictions. The alliance has sent letters asking both parties' national committees to use their power to press for free and open airing of the debates.

Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society, is spearheading the effort. Lessig also chairs the Creative Commons project.
"I am very hopeful that both the Republicans and the Democrats will help encourage the extraordinary public discussion around the election that the Internet has enabled, by removing any uncertainty about the right of the people to comment upon the speech of presidential candidates," Lessig said in a statement.

CNN announced last week that its footage would be open.

"Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public, CNN believes strongly that the debates should be accessible to the public," the division of Turner Broadcasting Company said in a news release.

"The candidates need to be held accountable for what they say throughout the election process. The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. Therefore, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate. We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process." (more)

they're doin' it in Knoxville, too

Free Press : Is Tennessee Ready for AT&T to Enter Cable Market? Here's an intelligent piece from The Knoxville News Sentinel about AT&T trying to pull off the same full-court-press offensive in Tennessee that it is in Ohio, regarding delivery of cable services.

There are so few positives and so many negatives to the legislation that I cannot really see why it's still alive and kicking, unless the money's talking just too, too loud to our elected and appointed employees.

The AT$T cable-delivery behemoths we've seen--across from the car barns off Pearl Road and up and down poor Clifton Boulevard--seem to be especially vulnerable to all sorts of disruption. They're hastily contrived and cheaply installed. I think they ought to be put below grade, first of all, for security purposes, then second, for shielding, and then third, for appearance.

The nasty evidence we see of AT$T's late-stage attempt at entry into the cable market, when they're losing telephone market share to VOIP providers, is sort of sad. They've been outflanked and now are lumbering around trying to respond with the quickest-but-not-the-best maneuver to gain a toehold--the technology seems not to be too well thought through, the design is barely sustainable. They are desparate. They want to stay alive, they want to stay in the game, they want to do it on our backs. We've found these past few years, with VOIP telephone delivery, that they've overcharged us for years. They've taken our discretionary savings dollars to themselves and back to Wall Street.

We don't owe them anything. And they don't really owe us customers anything, either, besides whatever service we contract to pay for. Remember that their first duty is to the shareholders, not the customers. And they're not good neighbors.

inaugural launch of The Real Deal: Now is the accepted time

The Real Deal--I got an email this morning announcing this new NEO blog by our friend Richard Andrews, whom we know through the Meet.The.Bloggers sessions at I-Open's Mid-Town Brews at WebTego and through Mid-Town Mornings at Nead Brand Partners. Are you beginning to see how the networks work, and what the names are and the brands imply? Attribution is hard because there's so much collaboration and overlap, but I hope everybody's beginning to get the picture.

But, back to The Real Deal. Richard is a writer with a track record that goes back a good while. The Real Deal shows promise of being just that. Go there now. I'll meet you.

freakonomics road show visits Youngstown

YSU News Releases--Just a reminder that author and economist, economist and author Steven Levitt appears tonight in Youngstown. They seem to be getting excited about it--

First, the obligatory Staubaugh listing:
http://www.stambaughonline.com/content/view/70/

Then Janko mentions the appearance along with lots of background and pictures:
http://shoutyoungstown.blogspot.com/2007/03/tofflers-take.html

And then, two days ago, the Vindy has Levitt angering "liberals and conservatives alike." I guess they're trying to create some common ground, in a backhanded way, and raise the level of excitement based on controversy.
http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/321498358234966.php

Personally, I would like to be going over there today to cover this as a Meet.The.Bloggers engagement, but we couldn't make the connections. This is a good series, and the participants need to have their content posted in the perpetuity that MTB brings to the community dialogue. This isn't just about Youngstown, and it's not just about our region; this is a huge discussion, and can become huger quicker if we share. The knowledge economy starts now and grows exponentially, once we begin to share openly and freely.

YSU, through the income from an endowment established by Paul J. and Marguerite K. Thomas, established the Colloquium on Free Enterprise in 1981. The Colloquium is a series of lectures or workshops by recognized leaders in business, economics and finance for both the public and academic community.

New York Times wheels in its big financial gun

Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages - New York Times -- here, the NYT has wheeled in its big gun, financial-press hit-woman Gretchen Morgenson, to level the mortgage market, perhaps to drive a panic, certainly to bang a gong and sell the news. The excerpt below is the tip of the three-page iceberg:

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.

Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.

Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.

Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.

MTB needs transcriptions of all the podcasts, too

e24 Transcription - » 5 Reasons to Transcribe Your Podcast--I left another reason with the e24 people as well, and it was--

Here's another reason: people can scan ahead (go fast-forward) on text-based content to see what's interesting to them, and what might be boring or nonproductive. With a podcast, that's not really possible. It is possible to read faster, but it is not possible to listen faster, unless you ratchet it up to something like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

I got this particular listener/reader/consumer preference this past Monday, in detail, from one of our old friends, Dr. Joe Foley, age 90, who has also appeared on MeetTheBloggers this past May. (http://www.meetthebloggers.net/2006/05/31/meet-the-bloggers-dr-joe-foley/)