Links for class today...

CBS news story about internet censhorship bill.
Basically the same story on Perez Hilton's blog, 'cause...

Basically the same story on The National Review's website.

Infographic about censorship in China.

Advertising, privacy, and your use of the Interwebs

We're just starting our look at advertising rhetoric (let's call it chocolate, for now), and we've got privacy/freedom of expression coming up in the not-so-distant future (let's call it peanut-butter; I'm going somewhere with this metaphor).

Ta-DA! Marketplace Tech Report did a story today that is basically the Reese's Cup of my little blog post. See? I told you I was going somewhere with it.

The story is about a study done by Carnegie-Mellon (considered a VERY good technology-focused university) suggesting that our online "opt-out" decisions, supposedly protected by Federal mandates, have probably NOT been honored. In other words, when we thought we were protecting our online privacy as we avoided/engaged online advertising, it turns out that the advertisers were probably still collecting data on us. Give the article a read. Go on; click on some links...

The Google Transparency Report (I know, RIGHT?!)

Once a year, google releases what they call their "Transparency Report," which is - well - a report detailing some statistics about data they release to governments of the world. It is at once fascinating, amusing, and potentially terrifying.

Some interesting tidbits:

• content removal requests by the U.S. alone were up 70% from last year
• number of data requests made by the U.S. were also up 29%
• The U.S. Government made 5,950 total data requests on 11,057 user accounts (not really sure how those add up...)
• Google complied with 93% of those data requests

Here's a link to the full report. Play around with some of the features (the map is particularly cool) and see what data looks like. How this relates to our class is that we're about to start examining how the public and private spheres of users' lives start to integrate as we participate in digital media. Should they? Shouldn't they?

Social media and upcoming class disucssions

Heard an interesting article today on NPR's Marketplace Tech Report about President Obama's election campaign and its use not merely of social media but of their use of social media aggregate sites, sort of the social media of social media. The article claims that previous campaigns have been characterized by increased social media presence (Twitter feeds and FaceBook pages abound...), but that the Obama campaign's use of media aggregate sites - specifically Tumblr - is a new development in political strategy.

So, what these aggregate sites do is allow users to post links to inforrmation they find interesting. You read something out on the interwebs somewhere; you grab the URL and head over to your favorite aggregate site and post the link up, in the hopes that other people out in the real world will also find it interesting. Look at you; you're a journalist?

Actually, the really interesting thing (to me, at least) is that these aggregate sites are a pretty big part of the idea of "going viral," a phrase we now throw around haphazardly like we say, "I 'googled' it" or "Eh, that's been 'photoshopped'." These aggregate engines give a MUCH wider range of users access to information they might not otherwise have found, and THAT'S the real trick in something going viral: superbroad, superfast exposure.

Here's the Marketplace article - including a button to listen, in case you don't want to read, slacker - and here are some links to some of the more popular aggregate sites like Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. These are really just a tiny handful of the aggregate sites out there, mind you.

Possible example that the pen IS mightier than the sword?

A while back, in my ENG 2353 (Professional Writing Technologies) class, I mentioned that no one country has oversight of the interwebs. In general, our participation - as individuals, as communitites, as part of a city/state/country/world - is without governance. I mean, it's not completely without government, but it's not exactly like the United States FCC can regulate globally-generated internet content. Well, not yet anyway.

So, I was reminded of our class' talk recently by two news-stories about the - hmm, how to describe it? - desire by some to globally regulate internet content. Maybe it's not merely about the desire; maybe desire is predicated (trumped?) here by necessity? I'm not 100% sure, but I do know that the ideas in these two stories speaks to the idea of content control/regulation. Read on!

Ever heard of Stuxnet? Probably not, and there's no reason you necessarily would have. However, some believe that it could very well kill everyone you know. Got your attention now? Wait, there's more!

Stuxnet is malware designed to deliver a pretty specific set of trojans into a computer system, theoretically then allowing some remote user(s) access into the infected system. Usually, trojans like that are designed to give those remote users access to our sensitive information: passwords, bank account/credit card info, etc. On that level, Stuxnet works a lot like malware you or I might get on our adorable little computers at home or school. However, (according to a great article on PC World) industrial cyber-security experts like Ralph Langer and Dale Peterson, CEO of Digital Bond, believe that because of the sheer complexity and artistry of the code itself, the malware likely was designed for a specific target: Iran's nearly-completed Bushehr nuclear reactor. In fact, Langer describes Stuxnet as "the hack of the century."

Stuxnet evidently targets some specific sectors of computer networks designed by Siemens, a big name in giant, industrial computer networks, among other things. The specificity and complexity of the attack, coupled with the small number of organizations that use the exact combination of Siemens' systems, limits the possible number of targets to just about one: Iran's nuclear reactor. Put another way, the Stuxnet trojans were designed to shut down "critical factory operations -- things that need a response within 100 milliseconds," according to IDG News' Robert McMillan (via PC World), not to infiltrate lots of different computers all over the world to steal lots of info like credit card numbers from regular Windows/Mac computers. McMillan argues that failure in those industrial systems could mean reactor meltdown, chemical catastrophe, etc, and that the target's specificity suggests that a new breed of cybercriminal - and/or "possibly a nation state" - created this malware to "destroy something big."

Up next time: "idea crime" and the internet!

Chocolate and peanut-butter, or infoGooglegraphical

So, it's not much of a secret that I'm very interested in what Google does, as a corporation AND purveyor/collector/terrifying overlord of information.

And I'm very interested in the ideas behind good infographics. NOT only because they're pretty (oooh, soooo pretty...) but because they represent such wonderfully complicated data sets in particularly useful (and handsome) ways.

Anyway, I have to admit I got a kick out of an infographic on Gizmodo today (via Computer School, where it's bigger and better-looking, via TNW [sort of]).

1 trillion unique URLs? 1 exabyte of data in the next year? 40 billion pages indexed?! [POP.] What was that? Oh, it was my brain sploding.

Quick links to some texting and emailing statistics

From Wednesday's class:

Here is Gizmodo's post on who texts the most (via Mashable).

Here is The Oatmeal's snarky doodle about what your email may or may not say about you.

I'ma go all infographic on you!

OK, so I've written about PowerPoint before (check here and here, for examples), essentially about the possibility that it represents a necessary communications evil. It's ubiquitous; there ain't no escaping it.

Then, one day, my tiny little world-view got all blowed apart (in a great way) by Edward Tufte, which I kind of wrote about here. The Tufte symposium I attended was pretty great on a variety of levels, and one of the many fascinating anecdotes he shared with the attendees was about the U.S. Military's use of PowerPoint.

Basically, he said that they over use it and - perhaps more significantly - depend on it to somehow simultaneously dumb-down and over-produce the presentation of complex data. If you're interested, you can buy a Tufte essay on it here. Tufte also has plenty of posts about PPT on his quasi-blog, including one about Microsoft's CEO hating PPT and an essay excerpt which takes the stance that bad PPT presentations are not merely the fault of the presenter.

Anywho, I was really interested to see a post on Gizmodo yesterday about the military's dumb use of PPT. Gizmodo's post points to a New York Times article, which is where the ridiculous graphic above comes from, that provides a more in-depth look at why PPT just isn't appropriate for any some data. Interesting food for thought (with which most business people will probably disagree).

Edward Tufte and the unyielding passage of time

I haven't posted in a while, but I've got some things coming soon. I went to a symposium last week given by Edward Tutfte, and had my mind pretty much melted. The presentaion itself was dynamite and has given me so much to think about in terms of information design that I'm sort of at a loss as to how to proceed.

I mean, I use PowerPoint all the time, and - in case you don't know - Tufte has a pretty serious hatred of PowerPoint. Well, no that's not exactly right. He argues essentially that PowerPoint, as a medium, has become crutch presenters rely on AND it's dumbed down the presentation of potentially complex data. He points out that even Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, has gotten sick of bulletized, oversimplified slide decks that his company's software creates.

Anyway, I'm doing some serious re-thinking about how I deliver information (create meaning?). In the meantime, I've added a couple great infodesign blogs to my bloglist. go check out what more dilligent writers (staffs thereof?) are writing.

Google: the Wal-Mart of businesses.

Earlier this week I wrote about the shifting economics of digital information. Then, yesterday I read a really interesting article on Gizmodo about a feature of Google's new Android operating system and how the feature (among others) is going to "destroy" companies. Here are some of the salient details you need to know:

• Just like your computer, your cell-phone has an operating system on it. It might be Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone OS, or one of several others. It's just the background "brain" that allows your phone to do whatever it does.


• Google has developed their own operating system called "Android." Sounds cool, huh?


• Like Apple, they've said to the world, "Here is the code for the system. Play around with it, and we'll sell the cool apps you make and give you most of the money from those sales."


• Since it's Google's operating system, it interfaces really smoothly with nearly everything else Google offers.

The issue Wilson Rothman, the author of the Gizmodo post, has is NOT with the operating system, or even Google, per se. Rather, he argues that Android's Googlemaps capabilities is an example of Google's ability to "destroy" companies "that [trade] in data or packages it for public consumption." He points to companies like TomTom and Garmin who charge a pile of money for users to get access to their maps. Rothman compares the potential loss of income here to "the devaluation of the office apps that make Microsoft rich." Google's free office suite now has lots of people asking, "Why would I pay Microsoft a bunch of money for software I could get legally for free?"

My issue with Rothman (not personally; I really like his articles) is his use of very loaded words like "destroy." Well, really it's with the notion that the demise of a company that sells communications data is a bad thing, if that demise is caused by a company who gives that same data away for free (or close to free).

An analogy: Wal-Mart destroys Ma & Pa businesses when the giant company moves in to a new market. It's an argument we've all heard before. Movies have been made about it. Now, I'm not a fan of Ma & Pa losing their business. I love Ma & Pa; I want them in my community. But I can't argue with the benefits Wal-Mart provides to that same community. Those benefits include LOTS of jobs (with decent insurance coverage) and products at lower prices. Ma & Pa have to close up shop because they have to charge too much for those same products; it sucks for them, but many more people benefit from Wal-Mart's presence.

Sidebar: I know that this Wal-Mart argument is not water-tight. I also know that arguing in favor of Wal-Mart in this way makes me sound like some fiscally-conservative prick, which I swear I am not.

My point is that companies who trade in data, ANY data, have the right to charge for it just like the grocery store has the right to charge me for bananas (or any other delicious edible). However, if I can legally obtain bananas (or data) more cheaply, I'm gonna spend less money. Every time. Wouldn't you do the same?

Companies like TomTom, Garmin, Microsoft et al have made lots of money selling products they spent lots of time/effort/capital to create. Google comes along and says, "Our revenue stream is kinda focused elsewhere, so we can just give some products away for free (or cheap), so that you - the user - will like us. It turns out the technology is already in place or can be developed by us on the cheap, so ZOOM away we go." Then, companies who previously sold those margin-rich products say, "Aw, dudeman. We were making money off that stuff. Now what're we gonna do?" Like Ma & Pa, it sucks for those companies, but how many more people are now saving money because Google stepped in? Lots.

Although, yeah, TomTom has to lay off folks, so now I feel bad about that. Hmm. I dunno, what do you think?

Pay vs. Free? How do you communicate?

I recently ran across a video by a group called building43, a budding online information community. In the video, blogosphere guru, venture capitalist, and snappy dresser Guy Kawasaki, asks an awesomely diverse panel, among other things, what they do/don't will/won't pay for in terms of technological communication. Their answers at times were equally diverse, but there was a common theme of not wanting to pay much for anything. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but you can watch the whole video here.

Now, Kawasaki has sort of made his mark as a venture capitalist, so he's interested - at least in part - in effective strategies for making money. Again, I'm oversimplifying because Kawasaki has done plenty of great and altruistic things for social media. That's relevant because he laughs (politely) quite a bit when most of his panel members say they wouldn't pay (or wouldn't pay much) for this online service or that online service. I think he laughs partially because their unwillingness to pay seems to contradict their dependencies on existing services, and I am very interested in the paradox that illustrates - more on that below.

I came across the video from an American Express (yeah, that one) blog, of sorts, called OpenForum. Kawasaki wrote a short post there (click here to read it), in which he paraphrases Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson made two points that interested me a lot:

• Digital economics has created a deflationary economy in which there is near zero marginal costs for distribution. Hence, content is getting cheaper and approaching free.
• Today’s generation expects things for free because people have internalized these digital economics. Adults, by contrast, grew up believing that “free” is a gimmick—i.e. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Put another way, tech-users of my generation (and older, if you can believe they exist) have been taught that free means "dangerous." However, younger users of communications technology have been raised to expect free (or really, really cheap) technology, so companies who offer those technologies have had to drop their prices again and again just to keep their products in use.

Sidebar: In an article this summer, Anderson points out that "the Neiman Marcus catalog offered the first home PC, a stylish stand-up model called the Honeywell Kitchen Computer, priced at $10,600." Think about where those prices are
today.

Are Kawasaki and Anderson right? In terms of communications technologies (email? cell-phone? cable TV? GPS? etc.), what do you pay for? What don't you pay for? If one of your "free" service providers started charging, what - if anything - would you pay for? Most importantly, why/why not?

FTC now regulating blogs? Relax, civilization won't end.

The Federal Trade Commision announced yesterday that they are now regulating some specific types of speech in the blogging world. Specifically, they are going to try to force bloggers to divulge freebies and endorsements from products they promote on their blogs. The FTC says they're going to levy up to $11,000 per violation, and on a blog there could theoretically be several violations per post. So what's really at stake here?

I've referenced Jeff Jarvis on this blog before, and I still think he has some important ideas on language and business communication. However, he states in a recent post, that he's very, very opposed to the new FTC regs, and I'm not exactly sure why. Well, I mean understand his argument; I'm just not sure I agree. He points to horrendous semi-spam sites like Pay Per Post and says that they are one big target of the new regs.

Sidebar: Pay Per Post (PPP) connects advertisers and bloggers by subject matter. For instance, some company sells rhetoric textbooks, and they want to advertise those books. They find out through PPP that I've got a blog that talks about, among other things, rhetoric. They offer to give me copies of their books, and even to pay me through PPP, to blog about how great their books are. I've got an established blog, a built-in group of readers, and a history of being trustworthy.

I think Jarvis is right that one of PPP's real goals is to cheat Google's search process. Furthermore, I agree with him (and plenty of others), on the princpal of language policing, who are initially against FTC regulation in this way.

However, I think there's another reason, rooted in our assumptions of language, that the FTC should target not only PPP but also other blogs that endorse products without full disclosure. And really, the issue of disclosure seems to be the FTC's main focus: you want to endorse some product on your blog because the producer paid you? No problem; just be transparent. Admit that payola to your readers, thus implying the possibility of bias. However, there is an over-arching issue here, from a rhetoric standpoint, wrapped up in how/why readers trust blogs (and language in general), and it points to two terrible attitudes a reader can have: full-on trust or full-on relativism.

Full-on trust: You believe everything that you read, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. You take nothing with, as they say, a grain of salt. you never demand evidence in support of truth. You're slowly bled dry by people who realize that, if asked, you will give them money in exchange for a product or service.

Full-on relativism: You essentially trust nothing because you believe that everyone's opinion is right in their own special, little way, but nobody's opinion is as right as yours. You don't accept evidence, even when it's incontrovertible, in support of truth. Your favorite things to say include a dismissive "Whatever" and "Thas just, like, your opinion." You never really engage any academic or intellectual pursuit or seek any new knowledge, and your brain stays the same size it is now.

Or, we can realize a few things about humans and language use. First, it turns out that humans have opinions. Put another way, many philosophers argue that there is no such thing as objective information. Subjective information can still be useful, though, when it's supported by good evidence (logos). Secondly, Jarvis argues that the Internet is not a medium. He says that "it’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism." I like Pew's claims about blogs and journalism, but I think that Jarvis is wrong. As I've argued before, blogs represent a special hybridized delivery system for meaning. By definition, that kind of delivery system is a medium. The material of that medium is language. The language of blogs comes from humans. Humans have opinions. The circle is complete.

Seriously though, the rhetoric skills we work on, especially our critical reading skills, create in our brains a better ability to search language for meaning. However, the percentage of readers who are overly trusting or overly relativistic seems to be huge and growing, from my perspective. If that's the case, what's the harm in FTC regulation of language? A compromise to our First Amendment right of free speech? News flash: those rights are already compromised. There are lots of things people aren't allowed to say (or show), and those limitations exist in part because of how readers/audiences interpret meaning (or fail to).

Readers tend to both trust and dismiss blogs by default (there's part of that hybridity in action). When we read something on a blog, I think we either assume that it comes from a trustworthy, unbiased source (often because it's in-line with our own opinions), or we dismiss it because, well, any crackpot can put anything on the web (or, more truthfully, because it is not in line with our opinions). Why do we trust or distrust these sources? Because blogs have some kind of punk-rock, DIY, outside-of-the-mainstream-media ethos?

No, no, no, I warn you. Our discerning eyes must depend not merely on ethos, but also on logos and the occasional smattering of pathos. If bloggers are paid to endorse a product, they should be compelled to admit that inforamtion. However, if we are going to read blogs, we should compel ourselves to use our critical reading skills to discern merit and truth. If we can't (or don't want to) compel ourselves in that way, maybe we shouldn't be reading.

A new way to read? (This could save you textbook money!)

Allow me to make an analogy:


Remember the original Nintendo GameBoy? Well, no. You probably don't. Though it threatens to date me even further, I'll admit that I do. I got one not long after they came out, and it was awesome. I played it so much, I used to see Tetris blocks on the sides of buildings, on cars driving by, and even when I closed my eyes. Then, other hand-held game systems started to come out; they had cool new features, better games and (gasp) color screens. There was the Atari Lynx; Sega had the Game Gear, etc. (I'm overlooking the fact that all of those systems - and most of their parent companies - have gone the way of the dinosaurs, while Nintendo is still going strong. It's my analogy, and I'm going somewhere with it.) Fast forward to systems like the PSP and DS with gorgeous screens, WiFi, etc, and suddenly that old GameBoy seems like a relic, an ancient joke that can't stand up to the scrutiny of history.






Think, too, about the original cell phones. Not the Korean-war-era-looking giant bag phones, but early cell phones. They did just what their name implied, and little more. Now, of course, our cell phones do a mind-blowing array of things and have more computing power than NASA's early computers. And, of course, there's the top of the ivory pedastal: the iPhone, which does everything and makes it look good.


Now, to the point. Apple is coming out with a new tablet (think computer with no keyboard) that, I think , has the potential to revolutionize portable reading devices in the same way that the iPhone revolutionized cell-phones. According to a post on Gizmodo, One of the markets Apple is setting their sites on is the textbook market.

Imagine buying this device, with its gorgeous screen, WiFi capabilities that let you (make you want to) use it everywhere for everything, AND you have all of your textbooks for classes on it, plus interactive class-supplements, blogs, discussion boards, etc. According to the article, McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are already trying to get deals with Apple. How many of their big, expensive books do you currently own? How much money would you save if you could buy less expensive e-versions of those books?


Compared to a device like amazon's Kindle, even the Kindle 2 or the supersized Kindle 2 (both from Ars Technica), I don't see there being much competition. Like the old-school Gameboy (and perhaps the Model T), the Kindle can represent any color you want, as long as it's a shade of black. It sort of has a touch screen, but Apple has clearly demonstrated fire superiority in that arena.


Could be that Apple new business model has one goal: shift paradigms.

Online rhetoric in a public or private context?

As we begin to think about our blog assignments, I'm interested in how "public" we think they are. Some blogs end up being essentially personal diaries. Not the blogs for this class, though; they're research-driven and subject-matter-focussed. Right?!

Much to the chagrin of people who have been fired because of online comments (example after example...), what we put online is typically considered public. Most recently, The Washington Post issued a set of social-media guidelines for its journalists after a reporter let slip on his Twitter account that he has opinions about things. Read more about it at TechCrunch.

NY Times contributor Randall Stross claimed, in an article from a few years ago (how long is that in social-media-years?), that private and public spheres must not be allowed to overlap. He states that

A line needs to be drawn — Day-Glo bright — that demarcates the boundary between work and private life. When a worker is on the job, companies have every right to supervise activities closely. But what an employee does after hours, as
longas no laws are broken, is none of the company’s business. Of course, what we used to call “off hours” are fewer now, and employees may connect to the office nightly from home. But when they do go off the clock and off the corporate network, how they spend their private time should be of no concern to their employer, even if the Internet, by its nature, makes some off-the-job activities more visible to more people than was previously possible.

I can't help but wonder if that's still true, or if it was ever true. The nature of new media technologies, especially so-called social media, is increasingly to create public rhetorical situations, to establish and maintain dialogue. Even Twitter, which is very push-oriented, is designed as a participatory environment, which means that a user's goal is to have their language read publicly and to read the language of others.

Put another way, if your Facebook page or Tweets say things that are - let's say - defamatory, derisive, or otherwise negative about your job, but you made those comments "off the job," are you liable for those comments? No, you didn't say them to your boss, per se, but aren't they public? Do you have some expectation of privacy, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment?

In an interesting article for Wired, security bigshot Bruce Schneier argues that the two-part privacy test articulated in Katz v. United States (or here) doesn't really even apply to new media situations. The sentiment is echoed by the likes of Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld in this article at Ars Technica (hatptip to Schneier).

Get a gmail account. Send/receive some emails. See those Google ads at the top and right of the screen? Those are called "content-driven" ads. That means that Google takes a look at the actual content of your emails, whether it's a buddy giving directions to a restaurant or the most sensitive details about your personal life, and shows you ads that they think are related to that content. That's not privacy. Even if your MySpace or Facebook page is set to "Private," it's easy enough for users to get a look at the content; how carefully do you scrutizine everyone who sends you a "friend request?" What, then, is private about the language we use online?

Meaning: a product not only of language but of typeface?

Several years ago a documentary called Helvetica made the rounds through indie cinemas, film festivals, etc. If "Helvetica" sounds familiar, that's because it's one of the most prevelant fonts (or typefaces) in use today. Look around wherever you go today; I bet you'll see some Helvetica.

Anyway, in the film, Modernist designer Wim Crouwel says that Helvetica is "the most neutral typeface."

He says that he loved using the typeface because "it was a little more 'machines'," suggesting perhaps that the neutrality of the font allowed for accompanying images to really draw attention rather than the text itself.

Meaning (and semantics, for our class' discussions of language) often depends to some extent on context. Situation, audience, etc. often influence the meaning of a "text," regardless of an author's intention. But typefaces often carry with them a sort of visual semantics, a sense of emotion perhaps that helps create that context. That's one reason that we have to be very, very careful not only deciding what words we use to convey meaning, but also with what our presentation (text, images, whatever) might also "say" to an audience.

While on the topic of typeface, you might also check out this awesome video featuring European Design Hall of Famer (no, I'm not kidding) Eric Spiekermann. That opening song is about to become my iPod's "Most Played."

What to make of the skills we've been developing

In one way, this post is geared more towards a Technical Communications class, but in another way it speaks to the continued development of the skills we worked on in Professional Writing Technologies, too. When you create a resume, you're basically creating a marketing document. You're organizing information that makes the argument that you, as a product, are worth the money the employer is willing to pay as salary.

I told my Tech Writing class, during the Spring '09 semester, that it's "better to admit than omit," as a general rule. That is, it's better to deliver all relevant information up front, even if some of it is unfavorable, rather than have that information rear its ugly head down the road and have a reader ask, "Why wasn't I told about this back then?!"

However, I also admitted (see, there it is in action) that, like "spin" or any other language manipulation, there's omitting and then there's "omitting," if that makes sense. A writer can leave out information in an effort to divert attention or even mislead (BAD), or a writer can leave out information because it's not really relevant to the rhetorical situation.

I thought about that subtle distinction today when I saw this article on Yahoo! Lots of blog have written about job-hunt issues like polishing up your resume, not including dumb (even offensive) information, and controlling public information that might hurt your resume. This Yahoo! article, though, deals with omitting information about your marketable skills because they make you seem "overqualified," a word I've always found problematic.

Depending on the field you're interested in, it can be a rough time to look for a job. If you're a world-famous rocket-scientist, for example, but you can't find work in that field, should you leave off that part of your skill set so you can get the 6th grade science teaching job you found? Whereas NASA might look at those lines of your resume and think, "Mmmm, looks good," Austin Independent School District might look at it and think, "Yikes, we can't afford her/him!"

In that case, what do you do with your valuable marketing information (about how skilled you are)?

Blogs don't get no respect?!

I know that classes are over for the summer, but neither information nor technology stops, does it? Anyway, in case any of the ENG 313J students come back to this blog, I thought this article was interesting.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently admitted to plagiarizing content from a political blog. She claims that the slip-up was unintentional (where have I heard that before?), but she readily admits that the words aren't her own.

I have to admit that it makes me wonder if (and why) communicators in "traditional media" consider blogs less valid. perhaps like it's OK to take content from them. When I was helping create blogs for a marketing group here in Austin, I noticed that news came out on many of the blogs I was watching a day or two before it hit mainstream media.

I think there's an important message there about the nature of communication inherent in blogging. Who do we think writes blogs? Are they people with "insider" knowledge? If so, or even if not, is transparency what makes their communication necessary?

Is "word-of-mouth" the new form of communication?

So, to sort of keep a theme going (sometimes, perhaps, called "beating a dead horse"), I'm still thinking about some of what I read on our pal Jeff Jarvis' blog (see last week's post). Among other interesting things, he asks (or says) the following in his PowerPoint:

1. Is advertising replaced by quality and service?
2. Are the customers the ad agency?
3. The mass market is dead – long live the mass of niches.

Now, as I said, his focus is on marketing, on advertising. Still, I think that what's behind these three items really speaks to what's at the heart of this class. Think not merely about advertising, but also about language, about communication. What kind of claim do you think he's making about how technology (especially the Interwebs) is in the process of changing how we communicate.

"Can I get a copy of the slide-deck?"

That's a phrase I heard many, many, many times in the professional world. PowerPoint is easily one of the most popular programs in the business world. Take a look at some of these articles on About.com. (I know, I know - it's almost as authoritative as Wikipedia, but it's an interesting place to start.) What differences do you see between the article about PowerPoint for students and the one on PowerPoint for business?

For another perspective, take a look at this post on Buzz Machine (a marketing blog). It sounds like Jeff Jarvis' book, What Would Google Do?, apart from having a pretty awesome title, takes a pretty interesting look at some of Google's best pratices. In the business world, that's similar to saying, "Hey, those Coca-Cola guys seem to sell a lot of soda. What can we do that's like them?" Of course, Google doesn't just sell advertising; they help define how web advertising happens, how it works, and how websites ultimately get constructed. That's the power of language for you.

Anyway, on Jarvis' blog, the author is giving out free copies of a PowerPoint slide-deck (the buzz-phrase for a collection of slides) that encapsulates at least part of his book. Based on his own mention of the deck and the other media versions he jokes about creating, AND on the comments on his post, what sense do you get for the business world's attitude about PowerPoint?

Writing is hard. Why should we bother?

The fact of the matter is that writing - whether it's for freshman English, a chemistry report, or an application letter - takes significant time and effort. Oh sure, there are writing assignments that we think of as "easy" or at least easier than others (anyone know what hubris means?), but any significant amount of content creation can be a real resource drain. In addition to the time and effort writing takes, there's also the issue of commitment. If you're not committed to the process, to the content, perhaps to a belief in the merit of what you're writing, that's going to become apparent to the reader, and that ALWAYS leads to problems.

So, in this information age, where nearly every technology we design and use is aimed at speeding up our communicative process (OMG, i tlk fstr? LOL!), should our goal be simply to figure out the fastest writing process and go with it?

I came across an interesting blog post by a writer named Dave Fleet. In it, Fleet talks about blogs vs. Twitter, both of which we've talked about, at least a little. A fair summation of his stance on a business' understand of blogs reads like this:

Blogs are a lot of work. To really pull it off consistently one has to have a strategy, enough content to write consistently AND the desire to even do it. But before even starting with a blog, blogging itself needs to first be recognized as valuable by upper management (which I think is still not even close to being a reality), controllable by middle management (in terms of helping/guiding the company blogger) and executable by staff willing/able to do it. And this, I think is where everything stalls. . .before it ever even gets started. . .

In my opinion, the perceived TIME it takes to create a blog isn’t a factor…it’s the EFFORT.

So, is our goal to reach as many people (or perhaps as many of the right kinds of people) as possible? If so, Y? bothA dedicating d tym n ef4T 2 ritN thorough content.


In only kind-of related news, after you look up hubris (and you should), notice that there's an ISP in Kansas called Hubris Communications. What were those folks thinking?