A Swarm of Angels

The group called, "A Swarm of Angels" is collaborating to produce a film that will be the harbinger of a new era in the movie industry.

In its endeavor to pull away from the current standard of the film industry's big money and marketing tactics, this new type of work is called Cinema 2.0. It works with a minimal budget and uses "Creative Commons," the Internet's alternate form of copyrighting, where usage of an artist's work is more liberal than general copyright standards.

While big Hollywood corporations are legally fighting against digital downloading, "A Swarm of Angels" is creating its media completely digitally and will offer its media for free by downloading to a computer or Ipod. Creation of the film is lead by filmaker and writer, Matt Hanson, but it is a collaborative effort, using Wiki-style editing. The group attracts members and donations. To date, they have achieved their first priority of 100 members. Their goal is to progress by intervals, ultimately achieving 50,000 members. Members have the right to have a say in how the movie is made.

Distance Learning Elements

There are various elements of online learning. Some are newly implemented, whereas other technologies have been used frequently:
Learning Objects: are elements such as audio-visual or animations.
Simulation: This can comprise a recording of the professor's screen as she/he uses software.
Multimedia
Video shorts: can be used for key concepts or ideas, such as brief video clips for a nursing or medical class.
Tutorials: Audio/screen show captured movements of a demonstration.
Discussion board: A closed online network forum for students to post comments.

There are two types of online learning associated with the use of Time:
Synchronous: This is an online learning session that has a start and end time. Students and professors meet at a certain time.
Asynchronous: An asynchronous learning setting allows users to read and respond at any time during a given period, such as the duration of a week.

Source:
Interview, 11/23/2005
Cynthia Gallatin
Associate Vice President for Online Programs
Quinnipiac University
Hamden, Connecticut

Notes about Online Learning

Did you know that online learning is actually harder for the student than on-site, classroom based learning?

With classroom learning, a student can be a more passive learner. He or she can show up to classes and get something out of the course by just attending. However, with distance learning, a student cannot hide. Participation is required of an online student. Active learning is equal to participation and attendance for an online student.

Sometimes a student who is quiet or shy in a classroom setting will write much more in an online setting or discussion forum. This behavior is similar to that of online networks, where more "talk" may come from otherwise seemingly quiet people.

Source:
Interview with Cynthia Gallatin, 11/23/2005
Associate Vice President for Online Learning
Quinnipiac University
Hamden Connecticut

Those Video Game "Slackers"

According to the New York Times (Nov. 22, 2005) over 100 American colleges, plus many overseas, are offering courses in video game development, as compared to less than 12 universities offering the subject five years ago. Some universities, like Carnegie Mellon, are staffing their program with faculty from a mix of areas. Carnegie Mellon has a professor with a drama background and another with a computer science background. Bing Gordon, chief creative officer of Electronic Arts was quoted as saying that the most successful graduates of digital entertainment programs had come to the field with a multi-disciplinary background.

It's good that other students have the "new" option of studying and pursuing interactive digital games. I'm not a "gamer," so I will gravitate to another venue.

Schiesel, Seth, " Video Games Are Their Major, So Don't Call Them Slackers" New York Times, November 22, 2005.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/arts/design/22vide.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

New Performance: "Super Vision"

BAM Harvey Theater in New York City is presenting a new performance is about several types of identity theft, put into story form.

Their description:
" The world is at your fingertips. Literally. A few strokes on the keyboard take you, virtually, anywhere you want to go, click by click creating a cyber composite of yourself. Every bit of data—credit card purchases, email messages, academic degrees, medical records—none of it goes away, ever. You’re there for the taking.

What if someone re-created himself out of all that detritus? What if he, essentially, took part of you?

Information anxiety, indeed, brought to you by the New York-based Builders Association (Alladeen, 2003 Next Wave) and multi-disciplinary studio dbox. Under the direction of Marianne Weems, whose unerring ability to tap into the zeitgeist gives her work a breathtaking immediacy, Super Vision explores how our identities seem to be increasingly dependent on, and constituted by, the cloud of data that surrounds each of us.

The production comprises three chilling stories: the machinations of a father who has co-opted his son’s digital identity; a data addict coping with her grandmother’s advancing senility; and a man who exposes more and more of his data in order to travel freely. Science fiction? Just hand over your credit card number and find out."

About Super Vision
http://www.bam.org/events/06SUPE/06SUPE.aspx
Interview
http://www.bam.org/events/06SUPE/06SUPE_ezine.aspx
Super Vision website
http://www.superv.org

Laptop for students 3rd World

Announced today, a laptop for students in "developing" countries: a laptop that you can hand-crank in case there's no power.
Perhaps we need a hand crank too!
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/11/16/PM200511167.html

Microsoft's "Live"

From "Any Big Revolution On the Net Will Be Televised by Microsoft," The Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2005

Microsoft's new software is designed for use in the upcoming New Internet, or "Web 2.0," as some call it. The new Web is not here yet. With the new version of the Web, you will run programs on the Internet that you now run on your home computer. Microsoft is jumping in on the game and competing with Google's Gmail, Google Maps and other competitors. The idea of running personalized programs on the Web is counter to Microsoft's Office and Windows, that run from computers.

Last week, Microsoft unveiled its "Live" collection of services and software in San Francisco. Live is still in the early stage of development. Live's free version will be supported by advertising. If you do not want to see advertisements, then you will have to pay to keep them off your screen.

In case advertisement does not make big profits, or if the Live does not do well, Microsoft has Office and Windows to rely on.

Urban Planning-and Citizen Comments

Urban Planning: This time citizens will be able to participate in workshops and put comments on the Web.

If you're interested in participating with the discussions on the designs for updating the New Haven, CT downtown area to replace the old Mall and the old Coliseum, you can go to an upcoming workshop to be held at Ninth Square, in New Haven, CT.

People could break into groups and tour the sites. Ledbetter and Munday agreed that the ideas generated from the workshops should be put up on the city's Web site so that more comments can be added. I feel that this is a great idea. Hopefully, the workshops and Web comments will generate good ideas that will be taken seriously.

The ideas generated so far are controversial. I hope that the new plans encompass all of New Haven's classes of people, not just for those who can spend lots on the stores in the proposed new marketplace. After all, the new Downtown Gateway Master Plan is supposed to serve community college students, not just Yale students.

Some residential units are proposed, but I do not know how many are marked for "affordable housing." There should be a good percentage of units available at very "affordable" rates. If New Haven's urban planning project goes like those of White Plains and Stamford (20 or 30 years ago), then there will be no housing for the poor. We will then continue the cycle of urban homelessness and blight, instead of improving the issue. When White Plains and Stamford "renewed" their downtown areas, they put the poor in temporary housing in motels for a fixed period of time. No permanent dwellings were provided. People were expected to drift off to Bridgeport. This is only one reason why Bridgeport had so many problems.

After Hurricane Katrina, Mayor DeStefano offered housing for New Orleans' newly homeless population. As one could expect, this evoked an outcry from some people right here in New Haven, because they had already been on the waiting list for years!

I hope that New Haven plans intelligently, and does not make the same mistake that other cities have made!

NOTE: See title for link to newspaper article

Home from a Junked 747

Architect David Hertz of Santa Monica is designing a home made from an old 747 jet. His client, Francie Rehwald wants a curvy, eco-clean home where she can practice yoga, organic gardening and meditation. Scrap from the junked plane will be used to build a number of buildings on the hilly site. The nose will be a meditation building, a wing will be an awning, and other pieces will be used for an art studio, loft and a barn. This venture will come to 1.5 to 2 million. The plane will be buffed to reduce its shine and remove paint so that it will not disturb neighbors or confuse planes flying above. Ms. Rehwald's property is surrounded by former spouses of Bob Dylan and Olivia Newton-John, so it needs a low profile appearance. Other "neighbors" are the coyotes, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that traverse the area. Ms. Rehwald has an archeologist to help her deal with the wildlife.

Source: Title has link to newspaper article: Frangos, Alex, "West Coast Woman To Build Crash Pad Out of an Old 747," Wall Street Journal, Weekend Edition, Nov. 5-6, 2005.
(As posted in my other blog, "Domaround")

Clean Energy Conference

The Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Center for Economic and Environmental Partnership, Inc. will host a conference November 7, 2005 in Boston, to promote business ventures in clean energy in the Northeast. The Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition and the Energy Special Interest Group at the MIT Enterprise Forum will have special sessions.

A career fair will be held in the afternoon for jobseekers and employers.

Center for Economic and Environmental Partnership:
http://store.mountainmedia.com/ceepinc/calendar.cfm?do=detail&d=3191&c=4943&p=33332
(As posted in my other blog, "Domaround")

NOTE: Title has link to web site.

Moulthrop’s “revolution”

Once again, we have a verbose article [The New Media Reader, by Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, MIT Press, 2003] that could be stated briefly. On page 697, Moulthrop quotes Thomas Pynchon with “paranoia” as “the realization that everything is connected…” If the writers feel that way, perhaps they need either "consciousness healing" or medical attention!

The babble continues with more theories until page 701 when the author discusses that hypertext, when taken to its limit can become “every bit as institutionalized and conservative as broadcast networks.” And, Gibson called cyberspace “a Cartesian territory where scientists of control define boundaries over power lines.”

Then on page 702, the Moulthrop quotes Timothy Leary with “reality pilot.” At that point, I decided to get a Wiki reading on Leary, and later found http://www.llp.armstrong.edu/reese/courses/4700/cornwell/p3.htm to get a better idea of “reality pilot.”

Kelly Cornwell, a student in Savannah, wrote an academic essay, discussing the term, “cyberpunk.” In her essay, she said that Leary calls cyberpunks:
"inventors, innovative writers, technofrontier artists, [...] elegant hackers, [...] media explorers, [... and] all those who boldly package and steer ideas out there where no thoughts have gone before." (369, "The Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot.").

Kelly wrote that the Greek definition of “kubernetes” became the Latin “gubernetes.” Kubernetes is the mariner or pilot who has to think independently. Gubernetes is to control actions or behavior, to direct or regulate.
It seems to me that these two terms are a good refection of the two directions that “cyberspace” can take us, according to our readings.

I feel that the most of the academic authors we have been reading in the New Media Reader could each have described their concept within a few pages. What does this say about the power or tradition of literature?