Archive for the 'Media' Category

Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Classroom is Sacred

August 22, 2010 0 Comments

Via The Googlization of Everything: Siva Vaidhyanathan makes some great points about the drive toward digitisation in post-secondary education in his lecture “The Classroom is Sacred” at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The point about the heterogeneity of the university is really great. The needs and ways of operating among and between different areas, especially in large universities, are not always served by a one-size-fits-all digitisation strategy. Indeed, as he points out, there is an incredible amount of value in the ambiguities that are present in the classroom. Here, his point about “teachers are liars” is one that I have thought about quite a bit. Coming from a performance background, I have always endeavored to acknowledge the performative aspects of teaching. Teaching (and writing for that matter) can be about provocation; it can be about eliciting responses in dialogue; it doesn’t have to be about simply passing information gleaned from one source, through the larynx or the computer scree, to a willing (or not so willing) receptacle). The point made here about education not being simply a matter of information transfer speaks directly to the issue of the necessary presence of living, contradictory, ambiguous bodies in the process of educating.

A great watch!

Tags: , , . Categories: Media and Teaching

The End of Forgetting

July 27, 2010 0 Comments

Alex has posted about an article on Web 2.0 and reputation management, and I have commented at length.

What happens to subjectivity when every whim, thought, impulse, or embarrassing photo becomes permanently cataloged on Twitter, Facebook, or the Blog? How will this immutable digital trail impact our relationship to ourselves, to knowledge, to our understandings of past and the future?  One of the effects, as the article intimates may be a radicalization of image maintenance and protection that accelerates an already creeping cultural narcissism associated with immanent collective surveillance and identity/reputation construction.

Read more.

Tags: , . Categories: Media

Cory Doctorow – Digital Economy Act: This means war

April 16, 2010 0 Comments

Cory Doctorow’s latest.

The entertainment industry’s willingness to use parliament to impose censorship and arbitrary punishment in the course of chasing a few extra quid is so depraved and terrible that it has me in fear for the very underpinnings of democracy and civil society.

Indeed, the swiftness with which the DEA went through the British parliament is something that does not bode well for democratic processes. A scant debate, a paltry showing of MPs, and blatant ignoring of public outcry marks the very opposite of engaged and responsible government. Add to the this that the substance of the law is largely the construct of profit-driven (i.e. not concerned with democracy) private industry, we have here authoritarian rule by the unelected and the unaccountable. A travesty.

So what, it’s just music and movies, right? Cutlral production plays a massive part in the circulation of ideas, social norms, possibilities and potentials, etc. This move represents the continued imposition of control in the name of profit on the very texts that might hold the key to new discoveries, that might open up posibilities for better worlds. In process and in content, this law is an attempt by a powerful elite to suppress the common, to lock down communication, and to punish those who dare to dissent. It is absurd.

Tags: , , , . Categories: Media, PhD Thesis, Politics and Rant

Giroux on Clarity and Anti-intellectualism

March 25, 2010 0 Comments

In this great TruthOut essay by Henry Giroux, a quote from Edward Said:

Therefore, for me, my antagonist is the person who passively watches CNN all day long and says that’s the world. My ideal is the person who looks at CNN and says, no, that’s not the world, that’s a version of the world and my duty as a mind in society is to understand what alternative versions there are in order for me to make my choice and to go out and to change the world.

And this equally nice one from Giroux himself:

Unfortunately, the discourse of clarity appears to rest on a universal standard of literacy that presumably need not be questioned as well as a self-righteous and deeply anti-democratic suggestion that most people are just too dumb or indifferent to struggle with language and meaning. This approach to language suppresses questions of context – who reads what under what conditions? More importantly, it presumes that language is a transparent medium for the seamless transmission of existing facts that need only be laid out in an agreed-upon fashion. Such a position runs the risk of fleeing the politics of culture by situating language outside of history, power and struggle.

Tags: , , . Categories: Academia, Media, Politics, Rant and Teaching

Michael Geist on the Canadian Copyright Reform Consultation

September 8, 2009 0 Comments

Michael Geist notes the rock and hard place situation in which Canadians who desire a sane copyright law find themselves. The strategies employed by powerful lobby groups in order to shut out the voices of educators and consumers of creative works are of particular interest. Those in support of strict copyright laws, including “three strikes” laws for Internet users

turned out en masse for a public town hall meeting in Toronto late last month, resulting in multiple interventions from record label executives (four from Warner Music alone).  Packing the room ensured that there was virtually nothing heard from education and consumer groups, many of whom could not even attend the town hall since all the tickets were scooped up in less than five days.

See the full post here.

Tags: , , . Categories: Media, Music, Politics and Rant