Kyle Wrather: Blog

Studying Media. Interests: tech, culture, TV, film, journalism, politics, sports and more.

[kylewrather]

2017 Media Diary

Below is a list of the movies, TV, and books I’ve completed in 2017. It’s important to note that these are things I’ve intentionally and actively consumed (I’ve watched half or half-watched far more television and movies than I’ve listed below). Also, there are not video games listed, there are no journalistic or academic articles, partially-read book chapters and sections were not counted, and things like social media reading — which I think is still an important and influential form of media consumption — are too difficult accurately note, so I didn’t include them.

Movies:

Jan 07 - Oklahoma!, 1955

Jan 09 - Jeremiah Johnson, 1972

Jan 13 - A Face in the Crowd, 1957

Jan 14 - Zootopia, 2016

Jan 21 - The Way We Were, 1973

Jan 23 - Network, 1976

Jan 28 - Vertigo, 1958

Feb 13 - Hidden Figures, 2016

Feb 17 - Arrival, 2016

Feb 24 - Hell or High Water, 2016

Feb 25 - The Secret Life of Pets, 2016

Mar 03 - Moonlight, 2016

Mar 07 - Barton Fink, 1991

Mar 11 - Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2016

Mar 11 - Rope, 1948

Mar 13 - Logan, 2017

Mar 13 - The Third Man, 1949

Mar 31 - Moana, 2016

Apr 06 - Shane, 1953

Apr 15 - Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

May 07 - Sabrina, 1954

May 09 - Five Came Back, 2017

May 10 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, 2017

May 19 - The Conversation, 1974

May 20 - Radiers of the Lost Ark, 1981

May 20 - Anthropoid, 2016

May 26 - A Kinght’s Tale, 2001

May 27 - El Dorado, 1966

May 31 - Beauty and the Beast, 2017

Jun 15 - War Machine, 2017

Jun 21 - Bataan, 1943

Jun 23 - Wonder Woman, 2017

July 04 - Dirty Dancing, 1987

July 04 - Minimalism, 2015

July 07 - Sullivan’s Travels, 1941

July 14 - Baby Driver, 2017

July 17 - Get Me Roger Stone, 2017

July 28 - Dunkirk, 2017

Aug 01 - Do the Right Thing, 1989

Sept 15 - The Dark Knight, 2008

Sept 20 - No Country for Old Men, 2007

Sept 25 - Jaws, 1975

Sept 26 - Robocop, 1987

Oct 08 - Get Out, 2017

Oct 17 - Blade Runner 2049, 2017

Nov 04 - Alien: Covenant, 2017

Dec 19 - The Night of the Hunter, 1955

Dec 21 - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 2017

Dec 23 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Books:

The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Cory Robin

Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline by Morris Berman

The Summit of the Gods Volume 1 by  Jirō Taniguchi

Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe by Václav Havel

The Summit of the Gods Volume 2 by  Jirō Taniguchi

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets by Kenneth Anger

The Flintstones, Vol. 1 by Mark Russell

Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School by Stuart Jeffries

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy by Jonathan Taplin

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer

The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers by Matt Bird

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis by David Foster Wallace

Levels of the Game by John McPhee

Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master by Brad Gilbert

The Pursuit of Lonliness by Philip Slater

The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski

How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs

Artemis by Andy Weird

Television:

House of Cards, Season 4 (partial)

Better Call Saul, Seasons 1-2

Planet Earth, Season 1

Master of None, Season 2

Great British Baking Show, Seasons 1-3

30 Rock, Seasons 1-4

Love, Season 2

This is Us, Season 1 (partial)

New Girl, final season

Brooklyn 99, Season 1 (partial)

Game of Thrones, Season 6

Veep, Seasons 1-6

The Good Place, Season 2

Riverdale, Season 2

Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Season 3

[kylewrather]

Cassettes

I finally got around to reading Sam Carter’s essay ‘Tape Magnetism’ in Real Life which has been sitting open on a browser tab for nearly a month. It’s a fascinating rumination on the appeal and resurgence of cassette tapes and their braoder appeal in the zeitgeist. His assertion that cassettes are a medium of control (and freedom) is particularly compelling: 

Cassette tapes give a sense that the music is one’s own, but their appeal doesn’t stop at the object: The ability to not only touch and display the tape, but also manually direct its playback, is a fantasy of engagement — and control — at a time when the media we consume seems increasingly rationed and monitored.

While I suspect nostalgia is the occasion for tape’s revival (it’s an inferior technology in almost every respect: fidelity, convenience, usability, etc.), Carter cannily identifies that cassette’s limitations are its features.

If the technology of cassettes lend themselves to consumption practices, do they also lend themselves to kinds of content? Historically, the move to cassette was one of growing prevalence and cheap manufacturing, but the growth of cassette albums (cassettes had much more flexibility run-times than vinyl albums) and cassette audiobooks (portable for in-car consumption) and of course consumer-made mix-tapes all played a role. Undoubtedly all kinds of material were recorded, but because of the limitations of tape they needed to be consumed later in blocks, one tape-side at a time. This suggests a complicated relationship between the ephemerality of over-recording cassettes and the ability to save, use and reproduce content via tape. 

As I think about podcasts (as distributed digital files), they are assumed to be ephemeral with a premium put on revisiting past content (some producers charge to visit the back catalogue). This strikes me as far more like radio, however the growing ‘event podcast’ and narrative content might begin to challenge this. Instead of following a radio-model of ‘hear it as it comes’, there may be a growing demand for return listening and other practices. While I can safely say that cassettes will not become a popular technology for sharing podcasts, the medium through which content is consumed/shared/saved certainly plays a role in how we consider them, even years after the peak of their popularity. 

[kylewrather]

2016 Media Diary

Below is a list of the movies, TV, and books I’ve completed in 2015. It’s important to note that these are things I’ve intentionally and actively consumed (I’ve watched half or half-watched far more television and movies than I’ve listed below). Also, there are not video games listed, there are no journalistic or academic articles, partially-read book chapters and sections were not counted, and things like social media reading — which I think is still an important and influential form of media consumption — are too difficult accurately note, so I didn’t include them.

Movies:

Jan 14 - The Revenant, 2015

Jan 20 - The Gold Rush, 1925

Jan 26 - The Freshman, 1925

Feb 3 - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932

Feb 10 - Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

Feb 11 - Trainwreck, 2015

Feb 12 - My Man Godfrey, 1936

Feb 14 - Wild, 2014

Feb 18 - A Star is Born, 1937

Feb 24 - Sahara, 1943

Feb 25 - Casablanca, 1942

Feb 26 - The Kid, 1921

Mar 2 - Double Indemnity, 1944

Mar 5 - Laura, 1944

Mar 14 - Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003

Mar 15 - Cover Girl, 1944

Mar 15 - The Invisible Man, 1933

Mar 17 - Key Largo, 1948

Mar 19 - The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946

Mar 20  - The Shop Around the Corner, 1940

Mar 23 - Singing’ in the Rain, 1952

Mar 26 - Mildred Pierce, 1945

Apr 3 - Everest, 2015

Apr 3 - Marty, 1955

Apr 6 - On the Waterfront, 1954

Apr 7 - Rebel Without A Cause, 1955

Apr 8 - Paper Towns, 2015

Apr 17 - The Garden of Allah, 1936

Apr 17 - Lincoln, 2012

Apr 20 - Giant, 1956

Apr 22 - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, 2015

Apr 27 - North by Northwest, 1959

Apr 29, Everybody Wants Some!!, 2016

May 21 - The Searchers, 1956

May 24 - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948

May 21 - Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961

Jun 1 - The Last Picture Show, 1971

Jun 3 - The Great Ziegfeld, 1936

Jun 8 - Chinatown, 1974

Jul 2 - Spotlight, 2015

Jul 8 - Only Angles Have Wings, 1939

Jul 15 - Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990

Jul 22 - The Maltese Falcon, 1941

Jul 30 - Red River, 1948

Aug 6 - His Girl Friday, 1940

Aug 12 - Ghostbusters, 1984

Aug 19 - Full Metal Jacket, 1987

Aug 19 - Heathers, 1988

Aug 20 - Roshomon, 1950

Aug 26 - Sixteen Candles, 1984

Aug 28 - Hail, Caesar!, 2016

Aug 30 - Fort Apache, 1948

Sep 8 - Rio Bravo, 1959

Sep 8 - The Big Short, 2015

Sep 9 - Rushmore, 1998

Sep 16 - Brooklyn, 2015

Oct 7 - Deadpool, 2016

Oct 23 - Frankenstein, 1931

Oct 25 - Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954

Nov 7 - Robin Hood, 1973

Dec 17 - La La Land, 2016

Dec 19 - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 2016

Dec 28 - Mean Girls, 2004

Television​:

The Good Wife (Season 3,4,5,6 (partial))

Love (season 1)

Master of None (season 1)

Modern Family (Season 7)

Documentary Now! (Season 1 (partial))

Transparent (Season 2)

Catastrophe (Season 1, 2)

Flaked (season 1)

Veep (season 5)

Orange is the New Black (Season 4)

The OC (Seasons 1, 2(incomplete))

Crazy Ex Girlfriend (Season 1, 2) Stranger Things (Season 1)

Last Chance U (season 1)

The Night Of (limited series)

Westworld (Season 1)

Lovesick (aka Scrotal Recall) (Season 1,2)

Modern Family (Season 7*)

New Girl (Season 6*)

*-season hasn’t all aired yet.

Books: (in reverse order latest to oldest)

The Secret History of Twin Peaks - Frost, Mark

Always Already New: Media, History, And The Data Of Culture - Gitelman, Lisa

Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store - Herbert, Daniel

Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States - Streeter, Thomas

Cult Collectors - Geraghty, Lincoln

Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization - Galloway, Alexander R.

Whale and the Reactor - Winner, Langdon

But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past - Klosterman, Chuck

Underground Airlines - Winters, Ben H.

New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United States - Boddy, William

Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR - Wasser, Frederick

Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium - Newman, Michael Z.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media - Gladstone, Brooke

The Television Will Be Revolutionized - Amanda Lotz

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s -  Otto Friedrich

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7: Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man, #7) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 6: Girl on Girl (Y: The Last Man, #6) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5: Ring of Truth (Y: The Last Man, #5) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 4: Safeword (Y: The Last Man, #4) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3: One Small Step (Y: The Last Man, #3) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles (Y: The Last Man, #2) - Vaughan, Brian K.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned - Vaughan, Brian K.

Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status - Newman, Michael Z. and Levine, Elana

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture - Phillips, Whitney

How to Write a Thesis - Eco, Umberto

Inside Prime Time - Gitlin, Todd

Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960 - Rivero, Yeidy M

Lumberjanes, Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max - Stevenson, Noelle

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned - Vaughan, Brian K.

Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy (Lumberjanes #1-4) - Stevenson, Noelle

Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969 - Classen, Steven D.

Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System - Carman, Emily

Television Studies - Gray, Jonathan and Lotz, Amanda

Life on the Screen - Turkle, Sherry

The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era - Schatz, Thomas

Get Shorty (Chili Palmer, #1) - Leonard, Elmore

Blankets - Thompson, Craig

Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America - Spigel, Lynn

All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture - Goldberg, Harold

[kylewrather]

2015 Media Diary

Director Steven Soderbergh has famously put out a diaries of the movies, books, television, and theatre shows he consumes with a given year. Thanks to services like Goodreads, Letterbox, and with the help of my own (imperfect) memory, it’s a lot easier to undertake a project like this yourself so that’s what I’ve tried to do for 2015. 

Below is a list of the movies, TV, and books I’ve completed in 2015. It’s important to note that these are things I’ve intentionally and actively consumed (I’ve watched half or half-watched far more television and movies than I’ve listed below). Also, there are not video games listed, there are no journalistic or academic articles, partially-read book chapters and sections were not counted, and things like social media reading — which I think is still an important and influential form of media consumption — are too difficult accurately note, so I didn’t include them.  The movies are listed by the date they were completed (I could have done this for the others, but I didn’t keep careful track at the time.) The books are also in order of completion, though they aren’t dated.  Finally, the TV shows are in alphabetical order.

Movies:

January 01 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) January 06 There Will Be Blood (2007) January 10 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) January 16 Selma (2014) January 16 The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) January 18 American Sniper (2014) February 06 Whiplash (2014) February 14 Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) February 20 Edge of Tomorrow (2014) February 27 Birdman (2014) March 13 Boyhood (2014) March 15 The Dark Knight Rises (2012) ` March 16 Fury (1936) May 20 Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) May 25 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) June 02 Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) June 16 Nightcrawler (2014) July 14 Breathless (1960) July 21 Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) July 22 Force Majeure (2014) July 24 High Noon (1952) July 24 Primer (2004) August 06 Foxcatcher (2014) September 01 North by Northwest (1959) September 06 Veronica Mars (2014) September 08 The General (1926) September 08 Easy Street (1917) September 22 Singing' In The Rain (1952) September 25 Spy (2015) September 29 His Girl Friday (1940) October 16 Steve Jobs (2015) October 13 The Rules of the Game (1939) October 09 The Martian (2015) October 27 The Bicycle Thieves (1949) November 10 The 400 Blows (1959) November 17 The Graduate (1968) November 20 Magnolia (1999) November 22 Ex Machina (2015) November 27 Inside Out (2015) December 15 Star Wars (1977) December 16 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) December 17 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) December 18 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) December 19 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith December 21 Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) December 23 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) December 25 Ant-Man (2015) December 27 The Hateful Eight (2015)

Books: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited: Revised and Expanded by Richard Florida Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 by Susan Douglas When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by Carolyn Marvin Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries by Gina Neff The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet by Thomas Streeter MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne Coding Places by Yuri Takhteyev Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin by Joseph Straubhaar et al. The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace by Vincent Mosco The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties by Fred Turner Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success by Suzy Giordano Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry Outlander by Diana Gabaldon Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema by Haidee Wasson The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History by Jaimie Baron Hollywood's Copyright Wars by Peter Decherney The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X The Martian by Andy Weir Modern Romance by Aziz Ansar Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas Television: Big Love (Seasons 1-5) Bloodline (Season 1 (partial)) Bojack Horseman (Season 1 (partial)) Daredevil (Season 1 (partial)) Game of Thrones (Season 5) The Good Wife (Seasons 1, 2, 3 (partial)) Halt and Catch Fire (Seasons 1, 2) House of Cards (Season 4) Justified (Season 1) The Knick (Season 1) Mad Men (Season 7.5) The Man in the High Castle (Season 1) Masters of Sex (Season 1 (partial)) Parks and Recreation (Season 7) Orange is the New Black (Season 3) Outlander (Season 1 (partial)) Silicon Valley (Season 2) Star Trek (Season 1) Togetherness (Season 1) True Detective (Season 2) Twin Peaks (Seasons 1, 2) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 1) Veep (Season 5) Veronica Mars (Seasons 1, 2, 3) Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (Season 1) Wolf Hall (Season 1) ---------- As a side note, my wife and I had a baby this year. You would think this would lead to a reduction in media consumption — in reality the means a lot of time rocking the baby to sleep, anxiously waiting for the baby to wake up, and generally occupied, but non-concentration-friendly time. Also, as a media studies PhD student, it’s easy to justify seeing movies and TV for “school” and many of the books I read were either loosely or directly related to my studies. 

[kylewrather]

Describe your work:

I need your help: tell me how you work!

I’m doing an informal survey for a graduate class project and I’d love to hear from you. If you have time, please take a few minutes to click the link above and let me know how you work.

Thanks!

[kylewrather]

Meerkat/Periscope and television “liveness”

Just a few quick thoughts about the two personal live-streaming services that have been getting a lot of buzz, Meerkat (which was a darling of this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin) and Twitter’s very similar service, Periscope.

There’s a lot being written about these two services in relation to news and journalism production and their ability to enhance or augment media watching experiences, but one of the most interesting aspects of these two apps are their relationship to "liveness” and television. Radio and Television’s history was marked by a clear connection to liveness as an important and unique marker of both media forms. In particular, mid-century television leaned heavily on “LIVE” as a marker of difference compared to the dominant visual media form at the time, film.1

Another important aspect of “liveness” is its strong connection to advertising. Ephemeral experience and exposure has been the hallmark of value creation in the broadcasting advertisement system. Broadcasters sell fleeting blocks of time to advertisers with the hope that viewers will be exposed to them in that moment. In contrast, the technological development of asynchronous viewing technologies (Betamax, VCR, DVR, downloads) has been seen as a problem in the broadcasting value chain. How do you quantify an audience that is no longer “mass” in the moment? How do you sell to broadcasting time to advertisers without reliable, singular audiences to point to? In fact, this can be seen in the shift toward today’s live event TV and the dominance of sports programming.

So where do Meerkat and Periscope fit into this? Personal live streaming isn’t new - from the 1990s webcam fad to current services like Ustream. My guess is the value comes from the potential for expanding liveness and advertising to personal media sharing. Personal media networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter already intersperse advertising within their user-generated posts. The potential of Meerkat and Periscope is to capitalize on the attention and ephemerality of “liveness” where click and impression-based web advertising can’t. This connection is already being seen with the television industry’s growing ties to the ephemeral photo service Snapchat.

Liveness allows these networks to capitalize media temporality. Permanence of online things online means they may (or more often may not) be viewed or returned to in the future - but liveness asks for immediate, intense attention. Companies like Meerkat and Periscope (like broadcast television before them) are undoubtedly banking on extracting value from combining social hype with the attention demand of liveness.

-------------------------------

↩ Hilmes, Michele. 1990. Hollywood and broadcasting: from radio to cable. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

[kylewrather]

In Defense of Spoilers by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic

Psychologists have found that people like stories more after they've been "spoiled" Why?

I'm fascinated by these discussions of spoilers. If I were to offer a knee-jerk reaction to why everyone cares so much about preserving or dashing spoilers, I'd say it's because the individual and social consumption of media are increasingly un-linked. In other words, we don't have to watch shows and movies all at the same time so the timeline for consumption, digestion and discussion are all on different tracks. The ubiquity of information and digital access to books, movies, television shows and many other media removes the need to consume these texts en masse. If everyone takes in media at different speeds or at different times, it's much more difficult to know who has consumed what, so spoiling becomes inevitable.

In the above article, Thompson quotes Adam Sterbergh who argues spoilable plot movements are sometimes the result of hack writing. Likewise he quotes a study suggesting human desire for predictability (and unpredictability) offer insight in the pleasure of unspoiled media (and displeasure when they're revealed). But beyond these internal explanations for why we do or don't mind spoilers, the reason for spoiling also becomes important. More specifically, it raises two questions:  1. Because we can now access media (books, TV, movies) individually at our convenience, does that change how we understand when something is considered "appropriate" to be spoiled? Is it OK to spoil Citizen Kane, but not Breaking Bad? What about Friends? The Empire Strikes Back? Are they different?  2. How was this issue of "spoilers" dealt with in the past? Obviously there are generational gaps in popularity. There have also been revivals dating back several centuries for theatre — where undoubtedly some people did not know the ending to Romeo and Juliet. But the mass availability of books and other media is relatively new, so how much of their value lies in their status as a widely-consumed (and known) cultural object (THE CANON!) versus their value as an individually-experienced text? 

Ultimately, being spoiled is an individual experience: someone who already knows the ending (the spoiler) tells someone who hasn't (the spoilee) it before they would have found out on their own. So why does that person reveal the ending? Probably a number of reasons, but at least one may be that the spoiler wants to share an experience or knowledge that they expected the spoilee to already have. That social value of knowing the ending comes into conflict with the individual value of having a unique personal experience with the text to find out the ending. 

[kylewrather]

"The difference is the use of “buy” buttons. We consumers are being led to believe that we are buying the e-books, MP3s and movies and therefore enjoy the same rights as if we bought a physical book, CD or DVD. No car lease or apartment rental is listed as “Buy Now,” because you are not buying anything, really. To indicate as much would be deceptive. We don’t make the same assumptions in the digital world because we don’t know we have to."

From "Think You ‘Own’ What You ‘Buy’ on the Internet?" by Kyle K Courtney, Politico

[kylewrather]

From Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 161

I have some qualms with some of the more techno-phobic aspects of Postman's arguments here, but despite the book being written in 1985, he highlights an issue that we seem to be just now reckoning with: the effects of digitization and data-ization of information. Only in the past few years have some of the more serious questions around 'big data' come into question. 

[kylewrather]

This 1990 ABC Primetime news report about Twin Peaks is a fascinating glimpse into event television's past. 

[kylewrather]

"...we delude ourselves if we believe that most everything a teacher normally does can be replicated with greater efficiency by a micro-computer. Perhaps some things can, but there is always the question, What is lost in translation? The answer may even be: Everything that is significant about education."

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 117-118 Even though this was written in 1985, it speaks pretty clearly to challenges today for MOOCs (and similar online ed. initiatives) as a effective platforms for education.

[kylewrather]

"Network neutrality sounds technical, but I’d suggest that it’s primarily a political and economic debate. At its heart, it’s the manifestation of a growing tension between existing (The telephone and cable television) and emerging (Internet content and computer technology) media industries. It’s a debate about who controls (and profits) from the distribution of media content across a new platform."

From my new post on Medium, "Could Title II really be happening?" 

[kylewrather]

A firing line from one of our readers

Here's my reply to a recent opinion column in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas at Austin. You can read the column I'm responding to "Look outside social media for life's most valuable moments." 

[saywords]

Look at these people always on their phones, like they’re obsessed!

Always typing on their devices

Why can’t she stop and just live in the moment?

Our addiction isolates us from each other, leaving us alone together

[kylewrather]

The internet is complicated. 

[kylewrather]

“It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it is behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real environment where action eventuates”

Walter Lippmann, Chapter 1, Public Opinion (1922)

Lippmann was one of the founders of The New Republic magazine and a central figure in the development of communication research - and media research by extension.  In the quote above, he makes the case for how mediated experiences interfere in how people understand the world. For Lippmann, this comes from a place of distrusting existing power structures (like other news organizations and political leaders) while also believing in an objective reality (this is before post-modernism) that should be reported and defended. While I have some qualms with his claim above it's still fascinating: 

- The resonance of this line of thinking still permeates much of journalism and popular conceptions of how news and information should be shared. 

- It establishes (or at least reinforces) the notion of an artificial mediated distance between people that continues to be argued about today. Even the term "pseudo-environment" consciously distances mediated information from ones that are "non-mediated."

[kylewrather]

"In actuality, a network neutrality principle makes a political stand by preserving the generative, perhaps radical democratic, aspects of the Internet. Participatory culture, social media, citizen journalism, and the creative commons depend on users being able to upload, broadcast, and share freely."

Fenwick McKelvey, "Ends and Ways: The Algorthmic Politics of Network Neutrality," Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition, 2010, Vol. 3.1.