21apples

SXSWi:Online Games: Beyond Play and Fantasy

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:56:21 GMT

Online Games: Beyond Play and Fantasy
Joichi Ito We Know Guild, his blog
Justin Hall Passively Multiplayer

Ito: We’re going to talk about online games and what we can learn from them. I think comparing Second Life to World of Warcraft is an apples to oranges comparison. They are similar because they are 3-D, Second Life is not a game (although you could make games inside), there is a difference.

I play my World of Warcraft videos in Second Life. We plan raids inside Second Life. Second Life is about simulation, I do talks there. It’s really not where I build relationships but many do.

Showing screenshots of his World of Warcraft that has many user-created add-ons that tell how the game is working, people’s strengths and more. Many of these add-ons are picked up and brought into official releases from the gamemakers. There is an unreal amount of data being shown on the screen. Some military players say their screens in WOW have way more great info than real-life military data systems.

All the data is logged later so that I can analyze later and improve the way I play (along with my teammates).

I recommend players I work with for real jobs because I know about the way they work under pressure, about whether they are honest, cheaters, aggressive, etc.

We use audiochats during game play to stay connected. “immersion-busting, reality-intrusive anti role-playing debasement of what virtual words are – Richard Bartle 2003

People used to keep audio out to keep up the fantasy. “Guildlies” chat me, sms me, audio chat me and more, I think the fantasy is broken, and we don’t worry about that anymore.

People were saying 3-D is not as good as text games because of the lack of imagination. Steven Johnson said well is imagining Paris as good as a 3-D simulation of Paris? It’s not the point, 3-D give new and different opportunities for brain exercise.

John Sealy Brown on USC site (paper) distinguishes between simulation and metaphor – McDonalds job simulation would be exactly like McDonalds vs. World of Warcraft has nothing to do with real life, but the leadership, camaraderie, etc is metaphorically connected to real life – stimulates your imagination for real life application.

A lot of the leaders online are not the MBA-type leaders, but more like open-source leaders. We have bartenders, foremans, nurses etc who are leaders. A lot of CEO’s don’t lead well in the games because they are used to paying people to do work, to follow. Here people pay to play, so if it isn’t good, they leave. More like open source that way. A guild is more like a congregation than a corporation.

Hall: I stopped writing about my life online as I used to do. I don’t play WOW because it takes too much time. I did gain time because of my lack of writing. I do now use MySpace along with Plazes, then my most recent video games, my recent photos from Flickr, my recent music from iTunes. I don’t have to do anything though, but you can get a picture of what was happening in my life on any given day, the Internet is notified. The “myware” software, the personal spyware programs.

Working on an idea of Passive Multiplayer Online Games – just by doing stuff online you score experience points. BBC said perhaps we can eval web literacy this way. I could say you are only level 5 because you only surf 5 sites a day, but I could give you a quest to explore 10 new points to earn 20 points. Then you would learn more about the Internet and gain experience points.

So I am creating a way for people to get experience points by using Internet resources. We don’t log the URL’s so no one could say where does arvind go online? All we know is he views a lot of education sites or a lot of tech sites.

Test the site out at bud.com

Ben Cerveny joins the panel

The real abstract resource we find in play are the metaphors the Joi mentioned. The movement between online and the real world impacts is real and powerful. What started off as a massive multiplayer game ended up as a mode for trading media (Flickr). The reason that succeeded came out of a different approach, that of play. The idea of “flow” is a balance between simplicity of task and complexity of task. Construction of flow it turns out is aided by being in a state of play. You have a different relationship between risk and reward when you play – you will take risk whereas during work you may get in trouble if you mess up.

Ito: In the U.S. we don’t take kids play seriously. In Japan we see kids using pagers so we figure how to use phones. In the rest of the world we embrace fun in work, where in the U.S. we think work can’t be fun. The barrier between work and fun is an American artifact. The barrier between online and offline is also American. In Japan you are always online. American Puritanic view of the Internet is warping perspective.

Pushing kids out is stupid and gaming companies might make that mistake. But the games on the Internet so far have ceded control to kids and users and it is empowering them and making better games.

Q from audience:
The concept of work is recent: 4 hours focused, not thinking about anything else, then a break, then 4 more hours. Thinking back, kids were around, social life all intermixed with work. IM at work and things like it are challenging this new business model, but these are false ideas of what work is. Also I would like to play a game based on Merlin Mann’s productivity ideas and win points for being more efficient.

Hall: There is a company called Seriosity that makes an Outlook plugin that give you points for better use of e-mail.Playing directly into the gaming/productivity idea.

My thoughts: very cool panel. These three guys are super-smart. Games or games-thinking definitely could benefit schools. Ok, another blog post to write. How about teachers gaming to increase their understanding of learning styles, there are ways to approach this. And I love the idea of a game amongst admins on best use of e-mail. I need to check out Seriosity seriously.

Off to the K-12 meetup, I hope Andy Carvin, Sa-Ul and others find me at the Mozilla party in Brush Square Park.

technorati tags:Joichi Ito, Joi Ito, Justin Hall, John Seely Brown, games, sxsw, sxswi, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Passively Multiplayer, We Know Guild, Seriosity, Andy Carvin, Sa-Ul, Brush Square Park, Ben Cerveny

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SXSWi: Alternadad Live!

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:34:34 GMT

Alternadad Live!
16:00 CST
3-12-2007
Neal Pollack, Bloger, Alternadad, starting online parenting community soon
Rebecca Woolf, Blogger, Girl’s Gone Child

Woolf: wanted to talk about hipster parenting buzz that has been around the blogosphere, NYTimes, Time magazine. We have become posters children for alternative parenting. I don’t think we are different than our parents who dressed their kids up in things they like.

Pollack: there has been this label slapped on this generation of parents. There is a cultural shift afoot, largely taking place on the Internet. Reacting against “Mommy and Me,” soccer-mom culture. The parents are largely the same. Idea that parents don’t want to give up pre-parent identity and you have things like Indie-rock parties for kids: baby loves disco, kids bands playing at Knitting Factory, House of Blues. Speaks to pareantal dissatisfaction. David Brooks (NYTimes) attacks, he isn’t paying attention. These are normal parents with a superficial Indie-rock aesthetic.

Woolf: I’m really not that cool, but I am looked at as a cool mom. We’ve become “Indie-rock” but the label itself is contradictory. People are upset, they don’t like me because they way I dress, the way I dress my kid. They are furious that I take my kid to an art show, a rock show instead of Gymboree.

Pollack: the angry people are in the minority. When you have a kid, you feel obsolete as an individual. Everyone can relate to fear of getting older and becoming culturally worthless. Lots of books, websites trying to understand what it means to be a parents, and trying to change definition of parenting in this country. There is fear of change.

Woolf: there are so many blogs that are all about being parents. [polling audience]: how many people read blogs instead of parenting magazines for advice? [not many raise their hand].

Pollack: parenting magazines are so focused. I have tried to write articles for them, but they always say their audience won’t appreciate his point of view. Blogs give a more raw and honest approach to parenting. First generation of parents that have been online their entire adult life, so more comfortable sharing that way.

Woolf: blogging is a personal experience. It is raw, it is ok to swear, etc. You can maintain your own voice while talking about parenting.

Woolf: people say that I am exposing my child, how do you deal with that?

Pollack: negative press that is personal. Parenting is a raw topic.

Deuce is the Beatles of parent bloggers (second Beatles reference I have heard today)

Woolf: I thought when I became a parent I would have to start shopping at Talbots and wearing pastels. You become a desperate housewife, wear tacky nails. So many different stereotypical moms, so I figured I would just start a blog.

Interesting hearing these thoughts. I don’t know anything about parent bloggers, but I should probably start reading them being that I deal with parents and their kids as a profession.

technorati tags:parenting, Alternadad, Neal Pollack, Rebecca Woolf, Girls Gone Child, blog, alternative, online, culture, sxsw, sxswi, ethics, NYCIST

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SXSWi: When Communities Attack

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:06:32 GMT

When Communities Attack
Presenter from Topix.net
15:30 CST
3-12-07

A session on the bad behaviors that happen in online communities.

Web 2.0 – it’s coming to your town, your parents town, and it’s not always nice.

Anonymity does enable certain bad behaviors. Someone says something nasty and a hundred people say “yeah”

Just like the playground, accusing someone of bad behavior. People trying to get opponents banned.

Number of people talking to themselves is phenomenal. Same person creates 50 accounts and comments to create credibility.

Small groups of very abusive people follow each other from site to site to fight.

What can you do?
- You can take it down – some news wikis LA, Washington felt they needed to shut it down
- Free speech vs. harboring hate & personal attacks
- you can take down a blog, but not the blogosphere – you’re not fixing anything by leaving
- you get taken down by the traffice

Abdicate: like MySpace, “hey man, it’s not our problem”
- Facebook lawyers have said they have societal responsibility to keep things in order
- hard to put on moderation later, do it at the start

Managing an moderating is probably the most responsible thing to do

1997	2007
moderators	meta-moderators – a group of people who are invested in the site and not invested in the arguments themselves
registration	captchas – help people from screwing with you
profanity filter	heat language analysis – looks at the entire post to see if something is full of hate or reasonable; you can get around profanity filters
logging	recent activity queue (Wikipedia does this well, look at the stream of new edits to keep tabs on bad things arising)
per post/user moderation	IP/domain moderation

The Ni-Chan Paradox – interesting social affect of the infrastructure
- Regisration keeps out good posters – don’t want to be bothered
- Registration lets in bad posters – children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to register, check e-mail for confirmation
- Registration attracts polls – in someone is interested in desotrying a forum, registration adds to the sense of challenge. They are not protecting their own registration, they are destroying others
- Anonymity counters vanity – you can’t get particular attention

What should you do?

- Security is policy. Have one
- make some decisions – if you let everyone bad in, won’t work. make it hard for good people, won’t work.
- optimize for growth
- get rid of the bottom 5-10%
- eliminate threaths, calls for violence, personal details, 100% harm – we allow rough stuff, but just wraith is not allowed

Paper: Clay Shirky – A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy

Real challenge: Identify the good stuff – what is your purpose?

This is a well understood problem. A lot of research has been done. There is caselaw for online communities, do the research.

Differences today are scale and impact: great when SXSW is using your product, but when everyone in the US is using it, that is different. There is an offline component to this. You have more of a responsibility when you’re large, this can lead to real-world issues.

Everybody learns the hard way – you won’t do the research, you will get smacked. Even if you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.

The lessons I learned was to be precise, correct an error promptly and to let the nasty, sexist comments role off my back. They don’t upset me as much now. I’ve gotten used to the incivility. I don’t like it, but I don’t get as angry. – Deborah Howell responding to the craziness that followed her Washington Post article

A really nice summary about keeping online communities healthy and avoiding the acerbic stuff that can go down. I missed the person’s name, but he was from Topix.net

technorati tags:online, culture, NYCIST, community, Topix, safety, moderation, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, portal, scale, Chris Tolines

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SXSWi: Dan Rather Keynote Interview

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:23:20 GMT

Dan Rather Keynote Interview
14:00 CST
3-12-2007
Moderated by: Jane Hamsher, Publisher, The Fire Dog Lake Company

Lots of paraphrasing here of course.

Q: What was it like when Richard Nixon dismissed you and you would not be dimissed?

A: (strange he needed the question repeated 3 times and then he went away from the question) We are going to talk about lots of important questions like tech, war, etc. Problems are the problems – the way we call attention to these in the news are important, but secondary. Reporters put themselves in harms way to cover this stuff.

“My role is to be an honest broker of information”

Have to keep up with the news so that people don’t have to. I never say myself as challenging President Nixon, I was just doing my job of finding out what was really going on instead of what they wanted the world to believe what was going on.

I wasn’t challenging the President, I respect that office more than anyone, but the President was involved in one of the largest conspiracies in our history – Watergate. The President said I was challenging him, but the facts are the facts and the President was not presenting the facts.

Q: Does the state of journalism today allow the same types of critiques of the administration

A: In the last 5-6 years (including me) American journalism has lost its guts. Journalists have adopted the go-along to get-along cliché. The access journalism game has degenerated the craft to a perilous state. We trade go-along get-along for access and having the boss feel good about you. The danger is real and present of being called “antipartriotic” and “not supporting the troops.” This is a very serious charge in America at a time of war. A patriotic journalist would be on their feet asking the hard questions. My role as member of the press is sometimes to question authority, keep checks and balances on power, follow up on these questions.

Q: Small group of journalists in DC are trying to protect themselves and their positions by not challenging with questions.

A: American journalism (including me) needs a spine transplant. The nexus between powerful journalists and corporate interest/other sources of power have become far too close. You get a little too cozy with your sources. You make agreements with them, stated or unstated. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. This is very dangerous. Definitely in Washingtion, but other places as well, city hall, towns, etc. To get them on your newscast you negotiate (but don’t call it that) that you get so close, you become part of the problem. Powerful people do use journalists – they will until the journalists say whoah, too far. Journalists though also use sources. That is a given in most situations. Sources begin to think the reporter can be part of the time. Then the reporter thinks that they are part of the system and need to help, then the reporter has gone too far. Journalists need to rethink the relationship with sources.

If you have many sources, it will be had for your sources to seal you out. When the President sealed Rather out, we called the Pentagon, Congress, etc. So when you call for the 15th time you then tell the secretary that I am on the evening news with a not-so-flattering piece of information and if the President wants to rebut, call me before 5:45pm. It doesn’t work the first time or two, but then they start calling you back. It isn’t true that you can’t find out the info without the main source. It is harder, but you can use other sources to force the hand of the main source.

Q: Do you still think it is important to ask the follow up questions? Is journalism failing to act as a check on power?

A: Do we still believe that the best journalism is Independent? Do we still believe you should ask the hard question and follow up? If the Governor, President, etc does not answer the question, do we believe the next person should say that Mr. President, you didn’t answer her question? Barring national secrets, do we the people still own all the documents? Even a president, this person is not a descendent of a sun god, they are supposed to server we the people. You listen to a news conference, you record, you take notes: then you go out and check, you call, you research, then you report. Or now have we taken the position that journalists are conveyor belts, and our job is not to ask the right questions – “The President said today such and such.”

Increasingly journalists are trying to play it safe. Look at the copy, “I know this is true, but if I broadcast this I am going to pay a price for it” so maybe I should water it down, make it a little less powerful so me, the boss, the network doesn’t pay the price.

“I have never really liked the word investigative reporter because I consider it a redundancy.” All reporters investigate. Hard news with Independent news is an endangered species. Especially in those places with the most outlets, most listeners, most viewers, etc.

Q for Rather: When is the last time you saw a 1-hour investigative documentary on the big 6 networks? It has gone out of fashion. The corporatization of news – larger companies owning news networks – the people at the head of the company and the newsroom, huge distance between the two. The interests of the corporations (building aircraft, billboards, etc) have nothing to do with journalism and they would rather give up the news, except that they need legislation they need to help their business. The have regulations that they need eased or stopped. Television corporations want to own more markets, they need FCC regulation, they need products manufactured. The people at the top aren’t evil people per se, but their mindset is stockholder value and what is good for the corporation as a whole.

Investigative reporting by its definition is going to make somebody unhappy. Journalists are at odds with lobbyists who are trying to get legislation lifted or passed if they are investigating. Competition leads generally to better journalism. 4-5 major corporations control 80% of principal communication. They aren’t seeking more competition, they are seeking less.

The press has a very important role to play as a watchdog (not the only role). Not an attack dog which goes for the throat. What does a lapdog do? Crawl into a lap and someone says nice dog, nice dog. A good watchdog barks at everything that is suspicious. Who’s that over there? Why’s the happening? Not that they will always be right, but that they will always be barking. That role has been shrinking in my lifetime.

Q: People have been turning to the Internet to get news that isn’t too close. What are your thoughts on Internet news, democratization of news.

A: Internet is great for news, education, illumination (Edward Murrow), the potential is unlimited. The Internet is in the Beatles stage. Elvis was the early stage, the Beatles moved it forward. We are not in the Beatles stage, the potential is vast and I am excited about it.

So many people think of it just as the blogosphere. There is so much more. Whatever you think the Internet will be in 15 years, it probably will be in 3-5.

Are their irresponsible blogs? Of course. Are there good analysis blogs? Yes. Are there some who do reporting themselves, going to the places, making the calls, yes. I applaud responsible journalism. Journalism integrity is about finding truth. I have a problem with anonymity. You could get on the internet on an anonymous blog and cut up a competitor or your neighbor – these are problems to overcome. Given time, the marketplace will balance this. Sometimes this takes a long time and reputations/businesses can get ruined. Being anonymous and saying scurrilous and unscrupulous things is a problem.

Q: You have a small group of people who aren’t asking the right questions. The country has other questions. How does new media address that problem?

A: One way, stay on it, hold people accountable. If you feel the right questions aren’t being asked somewhere, a rather constant putting out of a list of questions that aren’t being asked can be effective. Holding the press core accountable. These are major truths that aren’t being told, we need to keep generating this. So many raindrops eventually make a dent on the rock. We need to move towards increasing accountability. This is a problem in every government. We had less, but it is more and more of a problem. We need to keep asking.

When someone lies, news reporters say, “this is what the governor says, this is what his critics say.” When is the last time someone said, “this is what the governor says, this is a lie.” When the facts clearly demonstrate, that type of direct language might be preferable to the type of sideways dance that is going on.

Q: Do you think journalism as a craft took a hit during the Libby trial? Journalists on the stand said they assume everything is off the record unless stated otherwise.

A: This goes back to getting close. “I am pretty big, I am part of the system, I am part of what helps the country go around and I know a lot of things that I can’t tell people because it wouldn’t be good for the country.” If that toxic gas gets into journalists, that is dangerous for journalism and the country as a whole.

Off the record used to be clearly defined, on background was defined, on deep background was defined. In your own head, you knew what the rules of the road were, they were agreed to. Call a source, start talking: incumbent on the source to say on what grounds are we talking? Assumed that everything talked about could be written about. The source could ask to be protected, but it wasn’t assumed. If the source asked to be off the record, you could say no, not on this topic. Then you negotiate what the terms are. If those aren’t the rules now, then what are the rules? How can we get info from sources who won’t put their names, don’t want to be traceable in any way, and keep our obligations to the readers?

Going to leave early to do a live update at EdTechTalk.com. Tune in to the podcast and live tomorrow at 2:15 pm EST/1:15pm CST.

technorati tags:Dan Rather, Jane Hamsher, The Fire Dog Lake Company, NPR, ABC, news, media, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, media literacy, corporations, reporters, sources, NYCIST, journalism

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SXSWi:Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:08:37 GMT

Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins
Henry’s bio
Henry’s website and blog
His new book
3-12-07
11:30 CST
Moderated by dana boyd (bio, website)

Holy heck, Henry Jenkins and dana boyd just blew my mind. If you listen to one podcast from South by Southwest Interactive, make sure it is this one when it comes out.

Henry has written 3 books in the last year and posts a blog essay daily

dana boyd: What is fandom?

Jenkins: I have always been a fan. My cousin had comic books, etc. In college I was a fanboy of things geeky, techie. Married a fangirl. Star Trek fans.

People’s willingness to think non-stop about what they like leads to sites like Fanfiction.

Academics did not respect fans. I wanted to set the record straight about fans and the passion that drives them – 20 years ago. My book 16 years ago was written at a time were fans were totally marginal, hiding in their parents basement.

New book, convergence culture: fans are central to culture. What everyone calls web 2.0 is fandom without stigma. Creating communities, shared knowledge, remixing content. People were doing this in the basement 20 years ago and now major companies are making money on this. Fandom is not essential to the economy.

Church activities, political activities are now modeling themselves after fan culture.

Q: What role has the Internet played in fandom?

A: More people find their way into fandom. Mimeographs didn’t make things highly visible. The web makes things like the half-million Harry Potter stories possible.

A2: Speedup. Within 5 minutes of a TV show starting discussions have become.

Leads to a world of collective intelligence.

Twin Peaks: Newspapers were complaining that it had become too complicated to follow. Internet communities were complaining that it has become too simple. What was happening? Online communities sharing info, needed more complexity to follow. People watching along couldn’t follow along.

Steven Johnson: schools are dumbing down and TV is ramping up. Pokemon expects you to remember 250 characters and their traits while schools are struggling to get students to remember a handful of Greek gods.

Q: Remix culture: Many creators are not embracing this. Fans are being sued. Where is this going?

A: basic premise: media companies have already lost control. We can take your content and do whatever we want (remix, resample, etc) and there is pretty much nothing you can do. Media needs to deal with that and create new ways of engaging. Media companies need to know that fans don’t detract from value but actually increase.

Prohibitionist attitude (cease and desist letters to 14 year old girls who write Harry Potter stories) moving to a enfranchising attitude where fans increase value of what companies are doing

Control over intellectual property is a battleground which will determine if we become a more participatory culture – caught in a vice between government regulation and Hollywood attitudes – both squashing this participatory culture

Are you going to give up your house, your kids’ college funds or are you going to take your story offline? No one is able to defend the rights that the courts would likely protect. Bullying is the technique and lawyers are at these companies’ disposal.

Q: Young peoples’ participation. What does that environment look like with DOPA and others that affect youth?

A: 57% of American teenagers are media producers. 30-some% are sharing media they produced with people they don’t know. What does it mean to turn these kids loose on a world where they have far reach, but don’t have a lot of guidance and assistance. (from Pew study)

DOPA strips schools of social networking and blogging technologies. For a decade we were closing the digital divide through schools and libraries. Now that we are almost there (reservations, rural areas withheld) we have libraries with: 10 minute rules, no storage space, slow connections and now rules on what you can use. This does not allow people to be successful in a networked world and participatory culture.

Liberals and conservatives are both in this together. This would not pass without the support of liberal democrats. Mark Foley was an author so it solved. Ted Stevens is not pushing it further (the Internet as pipes guy). The community needs to mobilize against this.

Even if we thought MySpace was crawling with predators (it is not) we need to know if it is safer to lock out MySpace and don’t train students or better to train teachers and librarians to work with kids on how to participate in this culture. It probably leaves kids more at risk than they ever were before.

Kids being hit with cease and desist letters and driven out of social networks when adults are around.

Time magazine names “You” person of the year but “you” are under fire.

Boyd: Connecticut Attorney General trying to pass legislation that says any under 18 folks need proper adult supervision to use any communications tool – how would this work? Keeping kids out of queer sites could be terrible

Jenkins: politics of fear is working. All politicians agree that kids should be muzzled. Gender issue: we are afraid of our sons and for our daughters. Men will be Columbine and women will be attacked and violated.

Until we release the fear mongering we won’t be able to move forward with reason. We must challenge the fear and the methods that are being used. We must look to the researchers who are finding out how kids are engaging in civic spaces.

The right to preserver the infrastructure of democracy particularly as it applies to young people is essential.

boyd: Where do you see participatory democracy going?

Jenkins: the language of politics is not eternal, it shifts over time. Fireside chats are different than the Kennedy- Nixon debates. Participator culture potentially gives young people a new language, remix of politics. (see blog post from last week’s MIT conference Beyond Brodcasting). Democracy needs to be lifestyle the way we live with popular culture.

We feel more comfortable being consumer than we do citizens. Washington disempowers us. American Idol taught us about our role in music and we need to think about role in politics.

Photoshop for democracy – photoshop collages responding about political issues almost in real time. The peoples’ editorial cartoon. Challenge is that it does not fit into paradigm of news coverage.

News: already racist images of Obama, sexist images of Hillary. Use of images will play a huge role. We need to think about the ethics for using images – media literacy is essential in this.

“With great power becomes great responsibility” – Spiderman. The language of fan culture will be a lot of how the next election will be run. Using Second Life, YouTube etc. trying to appeal to young people. We can’t tear each other apart with stuff, but need to find out how to work together using these resources.

boyd: What lessons can we learn from Wikipedia?

Jenkins: Gave talk about why Middlebury College is wrong for banning Wikipedia (link to video here). It is a monument of participatory culture that it is as good as it is. I would be teaching people to look at the debates/struggles about how historical entries on Wikipedia are made. I had so much more respect for Encyclopedia Brittannica until I was asked to write an entry. I could not possibly write an entry! Speaking with Jimmy Wales about international evens like wars – English Wikipedia is one of the few places in human history where both sides had to come together and decide on “truth.”

You could aruge that all concerns about Wikipedia from history departments could be countered by this discourse about truth rather than one-sided reporting on History.

Center for Deliberative Democracy – no political leaders but putting together citizens to read and learn about issues and come up with policy – often better and different than all the major platorms

boyd: user-generated content is being critiqued.
UNC breakup video – 3,000 gather to watch a guy breakup with his girlfriend for cheating. Uncomfortable video as you are not sure you should be watching it. It was a hoax – was a test to see how far things can get out on the web. People were upset with it. They want things to be real. What is real? How do we work through these issues?

Jenkins: “Humbug” – stuff that was presented to the public without a certainty of status. PT Barnum – the status of this is under dispute, come see for yourself (a mermaid). Australian scientists find a beaver-like thing with a duck bill and a poison stinger, trying to convince people it was real – duck bill platypus

The World of Networks – Binkler – we are trying to figure out the status of what all this content is. Knowing what it is on YouTube is evolving – grass roots media literacy movement is beginning as a result. We need to stop being angry about being faked out.

Politics of shame covered by mainstream news outlets. How can we tell what is fake when the breakup is fake but the tasering of the student is real? Theoretically that could be fake. How do we get people to discern reality through the mixed media we received today. Through McCarthur we are focused on media literacy and how people can view this media with a critical eye.

boyd: what are the critical issues with things like second life and MMORPG?

Jenkins: I love Second Life. Global Kids group in New York made my avatar for me. Second Life is a new center of that participatory culture. Compared it to a medieval carnival where men dresses as women, women as men and other transformations. Women would beat mean that one day a year where the roles were reversed, a small check on culture. Boston Tea Party took image of Native Americans to do something out of character for political gain.

As we enter an environment that parallels are own but allows us to try out new and different ideas – sexual identity, economics, politics – try it out and see what happens and then carry out energy out into the real world.

Brigadoon Island in SL for autistic kids to learn about social signs with avatars and then move out into the new world.

Another idea about Macedonia and what it should look like. What about a virtual Palestine online? What about talking across national borders and see what that will give us? We need to think about it as a social experiment. It is not about escapism but about the experiment that allows us to see what might work in the real world.

That is why I like Global Kids in New York as they are trying out what could work in Second Life and learning from it.

There are now people lining up to ask questions. As with most questions in these types of panels almost every single person is a man.

Q: How do we combat politics of fear? Money?
A: I don’t know who is going to invest in fighting the politics of fear. Like small movies that make it big, how do we get low-budget politics to get big results? We have creation power that people will pass along if it is not granola, not bitch-slapping. Civic media needs to be viral to make change.

On mashup culture: The Sistine Chapel is a mashup of the Bible and Shakespeare did Fanfiction of characters that he read about.

LOL was used by teenagers in the 1850’s. There are connections between early print press to ham radio to the Internet – we can trace language across these times/modes. Participatory culture has lost ground at times and gained at times.

Q: Isn’t all the fandom stuff reliant on mass media? Is this a problem?
A: The 21st century drove out folk culture for mass media culture so fandom is heavy reliant on mass media. We will get back to folk culture. People write fan fiction because it is the best way to get people to read it. If I write about my high school you probably wont read it, but if I write about Hogwarts you might. It is simply a language that we share and so we use it.

We will be somewhat dependent on large companies to fulfill our shared fantasies, but companies are more reliant on us than ever before.

Q: What is driving DOPA for politicians? What are they afraid that kids will do, meet, say, see?
A: Fear of the unknown. As a parent I do things that I swore I wouldn’t when I was a kid. Parents don’t know how to get on second life, how to read a MySpace page, so all it takes is a small trigger event like a school shooting, abduction. Politicians then say how do I get parents to vote for me. Clinton: sees a shooting in Native American reservation with history of alcoholism, gangs, violence, zombie comics and video games. So she blames it on comics and video games – the good liberal.

Definitely the loudest round of applause I have heard at all the talks I’ve been to at SXSW. Went on for a few minutes. Ok, time to give my fingers a rest and get some lunch. Planning to have Henry on 21st Century Learning, perhaps to talk about how parents should be educated on these issues. Stay tuned.

technorati tags:Henry Jenkins, MIT, danah boyd, media literacy, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, MySpace, social networking, history, culture, mashup, Hillary Clinton, Barck Obama, UNC, breakup, 21st Century Learning, freedom, copyright, politics of fear, GlobalKids, Second Life, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Middlebury College, Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Dopa, plagiarism, fandom, fan culture, Convergence Culture

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SXSWi: The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World

Posted by arvind s grover Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:04:56 GMT

The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World
Bio: Timothy Ferriss
Book: The 4-Hour Workweek
His website
3-12-07
10:00am CST

How do decisions and priorities change if retirement is never an option?

Everyone in this room is probably too smart and way too easily bored to ever retire.

If you are growing in e-mail, calls, etc, is your business scalable, is your career scalable and is your lifestyle scalable?

Showed cartoon of a support group: “Hi, my name is Barry and I check e-mail 2-300 times a day”

“If you work faithfully 8 hours a day, one day you can be the boss and work 12 hours a day” – Robert Frost

3 currencies that you need to control:
- time
- income
- mobility

What you want to do, be and have (financial) needs to be defined to decide what you need to get there.

80/20 principle – 20% of your actions/inputs create 80% of desired results
20% of people created 80% of the output

Had very low spending customers taking up most of the time. Took those customers and put them into a holding pattern. Took the 5 most productive customers

and observed the commonalities with them farther.

You can apply this to customer base, suppliers and personal activities. You need to do a time audit – where do you spend time? Q1: What 20% of my activities

are producing the 80%. You need to ruthless eliminate everything else – some things eliminated may be somewhat important, but they are not important enough.

Q2: What 80% of my activities are producing only 20%? I fired the customers who were browbeating me (even though profitable) and it saved me social,

professional stress.

Parkinsons Law: from Ed Ciao (prof at Princeton, founder of Silicon Valley) – a task will swell in perceived perplexity and importance in direct correlation

to the time you allot it.

1. Limit the tasks to the important ones (80/20)
2. Limit the time (Parkinsons) spent on the tasks

Time management doesn’t work. There is an efficiency epidemic (especially technologists). More time spent on organizing than reducing.

Average American worker spend 24% of time between tasks switching tasks.

Batching: let similar tasks accumulate and then performing them at very limited times

Knowledge workers: 25% of time on e-mail. E-mail is the single biggest way to shave time. Set autoresponder on your e-mail. Dear Colleagues, thanks for your

e-mail, because of extremely high e-mails and workload, I will only be checking e-mail at 11am and 4pm. If an emergency, call my cell. If there is not a

question and only a confirmation, I will not respond, please don’t be offended.

I recommend e-mail checking twice a day. Checking e-mail first thing in the morning should not happen – scrambles the brain with unrelated e-mails, and

usually not too many responses.

You must manage expectations of people around you including your boss.

Focusing on the critical few and not that trivial new. Most things don’t matter at all, and a few things matter the most.

Quantify the value of your time: If you make $50,00 and work 40 hours a week and take 2 weeks of vacation – $25/hour. Outsource anything that can be done for

less than $15/hour. It removes the ability for you to create “crap” tasks for yourself.

From Tim’s website: outsourcing life. Read how an Esquire editor outsourced personal life stuff to India.

Create rules for yourself so not to be living in a response to urgency situation

Creating mobility (third currency of ideal lifestyle design):

Entrepreneurs: fear automation (don’t micromanage)
Employees: fear liberation (set rules that you expect people to obey)

You must not ask for permission or beg for forgiveness

If you are able to do this, you have a glut of time. You need to figure out what to do with all that time. A week on the beach is enough, then what?

Once you remove work as identity, it is quite a challenge to make productive use of that void.

I believe that the point of life is to enjoy it. Time, income, mobility are means to achieving that, not ends in themselves.

My ideal outcome: catalyze a movement against sever information overload.

Having people to wait for you is a symbol of power. You need to train them to do that.

Question from audience: How do you run meetings?
I use a virtual architecture, so don’t have many meetings. Here are my rules:
1) Shouldn’t have meeting to decide problem but to solve problem
3) No meetings longer than 30 minutes, define end time

No jumping on phone to hash things out – set agenda to do work ahead of time. Ask that person to send agenda and questions.

I call people when I have something important or interesting, not e-mail.

My Q to Tim: For those of us who work in traditional organizations, what should we do when we get back? Is the structure too locked in to change?

A: 1) increase your value to your employer 2) Ask for more things that you want

Wait until you are in a crunch time, then ask for the big things – 3 weeks off beacuse you are feeling unhappy. You are worth it to them.

Don’t underestimate your leverage. Make it harder to lose you than to give you what you want.

Homework: explore these two sites:
Your Man in India and Brickwork

by Wednesday send Tim an e-mail saying how you implemented his techniques – most dramatic story of implementation wins a free trip anywhere in the world

timferriss <at> gmail.com – feedback on the presentation. send physical address with feedback on the presentation and get free copy of the book

500 months in your working lifetime – slow down, take a look at what you’re doing, there is no rush

My notes: very cool presentation, worth listening to the podcast when it comes out. Tim is a good speaker and I chatted with him a bit yesterday. I am

definitely go to try out some of his techniques. I love efficiency and you know David Allen has been influencing me a lot lately. Maybe Tim Ferris is the new David Allen – I bet he hopes so.

technorati tags:Tim Ferriss, 4-hour Workweek, Brickwork, Your Man in India, 80/20, Parkinsons Principle, work, job, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, management, employee, GTD, David Allen, meetings, organization, lifestyle, knowledge worker

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