Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University

This article offers an explaination as to why athletes are engaging in twittering, and why fans like it.

Not entirely relevant to China's firewall but still interesting and important.

I found this really interesting about Africa's media and publishing classified information.

The quipu was a system of cords, some colored, some without color, some knotted, some without knots. It was a sophisticated way of keeping track of political, astronomical, and especially numerical data. We still don't know their exact function; it has been proposed that they served as mnemonic devices, but it's also quite possible that they were far more sophisticated, holding information in every strand, color, and knot. I just can't help but ask the question: How did they see the world in comparison to those of us who have written language? Instead of words, did they see in strands? In colors (not literally)? In knots? Perhaps all of this is a bit of stretch, but our language and system of writing certainly play an important role in how we see the world.

A great summary of the book I read for my research. Wesch suggested and even lent me the book, it's fantastic. I'm about halfway through, luckily for me the first two chapters got me what I needed. Hopefully my summary will be as good!

"The Name of War" by Jill Lepore

My blog post on the subject.

Details on The Egyptian Museum

he earliest form of a writing system found in the Incan Empire of South America prior to colonialism was the Quipu. Although writing system may not be fitting, it served as some sort of a "transmittal system." The quipu is colored strings made of wool and cotton which are joined in many different ways and knotted in order to communicate. Several South American societies were capable of reading it. Upon the arrival of the Spanish in 1531, the conquistadors were suspicious of the quipu and burned most of them. To this day, only 300 quipu's remain. As to what the Incans were communicating with each other about, archaeologists remain uncertain. They do know however that they were used for administrative purposes such as tracking tributes. They might also have been used as maps or legends to be told orally in the future. Little is still known about this fascinating system of communication.

This is an Executive Summary prepared by Steve Eubank "Abstract: Twenge suggests a different interpretation of some of the commonly held conceptions of the generation variously referred to as Generation Y, iGeneration, the Millenials, and in this case, Generation Me. The first half of the book makes the case that this is a generation in which the importance of the individual supersedes all other concerns, focusing on the cultural and demographic forces that have influenced this generational cohort. The second half of the book explores how this individual focus affects members of Generation Me, their relationships with each other and with other generations. Twenge closes the book with a number of suggestions for how institutions can be better prepared to deal with Generation Me"

Outlines the commercialism present in the ancient Olympic games. Look at "the Athletes" link in top left corner for more info

How are maps different across cultures? Is there a correlation on the type of map, viewpoint, material etc that has allowed for success and failure among different peoples?

I thought that this Google search showed a bunch of articles/ websites relating to Egyptian writing and technology and that the time line that Google provides was pretty neat.

world news. media plays an impact on how events unfold in real time to Egyptians. Perceptions from the inside through media involvement with Egyptian politics