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morganaletarg

The Dynamics of Fandom: Exploring Fan Communities in Online Spaces | Myc Wiatrowski - A... - 3 views

www.academia.edu/...n_Communities_in_Online_Spaces

shared by morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14
       
      "not unreal" tell my mom that
  • A thoroughknowledge of the community is required to be able to understand the group, as well asunderstand the individual’s place in the whole. This knowledge allows a group to build asocially imagined concept of communal belief. It creates a method for demarcating who is and isnot an insider, and allows the group to come to terms with their shared ‘canonical’ text(s).
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14
       
      e.g. "my feels"
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Often fans are recognized within the American cultural  zeitgeist  in just this way: fanatical, out of control, frantic and frenzied. In point of fact, fangroups are frequently ‘Othered’ by the dominant culture at large as being significantly differentfrom the mainstream norm.
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14
       
      perhaps this may be WHY THEY'RE ON THE INTERNET HMMM
  • we can say that fans are a group that consumes a text (or texts) enmasse , that in turn uses that consumption as a basis for creating something new that is tailored totheir specific concerns. In short, a fandom can be defined by its consumption of a text and itssubsequent cultural productions of and about that text.
  • we must turn our attention to the productions of the insider community. That is to say we must recognize that the urtext  , if it can be so described, does notmeet the needs of the group, so new material is produced by the community to fill the void.
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14
       
      ~*FANFICTION*~
  • “fans of a popular television series[and/or film] may sample dialogue, summarize episodes, debate subtexts, create original fanfiction, record their own soundtracks, make their own movies – and distribute all of thisworldwide via the internet”
  • In creating new artifacts for the group, thus theoretically fillingthe needs of the cyber-fandom as a whole, the group is further able to fashion both an ideologicaland consumable concept of Browncoat-ness and further contribute to the re-visioning and re-drawing of their community.
  • At a very base level these available narrative strains that existwithin the community function as a group rhetoric that ultimately reflects the fictional“Browncoats” of the program’s universe.
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 24 Jun 14
       
      are people fans of people like themselves, or do people make their fans want to be more like them?
  • Each party in a struggle over hegemonic power exercises their leverage from time to time, creating an almost ever present struggle in fancommunities between themselves and the producers of their canon.
  • Fans attack and criticize media producers whom they feel threaten their meta-textual interests, but producers also respond to these challenges, protecting their  privilege by defusing and marginalizing fan activism. As fans negotiate positionsof production and consumption, antagonistic corporate discourse toils to managethat discursive power, disciplining productive fandom so it can continue to becultivated as a consumer base.
  • There is a delicate balance between fans and media producers suggested by Johnson. Fansnegotiate their power in virtual spaces, both consuming and producing texts, yet corporate mediaentities struggle to both restrict fan activity, thus allowing them further opportunity to exploitthem capitalistically, while concurrently attempting to cultivate fan production to a degree so asnot to alienate the consumer base all together.
  • Building a complex, onlinecommunity constructed of both a social imaginary and an empirical reality allows the group tonot only form a space wherein they can participate but where they can assert their control over culturally significant texts.
  • n moving to online spaces fandoms remain able to function as traditional communitieswould be expected to. But the mediated interface and its ability to allow communities tocongregate in greater numbers regardless of spatial or temporal limitations, also permits cyber-fandoms to amplify their voice, giving them greater power in space as Foucault would have it.Exercising their power from self-created points in a virtual space allow the community greater    Wiatrowski control over both the texts upon which they’ve created a group and over their imagined sense of the community. In the end, the move to online spaces allows the group to exist both as it oncehad and in ways that are new and more powerful than they had perhaps previously imagined.
Virinchi Tadikonda

Future of Human Space Exploration Could See Humans on Mars, Alien Planets - 0 views

www.space.com/f-human-space-exploration.html

shared by Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Closer to home, private industries like Mars One seek to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet. At the Smithsonian Magazine's "The Future is Here Festival" in Washington, D.C. this month, former astronaut Mae Jemison and NASA engineer Adam Steltzner spoke optimistically about the future of manned space exploration
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      The way that planet Earth and our Solar System is operating is that the sun expands everyday, and planets revolving around the sun. The sun will eventually grow and expand with the future being sucking in all the planets, killing all life. Future expansion of other planets is necessary. 
  • Although the idea that bacteria — and life — could hitch a ride on traveling rocks to spread life to other planets is not new, Steltzner suggested a deliberate program that sounds more like science fiction than science fact. Such bacteria could carry our genome and the instructions to reassemble it after landing on a planet (and, one assumes, after the planet has been terraformed to support such life). Steltzner described the process as "printing human beings organically over time."
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      Life in other planets is not at all impossible. There are many scientific methods to start life, the only question is how to do it, and will the life survive? 
  • In addition to curiosity-motivated exploration, Steltzner pointed out that as long as humans remain on a single planet, we are at risk of extinction when disaster strikes. "Our real estate portfolio suffers from a concentration of risk," he said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      An important note is that we have limited resources on planet Earth. Once those resources are extinct, there must be exploration elsewhere from either Space, or deep in the unexplored regions of the oceans. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Technology didn't slow us down getting to the moon," Steltzner said. "Technology won't slow us down getting to Mars."
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      The problem with this technology is that all the information that was used for getting to the moon was lost. The old computers got replaced and the people who worked to get astronauts to the moon retired. The key this time around is to not lose the information. In Kennedy's presidency, it took a long time to get all the components together. Now that technology is more advanced, it should take less time to get to the moon, and should be a straight shot to Mars. 
  • Mars may be one of the closest planets humans want to colonize, but it certainly isn't the only one. Mae Jemison described the 100-Year Starship project to an interested audience. Funded by NASA's Ames Research Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the 100-Year Starship project aims to develop the tools and technology necessary to build and fly a spaceship to another planetary system within the next 100 years. The program isn't necessarily concerned with building the ship itself as much as it seeks to foster innovation and enthusiasm for interstellar travel.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      The method of transportation is going to be very difficult. The researching that is in progress and takes a while to accomplish, obviously. Maybe this is NASA's plan to not release to the public yet? 
  • Though many people object to funding the space program when there are humanitarian needs that have to be met on Earth, Jemison points out that such exploration often leads to innovation and unexpected technology that make an impact on Earth-based programs. "I believe that pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow will create a better world today," she said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      The original space launches did not revolve around trying to put up satellites, rather to explore space. Since then, satellites have been launched, telescopes have also been put up. Who knows what other technological aspects can be added once funding is no longer cut and innovation is big again?
Virinchi Tadikonda

Are Solar Sails the Future of Space Travel? - 0 views

www.space.com/il-tech-space-exploration.html

shared by Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      Innovation is one of the most important factors of space travel. This simple design can turn into something that we can use to potentially travel vast distances. 
  • But it took a long time for solar sails to go from concept to reality. The first successful demonstration of the propulsion system didn't come until 2010, when Japan's Ikaros probe deployed its 46-foot-wide (14 m) sail and became the first craft ever to cruise through space on the backs of photons.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      This just tells us that nothing comes easy, and that we might actually be a long distance away from achieving the next space milestone, which is setting foot on another planet. 
  • The $27 million Sunjammer mission, which takes its name from the Arthur C. Clarke story, will use a sail built by California-based company L'Garde that measures 124 feet (38 m) on a side. The sail, made of an advanced material called Kapton, is just 5 microns (about 0.0002 inches) thick. It weighs less than 70 pounds (32 kilograms) and packs down to the size of a dishwasher, NASA officials have said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      As much as funds are being cut from NASA and budget cuts are taking a toll on all space related activities, research is definitely crucial. But we do not hear about these researches in the news. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      Prevention of disasters is one of the most important security aspects of technology. This kind of probes will enhance safety among the public but the one thing I see is that the media has not covered this. It is not a big aspect of technology it seems, and I disagree. 
  • And some researchers have even higher hopes for solar sails, suggesting that a truly enormous sail —one the size of Texas, for example — could send a spaceship to another star system in just a few centuries. (A space-based laser would have to shine a powerful beam on the sail as the craft moved farther and farther away from the sun, however.)   
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      This is the definition of future research for the benefit of society in the generations to come. This kind of technology can potentially unite us with another Earth. Unfortunately this is the first one I have found about any kind of research with solar panels in media. 
  • Several upcoming missions aim to harness the subtle push of sunlight, using gossamer "solar sails" to cruise through the heavens like boats through the sea.
  • A spacecraft equipped with a sail 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide, for example, could travel 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers) per year, allowing it to escape the sun's sphere of influence in just a decade or so, according to researchers behind the Interstellar Probe, a NASA concept mission proposed about 15 years ago.
Mirna Shaban

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - 1 views

www.aucegypt.edu/...articledetails.aspx

socialmedia revolution internet

shared by Mirna Shaban on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Much of the organization and mobilization occurred through the Internet, particularly on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But social media also played a vital role as a democratic model. Its inclusive space indirectly taught lessons in democracy to a wide sector of Egyptian youth that was not necessarily politically inclined. When the right moment arrived, they were ready to join the revolt.
  • What happened in January 2011 in Egypt did not start in January 2011. It began at least ten years earlier, and it’s not over yet
  • The main catalyst for the January 25 revolution was the Internet, so it may be accurate to describe this as an Internet-based revolution. Not that the Internet was the only factor involved, or that Internet users were the only ones protesting. But the Internet was the tool that showed every dissident voice in Egypt that he or she is not alone, and is indeed joined by at least hundreds of thousands who seek change.
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • Facebook did not go to Tahrir Square. The people did. Twitter did not go to Al-Qaied Ibrahim Square. The people did.
  • More than one-third of Egypt’s population of eighty million remains illiterate, and just 25 percent of Egyptians use the Internet. However, Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in organizing, motivating, and directing these crowds as to where to go and what to do. Egypt’s revolution was created as an event on Facebook eleven days in advance. People clicked “I’m attending.” Certainly, this was a people’s revolution, yet one based on and accelerated in many ways by the Internet. What happened in Tahrir and every square in Egypt was the accumulation of years and years of activism, including Internet activism. Social media prepared Egyptians for the revolution and enabled them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came.
  • The Internet, by definition, is a democratic medium, at least in the sense that anyone with Internet access is a potential publisher of information.
  • The mere presence of the Internet as a source of information helps open up a freer space for public debate, and makes it much more difficult for governments to censor information.
  • Internet activism started in Egypt with the appearance of Web 2.0 technology in the country around 2003
  • Blogging was the first valuable brainchild of Web 2.0 technologies.
  • The phenomenon exploded in the Arab world, with Egyptian bloggers pioneering and leading the scene. Blogger numbers in the region approached half a million by the beginning of 2009, the great majority of them coming from Egypt.
  • Political blogging in particular became more popular, as users felt that they could remain anonymous if they so wished
  • Nevertheless, most Egyptian political bloggers choose to blog under their real names, which frequently got them in trouble with the regime. The state security crackdown on bloggers was testimony to their potential impact.
  • Undoubtedly, blogging created a space for the voiceless in Egypt.
  • It was the first time individuals felt they could make themselves heard. That in itself was important, whether or not the content was political, and whether or not anyone was reading the blogs. The phenomenon created a venting space for people who had long gone unheard.
  • Early on, Alaa Abdel Fattah and Manal Hassan were awarded the Special Award from Reporters Without Borders in the international Deutsche Welle’s 2005 Weblog Awards (Best of Blogs) contest, where their blog was cited as an instrumental information source for the country’s human rights and democratic reform movement. The husband-and-wife team had created one of Egypt’s earliest blogs, “Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket,” where they documented their off-line activism and posted credible information on protests and political movements, election monitoring and rigging, and police brutality.
  • Another award-winning blogger was Wael Abbas. He received several honors, including the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award of the International Center for Journalists for “raising the standards of media excellence” in his country. This was the first time that a blogger, rather than a traditional journalist, won the prestigious journalism award, a testament to the important work such bloggers were doing. In the same year, CNN named Abbas Middle East Person of the Year. He has been instrumental in bringing to light videos of police brutality in Egypt, a topic that was taboo before he and other bloggers ventured into it. As a result of these efforts, the Egyptian government at one point brought three police officers to justice on charges of police brutality for the first time in Egypt’s history; they were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail.
  • As blogging was becoming a phenomenon in Egypt, some political movements started having a strong on-line presence, and taking to the streets based on their on-line organization. The most important was probably the Kefaya movement, whose formal name is The Egyptian Movement for Change. The movement was established in 2004 by a coalition of political forces, and became better known by its Arabic slogan. The word kefaya is Arabic for ‘enough,’ and as the name implies, the movement called for an end to the decades-old Mubarak regime, and for guarantees that his son would not succeed him as president. Kefaya was instrumental in taking people to the streets, thus bridging the gap between the on-line and the off-line worlds. Many of its supporters were bloggers, and many of the street protesters started blogging. So, increasingly, reports on the demonstrations found their way into blogs and were provided media coverage even when the traditional media ignored them or were afraid to cover them. One result was that many more Egyptians gained the courage to write blogs that openly criticized the authoritarian system and crossed the ‘red line’ of challenging their president.
  • nternet applications such as the video-sharing platform YouTube, which appeared in 2005, took blogging to a higher level.
  • hey were also capable of videotaping street protests and uploading the clips on YouTube. Watching people chanting “Down with Hosni Mubarak” in the mid-2000s was a totally new, riveting experience, which led many other brave Egyptians to join these demonstrations. Internet activists and blogger stars such as Wael Abbas, Alaa Abdel Fattah, Manal Hassan, Hossam El-Hamalawy, Malek Mostafa, and others uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality, election rigging, and different violations of human and civic rights.
  • media, the platforms that allow for wider user discussions and user-generated content such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter
  • he next important development came with the introduction of what is typically known as social
  • The structure of social media taught Egyptians that space exists that you can call your own, your space, where you can speak your mind. To many in the West, this is probably no big deal. There are countless venues where they can express their opinions relatively freely. But for people in Egypt, and in the Arab world in general, this was a new phenomenon, and one I believe to be of profound importance.
  • horizontal communication.’ Before social networks, Egyptian youth were accustomed to being talked at, rather than talked to or spoken with. Communication was mostly vertical, coming from the regime down to everyone else
  • Authoritarian patterns of communication do not allow for much horizontal interaction. But social networks do, and eventually their existence on the Internet taught Egyptian youths a few lessons in democratic communication, even if the essence of the conversations carried out was not necessarily political in nature.
  • The bulk of those that I believe were affected by these lessons in democratic expression were clusters of the population that were not previously politically oriented. These form a good sector of those who took to the streets on January 25, and were joined by millions who held their ground in Tahrir Square and in every square in Egypt until Mubarak was toppled. The majority of these millions, including myself, were people who had never participated in a demonstration before. They were not political activists before January 25, but they saw or heard the call for action, and it touched a nerve as they found safety in numbers
  • another function that social networks served: making you realize that you’re not alone.
  • Perhaps the first time Egyptians learned about the power of social networks was on April 6, 2008. Workers in the Egyptian city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra planned a demonstration to demand higher wages. Esraa Abdel Fattah, an activist then twenty eight years old, felt for the workers and wanted to help them. She formed a group on Facebook and called it ‘April 6 Strike’ to rally support for the workers.
  • he knew it was too much to ask people to join in the protest, so she simply asked them to participate in spirit by staying home that day, not going to work, and not engaging in any monetary transactions such as buying or selling. The group was brought to the attention of the traditional media and was featured on one of Egypt’s popular talk shows, thus getting more exposure. What ensued surpassed all expectations. To Abdel Fattah’s own surprise (and everyone else’s), the Facebook group immediately attracted some seventy three thousand members. Many of these, and others who got the message through traditional media, decided to stay home in solidarity with the workers. Others were encouraged to stay home by a bad sandstorm that swept across parts of Egypt that day, and yet others stayed home for fear of the strong police presence on the streets.
  • The overall outcome made political activists realize that social networks could be a vital tool in generating support for a political cause, and in encouraging people to join a call for action.
  • The April 6 event was meaningful because it provided a sense that people were actually willing to take an action, to do something beyond clicking a mouse
  • three months before the January 25 revolution, Malcolm Gladwell argued in a much-discussed article in The New Yorker under the title “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted” that social media can’t provide what social change has always required. He said that social media is good when you’re asking people for small-scale, low-risk action, but not for anything more. “Facebook activism succeeds,” he wrote, “not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” He explained that this is because high-risk activism is a “strong-tie phenomenon,” meaning that those who carry out such acts of activism have to personally know each other well and develop strong personal ties before they would risk their lives for each other or for a common cause. Since Facebook and Twitter provide mostly “weak-tie” connections, since users typically have a strong off-line social tie with only a small percentage of their ‘friends’ or ‘followers,’ these social networks were therefore not capable of motivating people for a high-risk cause. He therefore concluded that a social network “makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”
  • nowing that you are in the company of many who share your utter belief in the same cause. That is something that social networks delivered
  • ne of the Facebook pages that played a major role in this regard was the Khaled Said page. Khaled Said was a young Egyptian who was brutally beaten to death by police informants outside an Internet café in Alexandria in June 2010. He had an innocent face that everyone could identify with. He could be anyone, and anyone could’ve been him. The Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” appeared shortly thereafter. It started asking its members, whose numbers increased steadily, to go out on silent standing protests in black shirts with their back to the streets. The demonstrations started in Alexandria and soon spread to every governorate in Egypt. Numbers increased with every protest. More and more people gained a little more courage and tasted the freedom of dissent.
  • One of the main advantages of the Khaled Said page was how well organized the events were. Protesters were provided with exact times and locations, and given exact instructions on what to wear, what to do, as well as who to contact in the case of any problems with security forces.
  • t was the Khaled Said page that eventually posted the ‘event’ for a massive demonstration on January 25, Egypt’s Police Day.
  • The administrators usually polled their users, asking them to vote for their place or time of preference for the next protest. The responses would be in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, and the administrators would read them all, and give a breakdown, with exact numbers and percentages, of the votes.
  • The January 25 demonstration was motivated and aided by an important intervening variable, the revolt in Tunisia. When Tunisian protesters succeeded in ousting President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, Egyptians felt that toppling a dictator through demonstrations was finally possible.
  • he Khaled Said page, which by then had about six hundred thousand followers, demonstrated its strong ability to organize. They listed all the major squares in every Egyptian governorate where they expected people to gather, and again gave specific instructions on what to wear, what to take with you, and who to contact in times of trouble. They then alerted the users that the listed venues for demonstration would change at midnight on January 24 to give police forces a lesser chance of mobilizing against them the next day. On the morning of January 25, there were close to half a million people who had clicked “I’m attending” the revolution. Today, the Khaled Said page has more than 1.7 million users, by far more than any other Egyptian Facebook page.
  • nd indeed that was what happened. We witnessed another key moment illustrating the power of the interaction between social media, traditional media, and interpersonal communication. Newspapers, broadcasters, and on-line outlets had been discussing the potential ‘Facebook demonstration’ for a few days prior to January 25. As groups of demonstrators marched through the streets enroute to main squares chanting “Ya ahalina endamo lina,” (“Friends and family, come join us”), people watching from their balconies and windows heeded the calls and enabled the protests to snowball to unprecedented numbers. People were galvanized by the sight. The core activists, who attended every demonstration for years, were suddenly seeing new faces on January 25, mostly mobilized by the Internet. They came by the thousands, and then by the hundreds of thousands, numbers larger than anyone had expected.
  • Twitter played an important though slightly different role. Crucial messages relayed in short bursts of one hundred and forty characters or less made protesters ‘cut to the chase.’ Most activists tweeted events live rather than posting them on Facebook. Twitter was mainly used to let people know what was happening on the ground, and alert them to any potential danger. It usually was ahead of Facebook in such efforts. Twitter also enabled activists to keep an eye on each other. Some managed to tweet ‘arrested’ or ‘taken by police’ before their mobile phones were confiscated. Those words were incredibly important in determining what happened to them and in trying to help them. Most activists are, to this day, in the habit of tweeting their whereabouts constantly, even before they go to sleep, because they know that fellow activists worry if they disappear from the Twittersphere.
  • When the Egyptian regime belatedly realized on January 25 how dangerous social networks could be to its survival, the first thing it did was block Twitter. Internet censorship is a ridiculously ineffective strategy, though. Users were tech-savvy enough to find their way onto proxy servers within minutes, and to post on Facebook how to gain access to Twitter and how to remain on Facebook if the regime blocks it, which indeed happened later. The government felt it didn’t have any other option but to block all Internet access in the country for five days starting January 27 (as well as mobile telephone communications for one day). By then it was too late. People had already found their way to Tahrir and nearly every square in Egypt. Ironically, some were partly motivated by the Internet and communication blockage to take to the streets to find out what was happening and be part of it. And they were joined by workers’ movements in many governorates that expanded the protester numbers into the millions. The major squares of Egypt were full of people of every age, gender, religion, creed, and socio-economic status
  • Gladwell, it turned out, was wrong. These people didn’t know each other personally, but the “weak” personal ties had not proved a barrier to high-risk activism. Egyptians discovered the strong tie of belonging to the common cause of ousting a dictator
  • ocial network users were not the only ones revolting, and social networks were not the only reason or motivation for revolt. However, the role that social media have played over the years in indirectly preparing sectors of Egyptian youths for this moment, and in enabling them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came, cannot be understated.  It can also be said that the role of social networks in Egypt has hardly ended. The revolution is not yet complete. 
Virinchi Tadikonda

SpaceX Launch Scrubbed Again - But No One Could See It Happen - NASA Watch - 0 views

nasawatch.com/...spacex-launch-s-2.html

shared by Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • This lack of visibility is rather unusual for SpaceX - a company that has gone out of its way to use social media and traditional media - with great success - to get word about its products and services to the widest audience possible.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      NASA contracts launches to smaller companies, and one happens to be SpaceX. This company is widely known for broadcasting launches around Cape Canaveral. Unfortunately, the limited amount of of companies that do that doesn't help to widen the media exposure. 
  • canceled its webcast and provided no commentary about the launch countdown, a public service offered even for classified Department of Defense satellite launches.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      NASA is not a part of this, as the final decision was made by SpaceX. Because they are a private company this is possible. The more privacy ensures less involvement with the media and public. Once upon a time the idea of Space travel was widely popular, but today it's quite the opposite. 
  • The hashtag "#FalconNein" quickly appeared. One would hope that SpaceX is paying attention and realizes that they are doing something cool - as are other space companies
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      The benefit of social media is that if something is great, it will appear in the media. But even if it didn't go through and failed, it will still appear in the media. Either way, there is still publicity 
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Cool sells. And if and when something goes wrong people root for the company to fix the problem so they can see cool things again.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      When Space was cool, that's when the government spent more money and time. When the last shuttle disaster occured, complaints came from every direction about mission safety. Space needs to become cool once again. 
Virinchi Tadikonda

NASA budget 2015: More cuts, more politics. - 0 views

www.slate.com/...5_more_cuts_more_politics.html

shared by Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In 2014 NASA got a total of $17.646 billion. The 2015 request is for $17.460 billion, a reduction of $186 million dollars, or about a 1 percent cut. That could’ve been worse. As we’ll see, though, it’s where those cuts are going that are bad.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      A reason for the lack of media coverage can be actually due to NASA not spending as much money to use for missions. A cut down of missions lead to less media coverage for typical launches unless major launches occur, such as a mission to the moon. 
  • ut I still fear NASA will have to cut other missions to fund this one
  • Some areas got more money, like Space Technology. That includes tech that will help the proposed asteroid retrieval mission.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      NASA seems to be directing it's resources more towards missions that are bigger. This means more funding, and cutting of smaller missions. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Commercial Spaceflight will see an increase of more than $150 million to a total of $848 million. That includes buying launches from commercial companies like SpaceX, and I’m all for that. That comes with a $300 million reduction to the Exploration Systems Development,
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      Commercial Spaceflight by NASA is defined as flights that are for satellite repair and launching. This means that you can see crews up in space to repair GOES-R, Hubble, ISS, and other kind of satellites. 
  • Earth Science: cut by $56 million (given that so many in Congress are climate change deniers who want to cut Earth-observing missions, I think this may be a mistake). Astrophysics: cut by $61 million (including mothballing the wonderful SOFIA aircraft unless a German partner can pony up the cash; see page 15 of the report). Planetary Science: cut by $65 million. That last one is almost a victory, given how the White House has tried to eviscerate planetary exploration over the past few years. But don’t be fooled; these cuts would hurt. A lot. (Note added after I wrote this article but before it was posted: Casey Dreier at The Planetary Society has more on this situation.)
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      This paragraph alone shows how space exploration is going downhill, and that such explorations are not necessary. Astrophysics and Earth Science are two major fields that require much research for space exploration. Without either or a lack of information from either departments due to cuts, this just spells bad news. 
  • Again, let me remind you that this is a budget request. Congress will have a different budget for NASA,
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
      Virinchi Tadikonda on 27 Jun 14
       
      This is a budget request, but the government is much more stingy. These numbers for cuts can be much higher without any warning. 
morganaletarg

Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction - 1 views

literature.proquest.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/searchFulltext.do

lgbt representation fanworks community history

shared by morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • rites observes that the majority of YA novels about gay and lesbian teens "are very Foucaultian in their tendency to privilege the discourse of homosexuality over the physical sexual acts of gay men, defining homosexuality more rhetorically than physically" (102-03).
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14
       
      reasons no one has ever actually enjoyed an LGBT YA book
  • Star Trek is widely considered to be the first "modern" fandom, and the majority of studies of participatory media fandom begin their history with Trek fans. However, activities that could be called "fannish" go back much further, and include eighteenthcentury unauthorized sequels of works such as Gulliver's Travels, the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and the entire body of literary and folk "retellings." See Brewer, Pflieger, Derecho, and Stasi.
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14
       
      sources on history of fandom
  • According to Francesca Coppa, the Internet enabled "an increasingly customizable fannish experience" (54). As a result, "[a]rguably, this may be fandom's postmodern moment, where the rules are 'there ain't no rules' and traditions are made to be broken" (57).
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • One avenue that has yet to be explored, with specific regard to adolescent fans, is the potential to encounter and experiment with alternative modes of sexual discourse, particularly queer discourse.
  • how do depictions of adolescent sexuality in Potter fanfiction differ from those of published literature for adolescents?
  • "adolescent literature is as often an ideological tool used to curb teenagers' libido as it is some sort of depiction of what adolescents' sexuality actually is"
  • Slash, like other forms of fanfiction in the modern era, initially circulated by way of self-published zines. Because of the controversial nature of the stories, slash was available only to those who knew the right people in order to be put on mailing lists, and who had the financial resources to order zines and attend conventions-in other words, adults.
  • [S]lash is not so much queer in the act as it is queer in the space . . . . Slash is a sandbox where women come to be strange and unusual, or to do strange and unusual things, or to play with strange and unusual sand. The women may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The many different acts and behaviors of slash may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The queerness may be sexualized or it may not, and what is sexual for one woman may not be for another. The space is simply that: a space, where women can be strange and unusual and/or do strange and unusual things.8
  • Harry's discovery of his wizard nature is akin to a coming-out narrative-he escapes from a literal closet, and his relatives' horrified reactions bear a striking resemblance to the language of homophobia, especially in the way they hurl about words like "abnormality" (Chamber 2) as weapons. Thus, one can, from the perspective of the Muggle realm, read the entire wizarding world in terms of Julad's "queer space."
  • morganaletarg on 27 Jun 14
     
    representation, history, fanwork does what published works don't
  • Bonnie Boaz on 30 Jun 14
     
    Your commentary provides a nice selection of pieces for readers. You model the best of Diigo work here! : ) (Even though I found this in a file cabinet -- of sorts!) YA novels are "Foucoultian" ?? Really? I've never read a YA book featuring homosexuality, but much media represents gay behaviors from heterosexual framework. Even Orange..New Black -- I think, anyway. Agree about fanwork doing what published works don't.
andhearsonars

Curators of databases: circulating images, managing attention and making value on socia... - 0 views

go.galegroup.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=viva_vcu&tabID=T001&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA363973224&&docId=GALE|A363973224&docType=GALE&role=LitRC

#pinterest social media curate internet

shared by andhearsonars on 07 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • relationships between cultural spaces, the image-making practices of smartphone users and social media platforms.
  • curatorial
  • In addition to targeted advertising, value is created by leveraging a continuous circulation of meaning and attention
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • They are a significant site in the development of a mode of media driven not only by ideological or representational forms of control, but also by the effort to manage participation and social space in order to harness and modulate an ongoing circulation of meaning, attention and data.
  • monitor and respond
  • This activity involves the affective labour of structuring image-based relationships between people, places and practices
  • In this article, I propose that conceptualising how value is made on social media involves examining how the analytic capacities of platforms are interrelated with the flows of images created by smartphone users within material cultural spaces.
  • On the social and mobile web, images are more than just representations of people, events and places. They also capture attention, and generate data and networks. An image is a device that holds in place a network of associations and affects in time and place, that can be tracked and responded to.
  • structuring feeling
  • persuade them with specific messages
  • Hashtags, tags, likes, comments and shares are 'manual' devices users employ to position images within a larger flow. Algorithms are 'automated' devices that determine how images circulate within a network based on a set of rules.
  • Users often know that posting certain kinds of content at certain times or places will attain more or less interaction from peers in their network. Efforts users make to position content--for instance, by tagging or liking an image--create data that algorithms use to manage the circulation of content in general by recognising patterns of interaction over time.
jurasovaib

Pythagorean theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Pythagorean_theorem

Math geometry theorem mathematics pythagorean triangle Pythagoras

shared by jurasovaib on 24 Jun 14 - Cached
  • Pythagorean proof
  • he Pythagorean Theorem was known long before Pythagoras, but he may well have been the first to prove it.[6] In any event, the proof attributed to him is very simple, and is called a proof by rearrangement. The two large squares shown in the figure each contain four identical triangles, and the only difference between the two large squares is that the triangles are arranged differently. Therefore, the white space within each of the two large squares must have equal area. Equating the area of the white space yields the Pythagorean Theorem, Q.E.D.[7] That Pythagoras originated this very simple proof is sometimes inferred from the writings of the later Greek philosopher and mathematician Proclus.[8] Several other proofs of this theorem are described below, but this is known as the Pythagorean one.
  • Pythagorean triples Main article: Pythagorean triple A Pythagorean triple has three positive integers a, b, and c, such that a2 + b2 = c2. In other words, a Pythagorean triple represents the lengths of the sides of a right triangle where all three sides have integer lengths.[1] Evidence from megalithic monuments in Northern Europe shows that such triples were known before the discovery of writing. Such a triple is commonly written (a, b, c). Some well-known examples are (3, 4, 5) and (5, 12, 13). A primitive Pythagorean triple is one in which a, b and c are coprime (the greatest common divisor of a, b and c is 1). The following is a list of primitive Pythagorean triples with values less than 100: (3, 4, 5), (5, 12, 13), (7, 24, 25), (8, 15, 17), (9, 40, 41), (11, 60, 61), (12, 35, 37), (13, 84, 85), (16, 63, 65), (20, 21, 29), (28, 45, 53), (33, 56, 65), (36, 77, 85), (39, 80, 89), (48, 55, 73), (65, 72, 97)
Mirna Shaban

Egypt's Spring: Causes of the Revolution | Middle East Policy Council - 0 views

mepc.org/...gypts-spring-causes-revolution

revolution government

shared by Mirna Shaban on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • eemed that nearly all of the 90,000 people who had responded to the Facebook request to demonstrate on Police Day had filled the square, crowded into central Alexandria, and confronted the security forces in Suez City
  • An accidental president, who came to power because of Anwar Sadat's assassination on October 6, 1981, Mubarak initially calmed the public, stressed the rule of law, released political prisoners and encouraged parliamentary elections. However, as soon as he began his second term, in 1987, he refused to reform the constitution, extended the state of emergency, promulgated laws to exclude opposition parties from local councils and tightened the grip of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) over parliament. He denounced opposition groups for criticizing his policies and asserted, threateningly, "I am in charge, and I have the authority to adopt measures…. I have all the pieces of the puzzle, while you do not."1
  • after the Islamist groups renounced violence in 1997, emergency and military courts continued to operate. They prosecuted civilians charged with nonviolent infractions, such as Muslim Brothers who met to prepare for professional syndicate elections or journalists who "slandered" regime figures. Police increasingly harassed people on the street, demanding bribes from shop owners and minivan drivers and free food from vendors and restaurants. They seized and beat people in order to coerce false confessions or to pressure them to become informers. They harassed people who came to the police station to get IDs or other routine documents, and they nabbed those who "talked back" to them. Amnesty International concluded that torture was "systematic in police stations, prisons and [State Security Investigations] SSI detention centers and, for the most part, committed with impunity…. [Security and plainclothes police assault people] openly and in public as if unconcerned about possible consequences."
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • 3 Even the government-appointed National Council on Human Rights, in its first annual report (2004), expressed deep concern about the 74 cases of "blatant" torture and 34 persons who had died in police or SSI detention that year.4 A U.S. diplomat cabled in 2009 to Washington that Omar Suleiman, director of the Ge
  • neral Intelligence Directorate, and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly "keep the domestic beasts at bay, and Mubarak is not one to lose sleep over their tactics."5
  • All aspects of public life were controlled, ranging from censorship of cultural and media production to the operation of labor unions.
  • Workers were banned from striking and, since the change in the labor law in 2003, were often hired on short-term contracts, under which they had no medical — or social — insurance benefits. The monthly minimum wage had not been raised since 1984, when it was set at LE 35 (in 2011 the equivalent of $6).6 The ETUF enforced government policy rather than represented its millions of members.
  • Private-sector workers suffered even more, as the 2003 labor law failed to provide any protection to employees negotiating length of contract, salary level, hours at work, overtime compensation, vacation or lunch breaks. Workers often lacked health and injury insurance. Many private-sector firms forced new hires to sign, along with the contract, Form No. 6, which allowed the employer to fire them without warning, cause or severance pay.
  • The exclusion of opposition forces from the political arena in fall 2010 was accompanied by systematic crackdowns on the media, cultural expression and university life. The regime wanted to prevent critical commentary from being aired in independent newspapers and on private satellite stations. The government closed down 19 TV and satellite channels, hacked or blocked several websites, and pressured private businessmen to cancel outspoken critics' positions as editors, opinion writers and talk-show hosts. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) concluded: "The Ministry of Mass Media and Communication has tightened its fist over all media channels to markedly reduce the space for freedom of expression, especially [during and] after the last parliamentary elections."13
  • Already, press and cultural output were managed through myriad control boards. Journalists were beaten, jailed and/or fined if they investigated corruption or police brutality and were charged with incitement or libel when they criticized government policies or political leaders. AFTE also reported heavy-handed censorship of movies, plays and books.
  • The crackdown on university life accelerated after the 1979 student charter was amended in 2007 to give administrative bodies — and, behind them, the SSI — the right to bar students from running in university elections. By th
  • en, the SSI was interfering deeply in university operations: approving the appointment of rectors and deans, exercising a veto over teaching-staff employment and promotions, vetting graduate teaching assistants, determining the eligibility of students to live in dormitories, and interfering in scientific research, textbooks choices, and faculty permissions to travel abroad to participate in conferences.14 The SSI presence was overtly threatening; guards stood at the gates and at each building. Plainclothes SSI officers quelled demonstrations as well as threatening and arresting student activists. Then, in October 2010, the government refused to implement the Supreme Administrative Court ruling that banned SSI guards from the campuses and also blocked anti-regime candidates from contesting seats in the student-union elections.15
  • They sold significant portions of the public sector for their personal benefit and decreased public investment in agriculture, land reclamation, housing, education and health
  • Nearly half the residents of Cairo lived in unplanned areas that lacked basic utilities, sometimes living in wooden shacks
  • the World Bank reported that, by 2006, 62 percent of Egyptians were struggling to subsist on less than $2 a day
  • Given the overwhelming power of the state, the severe restrictions imposed by the State of Emergency on public gatherings, and the unchecked violence by police and security forces, people were fearful of protesting in the streets. Nonetheless, there were many efforts to expose the conditions. Novels and films highlighted corruption, police brutality, urban poverty and sexual harassment.29 Some art exhibits displayed in-your-face paintings depicting torture and military repression. Human-rights groups reported on poverty in the countryside and cities, deteriorating environmental conditions, harassment of women and activists, restrictions on the press, police coercion, and thuggery during elections.
  • There was public outrage at the very public beating-to-death just before midnight on June 6, 2010, of 28-year-old Khaled Said, seized as he entered an internet café in Alexandria.35 Late that night 70 young men and women gathered across from the police station, demanding that the police be brought to justice. They received the usual response: beaten, dragged along the street, attacked by police dogs, and arrested. Protests continued throughout the summer: funeral prayers at Sidi Gaber mosque, attended by 600 mourners who spilled out into the street afterwards; a vigil outside the Ministry of Interior headquarters in Cairo; a silent protest along waterfronts and bridges throughout Egypt; and numerous violently suppressed protests in downtown areas not only involving well-known politicians and protest groups but also people who felt that Khaled Said could have been themselves, their son, or their grandson. A teenager reflected this perspective, saying: "This is an extraordinary case. This guy was tortured and killed on the street. I did not know him but I cannot shut up forever."36 "For the sake of Khaled! For the sake of Egypt!" (ashan Khalid, ashan masr) became a rallying cry, voiced in fear as well as in the determination to restore individual and collective dignity (karama). On the fortieth day commemorating his death, people shouted outside the High Court: "Our voices will not be silenced… We've waited for 25 years, but our condition has not improved. Tomorrow the revolution will come."37
  • Dozens of Facebook groups supported the cause, of which "We Are All Khaled Said" became the most famous. They circulated reports about poli
  • ce brutality, many of which had been posted in the past but had not received such intense scrutiny. These included the video of police sodomizing a 21-year-old minivan driver in January 2006. Filmed by police officers in Boulaq al-Dakrour station, the police mailed it to the cell phones of other van drivers to intimidate them. "Everybody in the parking lot will see this tomorrow," they boasted.38 Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, noted: "Police brutality is systematic and widespread… The humiliation of the simple citizen has become so widespread that people are fed up."39 Their anger, he warned, could spark a rebellion.
  • Nonetheless, the protesters themselves agree that it took the swift removal of Ben Ali to make them think that, if sudden change was possible in Tunisia, it might be possible in Egypt.
  • Even when people broke the barrier of fear on January 25, played cat-and-mouse with security forces on downtown streets on January 26 and 27, and withstood the onslaught all day and night on January 28, they faced a formidable regime, supported by the security forces and the entrenched NDP. The revolution would have been much bloodier if the armed forces had stood by the president. President Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly hastened their own demise by unleashing extreme violence on January 28, followed by Adly's abrupt withdrawal of all police forces that night. Enraged, the public created neighborhood watches to ensure the safety of their communities.
  • Mubarak miscalculated by ordering the armed forces into the streets, even though their loyalty was to the nation — not to the person. He further miscalculated that he could offer minor concessions — such as appointing a vice president, changing the prime minister, and saying that he would not seek another term — on January 28 and again on February 1 and yet follow those placating words by unleashing fierce attacks on February 2. Over the next week, protesters held their ground, thousands of people flooded to city squares to call for dignity and freedom, labor strikes spread, employees in public institutions joined the movement, and lawyers, doctors, and professors marched in their professional garb. Finally, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ended its silent watch and forced Mubarak's hand. When Mubarak resisted leaving, the generals compelled the newly-appointed vice president to inform the president that, if he didn't step down, he would face charges of high treason.
  • Suddenly on Friday, February 11 — as millions of people surged angrily through the streets — Mubarak vanished. Anger transformed into tears of joy and celebration. And the next morning, young people cleaned up the public spaces, symbolically starting the huge task of cleansing Egypt of the corrupt regime and rebuilding the country. How they would rebuild Egypt remained uncertain, but their mobilization instilled a new and powerful pride, coupled with determination to take control over their future and not be cowed again by any authoritarian ruler.
anonymous

Augmented Revolution » Cyborgology - 0 views

thesocietypages.org/...augmented-revolution

augmented revolution #ThoughtVectors technology media social media visualculture augmentedreality virtual reality augmented reality internet

shared by anonymous on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The Egyptian resistance used web tools as well as physical space, and most importantly, they did so by looking at the intersection of both. They used the web to inform people how to behave in physical space, e.g., what to do with tear gas containers, who should stand in front of the crowds and how the crowds should move about the city. It makes little sense to argue about whether these are social media revolutions or not. Instead, we should recognize them as augmented revolutions. Only then can we debate just how and how much of a role the digital aspect played.
  • anonymous on 11 Jul 14
     
    Thinking about how augmented reality impacts physical reality.
andhearsonars

What happened to the expert curator? | Guardian Professional - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...art-curator-in-digital-age

curation social media technology media

shared by andhearsonars on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Within these contexts, the act of arranging objects, images or sounds into an order that may or may not have meaning has proliferated throughout the creative and cultural industries. The curator is now a producer: you might curate your Flickr feed, your mates playing records at a bar or an exhibition in your own apartment – a trend showcased by the Serpentine Gallery's co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist, a master orator of what he calls a "global dialogue… in space and time".
  • A space has now opened up – both physically and online – where anyone can give curating a go.
  • What, then, if we're looking in the wrong place for qualified, ground-breaking curators? Perhaps they are no longer in museums, galleries or cultural institutions, but instead in front of a screen – sociable and connected. Curating in the age of the internet is the act of responding to social and technological developments: their usability, instability and the various networks of communication in which they are presented online.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Dealing with networks means that nothing is stable, everything is constantly moving in response to massive amounts of data
  • "Broadly accounting for any act where a person organises visual content on the internet in a way that creates meaning through the differences and similarities of their collected images."
  • relatively meaningless
  • 'digital curating'
  • "curating is now linguistically deluded beyond the point of return to an artistic context
  • people are creating meaning themselves – online, inside, outside
kimah6

Real-Life Decepticons: Robots Learn to Cheat | Science | WIRED - 1 views

www.wired.com/...epticons-robots-learn-to-cheat

robots cheat science wired #ThoughtVectors #tv008

shared by kimah6 on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • nnocence didn’t last.
    • kimah6
      kimah6 on 26 Jun 14
       
      Funny how the author used the word innocence.  The writer used "innocence" to describe a robot.  Robots have feelings?
  • Soon the robots learned to follow the signals of others who’d gathered at the food. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them to feed, and the robots bumped and jostled for position. As before, only a few made it through the bottleneck of selection. And before long, they’d evolved to mute their signals, thus concealing their location.
  • “Evolutionary robotic systems implicitly encompass many behavioral components … thus allowing for an unbiased investigation of the factors driving signal evolution,” the researchers wrote Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The great degree of realism provided by evolutionary robotic systems thus provides a powerful tool for studies that cannot readily be performed with real organisms.”
  • kimah6 on 26 Jun 14
     
    Robots Learn to Cheat
ifrahansari88

Future Proof - Protecting our digital future » Why you need social media reco... - 1 views

futureproof.records.nsw.gov.au/eed-social-media-recordkeeping

#socialmedia #governmentinfo #blogs #facebook #twitter #transition

shared by ifrahansari88 on 07 Jul 14 - Cached
  • Because key government business processes including policy development, community engagement, emergency management, business collaboration and project management are increasingly moving to social media channels. And social channels are complex spaces. They are third party owned and hosted, dynamic and collaborative. Maintaining important information in these environments can be very challenging. We therefore need to take heed of the fact that a lot of key business operations are moving to social media technologies, and we need to think about this transition from an information-based perspective. For example, as a result of the transition to social, increasingly there will not be formal publications, or reports, or white papers or meeting minutes or other fixed, formal, standard forms of accountability and history that we have traditionally relied upon. Instead there will be wikis and tweets and Facebook forums and blog posts and a host of fantastic, dynamic, collaboratively developed content but by itself this will not survive to be the stuff of history, it will not survive to be accessible under FOI or GIPA review, it may not even survive to be part of formal annual reporting a year from now.
  • ifrahansari88 on 07 Jul 14
     
    saving gov info to social medias
perezmv

http://oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2006/08/17/inside-pandora-web-radio.html - 0 views

oreilly.com/...inside-pandora-web-radio.html

Pandora howstuffworks music musical technology symbiosis format business model records experiments attributes project company analysts dimensions

shared by perezmv on 06 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Pandora (which is also the name of the company) grew out of the Music Genome Project, which company founder Tim Westergren began six years ago.
  • He became fascinated with the way directors described the music they were looking for, which led to his wondering what made people enjoy certain types of music. He asked himself, "If people haven't found any music that they love since college, and artists are struggling to find an audience, is there a role for technology to help bridge the gap?"
  • Westergren started the Genome Project from the idea of creating a platform for connecting people with music that they'll love based on music they already enjoy. The project uses experts called "music analysts" to deconstruct music into its fundamental parts and capture the results into a database. Pandora has 40 professional musicians who come to the office every day and listen to one song at a time, analyzing each in anywhere from 200 to 400 dimensions. (The dimensions are somewhat different for each genre of music.)
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Pandora chose the dimensions because they are quantitative. For instance, how breathy are the vocals? Is the music diatonic or chromatic? The music analysts are trained to be able to score songs consistently. In fact, one of the test cases is, "Could a group of 10 musicologists listen to a song and agree on one score for a particular element?"
  • vector space.
  • "What is exciting about the Music Genome Project, with respect to Pandora the radio-listening experience, is that by understanding the music on a song-by-song basis we can put together a playlist that has a much more natural ebb and flow than you might be able to do with collaborative filtering data," Conrad says.
  • "I think curator is the right word," Conrad replied. "Of all the financial models that could be leveraged to make Pandora a successful business, the 'play for pay' model runs completely spiritually opposite to the founding of the company.
  • I asked what Pandora was doing to avoid being influenced by big record labels, which have been widely accused of corrupting traditional radio through payola schemes.
  • "Since we use a human analyst to analyze song by song, we've experimented with using a smaller number of elements," he continued. "We've determined that you can't create interesting playlists with only 20 attributes. But we do keep an eye on machine listening as it might provide a way to augment the manual analysis."
  • I ask myself, "What's this song doing in my Bill Evans station? This song should be in my 'Soft Jazz Guitar' station. Why can't I tell Pandora to place this tune in the appropriate station?"
  • "It's fascinating to me that you raise that particular example," Conrad said. "Because the scenario that you just described is--after we evolved the product over five months and took a lot of low-hanging fruit off the table--probably the number-one listener request.
  • Pandora creates playlists with a "matching engine," written in C and Python, for each listener station. This engine builds the low-level linkage to the "source" music (the music that listeners indicate they like) and the music that actually gets played (a mixture of what the listener explicitly indicated, mixed with music that the Pandora service believes listeners will like). The replication system is Slony.
Will Sullivan

Barcode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Barcode

augmentedreality visualculture

shared by Will Sullivan on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data relating to the object to which it is attached. Originally barcodes systematically represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D). Later they evolved into rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns in two dimensions (2D). Although 2D systems use a variety of symbols, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well. Barcodes originally were scanned by special optical scanners called barcode readers. Later, scanners and interpretive software became available on devices including desktop printers and smartphones.
  • Will Sullivan on 27 Jun 14
     
    Barcodes are symbols just like any other, but they can only be read by computers! They're kind of like paintings for computers.
andhearsonars

Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With 'Curation' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-trouble-with-curation.html

curation pinterest tumblr internet social media

shared by andhearsonars on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • evoke in the viewer a certain feeling, atmosphere or mood
  • Not just on Pinterest, but also in the form of dopamine-boosting street-fashion blogs and cryptically named Tumblr blogs devoted to the wordless and explanation-free juxtaposition of, say, cupcakes and teapots and shoes with shots of starched shirts and J.F.K.
  • artfully arranged pictures of other people’s stuff?
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • “curation,”
  • rarefied and highly specialized skill, would all of a sudden go viral
  • Not because I don’t like magazines. In many ways, I like them better. But they’re too grounded in space and time, too organized and linear, too collaborative and professional to deliver the synaptic frisson available from the stream-of-consciousness image blog.
  • A friend of a friend calls his addiction to sites like these “avenues for procrastination,” but I think there’s something else involved. Like other forms of pastiche — the mix tape, the playlist, the mash-up — these sites force you to engage and derive meaning or at least significance or at the very least pleasure from a random grouping of pictures. Why not dive into an alternative world full of beauty and novelty and emotion and the hard-to-put-your-finger-on feeling that there’s something more, somewhere, where you’re not chained to your laptop, half dead from monotony, frustration and boredom
  • the sudden rise of the mood board as mood regulator, a kind of low-dose visual lithium
  • So maybe we are like the rats, and what we’re seeking while idly yet compulsively cruising Pinterest is really just the reliably unpredictable jumble of emotions that their wistful, quirky juxtapositions evoke. Maybe that is our rectangularity.
  • This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing.
  • In other words, your average Pinterest board or inspiration Tumblr basically functions as a longing machine.
  • They target aspects of our lives that “are incomplete or imperfect”; involve “overly positive, idealized, utopian imaginations of these missing aspects”; focus on “incompleteness on the one hand and fantasies about ideal, alternative realities on the other hand”
  • frivolous and feminine
  • People don’t post stuff because they wish they owned it, but because they think they are it, and they long to be understood, which is different.
  • In fact, the company discourages people from posting images they have created themselves, preferring that they venture out into the wilds of the Internet looking for beautiful things to bring back to the cave.
  • “Curation” does imply something far more deliberate than these inspiration blogs, whose very point is to put the viewer into an aesthetic reverie unencumbered by thought or analysis. These sites are not meant (as curation is) to make us more conscious, but less so.
  • But products are no longer the point. The feeling is the point. And now we can create that feeling for ourselves, then pass it around like a photo album of the life we think we were meant to have but don’t, the people we think we should be but aren’t.
peppermara

Artistic Dreaming - Women, Art and Empowerment in La Perouse | Human Rights in Australi... - 0 views

rightnow.org.au/...-and-empowerment-in-la-perouse

#ThoughtVectors #tv008 ##womanempowerment

shared by peppermara on 17 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Ngala Nanga Mai
  • Since its inception, it has been an accessible and popular program within the community, bringing together mostly young women from lower-socio economic backgrounds that face issues of social isolation and disadvantage, which have previously restricted them from using these essential services.
  • Often, guest artists will attend to lead workshops that expose the women to different artistic techniques and cultural experiences.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The project is about women and children and their access to health, education, art and social interaction. Art is central: it is about the process for the individual as an integrated being
  • be removed from their circumstances by immersing in the present and learn about themselves through the process of education and expression.
  • For the women, these meeting times exist in a space that provides a momentary respite from the role of mothering, where they can focus on the project before them,
  • We discuss how art gives shape to identity, pain and discovery as it taps into the unconscious. It connects the body, mind and spirit, allowing the opportunity to create and then step back and reflect. It is this holistic process that promotes the greatest right: human dignity.
  • Overall well-being has increased, contributed to by a greater sense of purpose, social connectedness, self-confidence and belonging.
  • In the past four years, Ngala Nanga Mai has grown into a strong, unified group that continues to prosper.
  • Art will forever remain one of the most effective mediums of expression. As blank canvases are filled with colours that depict stories, identities and lives, art will continue to inspire and empower change, growth and reflection. Initiatives such as Ngala Nanga Mai reveal the potential of art as a tool for promoting human development, building community and fostering well-being. Whilst law, policy and large-scale government intervention lack the capacity to ensure holistic change on an institutional level, it is vital that more creative ventures emerge that foster artistic expression, human rights and social empowerment. With motivation they are not only possible but sustainable.
marikejp

How Facebook Beat MySpace - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...why-facebook-beat-myspace

facebook social media

shared by marikejp on 17 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • not only an early internet success – but a seminal web site for the movement we now call social media. 
  • very simple management mistake News Corp. made.  News Corp tried to guide MySpace, to add planning, and to use “professional management” to determine the business’s future.  That was fatally flawed when competing with Facebook which was managed in White Space, lettting the marketplace decide where the business should go.
  • If you have an idea for networking on something, Facebook pushed its tech folks to make it happen.  And they kept listening.
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