ThinkProgress � Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’

ThinkProgress � Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’:

"Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor."

March 24 Class

You are on your own today.

Blog the class. In real time. Starting now.

There are different ways to do this--everyone; a couple of scribes, a couple of scribe-watchers; reporters, editors, critics; proclaimers and responders; pros and cons--what dynamic makes sense? Maybe folks with cameras want to post video blogs. Maybe different layers or versions--initial responses and immediate conversation, then compilation, design, synthesis, rethink.

What to post? Tell me who's there, who's missing, what you're feeling or thinking. Describe your process (how are you figuring out what to do since I'm not in the room)? There's a lot to do, can you get organized quickly? How? What are you doing to make this work? 

Is blogging while trying to discuss this stuff helpful or harmful? Why? If it's harmful, what should you do to meet the requirement that you blog the class and at the same time actually discuss something and put together something informative and creative?

It can't be all form, though. You need content. 

Use the class time to discuss what Andrejevic has to say about iWar and iPolitics. Your blogs (live from today's class, in real time) need to report what you are getting from the reading. What is he saying that matters? Do you agree? Why or why not? What do others think? Is there consensus? Division? Confusion? How are you dealing with this?

I think it makes sense to identify key insights and then raise questions. I also think it makes sense to highlight details, concepts, claims, and arguments.*

But you might have something else in mind--what? Is it worth going with? Then do that. 

Can you present the material, the ideas, the questions, the stuff that matters in a compelling way (are lists actually pretty good ways to summarize and transmit information)? Images? Video? Dialogues? Cartoons? What can you do/make that you'll be proud of in the limited time you have?

LocationS11: Heads up!! Change in syllabus!!

LocationS11: Heads up!! Change in syllabus!!:

"Heads up!! Change in syllabus!!

I've made a couple of changes in the syllabus for after spring break. Here are the changes. Please make sure that you note them on your syllabus and are prepared for the changes.

3/22 Marc Andrejevic, iSpy, chapters 1-2

3/24 Marc Andrejevic, iSpy, chapter 6-7

3/29 'Google's Revolution Factory' --Alliance of Youth Movements
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23283

look through and analyze this website: http://www.movements.org/.

'Diverting the Radicalization Track'

Be sure to read the summit reports (links available at both sites).

What is this group? What does it do? How do you know? Are these good guys?
Why or why not?"

Mapping Election Fraud with an SMS Reporting System - Haiti Rewired

(a number of the people mentioned in this article are affiliated with AYM)

Mapping Election Fraud with an SMS Reporting System - Haiti Rewired:

"Inside a dark, mildly air-conditioned room at the Jeune Ayiti Centre de Projets in downtown PetionVille, 12 people sporting “Obsevate” t-shirts sat around the table with their laptops and smartphones. It was March 20, Election Day in Haiti. A small TV off to the side played an England soccer game, but attention was mainly focused front and center to a projection screen displaying a Google Map of Haiti. The map was covered in green house icons with a few red flags scattered around the countryside, testaments to incidents of voting fraud or irregularities that polling station supervisors had reported via an SMS text message.

They were updating the Mwen Konte voting map, a Google map generated from a database of SMS text message reports of irregularities and fraud in the voting process. Cell phones are the communications backbone in Haiti, and they figured prominently in the little-noticed effort to provide transparency in the electoral process, which is typically riddled with fraud and corruption. Sunday's election was the second round of voting after the initial Nov election unraveled amid allegations of fraud. The two candidates that remain are Mirlande Manigat, a seasoned politician and former First Lady, and Michel Martelly, a charismatic show-boater who rose to fame from a career as a pop star."

Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience

Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience:

"Mystery is that second layer of attributes that are present but undefined explicitly, yet somehow created with just enough context to consume mental resources in subtle and compelling ways. At its most basic level, experiencing mystery in what we interact with makes you ask the question, “Why did they do that?”. What we mean here is, “Why did they do that? – A good thing, not “What were they thinking? – A bad thing. If you think carefully about the experiences you have in the ebb and flow of life, you realize that the most compelling are those that force you to think long and hard about why a given thing is the way it is. For example, why did Frank Gehry create the Guggenheim Museum Bilboa using the shapes he did? The famous architect could have created any shape concept, but why did he choose those shapes? It’s a mystery – we do not know and probably neither does he. What we do know is that his creation is cited as one of the most important works of contemporary architecture. In the same way that a building can captivate millions of sightseers, the element of mystery (conceptual depth) can help sell a few million copies of a simple interactive game."

Internet for Robots: It's Not Skynet, It's RoboEarth

Internet for Robots: It's Not Skynet, It's RoboEarth:

"'If you're going to have networked robots at home, it can do physical damage to your person, analogous to the way in which malware might damage your data,' says Teller, though he also considers RoboEarth a positive step. 'Your PC has a webcam, but it can't hit you on the head. Once these things gain the ability to move on their own, even without the virus or the bad guy dialing in from the Internet, if there is a bug in it, it can hurt you.'"

Ask About An Autonomous University: 5 Exam Questions For Life � OCCUPY EVERYTHING

Ask About An Autonomous University: 5 Exam Questions For Life � OCCUPY EVERYTHING:

"4) Would autonomous universities evaluate learning?

An autonomous university might not have grades. Perhaps the faculty would be able to acknowledge that they learn as much as the students do. Perhaps the students would be able to be open and honest about what they get out of their experiences at the school. Like accreditation, grades serve to differentiate the labor force while rendering future workers servile. To add insult to injury, of all the onerous tasks current universities demand, those who do it complain about grading the most. We can think of more productive forms of feedback."

Impotent With Rage, Psychotic File-Sharers Bite The Hand That Feeds Them | TorrentFreak

Impotent With Rage, Psychotic File-Sharers Bite The Hand That Feeds Them | TorrentFreak:

“Overwhelmed by the glut of content on P2P networks, file-sharers have lost control of their lives. Impotent with rage, they bite the hand that feeds them. They have made themselves the slaves of media-consumption – and who better to blame than the parasites, the scum, the spivs, the fat cats who ‘lord it over’ their screens?”

Apple is Catholic ("The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS")

(From a piece by Italian literary theorist Umberto Eco, written in 1994):

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions: When it comes down to it, you can decide to ordain women and gays if you want to.

I cite: Search and store

I cite: Search and store: (an excerpt on digital hoarding--taxonomical drive)

"Nina links taxonomical drive with contemporary porn's endeavor to bore us all to death and turn sex into work. That is to say, her point is part of a larger argument about contemporary capitalism and its absorption of its outside. I agree. I also think it could be useful to think further with the notion of taxonomical drive. Who is the taxonomy for? The easy answer is that it is for the individual porn consumer: I download, classify, and tag photos and videos so that I can find them when I need them. The taxonomy is for me, in the future. I never know what I might desire, so I can plan for desire in the future. Clearly I don't desire now--if so, I wouldn't be archiving all this stuff, I would be enjoying it.

Differently put, taxonomical drive is a component of archival culture, a culture where we try to control our reality by selecting specific features of it, labeling, and storing these features. It is as if we so fear the changes in which we situated, the rapid flows and movements online, the appearance and disappearance of sites and features, that we try to construct a knowable space or path. Here, at least, we know what's what."