Yesterday the FCC closed its proposed rule making procedure pertaining to the use of cellular phones during air travel. The FCC decided to uphold the ban on in-flight cell phone use, citing a lack of technical evidence that in-flight cell phone use would not interfere with regular cell phone transmissions. There was no mention in…
Category: Information Society
My interview on Pacifica Radio Program “Deadline LA”
I did a short interview that was broadcast today on the KPFK Pacifica Radio program "Deadline LA" hosted by Barbara Osborn and Howard Blume. The whole program is very interesting, dealing with YouTube and human rights abuses. From the description: Is YouTube the new forum for human rights abuses? Could be. A Guantanamo detainee was…
Bleeding edge tech confronts the oldest human problem
This quote from legendary American journalist Edward R. Murrow has been bouncing around my head the past few days: The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how…
Online Pornography Research Call for Papers
(If this doesn’t shoot up my google search stats, I don’t know what will.) I just received this call for papers for an academic "Collection on Online Pornography": Proposals are sought for a new edited collection on online pornography. Although online pornography attracts a great deal of public attention and is frequently the focus of…
Tracking presidential hopefuls’ blogs: Wannabepresidents.com
The US Presidential race, still far far away, is already heating up on the net with presidential hopefuls from all parties announcing their candidacy. How to keep track of all the action? One cool new tool is the hilariously named Wannabepresidents.com, a blog aggregator that pulls in content from all of the official blogs of…
Rock the Net: musicians need an internet that goes up to eleven!
Those cool music activists at the Future of Music Coalition have launched a new initiative in support of Net Neutrality called "Rock the Net" to highlight how a free and open internet helps musicians and music fans connect. From the press release: Net neutrality is the idea that all websites and services should be equally…
Machinima for Good: check out these cool fair trade machinima!
The machinima production group Strange Company has just released a couple sweet machinima videos intended to raise public awareness about fair trade issues using The Sims 2 and World of Warcraft. The Sims 2 machinima is probably easier to understand, but the WoW video is a more direct analogy comparing a virtual economy to a…
Viacom takes down SL fan video of Stephen Colbert
<rant> This just steams my beans. Stephen Colbert nearly pleads for this kind of fan adoration, and when some enterprising SL machinimators create a video in homage to him, his parent company Viacom issues a DMCA takedown on their ass. Next up: NBC goes after children creating shadow puppets that resemble characters from "Lost." </rant>…
Cheapskate MacArthur Foundation offers 50 bucks for digital learning project
I got an email invite to a "future of learning" event on April 21 sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. I had to chuckle about the byline at the bottom of the email that said that MacArthur had launched a "$50 digital media and learning initiative." Wow, $50! I think I can get a mansion and…
Stanford proposes Library of Congress archive “historically significant” computer games
Henry Lowood of Stanford University recently announced his proposal to the Library of Congress that video / computer games be added to the list of important digital media being archived by the Library. QJ.net reports that on March 8 at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Henry Lowood unveiled a proposed "game canon," i.e. a list…