I try to avoid the latest web sensation avoiding the latest cat video, or hot music video or really anything else that can drag me down the YouTube rabbit hole, but recently I encountered a “supercut” of covers to a song I had not heard. While I do not watch many videos online and avoid nearly all viral hits the idea of a “supercut” intrigued me as I always like to watch good video editing. Read the rest of Such is the web »
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I recently wrote and published a working paper on the “public author,” the historical and core function of the modern blogger. Read the full paper at JoshuaIAltman.com.
In publishing and media, nothing is truly new, every innovation builds upon those that came before, and even if unknowingly, uses the same tactics and methods employed by earlier mediums. In all cases, the same elements are necessary for taking a basic set of information and reaching an audience. Early printers, twentieth century publishers and twenty-first century bloggers all need to select their content and choose a way to distribute it.
Online publishing is not a virtual newspaper anymore than the radio is the newspaper being read aloud. Although the mediums are not the same the contributors share many characteristics that bind colonial authors with modern bloggers. Letter writers in the 1700s advanced, and at times created, a national conversation in the same way that twenty-first century bloggers spread national discourse and culture today.
I recently wrote a paper on the gamification of politics, read the full paper at JoshuaIAltman.com
Politics is a game and like all games there are winners and there are losers in every campaign and political fight. Although the existence of the victor and the defeated has been a part of politics since since the earliest contest, the rise of games, and a larger culture surrounding games has lead to the gamification of politics. The language of politics, words like “veepstakes” and online primaries allow anybody to participate in the game and play politics.
I wrote earlier about the resurgence of walled gardens in the form of white picket fences. When I first published those ideas in August 2011 very little had been done on the topic, now nearly a year later there has been an uptick in conversation about the topic (although sadly my phrase has not yet been adopted). Read the rest of Breaking outside the fence »
Aug 11
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The white picket fence
The world wide web is an open platform where anybody can create a page using the standard hypertext markup language and users are free to move across locations on the web and visit any other site without restrictions. Openness and equality, which guided the early web, was lost in its later years to walled gardens which eventually fell. Now openness is being sacrificed again, not to the extent of the early walled gardens but to their successors, the social networks who have erected their own walls directing users to see only selected and ranked content. Read the rest of The white picket fence »
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