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American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths. Miss Representation.org believes that all people should be equally represented in our media, that our voices should be heard and that we should all be valued for our talents, capacity as leaders, and ability to contribute to the world at large.
Miss Representation.org is a call-to-action campaign that seeks to empower women and girls to challenge limiting labels in order to realize their potential and transform our culture for the betterment of all.
Given the advent of the 24-7 news cycle and the proliferation of infotainment and reality TV, media has become the predominant communicator of cultural values and gender norms, telling us all who we can and cannot be.
We believe that one ordinary individual, united with others around a common, meaningful goal, can spark millions of small actions that ultimately lead to a cross generational revolution to eradicate gender stereotypes and create lasting cultural and sociological change that will benefit not only women, but the world at large.
missrepresentation.org 
The search giant's head of news products thinks we need to rethink how the news is architected and how information gets produced.
"While technology holds great promise, it’s important to recognize that while technology has value it has no “values.” Technology, in and of itself, is not the solution. Yes, it can provide the means for solutions, but it is up to us to determine how to make it so.
We need to rethink every facet of the journalism model in light of the dramatic changes in the architecture of the news ecosystem. I’m not suggesting that everything must change, but a comprehensive rethinking is a necessary and valuable intellectual process". 
if:book A Project of The Institute for the Future of the Book
These drawings date from 1982 (thirty years ago). Alan Kay had just become the Chief Scientist at Atari and he asked me to work with him to continue the work I started at Encyclopedia Britannica on the idea of an Intelligent Encyclopedia. We came up with these scenarios of how the (future) encyclopedia might be used and commissioned Glenn Keane, a well-known Disney animator to render them. The captions also date from 1982.
The most interesting thing for me today about these images is that although we foresaw that people would be accessing information wirelessly (notice the little antenna on the device in the "tide pool" image, we completely missed the most important aspect of the network -- that it was going to connect people to other people. 
TED Talks As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other?
As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.
My comment: Technology only has power and control over those who allow it. Digital & Media Literacies are key life in the 21st Century. 
In this new RSA Animate, author and journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on ‘cyber-utopianism’ – the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.
![TechCrunch | Keen On… Stewart Brand: How Real Innovation Is Now Coming From The South [TCTV] | Media Shifting Culture | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/-mxI7fWdPWHUoiOzTnP-_Dl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
There are few more iconic figures in the digital community than Stewart Brand, the effervescent founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, The Well, The Long Now Foundation and the guy who almost single-handedly connected the counterculture with cyberspace. 
In her new book, Consent of the Networked, Rebecca Mackinnon offers a reality check: "We have a problem,” she writes. “We understand how power works in the physical world, but we do not yet have a clear understanding of how power works in the digital realm." In fact, we probably don't even think about power when we update our statuses on Twitter, connect with old school friends and upload pictures on Facebook, buy a book based on a recommendation from Amazon or use Mail, Docs, Plus, Maps or search on Google. LoveSocial + MissRepresentation.org present Cause and Effect: How the Media You Consume Can Change Your Life. Learn more: http://bit.ly/tellingherstory *The ... 
Facebook is scheduled to release its initial public offering sometime on Wednesday, and is rumored to be valued at $100 billion. 
An excerpt from Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns. Also available on web site: online catalogs, secure online ordering, excerpts from new books. 
Today, Facebook is publishing a study that disproves some hoary conventional wisdom about the Web. According to this new research, the online echo chamber doesn’t exist. This is of particular interest to me. "We can debate outcomes of engagement all we want, but the thing that's really important, I think, to have on the public agenda is really the question of 'Who is getting access to the kinds of experiences that are productive and engaging, and who is not?' And what are the factors contributing to that?" 
In the world of technology, it will feel like 1995 all over again. Back then, Netscape, the creator of a web browser, staged an initial public offering (IPO) starting a fashion for flotations and a stockmarket bubble that eventually burst in 2000. In 2012, Facebook will launch its own IPO. The flotation of the giant social network, which pioneered “poking” as a way of saying hello to friends online, will set off another rush to market by fledgling internet firms. |
Why are we listening to signals when we can do the research ourselves? (More on the Advertising as Cult theory)
The Internet was supposed to make us smarter shoppers. So why should we still listen to the signals that brands send us? 
"Much has been said about what makes us human and what it means to be human. Language, which we’ve previously seen co-evolved with music to separate us from our primal ancestors, is not only one of the defining differentiators of our species, but also a key to our evolutionary success, responsible for the hallmarks of humanity, from art to technology to morality. So argues evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel in Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind — a fascinating new addition to these 5 essential books on language, tracing 80,000 years of evolutionary history to explore how and why we developed a mind hard-wired for culture." Via Howard Rheingold 
Sherry Turkle writes as though digital life is something that happens to other people. But it isn't. It's something we create.
"...As long as we frame the digital transformation in the third person, we maintain a comfortable distance from our individual and collective responsibility for how it will unfold. We absolve ourselves with an implicit story about technological determinism -- look at what the Internet is doing to them -- or comfort ourselves with a vague fantasy in which government policies, educational institutions or social conventions teach them to live in the way we know is best.
But digital life isn't something that happens to them; it's something created by us. The most powerful part of Turkle's argument, in her book as well as in her recent piece, come when she shifts back into the first person: "we have confused conversation with connection"; "we flee from solitude"; "[w]e expect more from technology and less from one another". In these pronouns, and in these observations, lie the potential for conscious choices about how to engage online, and how to create online lives that support both conversation and connection..." 
My short answer: No, technologies can only take control of our lives if we allow them to. Digital Literacies are critical for life in the 21st Century.
"Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society". 
The speculation is a misogynistic assault, the actress writes, and it’s time to change the conversation.
"If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings". 
"The discovery of a huge new trove of unedited German fairy tales is nothing short of a revelation. These tales, only of few of which were published in the 1850s are an abrupt contrast to the Brothers Grimm. In these stories, we find an equal-opportunity world where the brave and clever children are as likely to be girls as boys, and the vulnerable, exploited youths are not just princesses, but princes
What the discovery makes clear is the degree to which this revered Western canon is a social construct. Far from being transcendent examples of universal values, as Bruno Bettelheim argued, these tales were edited and fixed at a specific historical moment. The publication history of the Grimms’ Tales is instructive. First published as a large academic collection, the tales were very consciously edited and re-edited by Wilhelm Grimm into a shorter and less bawdy work explicitly intended as moral instruction for 19th century children. Tales by Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen were set down at that same rigidly gender-divided time". 
In the 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture, Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, looks at the "cute cat" theory of internet activism, and how it helps explain the Arab Spring. He discusses how activists around the world are turning to social media tools which are extremely powerful, easy to use and difficult for governments to censor. The Vancouver Human Rights Lecture is co-sponsored by the UBC Continuing Studies, the Laurier Institution, and Yahoo. 
I just read the Kindle edition of "Net Smart," written by writer and critic Howard Rheingold. The book provides a thoughtful analysis of some major theories and discourses about the "always on" era, while at the same time giving new insights and practical advice about the literacies we need to thrive in this environment.
I've followed Rheingold's posts and videos for some time now, attended presentations, and participated in some of his courses. He's not only an expert in virtual communities (a term he coined himself) and social media, but also teaches digital journalism.
I had the opportunity to interview him recently about the implications of his thinking on media, journalism and journalism education. 
Gamer pop icons transform into insurgent reality hackers in Douglas Rushkoff’s new graphic novel, A.D.D. But the book’s genesis has more to do with Korean gamer culture than The Matrix.
“Everybody expects The Matrix from most everything these days,” the internetworked media theorist told Wired.com by e-mail. “If you get a kid to read the Bible or Midsummer Night’s Dream, they’ll tell you that they’re derivative of The Matrix.
“But the idea came out of my experiences with pro gamers in South Korea,” Rushkoff added. “They get plucked from junior high school to live in swank high-rises, practice games all day and be on TV every night. They wear jumpsuits and have girls screaming at their tournaments.” 
ReCivilization is a five-part series that examines some of the the biggest challenges facing our world. It charts a path to the future enabled by the revolutions underway in communications, innovation and learning in this new, post-industrial, digital age. Celebrated Canadian author and thinker Don Tapscott guides us along this path with some of the most prominent minds in education, government, industry, the media, science, and health and medicine -- along with the pioneers who are collaborating to create a new era of networked intelligence. 
What exactly is a “media and information grant”?
It’s funding we offer to media and media-supporting organizations to enhance their ability to create, distribute, engage, measure, and facilitate conversation around their content. The funding includes commercial, nonprofit, social, and public media outlets, as well as communications schools, journalism training organizations, and research institutions. 
By Nishant Shah
Based on my research on young people in the Global South, I want to explore new ways of thinking about the Digital Native. One of the binaries posited as the Digital ‘Other’ -- ie, a non-Digital Native -- is that of a Digital Immigrant or Settler. I am not comfortable with these terms and they probably need heavy unpacking if not complete abandonment. Standard caricatures of Digital Others show them as awkward in their new digital ecologies, unable to navigate through this brave new world on their own. They may actually have helped produce digital technology and tools but they are not ‘born digital’ and hence are presumed to always have an outsider’s perspective on the digital world order. 
Over the holiday weekend, the tech reporters and editors of The New York Times found some interesting items on the Web - on subjects from social media in the 16th century to the debate over the online piracy act. |
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