Posts tagged “media”

Creeping Utilitarianism on the Fediverse — May 5, 2026
This morning I noticed something. I noticed that there appears to be more utilitarianism on the web. I noticed that Wordpress now quantifies follower growth, engagement and more and whilst some people love it, it fills me with dread....
We are living through the media's golden age. — Mar 18, 2007
When I started using comptuers they were nothing more than ega displays with the large floppy disks and games were text based. As I grew older so the games grew to be more complex, from 2d to 3d and then the quality improved. The television of my youth was limited to five channels and by the 90’s had expanded to twenty plus channels. By 2000 the number had exploded to several hundred channels and that’s just counting the English ones. The media have progressed. I am in constant contact with everyone by mobile phone for over a decade. I have had minidisk players, i’ve had phones and I’ve had a television in my room. Now the mobile phone I have replaces all these devices if I so wish. The ipod replaces the radio and the television, the phone replaces the laptop, the minitel and the fax machine. I have access to the world’s media within two clicks of a mouse, which is no more than a trackpad on an ibook. Video editing is far simpler. When I wanted to learn to edit I remember that you’d need to get two player/recorders and a third device to control the two machines. We bought Adobe Premiere and the Miro dc30+ and there it was. I spent a weekend learning to edit with pictures of the Mer des Glaces, a glacier in the French Alpes. Since then I upgraded through the years and my laptop can do all this seamlessly. We discussed video on demand years ago and that idea was novel, was something which would be hard to implement. Today video on demand is so easy it’s syndicated via RSS feeds. I get my televisual experience via downloaded streams on a daily basis. Radio on demand is certainly here and doing well. In this week in media one of the presenters said that in the near future media content would become more valuable than oil. It’s an interesting idea. Are media studies a mickey mouse course when you’ve got free newspapers, you can watch television whilst commuting to and from work? When you share your pictures with friends around the world and computing is no longer the realm of the computer geek I think we’re in the Golden age of media studies and that it may have been one of the most interesting topics to study with the exponential growth of media outlets....
The Social Media — Nov 27, 2007
Forget the term new media, it’s passed, it’s gone. Today’s key word is social media. What this term means is the following. Any medium that encourages conversations via new technologies, whether twitter, blogs and podcasts or forums is a social media. It is the idea that authority has disappeared. Rather than be talked to by the content producers a dialogue is formed. Liana Lehua of Girls gone geek.tv for example started following me just as I was listening to her talk on another podcast than your own. There is no need for the tabloid press to tell us what the “rockstars” are doing, rather they tell us themselves. Look at Leo Laporte’s blog. Look at Documentally’s two websites. Look at Loudmouthman, Jeff Pulver and others. These people all create content for us to enjoy. Each of these people is taking advantage of the social media to create a profile for their activities both as podcasts and textual content. Those who are new to the media, who have yet to create a name for themselves have a great opportunity. If you’re a sociable individual then take some time to learn about the social media movement and participate. Participation is a key concept. We are all publishers, we all have a website. We have moo cards and they’re social media bookmarks. They’re just a quick way of sharing contact information. As soon as we get to our computers we add those we meet and keep up to date with what we’re doing. It creates a great sense of unity. They’re also taking advantage of the new social media landscape. It’s a shame that most people are limited to zombie biting, vampires and other wastes of time rather than sharing their creative output. I wish more people would write about what’s important to them and share it via twitter, blogs and of course aggregate the content according to the various social media tools like Plaxo Pulse, Lijit and Tumblr. This is a call for more people to take proper advantage of the current social media trends and participate more actively. Don’t just join a social network and post photographs. Write and produce content as well....
The future of the media — Jul 27, 2006
Over the next two weeks, I am working in part of what will become part of the new media landscape. I receive footage via satellite and edit short summaries to become video clips on the official site of the organisation. At the moment it’s not visible to the normal public but it is an interesting activity. As part of my dissertation, I have to understand where the documentary has come from and where it’s going. It’s an interesting way to spend time and I’m learning about new things all the time. We’ll see what the landscape will be like once I’m working full time in the media again. Paleo was really good fun. An average day consists of five hours of work, followed by at least two or three concerts, a multitude of conversations before ending with three or four hours of sleep. The conversations have ranged from the passion that certain friends have for Nutella to driving Segway around one particular stand. With one friend we went through to the moshpit of one concert and there was a good ambiance. With another friend everything was far calmer, more relaxed, taking time to unwind and relax. I have learned about long hours in the sun drinking ice tea whilst at work and enjoyed it greatly. It’s good fun because there’s a breeze, people come and go, and as they do your greeting varies. The variation in greeting is part of what makes the work so enjoyable. When people pass they do so without wanting to take time to chat sometimes but as they have a badge you can read their name. In doing so you can greet them more personally. I read so many name badges over a number of hours that it was quite a challenge to remember everyone’s name. In fact, I could probably remember none. Faces… that’s what I remember all the time, not names. On that note, I’ll stop rambling....
On social determinism and the media — Jan 30, 2007
My week started at 10 this morning and was over by 1300 this afternoon. It was a lecture and a seminar about Brian Winston and social determinism in relation to the media. It’s a theory which is exploring whether social factors affect the technology that we use. I was taking notes during that lecture but not with pen and paper and without a laptop. Instead I was using the O2 XDA minis. It’s a really nice device and I’ve had it for over two months now. What I love about it is it’s size, being about the size of my palm it’s large for a fun but tiny for a laptop. It’s got a big display and a sign out keyboard. It’s also got a good scribling interface which makes handwriting notes just as easy as typing. It’s a friend that played with this feature and I’m quite impressed. The reason I love it is that it’s got all the features you’d expect from the i-phone but in the windows operating system and for a European market. The fact it’s got a keyboard makes it ideal for fast typing of sms. I often find myself writing over 200 characters because it’s so simple. Checking e-mail is a doddle. Simply download the gmail interface and connect to the web. The download of messages is easy and intuitive. It’s a shame that data transfer over gprs is still expensive otherwise it’d be perfect. I’ve made a skype call with it and it’s worked well. I was able to make a phone call to a mobile phone and talk and hear myself at the same time. Being alone that’s complicated but I know it works. I bought a program and that makes the synchronisation extremely straight forward. I have contacts, pictures and some word documents synced on the ibook and the mobile phone this way. It’s perfect for students and I really enjoy using the device. I’m speaking as someone who’s owned at least 5-10 mobile phones over the past few years....
On Film and Television — Nov 29, 2014
I like that I can watch days of television series and that I can’t spend 90 minutes watching films. Television series are about people, places and situations and the characters are realistic. In contrast films are superficial, shallow and too full of special effects for a story to be told. The cinema loses out because it is too superficial, too pretentious without offering something contrast at the end of the donated time. We do donate time to the media we appreciate and gain from....
A really good conversation from TWiM — Mar 22, 2008
This Week in Media 85 is an interesting conversation about media news for the past week with a technological slant. This week’s interesting is particularly interesting as it explored the future of television and how people consume media. From the PVR and the ability for people to discuss the content they enjoy to machines that talk to each other they cover many topics. They also discussed computer literacy and whether the youth of today are as computer litterate as previous generations. That’s an interesting point. The idea is not whether someone can get a computer to do what they want but rather whether they know how to set it up. Think of Linux. Would you be able to setup a linux box. It’s the type of discussion that’s good to follow to give you a number of points of view....
The Strava IPO and My Desire To Quit the App — Oct 13, 2025
Strava intends to float itself on the stock exchange. In my experience of Twitter, Facebook and other social media apps this is the beginning of the end for the app. In my experience when an app such as Zwift gets VC funding it loses control of its app. Users go from being the customer to investors becoming the client. In this situation user experience degrades continuously....
On the Importance of Media Literacy in the Smartphone Era — Sep 3, 2025
Within the last two weeks children have headed back to schools. As a consequence of this schools, towns, villages, and ‘states’ are banning mobile phones for children and teenagers. In theory this is a fantastic, and simple solution. In practice this is failing society....
Social Media with Moderation — Jun 26, 2025
When I look at Facebook, BlueSky and Threads I see a lot of content that should never be. I see sentences and phrasing that provoke hostility, and I see article headlines and more that provoke polarisation. In essence I think that social media is no longer a social network. I believe that social media is about emotions, rather than conversations, especially negative emotions....
Of Teens, Antisocial Media and Leadership — Jun 18, 2025
In England, Australia and Switzerland...
A Bluesky Flame and the Case for Anonymity — Dec 7, 2024
In the golden age of social media I went from tweeting with a pseudonym to tweeting with my own name. This was as true on Twitter as on Facebook. There was a sense of community that meant that we were safe to use our own names, rather than nicknames....
The Bluesky Flame — Dec 6, 2024
I had and have reservations about Bluesky. I worry about the venture capitalists funding the site and I worry about the community on the site. Today I wrote a post that was meant to show empathy but it got me flamed. The flames were just two posts, but that flame is enough for me to deactivate my account, at least until the flamers have given up....
The Absurdity of Threads — Sep 30, 2024
Threads, in theory is a social network but in practice it is a popularity contest driven by algorithms. Normal people are competing against influencers to be seen. You are more likely to find a troll than someone interested in what you have to write, or what you think....