EchoDitto

As a follow-up to my last post on teaching, let’s fast-forward a few decades: from the youth to the “wise”. A couple days ago I had a long compelling conversation with Jim Moore and his son Graham about the elderly and technology that got me to thinking: how can we use technology to connect the un-connected elderly with those of us living a more digital lifestyle? Then I saw this post about the Nintendo Wii in nursing homes and it’s clear: technology offers oblique opportunities to engage the elderly.

I started my professional life as a student teacher at James Blair Middle School in Williamsburg, Virginia. Teaching has always been in my blood; I absolutely love learning, which is the other side of the coin. My grandmother was an amazing teacher; you can still buy her textbooks on Amazon. And for the last year and half, I've taught a class in the Johns Hopkins University Graduate School of Communications on digital communications. This semester, I'm teaching the class entirely online, remotely, with no face-to-face meetings.

I don't know about you - but I'm overwhelmed by our social media. So many blog posts, so many friend requests on Facebook and LinkedIn, so many emails. In the month of August, I received 2,960 emails directly addressed to me – that’s excluding spam, excluding bulk email lists, and excluding emails where I was CC:ed. I replied to 1,231 of those emails.

I vaguely recollect somewhere reading that the average human being can process approximately 150 relationships. I have 329 friends on Facebook, 15 pending friend requests, and 25 group invitations. Am I anti-social, or is this just crazy?

For a long time I've been skeptical of the role of video online. I always felt like people just liked watching videos on their television sets - not their computers. Evidence about online video use seemed to support my anecdotal conjecture.

But the last few months have delivered some major blows to my theory. Apple introduced the video ipod and started selling television shows through the iTunes store - and people took to it in droves. At the same time, YouTube seems to have become completely ubiquitous, allowing video publishing and video sharing to completely explode. And I was with a friend recently who now watches the Daily Show via his cell phone every day using Verizon's V-Cast.

I continue to be obsessed with the social and political implications of video games - in America, but I've started to get interested to their implications in China. China has a game called Legend of Mir II (frequently called Legend2). It's what's called a MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. That means that thousands of people play it simultaneous on the internet, meeting up with each other in the virtual world and talking to each other. It's basically a virtual world where people meet to communicate and collaborate. At given minute, Legend2 has approximately 600,000 concurrent users online (and sometimes more than a million). Legend2 has over 20 million monthly subscribers and is owned by Shanda, the largest Chinese online entertainment company. The company has over 140 million subscribers across all of their games. By the way, that completely dwarfs American MMORPG numbers.

There is something happening this week in Congress (I know, hard to believe). A bill call HR 1606 is coming up for a vote on Wednesday. The bill is designed to (a) protect bloggers and online political activity and (b) open large loop-holes in campaign finance law. I'm all for (a) - protecting online political activity. As for (b), I'm pretty sure that allowing more big money into the system is a bad idea - besides the obvious reasons (influence peddling) the major donor dilutes the power of the small donor. My work on the Dean campaign was about the triumph of citizens, about how if everyone participated we could be more powerful than a few large, wealthy interests.

I am a devoted Flickr user. The problem is that long before Flickr ever came along I was a devoted SmugMug user. So now I've got my photos split between SmugMug and Flickr - and not just a few photos, but gigabytes of photos. Generally I prefer Flickr, but SmugMug has two features that stand out: completely customizable templates, so I can add my own look and feel, and a shopping cart with a wide range of products, so that you can order mugs with pictures of my niece (which include a tiny markup that goes to her college fund).

I'm a bit late to the game, but the arguments about Google's AutoLink continue to fester and I'm feeling inclined to add my opinion. For those just joining us, Dan Gillmor has a decent summary and weighs in against the feature, Dave Winer makes the strident case against, and Kuro5hin summarizes and then plays defense.I've also spent some time during the last week playing with the feature. Kuro5hin is right that it is relatively limited and innocuous in its current manifestation -- but relatively is the key word there. To bring up Creative Commons is right on -- my issue here is with ownership and permissions. There are essentially two parts to the argument against the feature as it current exists: one is that the creator of the material owns the material, has rights to it, and AutoLink violates those rights because it does not seek permission from the owner. The other argument is that Google is getting to big and might become evil.

That's the title of this recent Wired article on newspapers and the future. It notes that The Washington Post organized a series of focus groups with younger readers and discovered - surprise!! - younger readers don't like newspapers:

...focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.

I recently wrote on my personal blog about how I've come to loathe even the once-celebrated "New York Times". And it's not just about newspapers. I noticed last week that John Cleese is now performing regularly on his website -- his quote: "It's like having a tiny TV station or a magazine. The simplicity is delightful."

Early on this blog I could feel podcasting coming, but I wasn't sure what that meant. I'm becoming increasingly obsessed with podcasting - and working with Tim to build an online radio station in our office. Some would tell you that my primary motivation is my personal satisfaction at hearing my own voice "on the air". There is no doubt some truth in motivating factor of the egoism of it (as there is in blogging), but more importantly I want to figure out alternatives to our major media machines. It's very clear that the major news outlets in this country aren't covering the war in Iraq with the seriousness and integrity it deserves. Political campaigns spent hundreds of millions of dollars in this last political cycle on television ads, arguably to no effect (except to enrich political media consultants).

Yesterday I was a speaker at the Serious Games conference in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post even had a front page story about the conference on Monday but thanks to the Post's impossible registration requirements I can't track it down. I'd recommend the Serious Games Initiative for more info.

But games have been an on-going fascination for the company. It goes beyond my own personal video game obsession (thanks to recent console game re-releases, Rally-X remains an constant and near-fatal distraction). In early September, the EchoDitto team went to Charlottesville, Virginia for a day-long brainstorming session with a group of UVA law school students. We were hosted by David Cohen, and we spend the day discussing virtual worlds and massive multi-player online games. Prior to the trip Michael Silberman posted recommend reading for online gaming and virtual worlds . Coming out of it we all had some interesting ideas and perspectives but a clear direction didn't emerge.

Yesterday's conference, though, clarified some things for me. The panel was hosted by the amazing Ian Bogost, whom I worked with on the Dean for Iowa game. Ian also introduced me some time ago to this interesting blog about games with an agenda. Also with on the panel was Chris Chambers from the Army Game Project, also known as America's Army. Excellent summary of the Army Game Project here. Some of the statistics he cited amazed me; 4 million unique players. At any given time 8,000 to 10,000 simultaneous players. The purpose of the game is basically soft-sell recruiting - providing a game experience that simulates what being in the Army is like. Listening to him talk, I realized that the game is really a brilliant form of advertising or marketing. They're using the game as mass media - like their own TV show.