Huxley, Orwell and Postman

I wanted to talk a little bit about this quote from the Neil Postman book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not
prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally
imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to
deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people
will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their
capacities to think.

Remember, the paragraph and the book were written pre-Internet explosion. But I wonder how that quote relates to right now and what Postman, if he were alive, would be writing about the Internet and convergence journalism.

Let's talk about that a bit in today's class.

Two Quotes for Today

For the first part of class today, I want us to consider two quotes from the Henry Jenkins book Convergence Culture.

The first one actually is from historian Michael Schudson who is quoted in the book on page 226. Schudson says:

Monitorial citizens tend to be defensive rather than pro-active... The
monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than
information-gathering. Picture parents watching small children at the community
pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene.
They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The
monitorial citizen is not an absentee citizen but watchful, even while he or she
is doing something else... [They] are perhaps better informed than citizens of
the past in that, somewhere in their heads, [while] they have more bits of
information, there is no assurance that they know at all what to do with what
they know.

That is an interesting comment and something Andrew Shelffo should be able to talk about first hand today.

The other quote comes from the very end of Convergence Culture. Jenkins writes:

Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where
grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer
and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Convergence
culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more
powerful within convergence culture -- but only if they recognize and use that
power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture.

A pretty powerful ending and a call to action. What do you think?

The Other Walter Reed

Today's class starts here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html

Comment and Win

We have been talking about comments in this class, and many of you have been employing your own set of cheap tricks to try to elicit comments to your blog posts these past couple weeks.

Over at Gridskipper, they are having a contest to try to allure more commenters.

They write:

Tell you what, 25th commenter this week, will win a Gilette Fusion Power
razor, a copy of Secrets of the Model Dorm and a plastic hand. We figure
that covers pretty much every demographic we have.

That sounds like a mighty-fine prize package. I mean, who could resist?

The Feedback System

In chapter 12 of his book We the Media, Dan Gillmor writes:

Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems. They work in something close
to real time and capture -- in the best sense of the word -- the multitude
of ideas and realities each of us can offer. On the Internet, we are defined
by what we know and share. Now, for the first time in history, the feedback
system can be global and nearly instantaneous.

This feedback system is a big reason I got involved in the online world in the first place. I am wondering where it ranks for other people as a reason for them to be pulled into the Internet.