Archive for October, 2007

Digital Ethnography

This morning I posted Just Another Brick in the Wall on my Recruitomatic blog. It features a video produced by the Digital Ethnography Working Group out of Kansas State University. The group is led by Dr. Michael Wesch

Wow, these guys produce such good stuff!

Here is another great visual, Information R/evolution:

Information R/evolution follows on from the excellent primer Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us. I posted that a while back on RecruitingBlogs.com.

Recruiting Talent: No Real Value in Virtual Worlds

‘Second Life, Virtually Useless’ » Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

An interesting post on Social Media Explorer ‘Deconstructing Second Life’ questions the value of Second Life based on a review of the virtual world’s demographics:

The demographics show 8.5 million users, but only 561,000 of those are “active.” While nearly 40 percent of the active ones are age 25-34, only 26 percent are from the United States (with Brazil a distant second a 8.5). The numbers show 57 percent of active users are male…

Read the rest of this entry » ‘Second Life, Virtually Useless’

Blog Action Day: Searching for Answers

Blog Action Day is designed to raise the collective voices of bloggers in a single refrain, this year about the environment.

Hmmm…If 15,000 or so bloggers who are taking part in this day of “mass participation” represent a pathetically small percentage of the total number of bloggers who regularly publish then the 15 million or so readers who could be potentially reached should not be overlooked. For some reason the cynic in me thinks it won’t be.

For my part I don’t want to create more waste in the blogging ecosphere by writing about something simply because everyone else is doing it, not really having anything to say except to note my wariness of anything that smacks of groupthink.

Besides, there will be so much to choose from that it seems the best I could do is find those posts I like best and comment on them, list them here perhaps. That and suggest you stop wasting energy too.

The Future Is What It Used To Be

The sweet irony of unrequited love for my efforts to understand the recursive nature of blogs has not reached the point at which I realize my efforts might be better spent researching something else. 

One of the benefits of chasing your tail is that in the process there is so much interesting stuff to discover and think about, all wonderful distractions from the bitter irony that if I am ever successful in my quest I’ll finish up kissing my ass good-bye.

And so I discovered Dr. Richard Barbrook who recently published what looks like a smashing book, Imaginary Futures.  I am setting this aside to study more closely because the thesis is fascinating and there is something about the overall feel of the thing that resonates with me, something retro maybe?

Here is the professor in his own words…

…and the text to study. Also, Sarah Snider’s review in Culture Wars, perhaps a better place to start.

projectstars: A New Twist or Old Problem?

‘Shooting Stars, Making Wishes’ » Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

I came across a new social network called projectstars, yet another killer startup. The site touts “blog for stock in the largest enterprise business blogging network” as if to suggest the potential payoff for participation might be worth the absolutely mind-numbing prospect of having to fill out yet another blessed profile first.

Read the rest of this entry » ‘Shooting Stars, Making Wishes’