David Bollier talk on 5/18 at NYU – History of Free Culture Movement

TIME: Monday, May 18, 7:00pm

VENUE: Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street (Warren Weaver Hall) Room 109 TITLE: “The Struggle to Build a Digital Republic”

ABSTRACT: David Bollier will speak about the themes of his new book, Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (New Press). The book is the first comprehensive history of the “free culture” movement and “sharing economy” that is empowering ordinary people, disrupting markets and changing politics and culture. Bollier will talk about the rise of free and open source software, Creative Commons licenses, the new forms of non-market creativity (Wikipedia, blogs, remix music, videos) as well as fascinating innovations in open science, open education and “open business models.” More about the book can be found at the website www.viralspiral.cc. More about Bollier can be found at www.bollier.org. Bio David Bollier is a leading American activist, author, blogger and proponent of “free culture” on the Internet and the commons. He is an editor of Onthecommons.org and Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Bollier is also co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., organization that advocates for the public’s stake in the Internet and copyright law, and the author of Silent Theft, Brand Name Bullies, and four other books. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

VENUE: Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street (Warren Weaver Hall) Room 109

Contested Geographies in Wikipedia, Glaiyer and Reich, Columbia, April 27, 4-5.30pm

Contested Geographies in Wikipedia: An exploration of controversy on the web

Tom Glaisyer, PhD student in Communications, Columbia University, and Josh Reich, www.i2pi.com

Date / Time: 4 – 5.30 Monday April 27th Location: Room 107B Journalism School

Tom G writes:  I’ve been working with Josh Reich of www.i2Pi.com on an analysis of controversy in Wikipedia around articles related to ongoing armed conflicts. We are at an early stage of analysis but have reached a point where feedback would be useful. The analysis is an attempt at revealing how Wikipedia is as much a negotiation tool as it is an encyclopedia. Our approach takes into account and builds on prior analysis by others though it explicitly looks at real conflicts and how they play out on Wikipedia rather than starting with wiki edit wars. Ultimately, we hope our final paper will incorporate thinking from fields well beyond those traditionally engaged in analysis of large scale conversation analysis on the web. Feel free to invite others, but do set the expectation that this is a “work in progress” and that we’re looking for feedback. Though there will be some technical discussion our hope is that the final product will prove interesting to anyone interested in information-architecture, conflict resolution, sociology, communications, and data analysis. Look forward to seeing you if you can make it.

Saskia Sassen presentation at Columbia, April 27, 12-2pm

Monday, April 27, from 12 to 2pm, Saskia Sassen (Columbia) will present at the Communications Colloquium hosted by the Communications Program and ISERP.

Her presentation is entitled “Cultures of use and the constituting of digital power”.

The event will take place in room 107B of the Graduate School of Journalism (in the basement).

John Peters at Cyberscholars event at MIT.

————-Announcement: Please Circulate Widely———————– A Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyber Scholars Working Group Special Event In conjunction with MiT 6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission 9:30 am – 11:30 am, Friday, April 24, 2009 E51-315 (MIT campus) Please RSVP to Colleen Kaman at ckaman@mit.edu Light snacks provided Linked announcement: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit6/subs/agenda.html Whatever happened to loneliness? Social thought about communication, 1959/2009 John Durham Peters, University of Iowa A talk followed by open discussion Around 1959, social commentators looked at the media landscape and saw loneliness everywhere. According to a wide range of intellectuals, the mass media of radio, television, film, newspapers, and magazines addressed people as members of a lonely crowd. Some avant-garde thinkers–in zoology, astronomy, neurology, parapsychology, and theater–saw in the tape recorder and radio potentials for peer-to-peer messages, but most understood the effort to pull private meaning from mass media as a sort of madness. In 2009 the scene is radically different. Commentators on the media landscape see in frenetic networking the collapse of mass media and the triumph of peer-to-peer. Some long for the cold familiar comfort of existential solitude amid a world of pokes and tweets. The fashion has swung from schizophrenia to autism as the mental illness that holds the truth of our moment. By using the late 1950s as a point for defamiliarizing the present, this paper tries to find out what is new in the media landscape of our moment. John Durham Peters is F. Wendell Miller Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa and author of, among other books, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. The Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group is a forum for fellows and affiliates studying issues confronting the information age to discuss their ongoing research. Each session is focused on the peer review and discussion of current projects submitted by a presenter. Meeting alternatively at Harvard, MIT, Yale, the working group aims to expand the shared knowledge of young scholars by bringing together these preeminent centers of thought on issues confronting the information age. Discussion sessions are designed to facilitate advancements in the individual research of presenters and in turn encourage exposure among the participants to the multi-disciplinary features of the issues addressed by their own work. MIT Comparative Media Studies (http://cms.mit.edu/) and C4FCM (http://civic.mit.edu) are co-sponsors of Cyberscholars at MIT.

CCC social get-together, Thursday April 16, 9-11 pm, at the Magician

Collective Communications Campus is hosting an informal gettogether for communications grad students and scholars from the greater NYC area on Thursday 9-11pm at the Magician on the Lower East Side. Come, bring a friend, and meet colleagues from elsewhere over cold drinks and cutting-edge chatter.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=89598304814

Surveillance Societies, Conference at Macaulay College, April 24-26

Surveillance Societies: What Price Security?

March, April 24 Saturday, April 25 Sunday, April 26

An international conference focusing on the tensions between systems of security within and between societies and systems of surveillance over members of those societies.

Conference to be held at: Macaulay Honors College of The City University of New York 35 West 67th Street, New York, New York 10023

http://macaulay.cuny.edu/conference/surveillance.html

Program et al below

USER GENERATED CONTENT 3.0, April 17 conference at CITI/Columbia

USER GENERATED CONTENT 3.0:
From Threat to Opportunity

April 17, 2009
9:00am – 5:00pm

CITI

Columbia University
New York, NY

The rapid increase of user-generated content on the Internet is a source of concern for traditional media firms. Will the YouTubes, Facebooks, Flickrs, Second Lifes and the HuffPos take away significant audience segments on a sustaining basis? What are the ramifications for intellectual property law, for the trust of news sources, for political polarization? Will reputational systems and wikis replace traditional institutional authorities? The symposium will review findings on current web user behavior and on evolving online business models to better understand the contours of these new economic and social realities– let’s call it Web 3.0.

Agenda

8:30                  REGISTRATION

9:00 – 9:15      SETTING THE STAGE

9:15 – 10:30    THE EVOLUTION OF USER GENERATED CONTENT

• The Principal Exemplars So Far
  • Blogging
  • Wikis
  • Gaming/virtual worlds
  • Social networking
  • Reputational systems
  • Forums/Newsgroups
  • Other
• Governance Practices
• Business Models So Far
  • Advertising
  • Direct marketing
  • Fees, voluntary contributions and micro payments
  • Non-profit and volunteer models
  • Other

10:30 – 10:45   COFFEE BREAK

10:45 – 12:00   UNDERSTANDING EVOLVING ONLINE BEHAVIOR

• Who writes?
• Who reads?
• Word of mouth in the online world
• How long do they stay with it?
• How do these patterns vary with age, education and online experience?

12:00 – 1:30    LUNCH & KEYNOTE

1:30 – 3:00      SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODELS AND LONG TAILS

• The economics of low barriers to entry
• Long tails and the persisting economies of scale
• Capital investment dynamics: valuations and venture capitalists
• First mover advantage models
• The transition from voluntarism to commercial ventures
• Better than free
• The future of journalism
• The future of the performing arts
• The future of marketing and public relations

3:00 – 3:15     BREAK

3:15 – 4:30     LEGAL, SOCIAL & POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

• Copyright law and evolving public behavior
• Political and social polarization
• Censorship
• Trust and accuracy in the evolving public sphere
• Liability issues

4:30 – 5:00    CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

Registration

To register, please visit http://www.ersvp.com/r/ugc3. Corporate registration is $100; Government/Academic/Non-Profit registration is $50, and Student Registration is $35. CITI Affiliates, please contact Arian Rivera (arr2137@columbia.edu).

Bernard Stiegler | New French Philosophy and Media Theory, at NYU, april 2

Talk: Bernard Stiegler | New French Philosophy and Media Theory
Philosopher; director of cultural development, Centre Georges-Pompidou; author of La Techique et le temps; De la misère symbolique; Mécréance et discrédit; Prendre soin. Respondents:  Avital Ronell, Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature, NYU; Alexander Galloway, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU; Moderator: Emily Apter, Professor of French, English, and Comparative Literature, NYU

Thursday, April 02
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
NYU Maison Française (16 Washington Mews)

Blowing Up The Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture, conference, May 8-9 at NYU

This looks great

CONFERENCE
Blowing Up The Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture

WHEN: 8-9 May 2009

WHERE: New York University – Institute for Public Knowledge – http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/

WEBSITE: http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/brand/

Keynote Address by Rob Walker, New York Times “Consumed” Columnist

Invited Panelists
Paula Chakravartty, UMass Amherst
John Corner, University of Leeds
Arlene Davila, New York University
Mary Ebeling, Drexel University
Jonathan Gray, Fordham University
Miriam Greenberg, UC Santa Cruz
Graham Knight, McMaster University
Celia Lury, Goldsmiths, University of London
Jeff Pooley, Muhlenberg College
Marita Sturken, New York University

Description
Creative cities, PR nations, celebrity diplomacy, Hype Machine, branded philanthropy, YouTube identities…. These are both symptoms and effects of what Andrew Wernick termed “promotional culture”: the extension of promotional discourses, practices and performances into virtually all areas of public life.

What is at stake in these contemporary promotional paradigms? The interpenetration of public and private interests, techniques and expertise creates new anxieties and demands new forms of analysis. The goal of this two-day conference is to develop a set of productive critical perspectives on promotion in relation to contemporary culture. We seek to assemble creative and interdisciplinary frameworks to identify common themes and disjunctures inherent to these forms of communication. At issue is the changing role of the consumer-citizen-user in contemporary life.

For complete schedule, or to RSVP, visit: http://www.nyu.edu/ipk/brand/

For more information, contact conference co-organizers Melissa Aronczyk and Devon Powers at blowingupthebrand@gmail.com

Activism and New Media, at Rutgers, April 1

This Wednesday afternoon at Rutgers, the Center for Cultural Analysis will host an “Activism and New Media” conference. For anyone unable to make it out to NJ, we’re trying a new simulcasting system for this event. See the attached files for details, and e-mail Curtis Dunn (curtis.dunn@rutgers.ed) with any questions or technical issues.

ACTIVISM AND NEW MEDIA APRIL 1st at the TLH!!! SIMULCAST ON QUICKTIME!!! Greetings New Media fans! Just a reminder not to miss our conference on Activism this Wednesday – but if you cannot make the conference, we will be simulcasting it using QuickTime! To view the simulcast, use the file attached below. You will be able to see the event live, in real time (this is not a podcast). Please note that you must have QuickTime installed on your computer before activating this link. Best, Curtis Simulcast file: Curtis Scott Dunn Administrator Center for Cultural Analysis Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 8 Bishop Place New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8530 Phone: 732-932-8426 Fax: 732-932-8683 Email: curtis.dunn@rutgers.edu Web site: http://cca.rutgers.edu