GroshLink

Tron cometh again

tom — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:36:08 -0400

How about PR and making "must attend" movie openings, e.g., Marketing ‘Tron: Legacy’ Brings the Hardest Sell Yet (Brooks Barnes, NY Times. 7/26/2010). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/media/26tron.html).

“If this thing isn’t a hit,” said John Juarez, a Comic-Con attendee, “somebody at Disney is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Yes, it's a business with the importance of getting material on screen which will sell and being sure to lock-down advance ads (Brooks Barnes. "Screenvision to Revamp Preshow Ads at Cinemas." NY Times. 7/26/2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/media/26screenvision.html). Some complementary thoughts shared in yesterday's post: "A fan of a critic ...," http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/26/a-fan-of-a-critic-....

One of several trailers emphasizing a variety of threads: http://www.youtube.com/v/L9szn1QQfas

Do you remember in 1982 when we heard, "In the future video game battles will be a matter of life or death"? I think that I liked Jeff Bridges more "back in the day."

Trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/.

A fan of a critic ...

tom — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:08:56 -0400

I really appreciated A. O. Scott's "Everybody’s a Critic of the Critics’ Rabid Critics," (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/movies/25scott.html, NY Times, 7/21/2010), generated by the reviews of "Inception." Below's his "conclusion," opening up further reflection/conversation.

Film culture on the Internet does not only speed up the story of a movie’s absorption of a movie into the cultural bloodstream but also reverses the sequence. Maybe my memory is fuzzy, or maybe I’m dreaming, but I think it used to be that “masterpiece” was the last word, the end of the discussion, rather than the starting point.

But in this case we end up with where we should have started, wondering what the movie is about, what it means, puzzling over symbols and plot points. It’s almost as if we’re all in a movie that’s running backward, like “Memento.” Which was totally overrated. Unless it was a masterpiece. I’m going to have to see it again.

When I shared Scott's article with Theresa, she mentioned her agreement with the over-rated nature of the current review structure (in both positive/negative directions). With regard to the question of when a "piece" becomes a "masterpiece," she used the illustration of the Beatles, i.e., when did the Beatles become such a monumental band ("a masterpiece" or those which churned out "masterpiece" albums and/or songs)?

So, we find "masterpiece" too much for a new release (let alone use in a "pre-release" commentary). Maybe in the larger culture, on-line critics provide the much needed yes/no filter to sift through the overwhelming stream of new media options. It seems that some "take it all in" (or as much as they can) despite how bad it is, whereas others prioritize based on what is supposedly a "must see" by those they consider "well-informed." I guess for us, other concerns set the stage (Note: Earlier post related to "Inception," What do you dream about? Who is in your dream world? -- http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/20/what-do-you-dream-about).

As for "Inception," I'm afraid that at present I can envision/dream enough of it for myself.

Confession 1: Scott's typically the first film review I read on new releases. As such, I've read his review (http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/movies/16inception.html), along with some others (e.g., Steven D. Greydanus. Christianity Today. 7/16/2010. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2010/inception.html), and watched some trailers. Result: "Inception" has been wait listed for so we can enjoy the summer with our family (and extended family). Nothing like the "masterpiece" of God's creation, God's story, family, friendships, the Body of Christ. ... which reminds me of a post which I wrote about "Inception" on July 20, What do you dream about? Who is in your dream world? (http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/20/what-do-you-dream-about).

Confession 2: I don't want to come across as "holier" than the silverscreen and leave the impression that movies (and the media in general) have been taken out of our family's mix this summer. So to come clean, in addition to the reading frenzy (some below, more coming a future post on this topic), recently ...

The twins enjoyed "Toy Story 3" with one of their Aunts. Afterwards they
- turned in reading lists to Barnes & Nobles and Borders
- secured a new pile of books and one more video to add to our family's crowded shelves
Theresa and I rewatched "Amazing Grace." Wow. To God be the glory! Note: earlier post of related interest, http://groshlink.net/archives/2007/09/15/human-trafficking-and-enslavement-symposium.
Harry Potter has received a lot of attention in text and film from others in the family. Still not of interest to me. ... A post for another day.

Still trusting google?

tom — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:13:14 -0400

How do you search for material on-line? Do you place absolute trust in The Google Algorithm (NY Tmes Op-Ed, 7/14/2010)? If not, what is your preferred search engine and why? Just wondering ... I'm still using google for searches. I appreciate their "library," blog reader, and email. Sometimes I use their maps. But I've not gotten into it as a social networking or business recommendation tool.

Tweet Less, Kiss More ... Amen!

tom — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:29:34 -0400

Came across a NY Times Op-Ed entitled, Tweet Less, Kiss More (Bob Herbert. NY Times Op-Ed. 7/16/2010). Below's the conclusion. Enjoy today. This summer. Into the fall, i.e., the new academic year :-)

We need to reduce the speed limits of our lives. We need to savor the trip. Leave the cellphone at home every once in awhile. Try kissing more and tweeting less. And stop talking so much.

Listen.

Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you -- Tweet Less, Kiss More (Bob Herbert. NY Times Op-Ed. 7/16/2010).

What do you dream about? Who is in your dream world?

tom — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:40:10 -0400

When I was younger, I watched, dreamed, and imagined films like Inception (2010). Furthermore, I wondered why everyone else wasn't generating similar dreams and desiring to jump into them (and their media creations) with me.

Over the past couple years real life has become too gritty to regularly watch, dream, and imagine these type of realities. As such, I long for, dream, and strive toward much different realities:

directed by the creation and the God's call as one stamped with the image of God, to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28)
responding to the Fall and it's destructive nature (Genesis 3)
traveling in exile/back again (again and again)
prophetic word to our culture and cultural religious exercises
sitting on the hills hearing the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)
living out the Kingdom of God as salt, light, leaven
partaking/blossoming the fruit of the Spirit through the freedom in Christ (vs. the bondage of the sinful acts of this present darkness/world) -- Galatians 5
stepping into the New Creation with family, friends, neighbors, and many more in local communities ... beyond local communities spanning not only geography/ethnicity, but time (Hebrews 11-12, Revelation 21-22)

Time by the Word, Spirit, witness (word/life) and Body of Christ to sow these seeds of transformation which rest upon the foundation of acknowledging the brokenness of human beings (individual, corporate) and offering ourselves up to the One who alone offers redemption/next steps for the future. That is the seed to plant.

To conclude, at present, This Time the Dream’s on Me (A.O. Scott. NY Times Movie Review. 7/15/2010), ‘Inception’ Exceeds Box-Office Dreams (Brooks Barnes. NY Times. 7/18/2010), and Inception's Official Website are all I need regarding the film. But if you were one of the many to see the film (who helped make Inception #1 in North American theaters, so much so to give Leonardo DiCaprio his biggest opening ever), feel free to share your thoughts on it and lure me to the theater .... Otherwise, I'll wait until DVD ... or fill the gaps between the clips/trailers for myself :-0

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 11/Epilogue

tom — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:30:26 -0400

What is Clay Shirky's* formula for success? The "fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The promise is the basic 'why' for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the 'how' -- how will the difficulties of coordination be overcome, or at least be held to manageable levels? And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tool, what can you expect, and what will be expected of you?" (p.260, bold added) And be sure to have the components in that order!

Simple? No. Why? "[B]ecause the interactions among the different components is too complex" (p.261). I particularly appreciated Clay Shirky pointing out that social media isn't selling a product, but calling people to come together to make a product. I have found that to be the rub, sometimes leading a blog such as this to have more of the appearance of website. Is it a failure? No. I'm not only feeding Groshlink into Facebook, but also I'm using it more and more as a resource for those interested in learning more about our ministry. With regard to Facebook's move from 'fan' pages to 'like' pages, my gut reaction is that more 'members' decreases the potential for these groups to move toward direct 'real world' action. The proposal of local clustering makes a lot of sense to me, one which I've thinking about for Emerging Scholars Network and Faculty Ministry. Clay Shirky's two questions regarding tools are quite good: 'Does the group need to be small or large?' and 'Does it need to be short-lived or long-lived?'" (p.266)

What do we do with all the group forming, e.g., Facebook's 'like' feature? How long until the young are displaced and find themselves in the midst of a culture in which they did not grow up? Hope to have another post which draws together my overall response to the book. I don't have the time to do such at present :-( Maybe it's good to hang open in order to let the ideas flow, as long as I get back them.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 7-8
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 9-10

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 9-10

tom — Sat, 01 May 2010 07:05:11 -0400

Clay Shirky's* exploration of the Six Degrees of Separation provided helpful clues on homophily (i.e., the grouping of like with like), developing dense and sparse connections at the same time, and how "bonding capital tends to be more exclusive and bridging capital more inclusive" (p.224). "In Small World networks bonding tends to happen within the clusters, while bridging happens between clusters. ... Perhaps the most significant effect of our new tools, though, lies in the increased leverage they give the most connected people. The tightness of a large social network comes less from increasing the number of connections that the average member of the network can support than from increasing the number of connections that the most connected people can support" (p.224).

The material at the end of chapter, drawn from Ronald Burt's "The Social Origins of Good Ideas" resonated with me.

"First, most good ideas came from people who were bridging 'structural holes,' which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Second, bridging these structural holes was valuable even when other variables, such as rank and age (both of which correlate for higher degrees of social connection), were controlled for. ... In Burt's analysis, a dense social network of people in the same department (and who were therefore likely to be personally connect to one another) seemed to create an echo-chamber effect. ... Burt found that bridging capital puts people at greater risk of having good ideas (his phrase) than do any individual traits. ... Even when the judicious use of social connections increases the proportion of good ideas, most ideas are still bad. It's not enough to find some way to increase the successful ideas. Some way needs to found to tolerate the failures too" (p.229-232).

Chapter 10: Failure for Free seeks to address how social tools enable the volume produced by the publish-then-filter of websites such as Meetup which are successful because of the failures. Linux and Wikipedia both illustrate the desire to work alongside a bigger project instead of doing something on one's own. Meetup, like Flickr and Facebook, is an enabling platform. "What the open source movement teaches us is that the communal can be at least as durable as the commercial. For any given piece of software, the question, "Do the people who like it take care of each other?" turns out to be a better prediction of success than "What's the business model?" As the rest of the world gets access to the tools once reserved for the techies, that pattern is appearing everywhere, and it is changing society as it does" (p.238-9).

Does Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization leave the reader with a formula for success? Turning to Chapter 11 to find out.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 7-8

tom — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:35:15 -0400

Does Faster and faster, title of Chapter 7,* summarize your experience of speed of on-line communication? Have you at times gotten run over by the volume of the communication or by groups coordinated via good communication (some version of a flash mob)? I loved Clay Shirky's illustrations of the fall of the German Democratic Republic (1989), protests in Belarus (2006), German communication in Blitzkrieg (1940), the suprise punch of the Falun Gong (1999), dealing with flight delays, changes in loan stipulations, and Egyptain political activists. Wanting to know more about Solving Social Dilemmas, I charged into Chapter 8.

Of course, Clay Shirky doesn't actually claim social tools can solve social dilmmas, instead he offers various ways in which social tools can amplify our ability to address them. As a follower of Christ, I differ with his Tit-for-Tat approach to the extraordinary and daily use of the Prisoners' Dilemma. We are to always confess and share the truth as part of our loving relationship with God. Such a way of life supercedes our love of neighbor and self. But I found his remedy to the concerns expressed by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000), quite on the mark. Meetup is a great illustration of how affinity and proximity make a great match, particularly for those on the outside, seeking social opportunities. Due to Theresa's connections with MOPS, I'm not surprised that the most popular current group is Stay at Home Moms (SAHM). But I would guess that Facebook's surge among SAHM has been taking a big chunk out of this audience. Can anyone give me insight on this topic?

Clay Shirky raises three issues regarding the new freedoms of on-line connection/assembly:

loss of jobs to specialists who are displaced by mass amateurism
loss of governmental (and journalistic) ability to control media output
"Networked organizations are more resilient as a result of better commuication tools and more flexible soical structures, but this is as true of terrorist netwroks or criminal gangs as of Wikipedians or student protestors. This third loss, where the harms are not merely transition, leads to a hard question: What are we going to do about the neagive effects of freedom. ... It used to be hard to get people to assemble and easy for existing groups to fall apart. Now asembling latent groups is simple, and the groups, once assemble, can be quite robust in the face of indifference or deven direct opposition from the larger society. (In some cases, that very opposition can strengthen the group's cohesion, as with the Pro-Ana[rexic] girls.) When it is hard to form groups, both potentially good and bad groups are prevented from forming; when in becomes simple to form groups, we get both the good and the bad ones. This is going to force society to shift from simply preventing groups from forming to actively deciding which existing ones to try to oppose, a shift that parallels the publish-then-filter pattern generally. -- p.210-211.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6

tom — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 06:00:28 -0400

My reference to the Body of Christ in Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5, may have been looking for more of what we find in Chapter 6: Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.* Let's explore what "new tools give life to new forms of action" which "in turn challenge existing institutions, by eroding the institutional monopoly on large-scale coordination" (p.109, from Chapter 6 Abstract, italics in original).

Chapter 6: Collective Action and Institutional Challenges is actually focused upon the church, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church. In what manner? Clay Shirky devotes significant attention to how on-line lay coordination (Voice of the Faithful, i.e., VOTF) in 2002 led to sexual scandal reforms/resignations which failed to occur even ten years previously when the issues were raised by the media in 1992. What enabled strong lay mobilization? The ease of sharing information (versus expending the energy to collect/mail newspaper clippings and find out the the stories of others) along with the coordination of response through on-line resources and arranging public meetings.

Later in the chapter, Clay Shirky also refers to the challenges of parish authority by the Episcopalian Church in Virigina when they brokeaway from the U.S. denomination, in protest to the ordination of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson, to go under the Nigerian Anglican Church.

What powerful tool do we find now in regular use, email. The ability to go viral.

social tools don't create collective action -- they merely remove the obstacles to it. Those obstacles have been so significant and pervasive, however, that as they are being removed, the world is becoming a different place. This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple, easty-to-use tools like e-mail, mobile phones, and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their daily lives. Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new behaviors. -- p.159-160.

Clay Shirky's stringing me along as I anticipate Chapter 7: Faster and faster is going to provide intense illustrations regarding Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5

tom — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:00:50 -0400

Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production. Tell me more! As many of you know, collaborative production rests in the soul of my understanding of being part of the Body of Christ. Let's dig in to find out what we can learn from Chapter 5 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Oranizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008):

Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is considerably harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound. New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of nonfinancial motivations and by allowing for wildly differing levels of communication (p.109, Chapter Abstract, italics in original).

Yes, collaboration's harder than simply sharing. Shirky focuses upon the history of and the continuing development of Wikipedia as a coordinating resource via the spontaneous division of a community of love (!). He points out two (actually three) surprising lessons learned about collaborative web projects:

1. the imbalance is the same shape across a huge number of different kinds of behaviors. ... The general form of a power law distribution appears in social settings when some set of items -- users, pictures, tags -- is ranked by frequency of occurrence. You can rank a group of Flickr users by the number of pictures they submit. You can rank a collection of pictures by the number of viewers. You can rank tags by the number of pictures they are applied to. All of these graphs will be in the rough shape of a power law distribution. ...

2. the imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them. Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions of users. ... Though the word "ecosystem" is overused as a way to make simple situations seem more complex, it is merited here, because large social systems cannot be understood as a simple aggregation of the behavior of some nonexistent "average" user. ... Any system described by a power law, where mean, median, and mode are so different, has several curious effects. The first is that by definition, most participants are below average. This sounds strange to many ears, as we are used to a world where average means middle, which is to say where average is the same as the median. You can see this "below average" phenomenon at work in the economist's joke: Bill Gates walks into a bar, and suddenly everyone inside becomes a millionaire, on average. The corollary is that everyone else in the bar also acquires a below-average income. The other surpirse of such systems it that as they get larger, the imbalance between the few and the many gets larger, not smaller. As you get more weblogs, or more MySpace pages, or more YouTube videos, the gap between the material that gets the most attention and merely average attention wil grow, as wil the gap beween average and median (p.124-125, 127).

Comment: You can see where this is going with regard to the readership of most blogs, of which Groshlink fits the category. But the comparatively low readership of the various pages with which Theresa and I are involved in provides the opportunity for concentrated, deeper connections. The larger our friendship circles (such as on Facebook) and the number of groups we find ourselves managing, the lower our personal interaction. How does one choose proper size and work toward those ends with a project such as the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog? Any proposals on an open project for InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry related to ESN? Is it best for us to turn attention to pilot campuses or through the door open for campuses to tap into a national open project? Clarity in direction and fluidity in structure is important for growth/development. Turning to Chapter 6: Collective Action and Institutional Challenges. Maybe that's more of what I was referring to at the beginning of this post.

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4