Project New Media Literacies

Another new media white paper, this one from MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program. It “explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.”

The paper identifies the three challenges:

• The participation gap
• The transparency problem
• The ethics challenge

And shares a list of skills needed for engagement in today’s participatory culture.

Worth repeating

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted a survey that rendered an obvious conclusion: the Internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of national and international news, and television, led by CNN, continues to serve as the main source.

Wackos… and it’s all about assumptions

Political Correctness is out of control. On the way to work we usually hear the Family Health broadcast. Dr. Harold C. Thompson isn’t a bad guy, but sometimes I want to grit my teeth and scream, like today when Dr. Thompson assured us all that Santa and his elves have increased productivity due to adopting a smoke-free workplace and a healthy diet up at the North Pole. Dr. Thompson assumes this will be an uplifting and motivating message, but I am filled with disgust.

Now, I *am* a Grinch when it comes to Christmas, but every time we turn around someone is trying to get us all to redefine something we value and that is just fine the way it is. I don’t want Santa to be skinny, I’m OK with him losing the pipe, but lets get real here. Skinny Santa Clause means that thousands of Santa Impersonators will be out of a job. You can always put a pillow in your suit to pad out a bit, but if Santa Clause is skinny he’ll also have bony, uncomfortable knees for kids to sit on. Just read “The Hogfather” by Terry Pratchett to explore this concept.

What has this to do with New Media and NASA? Not a bloody thing, sorry. Well, maybe.

Old and new

Many journalists are catching on and joining the twitter community … They represent a Strategic Relationships Office combo platter … News and New Media: twittering journalists KB

The tale of the tape

Say your prayers

A lot of people don’t realize that the Vatican is a sovereign city-state. And even though it is the smallest country in the world in both population and physical size, it has, I guess, communications issues that face nations everywhere.

So it should not really come as a surprise that the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications has endorsed an iPhone application that allows users to load a prayer book used for saying a Catholic Mass.

It’s called iBreviary, and it’s only 99 cents! Gregorian chants to come. Check out the story here.

The future of social media, including in the federal government

I love Science Friday on NPR, but of course it airs when I’m working … so I don’t always get a chance to hear it. (The radio reception in my office is awful and I get busy so I forget to go online to listen in.) But this past Friday the guest was Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media,talking about social media, including how  the federal government can improve: here ( federal government portion started about 12 minutes in.) The conversation continued on blogs, including one I follow occasionally:  contentious.com So much information, so little time! But excellent food for thought. KB

Nights before Christmas

As I work at my desk listening to holiday music – courtesy Pandora internet radio – I am both overwhelmed and excited by the possibilities presented by “new media.” This is the season for enjoying family and friends, so I won’t go deep, but would like to post a few things to consider when we really get back to work after the new year.

One, I have lots of emails and thoughts from Rich regarding new media. I will collate those and share.

Two, I would like to start a Langley Twitter, possibly in Fab where they’re building Ares stuff, and have spoken with a couple of folks there to see if that’s possible. The work being done in ATOL is also very interesting and might lend itself to such as well. I think we’d need a site like Flickr for posting related photos, too.

All the world’s a stage, and there’s no curtain any more…

This blog post illustrates exactly the kind of thing that happened with the Mumbai bombings and twitter, but right here in the US. A plane crash, not one that killed anyone (apparently, I haven’t seen the News yet) in Denver that was tweeted blow-by-blow.

Aside from the obvious implications for NASA and tweets from any kind of failure, especially a fatal or spectacular one, the tweets from the crash passenger also go into a little detail about how the passengers were treated after the event. This kind of thing may well transform the day to day attitude of every person everywhere from one of assumed anonymity to Show Time At All Times. The kind of life that regularly drives celebrities off their nuts and into rehab.

Brave New Worlds

It’s a Brave, New Media World out there and all kinds of issues crop up due to the utter ubiquity of computers and devices, the legal (or illegal) use thereof and the side effects of all these things. I believe that whatever we do with our New Media efforts, we need to be reminded every now and again that the Internet is both a massive engine for empowerment and also an incredibly easy place to forget things as well as to go overboard remembering them.