David lafontaine's
Sips from the firehose
A site that attempts to render the internet down into one easy-to consume mental beverage.
A Social Media Milestone: A Crowdsourced State of the Union Address?
The Teleprompter is Us Tonight's State of the Union address is being billed as "the most interactive political act ever." Well, other than the crowdsourcing that brought people to the guillotine during the French Revolution. Although, if you read through the comments...
Truth Vigilantes and Online Reputation
This was originally a comment to Robert Niles' excellent piece on the Online Journalism Review, on whether or not the New York Times should be a "Truth Vigilante". I'm republishing it here, because it looks like the commenting feature on OJR (always a little hinky) is...
Panorama Experiments
Just playing around with some of the photos I've shot over the years - this one is a panorama of the city of Tbilisi, Georgia. It's an amazing town - ancient and modern, and at the time this photo was taken, baking at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wearable Media: T-Shirts, Hats & Wristbands
Video Everywhere Comes to Our Clothing I guess it was inevitable. Back in the 80s, hip designers realized that consumers were willing to become walking billboards for their product logos, all for the sweet, sweet tradeoff of being able to flaunt our ability to buy...
“Filter Bubbles” and the Raison d’Etre for This Here Blog
The contradictory voices are there. They are presented by voices that mock & disagree with them – in much the same way that newspaper editors, radio hosts and TV anchors did back in the pure human filtration days – but the voices and bits of information are there.
I do agree that there is a serious problem in our society today that a large segment is seemingly living in its own reality, with its own set of facts an interpretations. But this has been true before in our history as well (See: Davis, Jefferson et al.). But this problem predates the web, and is attributable more to talk radio and the removal of the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time than anything else … and to the failure of the American educational system to produce large swathes of the citizenry capable of critical thinking.
4.8 Zettabytes of Content -or- Why We’re Really REALLY Gonna Need Good Filters
One of my oft-repeated memes for my trainees - and, not coincidentally, the reason behind the very name of this blog - is that as we move further into these uncharted digital waters, what we need more than more information is better filters for the ever-increasing...