I’m going off to Saratoga Springs to a mar­tial arts con­fer­ence. Right now I have a lot of ideas per­cu­lat­ing. Some are an extension/refinement of the “craft v. automation” thread from a few days ago. Others are in regards to Google Print and the moni­ti­za­tion of knowl­edge. I also have some thoughts about two teired mar­ket­ing in the print indus­try. Finally, the Blog­jects thing will happen. Its great to have all of this rattlin’ around inside my noggin’. Now I just have to carve out time to write.

On the plus side, classes are going really well. I’ve finally hit­ting some­thing of a groove.

Part of my goal for this blog is to begin to get more and more of my research work up here as an early review system. So while I still will be writ­ing about my daily goings on (and includ­ing the occai­sional photo or two), there will be a bit of a shift towards longer, more schol­arly posts. My hope is to take advan­tage of the cat­e­gories fea­ture and present dif­fer­ent views of the blog based on the con­tent that you are inter­ested in.

In the mean­time, let me tell you that trying to import word doc­u­ments into Word­press sucks. It took me more than an hour yes­ter­day to get the post ren­der­ing cor­rectly. That’s mainly due to Microsoft’s wonky spe­cial­ized HTML tags. Bleh. Any sug­ges­tions on stream­lin­ing that process are greatly appreciated.

I believe in the power of print media. I also believe in its longevity. Despite some futurist’s asser­tions, I do not think we are near­ing a print or paper­less future.[1] That said, I do not know if I believe in the via­bil­ity of the Print­ing Indus­try as it cur­rently exists. Amer­i­can Printer and indus­try experts tell us that we are in a time of tran­si­tion. The ques­tion is:

What does the future of print­ing look like? What will be the next instan­ti­a­tion of the Print indus­try be? Are we rapidly approach­ing a time of new indus­tries that use print, but are not nec­es­sar­ily printers?

What will follow in the days, weeks, and months to come is a med­i­ta­tion on these ques­tions. I do not want to present what I write as a def­i­nite or final view of the future. These writ­ing are simply a dialog with myself, with the indus­try as I observe it, and with anyone else who chooses to con­tribute to these posts. (Click on the More below for the full article)

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As promised, here are a few pic­tures I took yesterday:

Pro­fes­sor Lessig pre­sent­ing in Ingle Audi­to­rium.
This was taken during an ani­mated Q&A session.

Ralph Nader in Web Audi­to­rium.
Note how he towers over the interpreter:

Like I said, a very tall man.
Yes, I real­ize he’s slightly upstage.
Still, there’s a pretty big height dif­fer­ence –
espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that he’s sorta slouching.

Today was full of lec­tures at RIT. Lawrence Lessig rocked my friggin’ world. — he???s a bril­liant man and a phe­nom­e­nal speaker. I have a lot of thoughts on the lec­ture, but I???m reserv­ing them for the moment as they need more time to pec­u­late. Ralph Nader was on campus too. I poked my head in for a moment, but opted not to stay. So all I can say about Nader is that he is a very tall indi­vid­ual (and it looked like he had slept in his suit).

In addi­tion to all of that, I also sat in on a large group dis­cus­sion on new forms of writ­ing and how var­i­ous new media affect the ped­a­gog­i­cal process and two panel dis­cus­sions. The latter one, on Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty and Author­ship, was quite inter­est­ing. Espe­cially since it brought up ques­tions about who owns char­ac­ters cre­ated in online games (a ques­tion I find quite inter­est­ing). The prior one, on Pornog­ra­phy, sucked (that really wasn???t intended as a pun). The posi­tions taken were pretty sim­plis­tic and just not sat­is­fy­ing (again, no pun). I had hoped the speak­ers would prob­lema­tize the rela­tion­ship between pornog­ra­phy and the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tions medi­ums (from the Print­ing Press to the Inter­net). Instead they retread the sim­plis­tic ???objec­ti­fi­ca­tion argu­ment??? with­out deal­ing with the more com­plex prob­lems inher­ent in that argu­ment (in par­tic­u­lar, if you are saying that pornog­ra­phy is bad because it reduces par­tic­i­pants to per­for­mance objects ??? which are com­modi­tized based on their phys­i­cal fea­tures ??? then you need to acknowl­edge all of the other aspects of the culture/entertainment indus­try ??? pro­fes­sional sports being the best exam­ple ??? that engage in exactly the same behav­ior). Don???t get me wrong, I???m not all ???rah-​rah, go porn!??? I???m simply saying that I think that is a much more com­plex sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially on the col­lege cam­puses of today.

One thing that I???ve been think­ing about recently is the space where dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion and pub­licly acces­si­ble shar­ing com­mu­ni­ties meet campus reg­u­la­tions in the age of the face­book and myspace. In par­tic­u­lar I???m think­ing about this in terms of party pictures.

During my time at RIT (back in the stone age of film) I was known to imbue the occa­sional adult bev­er­age at print­ing social events. This was before RIT became a ???dry??? campus (though the ???wet­ness??? at the time didn???t really negate the fact that most of us were under­age ??? sorry mom, it was bound to come out sooner or later). And there are def­i­nitely pic­tures of me doing so, along with other mem­bers of a cer­tain pro­fes­sional group I was involved in. How­ever, the cir­cu­la­tion of those pic­tures (4×6 color glossies) was han­dled using quaint mano-​to-​mano tech­nol­ogy. We???d pick them up from the devel­oper and then pass them around at meet­ings, in labs, and, more often than not, at par­ties (while con­sum­ing more illicit adult bev­er­ages ??? oh the ter­ri­ble cycle).

Fast for­ward a decade. Today???s stu­dents are more often than not equipped with dig­i­tal cam­eras and shar­ing party pic­tures through var­i­ous dig­i­tal means. Among the pos­si­bil­i­ties for this cir­cu­la­tion are social net­work­ing sites like afore men­tioned face­book and myspace. Choos­ing these meth­ods of dis­tri­b­u­tion also means that those pic­tures are poten­tially avail­able to a larger audi­ence. And that audi­ence may include not only peers but also admin­is­tra­tors at the insti­tu­tions that these stu­dents frequent.

So can stu­dents be busted for throw­ing a party after the fact if pho­to­graphic evi­dence sur­faces online? Exist­ing prece­dent def­i­nitely sug­gest this is the case. There are cur­rently inves­ti­ga­tions into LA night­clubs that allow under­age stars to drink. And a star of the Harry Potter movies stirred up a bit of con­tro­versy when pic­tures of her appar­ently drink­ing a Corona sur­faced online.

So while tech­nol­ogy may facil­i­tate rapid shar­ing of pic­tures from par­ties, social (or per­haps struc­tural con­trols) enter into the equation.

Today went smoothly. I taught a lab where I tack­led both a new peice of soft­ware and con­di­tional logic (if … then … else). Tonight I’m hoping to get ahead on research and take a pass at finally writ­ing my Bleecker response (which will be hosted both here and on Con­duit — an inter­disi­pli­nary web pub­li­ca­tion at RIT).