“The way media is changing isn’t entirely positive when it comes to creating a more informed citizenry. Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?”
Archives for March 10, 2014
The Onion Breaks The Story: National Endowment For The Arts To Award $80 Million For Talentless Hacks
“The independent federal agency said it intends to provide the nation’s exceptionally unskilled and deluded artists with cash grants ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 in order to sway them from continuing with their derivative and atrocious work, thereby significantly bolstering the overall quality of art in the United States.”
The World’s Rarest Jazz 78s Were Found Here
“In the 1940s, the Jazz Record Center became the default clubhouse for a cabal of distinctive gentlemen: exiles, recluses, characters so outsize in their eccentricities that they felt invented, except better. Here there was not a sense—as with the archetypal Outsider—that a choice had been made. Here, the earliest collectors of 78 rpm records found each other.”
Ukraine’s Most-Influential Poet Is Beaten
“It may sound like an old-fashioned ‘poet stands up to tyranny’ story, like something out of ‘Les Miz’—‘Can you hear the people sing?’—but it’s really kind of like that.”
The Ignorance Economy (It’s Thriving In The Age Of Information)
“The myth of the ‘information society’ is that we’re drowning in knowledge. But it’s easier to propagate ignorance.” That’s especially so when issues are so complicated that it’s easier to present them as the topics for discussion in which both sides are granted equal time.
David Carr: The Quality Of TV Has Gotten So Good It’s Edging Out Other Art Forms
“The vast wasteland of television has been replaced by an excess of excellence that is fundamentally altering my media diet and threatening to consume my waking life in the process.”
Where Are The Real Scholars Of Technology? (It Matters Because The World Is Changing)
“Technology comforts, surrounds, and confounds us. When we argue about MOOCs, hydraulic fracturing, NSA surveillance, or drone warfare, we’re arguing about technology. Unfortunately, the conversation is impoverished by the absence of a robust cadre of scholars who can engage with and critique the role of technology in society.”