By vikkichowney on November 13, 2009
I’m planning to visit Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square, London on Monday. It’s an ‘original and ambitious art installation’ by Angela Palmer that visually expresses the connection between deforestation and climate change.
The project itself involves a series of 10 rainforest tree stumps with roots still attached, which have been transported from Ghana and rearranged as a ‘ghost forest’.
It’ll be there from the 16-22 November, before heading off to Thorvaldsens Plads in Copenhagen for COP15 throughout 7-18 December.
Posted in Charity/NGO, Events, NaBloPoMo |
By vikkichowney on November 13, 2009
I’m LOVING this new Muse video. The band is showing its techy side, which reminds me of Felix’s Machines that I first saw at TED in Oxford. Take a look…
Posted in Music, Music videos, NaBloPoMo, New music |
By vikkichowney on November 13, 2009
I spent today at the IAB’s Engage 2009 conference. Charles Leadbeater, author of We-think: the power of mass creativity, was the best speaker for me. I liked his advice for dealing with trolls (“sometimes, you just have to let it go”) and it was refreshing to see someone speak so fluently without the dreaded PowerPoint. His note about the future of media being about ‘mutuality’ was music my ears as well (as that’s what we’re trying to do with Reputation Online by combining editorial with UGC).
I also found his insight into the way kids interact with the online space really insightful. I realised a while ago that I don’t have any connection with anyone under the age of 21 any more, so his firsthand experience was great.
He spoke about his son hating things that stop him from grazing content; copyright, ads etc. “The dominant part of his culture is playing. It’s a fragmented space in which he is a participant, instead of a passive watcher”.
Leadbeater also made an interesting point about the potential for ‘playing’ online to be integrated into Education. One Sunday, his son had discovered an animation tool online and was so excited by it that he pondered making it a career choice, asking for extra software and books to teach himself. Leadbeater said that in an ideal world, this could have been continued at school the next day if his son had been able to go in and ask to learn more from his teachers.
He compared this to his own experience of a Sunday night as a child, which was all about Songs of Praise. He noted that he admired the architecture, fashion, design within the show, because that was all he could watch. For kids nowadays, there’s a vast amount of subjects and information online to get involved with. Yes, this could mean that they don’t pay attention to each one as much as he did with SOP, but it’s an interesting idea all the same.
Posted in NaBloPoMo, PR & Marketing |
By vikkichowney on November 13, 2009
US firm Pew Research has released its report into social behaviour, called ‘social isolation and new technology’.
From the company’s Internet and American Life project (which is a nonprofit), it looks only at American users of social-based technology, but is still a fairly good gauge of Western use. The main outcome was that technology is not leading to social isolation and those that use the internet and mobile phones actually have larger and more diverse social networks.
Keith Hampton, lead author and an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennyslvania said;”It is a mistake to believe that Internet use and mobile phones plunge people into a spiral of isolation.”
He also said that the key findings of the study “challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology.”
It found that on average, the size of people’s discussion networks is 12 percent larger among mobile phone users, nine percent larger for those who share photos online, and nine percent bigger for those who use instant messaging.
The diversity of people’s core networks tends to be 25 percent larger for mobile phone users, 15 percent larger for basic Internet users, and even larger for frequent Internet users, those who use instant messaging, and those who share digital photos online.
You can read the full overview on Pew’s website.
Posted in Mobile, NaBloPoMo |