We have threads for great emails and blogs and newspaper articles. How about one for great videos. I have been working on the appropriate use of social media in health care and found this YouTube video intriguing. I hope you do too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...pdc&feature=youtu.be

Call me a luddite but I think social networking is over-rated and I think we are underestimating its dangers. See this article:

http://www.newyorker.com/repor...kahn?currentPage=all

Now THIS is a great video showing social interfacing. Thanks to Geoff for sending it to me.

Well, Metic, I am not sure why Lanier expected more from the Internet. He said,

quote:

In place of a banquet, we’ve been given a vending machine.

We must remember that everyone is involved with the Internet. The total population is quite diverse, and I'd not expect what Lanier expected in terms of the richness and humanness of the Internet. I get his point though:

quote:

Last year, he published “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto,” a provocative critique of digital technologies, including Wikipedia (which he called a triumph of “intellectual mob rule”) and social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which he has described as dehumanizing and designed to encourage shallow interactions.

I do hope we are different on Wordcraft!

I'm on Metic's side. I couldn't face Facebook and signed off. Well, I'm no doubt on there forever, but there's no photo of me, so the stazi or its descendants will have a harder time finding me when the time comes.

Geoff, emailing my wife in the next room.

I don't think, though, as Lanier states, that Facebook or other social networking sites have to be shallow. Indeed, I think people write a lot more than they used to.

I've heard all these arguments when blogging took off. Shallow, worthless, etc. Back in the day, it used to be TV and not the Web/Net that warped young person's minds and polluted their bodies. Same was said about the telephone. Anyway, we use social media at work. It's not phace book, it's an internal proprietary technology.

I have been known to say the same thing about BBSes and Forums. Some people want to post questions and answers about subjects, others just want to chit-chat, or make jokes and puns. I do have a friend (also an ex-manager at a different job), who thinks that blogging and social networking are the equivalent of slavery. I've never quite followed her reasoning (if such it can be called), and after a while figured I did not have to.

Anyway, one just needs a bit of common sense when dealing with any aspect of a public medium. I don't blog about work, or post anything on Facebook about it. Not even previous jobs. I know people who have their public accounts which are neutral and pseudonymous ones for their more edgy posts. I'm on Facebook under my real name, but I use it mainly to keep in touch with friends and family. Sure lots of dross gets posted, but I seem to have developed a skimming style (I used to use it when reading newspapers, too) that works for me and does not take up too much of my time. If you think that next year's secret police will need Facebook to compile your dossier before taking you to the political rehab centre that is your privilege. There's plenty more information about you that is publicly available (usually at a price). Personally, I think it more sinister that insurance companies are buying data warehousing information from store "club" cards about what kinds of fatty foods and booze and cigarettes you're buying to adjust your rates accordingly.

Good points, Jim, particularly WRT the insurance companies. Were it more common knowledge, might it make people think twice about buying junk food?
Hard to know. It HAS made me refuse most such cards. I'll pay 5% more to not be on someone's database. Eventually I suspect that here in the USA we'll see a Supreme Court test of such snooping as being a Fourth Amendment violation.
Nevertheless, I stand by my assertion that for the most part, technology of any kind does not elevate the masses. Example: Viewer numbers between the Fox Network and PBS's News Hour.

quote:

If you think that next year's secret police will need Facebook to compile your dossier before taking you to the political rehab centre that is your privilege.

My daughters won't use Google Chrome or even Google because they think all their "secret information" is being sold. I say, whatever data they get from my posts, blogs, Facebook, etc., they can have. It won't do anyone much good! I find that fear a bit paranoid.

Geoff, while the "masses" may not be elevated, I doubt they will be downgraded (what's the opposite of elevated?) either. Indeed, that is my point. I think there are positives and negatives with the Internet culture, just as there were with previous cultures. I don't think there is much difference.

quote:

Some people want to post questions and answers about subjects,

And how I wish I'd get an answer to one of those questions!

I saw this video at a conference I recently attended, and I love it. It's not word related, but it has an international flavor. I think you'll like it.

He made a whole series of those. Fun.

Show-off

This isn't word related, but I saw it on NPR and loved it. Apparently in the 1940s, during WWII, the U.S. government wanted to get people to pay their taxes and chose Donald Duck. It's 7 minutes, but after Donald completes his form, the rest is really just war propaganda. The Donald Duck part is fun, though!

I watched that film and found others which were labelled "banned". Here is one but I couldn't see any reason for banning it.

Then I found that Warner Brothers pulled eleven cartoons from the war days in the '60s because they supposedly perpetrated ethnic stereotypes that some found objectionable (beginnings of political correctness?). Some scenes had characters involved in explosions transforming into blackface, which is indeed objectionable today. But the producers also didn't like the portrayal of Japanese in the films, even though these were propaganda productions during a war.

quote:

Here is one but I couldn't see any reason for banning it.

Me either. Strange. I wonder who banned it?

A couple of Tom and Jerry cartoons have been banned* because they show characters (Tom in one of them) smoking and they don't want to give the idea that it's cool to smoke to impressionable kids.

*Or re-edited to remove the offending scenes.

I actually could see that, Bob. Kids would think that is cool.

One of my favorite childhood stories was Little Black Sambo - again, that's down the drain. Fortunately I still have my Better Homes and Gardens Storybook with that story in it - and many of my favorite stories. I loved that book!