Storytelling, #nbcfail, and the upstanding guy Jeff Jarvis

My wife and I just watched NBC’s evening coverage of the US Women’s gymnastic team winning the team gold medal and Michael Phelps win his 19th Olympic medal.  Lots of commercials, but compelling tv.  I’ve been enjoying watching the evening coverage so far. Yes, even though it wasn’t live.

That’s why, aside from the issues with the coverage of the opening ceremonies, I’ve had a hard time getting on board with the #nbcfail movement. Jeff Jarvis articulated what he saw as the root of the problem for NBC in a post on Sunday.

The problem for NBC as for other media is that it is trying to preserve old business models in a new reality.…The bottom-line lesson for all media is that business models built on imprisonment, on making us do what you want us to do because you give us no choice, is no strategy for the future. And there’s only so long you can hold off the future.

The problem is that people are tuning into NBC’s coverage.  Lots of them.  Indeed, record numbers of them.  Maybe there’s a future in good, old-fashioned tv channels after all. Perhaps the rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

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by Jim Caccamo on August 1, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in communication, human development
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on August 1, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/08/01/storytelling-nbcfail-and-the-upstanding-guy-jeff-jarvis/

Peak, Permanence, and the Precision Bass: On What Lasts

The myth out there is that college teachers have the summer off. I wish. I don’t have to be in my office, but summer is a time to regroup, kill off lingering committee work, get new classes set up, and try to get ready for the next semester. As part of that, my computer was replaced. I now have a nice iMac in place of my MacPro, which exceeds what I need these days.

Of course, the complicated part of the upgrade was getting all the stuff that I use on the new machine: apps, fonts, bookmarks, etc.  Lots of reinstalling and updating. Sadly, as I was doing this, I found out that my favorite 2 track audio editing app—BIAS’s Peak—is no more. As Peter Kirn at CreateDigitalMusic.com put it:

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by Jim Caccamo on July 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in charity, hope
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on July 26, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/07/26/peak-permanence-and-the-precision-bass-on-what-lasts/

Netflix, Closed-Captioning, and the Difficulty of Means

A couple of weeks ago, Chris Morran at The Consumerist reported on an unexpected, but reasonable, legal decision against Netflix.

Netflix recently asked a court to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Deaf that alleges the company violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by not including closed-captioning on many of its streaming videos. But earlier this week, the judge in the case ruled against Netflix, allowing the suit to move forward.

Since the early 1990s, televisions have been required to be able to display closed captions in programming.  It wasn’t until the mid 2000s that programs were required to carry the captioning. Clearly, allowing the suit to proceed makes sense. Netflix argued (in Thomas’ terms) “that the ADA doesn’t apply to Internet-only businesses or to services that people use at home rather than in public places.” The judge called that “irrational.”

The tricky bit here, as June Thomas at Slate summarizes well, is the technical side of things.

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by Jim Caccamo on July 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in human development, marginalization, solidarity
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on July 13, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/07/13/netflix-closed-captioning-means/

Rewiring Dinner—Temperance as a Social Game

Love this great new dinner-time game (via Marco Arment):

It works like this: as you arrive, each person places their phone facedown in the center of the table… As the meal goes on, you’ll hear various texts and emails arriving… and you’ll do absolutely nothing. You’ll face temptation—maybe even a few involuntary reaches toward the middle of the table—but you’ll be bound by the single, all-important rule of the phone stack.

Whoever picks up their phone is footing the bill.

I mentioned to a friend last week that I thought that those of us who didn’t grow up with cell phones and mobile computing devices are probably the worst at setting boundaries for temperate use of our tech.  We lacked any formation in appropriate use as kids, and now we’ve gone overboard with our enthusiasm.  We’re all trying to teach our kids good habits, but it often ends up “do as I say, not as I do.” Perhaps making a game out of good habit formation would help?

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by Jim Caccamo on July 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in temperance
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on July 11, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/07/11/rewiring-dinner-temperance-as-a-social-game/

It Only Gets Better When We Redefine “Better”

Intriguing reflection by Matt Buchanan at BuzzFeed (It Never Gets Better) about how strongly we buy into the promise of technology:

There’s an update waiting for you. For your apps, for your computer and phone and tablet and the box attached to your TV. Updates are so routine that when you buy a smartphone or a tablet, you don’t just hope it will be better tomorrow than it is today, doing new and wonderful things that it doesn’t already do — you expect it. That’s the magic of software.

Yet, for the most part, it never gets there. Buchanan’s advice is to buy things that work well now, not those that only offer the promise of working well, once the next update comes out, etc. Great advice.

It seems to me that we place a lot of faith in technology as a means to achieving what we hope for. Social media will put us in touch, easing our loneliness. Biotech will heal our bodies, extending our lives. Manufacturing and design will make our lives easier, improving the quality of our lives. We have so much faith in our tech to live up to our hopes, we will cut it some slack when it fails to live up to our expectations. And it pretty much always does. So, when will we start to accept the fact that tech doesn’t solve every problem? When will we learn to manage both our faith and hope?

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by Jim Caccamo on July 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in faith, hope
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on July 10, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/07/10/it-only-gets-better-if-we-redefine-better/

Seatbelts and Cellphones: Re-wiring Driving Practices

On the mobile while mobile front, Abdul Shabeer of the Anna University of Technology in Tamilnadu, India has published a paper (“Technology to prevent mobile phone accidents” in Int. J. Enterprise Network Management, 2012, 5, 144-155) on in-car cell blocking tech:

The team [Abdul Shabeer of the Anna University of Technology in Tamilnadu, India, et al.] has now devised a system that can determine whether a driver is using a cell phone while the vehicle is in motion and “jam” or block the phone signals accordingly using a low-range mobile jammer that ensures the vehicles passengers might use their phones unhindered. The system has the potential to report “infringements” depending on local laws and might also report vehicle registration number to the traffic police under such laws. The team suggests that an alternative approach might be to alert others in the vehicle that the driver is attempting to use the phone. They suggest that not only would such a system reduce road traffic deaths, but it would have the positive side effect of improving how the average goods vehicles are driven overall.

So, stop, narc, or warn. Interesting move to suggest that the system could be used in different ways.

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by Jim Caccamo on July 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in common good, justice
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Posted by Jim Caccamo on July 10, 2012

https://rewiringvirtue.com/2012/07/10/re-wiring-driving/

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