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Watch This! – and Listen to Everything Differently!!

September 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

Julian Treasure spends a lot of time listening. What he hears is, often, different from you hear and I hear. He listens to environments, acoustics, classrooms, hospital rooms, offices, city streets, conference rooms, and other places where poor acoustic design and ambient noise make listening very difficult indeed.

He describes, for example, a cleverly designed modern school building with open-walled classrooms where, for the most part, students could not hear the teacher. He describes the stress levels associated with teaching due, almost entirely, to ambient noise, and their related impact on heart disease. He describes errors in hospitals due to high noise levels (twice as high as they were decades ago, which makes healing more difficult to achieve). He’s convinced that poor school performance is directly connected with poor behavior due to noisy, stressed environments.

He wonders whether the architects who design with their eyes ever use their ears.

And he does all of this in a marvelous–and fairly brief–TED Talk that everyone ought to watch. You’ll find it here.

And, for that matter, you’ll also find Mr. Treasure in several other TED Talks conveniently listed beside his 2012 video.

 

Filed Under: Audio, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,

New Cameras – The Best of Photokina

September 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Every two years, Cologne, Germany hosts the world’s greatest photography trade show. This is the year, and these are my notes on the most interesting of cameras that are small, lightweight, and extremely capable. Over time, I will write about some of these products in more detail. Most are announced but not available in stores.

One of the coolest new cameras: Sony’s Cybershot DSC-RX1. The sensor is “full frame”–that is, the size of a 35mm film negative (about an inch high). At just under $3,000, it’s beyond the budget barrier for most of us. But don’t lose hope: 2012’s state-0f-the-art may well be 2014’s under-$1,000 camera. We’re seeing more and more full frame sensors, and prices are coming down. So why is this camera worth so much money?  Lenses are not interchangeable: your investment buys a single 35mm lens (f/2) attached to a 24 megapixel camera. It’s a small camera with superior build quality, and, if it performs as promised, quite good in low light situations. For more, see Digital Photography Review’s preview.

For several years, Sony has been producing cameras in the NEX range: small APS-C sensors in thin, sleek bodies with outsized lenses. The NEX-6 is priced at $999, offers 16 megapixels, and offers some features unavailable in Sony’s higher priced NEX-7.

Two years ago, at Photokina 2010, Fujifilm introduced a state-of-the-art, retro-in-look-and-feel camera fixed lens camera called the X100. The lens was a wide angle, the color rendition was extraordinary, and it offered a built-in hybrid viewfinder (easy switching between optical and electronic viewfinder). A year or so later, Fujifilm built on the franchise with an interchangeable lens system for serious amateurs and professionals, the XPro1. Now comes the XE-1, similar to the XPro1 but smaller, lighter, and an electronic (but not optical) viewfinder. It’s a 16 megapixel camera that costs about $1,400.

The Fujifilm XF1 in brown. Also available in black or red.

Just about everyone will want the new, simple, high quality Fuji XF1 with its 4x zoom and 12 megapixels. Why? It’s small, fast, and looks great. Small: 4.2 inches wide, 1.2 inches thick, 8 ounces. Fast: largest aperture is f/1.8, so you can shoot in reasonably low light without a flash. Looks great: yes, it’s a bit of a fashion accessory (see the website), but it’s also a straightforward camera for a serious photographer. It’s a 12 megapixel model, and it costs about $500.

For those with greater ambition, some tolerance for a slightly heavier camera, and more available cash, Fujifilm’s X-E1 is an interchangeable lens camera with a lower price than Fujifilm’s much-coveted X-Pro1. This is, arguably, mirror-less digital photography at its 2012 peak. The X-Pro1 includes an optical/digital hybrid viewfinder; the XE-1 offers only the electronic version.

The new Leica M-E digital camera.

Leica’s new M-E provides a Leica-universe starter camera priced at 3,900 Euros (about $5,000). It’s a full frame 16 megapixel camera. Even more pricey is Leica’s new full frame digital M camera with 24 MP and an available external viewfinder. For more about Leica’s new M camera, and their current digital camera philosophy, read this interview with Leica product manager Jesko von Oeynhausen.

Over at Canon, I found two new, intriguing models. The EOS-M is sleek and small MORE. The latest in an impressive line of self-contained (no interchangeable lenses) models is the G15, now with a faster F1.8-2.8 les. It’s less bulky than the current G12, but dispenses with the handy pull out / pull up / pull down “articulated” rear screen.

Nikon has added orange colored cameras to its Nikon 1 line.

Panasonic’s GH3 was recently announced.

At Panasonic, the GH3 is the big news–a full-featured DSLR style camera, and although its mirror-less design suggests smaller size, it’s about the size of an entry-level DSLR. The GH3 is a more versatile multimedia performer than most cameras in its class. It shoots in several video formats, MP4, MOV, AVCHD or AVCHD Progressive. WiFi connectivity allows the camera to be operated from a computer. No specific pricing yet, but the camera will probably cost between $1,500 and $2,000.

The OM-D was released by Olympus earlier this year.

Olympus is again getting things right. For serious photographers, there’s the new-ish OM-D and for smart amateurs. This smallish camera offers an ideal combination of reasonable price, very good color rendition, a built-in viewfinder, lessons learned from several excellent PEN model cameras, and the promise of a new line of professional cameras that can be carried anywhere without worry about weight or size. What’s more, the video quality is quite good, and the camera handles beautifully. This is camera that you ought to consider against just about any of the others in this article. And if the OM-D is more camera than you need, Olympus offers several good options in the PEN line with interchangeable lenses and a nice range of accessories. New at Photokina 2012, and soon to be in stores, there’s a revised version of two lower priced PEN models (which use the same lenses as the more sophisticated OM-D): PEN Mini (E-PM2) and PEN Lite (E-PL5).

Samsung has been making serious inroads. The NX210 replaces the NX200, offering both style and ergonomic improvements and 20 megapixel resolution, and some useful new features, including wifi connectivity for image transfers to your computer. Samsung is a relatively new name in the photo industry, so it’s easy to overlook the huge advances these guys have made in a systems approach to photography–there are lots of lenses and accessories available for the growing NX line, fashionable cameras in white, very good ergonomics, interesting features, lots more.

The new Hasselblad Lunar.

Hasselblad ‘s new Lunar is a luxury camera that resembles one of Sony’s NEX models, and, in fact, uses the same A-mount lenses that you’d use on the NEX cameras. This is a very high-tech 24 megapixel camera with a very fast processor and a blingy exterior (there are a variety of handgrips made from exotic woods, etc.). It costs 5,000 euros (about $6,500)–a price that may be difficult to justify in the era of cameras that remain state-of-the-art for just a year or two. For more about Hasselblad’s approach, see this article in the British Journal of Photography.

Well, that’s quick overview. If you’re looking for a more extensive roundup, you can visit the largest booths (stands, in Europe), virtually, by exploring the Digital Photography Review section on Photokina 2012.

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After many productive (35mm film) years with a Canon A-1, I decided, just before the digital deluge, to invest a really good film camera. The year was 2000. I kept the Leica catalog, and found my written notes inside the back cover. I was considering the Leica M6–one of the finest 35mm cameras every made. The cost of the body was about $2,000. Each of the three lenses cost $1,000-2,000. Total package price: about $7,000. (I ended up spending a lot less money for a wonderful used Hasselblad 501CM with two lenses). At the time, I had the feeling that my investment would stand the test of time. A decade later, film photography is retro fun, but digital rules the day. Now, I wonder whether a $2,ooo camera will stand the test of time. And I’m less secure now than I was in 2000. And I still spend far too much time thinking about cameras, and far too little time actually taking pictures.

—

See also:

https://diginsider.com/2012/03/20/the-quality-camera-that-goes-everywhere-part-1/

Filed Under: Art & Photography, Products, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Immersive Storytelling

September 19, 2012 by 1 Comment

From the Toverlandarn site, an example of a magic lantern image… immersive entertainment from the 1800s.

At its simplest level, immersive storytelling requires nothing more than a good book, or, in simpler form, a really good storyteller, preferably on a chilly night near a campfire.

Immersive storytelling is hardly a new idea. In the days of magic lantern shows (which preceded nickelodeons and movie theaters), a storyteller would captivate an audience in a dark room with his narration of projected images. (For more, here’s a wonderful web site about magic lantern shows that includes thousands of images.) As early as the 1700s, magic lantern shows were popular–and scary–entertainment. At about the same time (give or take a few decades), Daniel Defoe was concocting written tales in novel form, an art perfected by Charles Dickens, whose immersive tales of dreary London captured the attention of large audiences. As theater, and movies, and videogames, and other forms evolved, they have done by building on fundamentals established by these early immersion artists.

Today, the power of computing can provide spectacular realism and the promise of deeply interactive experience–in which the individual participant and the story framework become one. That’s the area that author Frank Rose explores in an interesting new-ish book entitled, appropriately, The Art of Immersion. The more I read, the more I realized that Rose’s interpretation of immersion is more closely aligned with internet communities than large-scale digital immersion on, say, a James Cameron scale.

For much of the book, Rose tells stories about commercial ventures into lite forms of community engagement related to media. These stories are fun to read, and in some cases, familiar, but the intensity of the immersive experience is, often, both minor and fleeting. For example, he tells of Dunder-Mifflin’s virtual employees, paid in Schrute bucks, over a quarter of a million people in all, many more if you count the YouTube video of JK Wedding Entrance Dance. Rose muses on the relative importance of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Quarterlife, and other early attempts at a web-based version of web-based TV shows with a twist. The discussion continues with various YouTube, Twitter, and, at last, interactive gaming experiences–and that’s where the immersive concept starts coming together. Viewing comedy or music on a modest screen doesn’t quite do it for me, not as immersive storytelling. Dr. Horrible is funny, but not immersive. Immersive takes me a different place, and alters my sense of reality in a convincing way.

My first dose of modern immersion was probably a cineplex viewing of James Cameron’s Titanic. Without the benefit of 3-D, I was on that ship, able to feel the motion, the king of the world freedom, the pull of the sinking ship. It was more than a motion picture. It was an experience that filled my senses. I was in awe. One member of my family were in the bathroom, overcoming a difficult-to-explain feeling which resembled seasickness.

As it turns out, immersion through dramatic audi0-visual presentation or community interaction is the least interesting part of Rose’s book… but it takes over 250 pages to reach the “good part.” The book takes off when immersion is defined not by the external experiences that are manufactured with technological trickery, but by the intense, simple manipulation of mental mechanics… the advanced psychology associated with addiction, game theory, decision science, and emotion–the domains of science fiction innovator Philip K. Dick, and twisted author Lewis Carroll, and, when at his very best, Alfred Hitchcock. Mastery matters. Authenticity overrules realism. Movies do it well. Videogames of the future will do it better than we ever thought possible. The combination of the two is on its way–probably preying more on emotion and psychology than the now-easier-to-achieve realist simulations of fantasy environments. It’s character that drives the narrative, and when you become that character, you won’t shake off the experience in an hour or two. It will take days, and maybe weeks. An immersion vacation.

And that brings us back ’round to the charlatans of the 1700s who could draw their victims into a dark cave, project an unexplainable ship on the wall, and wrap all sorts of spooky storytelling around the mysterious image. One image, perhaps four slides in sequence, not so different from the ocean-going graphic that has been distracting your attention since you started reading this article. We are drawn to these images, drawn in by the darkness and the storyteller’s inescapable magic. Twitter isn’t quite the same thing, and it’s difficult to imagine an internet community with this kind of intense power. Then again, we’ve only seen the start of massively multiple player games, and we’ve only begun to understand what happens when a community of LOST or Star Wars fans authors its own encyclopedia (the Lostpedia and the Wookiepedia, in case you didn’t know). As these worlds collide, as deep information, worlds of characters, movie-making magic, and gaming combine, the era of immersion shall begin to change the way we think about modern storytelling. But that’s the future. The present, sadly, is best represented by the likes of the new TV series, Revolution, and so, we’ve got a ways to go.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, Learning Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Teach Your Children Well

September 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Madeline Levine, Ph.D. is a California psychologist, a woman who understands child development with refreshing clarity. Her candor may upset parents and children whose focus is abundant personal accomplishment. Her priorities reside elsewhere.

For example, she addresses the vitality of self-esteem as the positive result of a child’s own decisions and accomplishments. In opposition, she expresses grave concern about the distortion of self-esteem as narcissism, self-indulgence and materialism, which results in a higher level of distortion related to entitlement, grade inflation, and sad misconceptions about self-worth.

She takes on present day insanity: “…the kind of overblown panic I am seeing today has its roots in an extraordinary marketing campaign designed to convert normal parental concern into frenzied anxiety about what it will take to be successful in the twenty-first-century global economy.” she continues: “We have been sold a bill of goods and that bill of goods has clouded our common sense and judgement.”

And here’s the core idea of her book:

Here’s the reality: kids who are pressured, sleep-deprived, and overly focused on by parents convinced that without significant oversight and intervention, their children are not likely to be successful, [and] are at high risk for emotional, psychological and academic problems.”

Inexplicable trends tied to seemingly boundless cheating, stress behaviors including substance abuse and cutting, family ties stretched beyond their limits, the overwhelmed, overworked, consistently unhappy patterns now commonplace… They all make sense when explained in context. It’s time to stop this madness.

So begins a refreshing 21st century course in child development that acknowledges, incorporates and often celebrates technology, learning differences, and natural processes that hyperactive parental meddling are not likely to overcome. Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success is a brilliant book, essential in the ways that What to Expect When You’re Expecting has become for the first years of life.

It’s all about helping children to find and nurture friendships; to encourage them to maintain the connection between learning and fun; assisting in the construction of self-identity; and practical specifics about, for example, the healthy benefits of sufficient sleep. Often, Dr. Levine’s sane advice makes sense not only for children and teens, but for adults, too. Her advice regarding good sleep habits:

– Consistent bedtime
– A quiet half-hour ritual prior to bedtime, with dimmed lights
– No caffeinated drinks in the afternoon or evening
– No digital device use before bedtime
– Absolutely no social networking before bed

Dr. Levine insists upon appropriate roles for children and for parents, appropriate relationships that may differ from the daily realities in your home or in the households of relatives, neighbors or friends. She’s clear on the ways in which technology can, should, and ought not be part of the picture. And even though you, me and our kids rely upon our modern tools, she makes it clear that neither these tools nor the social interaction nor the increased productivity are worth much…certainly not nearly as much as the direct, moment-to-moment personal interactions that matter so much more than anything else in the world.

Gee, I really like this book. It’s the kind of book I want all of my friends to read, that I want every parent and student to read. Given that her previous book was reprinted some seventeen times, maybe everyone will.

And on this Rosh Hashanah evening, I can think of no better way to begin a new year than to recommend a book by an caring author who is making a difference. L’shana tovah.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The News from Camden

August 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For the past month or so, I’ve been thinking about a series of articles about the ways in which we define news, and the purpose served by that definition. Earlier today, I encountered the article below. It’s written by a Jesuit Priest named Jeff Putthoff who does the Lord’s work by running a youth development center in Camden, NJ. Before you read the article, you should know that half of Camden’s children live in poverty, and that only half of Camden’s adults finished high school.  Once a thriving manufacturing city, Camden is located just across the river from Philadelphia–in fact, you can walk over the Delaware River, from one world to another.  Camden is a great American urban challenge–and  Reverend Putthoff is among those who believe in the city and its people. His view on the news is the subject of this essay, which appeared on Philly.com on August 19, 2012. I suspect most of my readers have not seen the article, so I am encouraging you to read the article by either clicking on this Philly.com link or reading the text of the article below.

——————–

Killings that don’t make news

The Rev. Jeff Putthoff is executive director of Hopeworks ‘N Camden

A few weeks ago, Camden had its deadliest July since 1949. That was the year that Howard Unruh, America’s first serial killer, killed 13 people on one day. This year, 13 people were killed over the course of 31 days. At the time, I commented on how differently the violence in Camden would be covered by the news media if it had been done by a single serial killer as opposed to many killers.

Amazingly, with the killings in the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., we see how gripping one killer of many is to the country. We also now have a case of domestic terrorism – and significant international news coverage – with the horrible killings outside a Sikh temple in Wisconsin this month. Both of these incidents were unimaginable tragedies that have sparked hundreds upon thousands of debates and even more news stories. Both have elicited outrage and even responses from President Obama.

Here in Camden, where more people were killed last month than in either of the tragedies in Colorado or Wisconsin, there has been limited outrage and media coverage. In fact, there has been more attention and news about the new medical school than there has been about the people who are dying right outside its walls in the streets.

Just recently, I had in my office a young man who was speaking to his grief about losing a friend last month to a shooting. This was his second friend in a year who has been shot and killed. The loss is real, the trauma of the violence is deep, and most alarming is the lack of moral outrage that accompanies the “domestic terrorism” visited upon the people of Camden.

In State College, the crimes of Jerry Sandusky have been met with outrage. The outrage is not only about what was done to many young people, but the fact that so many people seem to have known or had some information about what was going on and chose to put Penn State’s image or football program first.

In Camden, murders are not being properly prioritized. Not only is our city being traumatized by ongoing, incessant violence and the trauma of losing life, but there is also a terrible public acquiescing that keeps it protected and perpetual. Such a lack of outrage is itself abusive. It “normalizes” the violence, making the unconscionable acceptable and continuing to wound the already wounded.

The question is, why do 13 murders in 31 days in a city of 77,000 find so little voice, so little reaction, in our world today? A movie theater, a temple, and a football locker room all engender a response that the streets of Camden don’t seem to warrant.

Camden is facing escalating crime and death. And yet the outrage is muted, the TV networks don’t send news trucks, and no memorial is held. It is the ultimate bullying: collusion with an abusive situation. In State College, such collusion is why Joe Paterno’s statue was taken down and why some officials may go to jail. As long as we continue to know and not act, the systemic and repeated abuse of Camden will continue.

The ongoing abuse and violence that are occurring in Camden need to stop. The lack of action around this issue is an outrage.

E-mail Jeff Putthoff at jeff@hopeworks.org.

 

Filed Under: Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Posted in an independent bookstore

August 24, 2012 by 1 Comment

One of New Hampshire’s three Toadstool Bookshop outlets. They’re located in Peterborough, Keene, and Milford. If you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to visit the one in Keene, and then grab a beer and a burger (and gigantic onion rings) at Elm City Brewery, located in the same large ex-factory as NH’s best bookstore. With ebooks, there’s concern for the survival of even this fittest of independent booksellers.

“PLEASE THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU BUY A KINDLE

We are very grateful to all of those of you who have said you would like to support us by purchasing your e-books through us. This will become extremely important to us as more and more people begin using e-readers. We ask that you please bear in mind that only certain types of readers are compatible with our website. Fortunately, most of the common ones are. These include the iPad, Nook, Sony, and Kobo. However, the Kindle is not compatible.

Amazon has chosen to force Kindle users o make their e-book purchases only through their website.

Please think twice before getting one for yourself or for a gift. The future of independent bookstores such as our depends upon every sale, the physical book and the e-book. None will exist without the support of loyal book buyers such as yourself. Thank you so much for thinking about us, and be assured our love remains [for] the real book, there for your browsing in a real bookstore.

(Kindle Fire update: With Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet, it is possible to sideload an Android app that make it possible to purchase and read ebooks from the website of independent booksellers such as ours. But you do have to do this outside the Amazon App store. This will not work with the original Kindles. B&N’s new tablet Nook also requires a sideloaded app.”

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Some other thoughts about Amazon and its relationship to independent booksellers:

Slate: Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller

Harvard Business Review: Amazon Should Partner with Independent Booksellers

Huffington Post / Poetry Foundation: Independent Booksellers: How to Compete with Amazon

and the most comprehensive and thoughtful view, written for The Nation: The Amazon Effect

Filed Under: Books & Print, Mobile Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Publius on Passion, Interest and Reason

August 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

No doubt you’ll recall the name “Publius” from high school civics. It was the pen name shared by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (mostly), and John Jay (a few times) when writing an extensive series of essays about the then-new U.S. Constitution. Collectively, the essays were known as The Federalist, or The Federalist Papers.

I just read a 2008 book about The Federalist entitled Liberty’s Blueprint by Michael Meyerson, so the Federalist has been on my mind. It’s remarkable stuff–extraordinary thoughtful, well-reasoned, and (for the essays written by Madison), extremely well-researched considerations of how the U.S. Constitution ought to be applied in our new nation. So much of it remains relevant–astonishing, given that these essays were written in 1787 and 1788.

As I find myself thinking about what we know, why we know it, why we believe so strongly in what we know, and how minds change, I found one passage especially helpful in my thinking. I figured I would share it with you.

“According to Publius, the motivations for people’s differing beliefs and conduct can be divided into three broad categories.

The most powerful and most destructive of these is “passion,” whereby a person’s intellect is dominated by prejudice and emotion.

Next is “interest,” which arises from rational but selfish considerations. Both passion and interest can be be harmful to civilized society; when Madison defined faction [which we would now call “special interest’] in Federalist 10, he described citizens who were united “by some common impulse of passion, or of interest” which was opposed to either the rights of others or the interests of the community at large.

In contrast to passion and interest is reason, which according to Madison is “timid and cautious.” Reason represents the culmination of logical thought combined with either a concern for the needs of others or, at minimum, the recognition of one’s own long-term interest requires such concern.

According to Publius, under normal circumstances, people act according to their passions and interests rather than their reason.

—–

As I spend a sunny summer day pondering Publius, I wonder about our media, and our flow of information.  I want to believe that reason is our guide, but I know I am wrong. Emotion, lack of context, prejudice, incomplete stories crafted by self-interest, these are the winds that propel today’s media, the ideas that fuel FOX and reduce local news to “team coverage” of local fires, abused dogs, and urban children dead because of a stray bullet. Emotion rules. With prejudice. Special interests (Madison’s “factions”) write not only the press releases, but the news stories, and, too often, the laws on which those news stories are based. There may be no better way–would we prefer that government or large corporate advertisers fund our news, for these seem to be the only available choices–but for today, at the end of a very pleasant one staring at the clouds, I prefer reason.

Filed Under: Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , ,

Learning from History

August 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

From The New York Times (photo by Tim Gruber for The New York Times), a picture of eBureau headquarters in St. Cloud, Minnesota. You provide the data, and they provide your profile to increasingly savvy marketers. But that’s only part of the story.

On Thursday night, Paul and I had dinner. We split the bill. I charged. He paid me the difference in cash. On Friday night, some neighborhood friends went out to dinner, and I used Paul’s cash to pay our share. On Saturday, I couldn’t resist a 50%-off-everything sale at a local record store, and charged about $40 for about twenty great old LPs. Last week, we went on vacation, and like good Americans, we enjoyed the convenience of our credit cards.

Along the way, apart from the two cash transactions, we generated a cluster of data, enough to build a profile of recent activities. Add the detailed list of supermarket purchases, online book purchases, and EZ-Pass comings-and-goings, and our data stream is sufficient for any reasonably competent marketer to do their online stuff. Add Google’s record of our online searches, Verizon’s record of every TV program we watch, and the picture becomes more complete.

Does Verizon need to know what I watch? Do they need to keep a record of every minute detail of my channel flipping? Is there, somewhere, a complete lifetime record of every subscriber’s viewing history. If there is, shouldn’t I know that? If there’s not, shouldn’t I know that, too? And shouldn’t there be some sort of understanding between me and Verizon about the data that they do and do not collect, and how it might be used? And shouldn’t I understand every word of that agreement?

In theory, each private transaction resides between me and an independent vendor. I choose my vendors with some care, and I am comfortable with the idea that they will use my past purchase history to present me with new marketing offers. If, for example, EZ-Pass notices that I commute on the same routes regularly, I am interested in a discount program for commuters.

My interest ends, rather abruptly, when one vendor provides data to another without my express written permission. In most cases, I would NOT grant that permission. I suspect your personal policy would be the same as mine.

Access to data about my every purchase: useful. Sharing that data with marketers willing to pay for access: priceless.

There is, however, one stupendous soft spot in my argument. I use a credit card. And, I suppose, in some version of logical argument, my transactions with VISA, MasterCard and their affiliated banks, provides some level of permission to share data about my purchases with marketers. I think this is an over-reach, and, increasingly, I believe that my transactions with these companies ought to be private, released, perhaps, only when my creditworthiness is open to question when purchasing, say, a new couch, and I expressly offer my permission, in any extremely limited way, specifically for that transaction. (Of course, this, too, introduces complexity because my creditworthiness cannot be evaluated without a gateway to lots more of my data.)

This morning’s New York Times tells the story of eBureau, one of several companies that tracks my combined purchases and provides a profile (a score, actually) to companies with an interest in selling me something, most often online. In the case of eBureau, the game is not only determining an individual’s credit score, but also the individual’s value to an individual marketer based upon past purchase patterns, zip code, income level, and more. In essence, eBureau advances the concept of a lead qualification to a massive scale. Buried in the article are concerns about privacy, secrecy (the scores are not available to the affected consumers, only to eBureau’s clients), and extension of the concept to other forms of marketing. What’s more, e-scores are likely to widen the digital divide, offering better deals to those with certain profiles, and so on.

On the side of the people: a very overworked PIRG organization battling on so many fronts.

In the NY Times article, The US Public Interest Group and the Federal Trade Commission both express specific concerns about new digital scoring and the inadequacy of current law to define appropriate practices, but the related issues are rapidly emerging with tremendous velocity, depth, and complexity.

Where does this lead? I think it ought to lead to some serious discussions about consumer protection in the digital age. We’re way behind on the development of law in this space, and, quite reasonably, marketers and opportunists are taking good advantage of the lag, and establishing precedents that will be difficult to challenge or disassemble in the future.

Filed Under: Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Nielsen: Connected TV on the Rise

August 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Watch Pat McDonough, SVP Insights and Analysis at Nielsen. She knows a lot–perhaps more than any other human being–about how and why Americans watch television.

Americans spend more time watching video than we do working.

We continue to average about 155 hours of total viewing (all screens and devices) per month–over 4 hours per day, every day.

94% of video is watched on–what else–a traditional TV screen. YES BUT–in 2008, 99.4 percent was on TV, and less than four years later, in Q1 2012, we’re seeing 3 percent online plus 3 percent more on mobile devices–that is, (more than) 6 percent of viewing is online or mobile. By next year, my guess would be 10 percent of viewing not on TV, but on other devices. And it’s accelerating.

Nearly half of American households use a DVR. That’s up by nearly 80% over the most recent five year period. Three quarters of us have a high-definition set.

Half of us own a smart phone. Two thirds of American Asians own a smart phone.  More than two thirds of people 25-34 own a smart phone.

Internet TV is not yet popular, but penetration has grown to about 10 percent.

Filed Under: Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Key to Fun and Learning

August 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For many years, scholars have debated the aesthetics of film (or, with greater pretense, “cinema”) and the mass culture associated with television (or, with less pretense, “TV” or “the idiot box”). Videogames make for more interesting study because they combine the sound and images with the 21st century version of interactivity. Stories aren’t watched–they’re played. Characters aren’t observed–they’re enacted by the participant. It’s rich stuff.

So here’s my new hero, Constance Steinkuehler, a University of Wisconsin assistant professor who studies the intersection between videogames, science and cognition. Currently she’s on a leave of absence, working at the White House in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I first encountered Ms. Steinkuehler while listening to NPR’s Tell Me More in April. Then, I found a video, and I realized how much I/we could learn from her.

So I took all of our plans and I threw them out the window. Structured stuff? Not going to work…If I talk at them, they are not going to listen to me. So, we’re just going to do this weird, radical thing. We’re just going to…play next to them. When an interest comes up, we’ll be like, well, you know, the place to read more about that would be “x”…Once we turned it around to a ‘follow their interests’ kind of a model, everything shifted. And it worked.

She’s talking about how learning works. And she’s using videogames as the basis for that learning. Among teen boys who were part of her project, chosen because they did not do well in school. She paid attention to the ways in which they preferred to learn, and here’s what happened:

So for example, we had a reader who was in tenth grade who read at the sixth grade level. [He was not] doing well in school. I handed him a fifteenth grade level text (from the game) and he was reading it with absolutely fine comprehension, 94, maybe 96% accuracy…”

Why?

When they choose the text, when they actually care about it, they actually fix their own comprehension problems…”

These quotes are lifts from the video below.

Steinkuehler is not the only academic who is thinking deeply about videogames and learning. This page does a good job in providing an overview of the videogame industry, and includes several videos that will stimulate your thinking about what games mean and why they are important. (The embedded TED talk is quite good because it covers bits about the industry and bits about game design.)

In this field, one original source of light is James Paul Gee, who explains, simply, that every videogame is a set of problems to be solved in order to win. His excellent book, What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, is an excellent place to begin thinking seriously about videogames. So, too, is this introductory video:

Carnegie Mellon’s Jesse Schell will take your thinking further. He’s a game designer, an author, and someone who is thinking about games and learning in very exciting new ways. You may have seen Jesse’s TED talk, but you may not have seen his TEDx talk which is, ultimately, about how games (by design) encourage collaboration and shared learning styles, and how well-designed games respect the learner in ways that school often does not.

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BTW: Score yourself 100 extra points if you recognized this article’s title, “The Key to Fun and Learning” as the tagline that appeared on most Milton Bradley board games. Double your score if you recognized the bearded man as Milton himself, a pioneer in games that were fun and also provided a learning experience. Triple your score if you knew that Mr. Bradley started out by making game and puzzle kits for Civil War soldiers to occupy their time in camp (remember, those guys were, mostly, teenagers.)

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