I am a big fan of social media, some may even say Im a fighter for the cause. Just the other night I got pinned in a figurative corner against three adament Jordan Maxwell spouting anti-establishmentarists trying to tell me that internet/information culture has no potential to empower a popular shift in practical social issues and that my faith in a figurehead like Barrack Obama is as useless as LinkedIn; which granted is useless.
I am a big advocate for the science of conversation, the enabling powers our information revolutionary milennials can develop in the expanded social circles the digital medium provides. Lately, innovations online considered “the next big thing” in social media, are starting to worry me for where we are taking the future of the technology and just how much influence we are letting material culture have on our online habits.
Material culture is sad, yes this is true. Us Weekly/Perez/tabloid lifers are weird and the culture that follows it, though large and often intelligent, is succombing to a material personal brand culture that while fun to browse for, is really just distraction from quality cultural growth.
I worry new popping social media products are drifting into a state of self indulgent tripe. I got into Twitter about a month or two ago and today I was introduced to Seesmic. I find that both are incredibly self indulgent, see me see me see me tools that yes, keep us informed of the actions and opinions of our peers, but are actually stripping away truly valuable tools that lie in overpowering products like facebook and youtube.
We have to be careful that as innovation online continues to develop niche hotnesses in the digital world, the democratic, power to the people, potential that lies with the technology is not constantly being reduced to watching ourselves talk over and over and over about ourselves.
AND NOW FOR A GRUMPY HAIKU….
Keyboards not journals
Monitors are not mirrors
Stop lurking weirdo
Im pretty sure that the federal government has invented email responsive robots and named them Eric.
I used to work on a project titled the Canadian Health Network, which was an online emporium for Canadian health information provided by community health organizations from across the country and broken out by topic. The conservatives cut the budget for this project for April 2008 and it this former liberal initiated project’s url now points to the public health agency of canada website and encourages conservative created healthycanadians.ca instead. Which by the way offers a fraction of the information the CHN had.
I sent PHAC an email about sourcing the list of contributing organizations that were involved in the CHN which was once easily available on www.canadianhealthnetwork.ca, and if I had five minutes with the former site I could copy and paste this very general information with probably time leftover to learn about getting rid of a summer cold/flu. Instead of the information I requested, I received this in return
“Thank you kindly for the e-mail. We wanted to confirm for you that the Public Health Agency of Canada is giving consideration to publishing a list of external links to Canadian health organizations on its Web site. We are currently expanding the site to deliver more consumer-based information to Canadians and is constantly updating the site so that it meets the needs of all Canadians. As such, we appreciate you bringing this content to our attention.”
- Im thinking robot with a real name
“Giving consideration”, you had already been publishing them for the last nine years.
“Expanding to deliver more consumer based information”, have you seen www.healthycanadians.ca , its more top down showcasing then cancun was for spring break.
As I continue to read, work, and inform brands of all types on why it is so important in today’s communal and information rich culture to be transparent, community driven, providing ”real conversation”, its boggling that the cogs in our tax paid wheel are so so so far from reality that they can deliver such cold, non-personal, mechanic messaging to a former colleague who knows the answer and just no longer has the username or password to access it.
Government needs to wake up and realize that the general public already knows everything that is going on, and that gatekeeping services that we pay for, and fencing off access to public information is just a weak way of showing that the people in place don’t know what they are doing.
Thanks to Alliance Atlantis I was able to see a screening of Bottle Shock last night and it has inspired a new feature that I am going to put into this blog.
Bottle Shock is the true story of Napa Valley in 1976, when it receives a visit from self proclaimed Frenchmen Steve Spurrier. Owner of L’academie du vin in Paris, Spurrier heads to California to search out the region’s greatest wines to pit them head to head with France’s greatest bouteilles on the dawn of the American Bicentennial.
The film inspired a desire to visit Napa sometime this year and make sure to take in the winery of fame in the film, Chateau Montelena.
The film also inspired me to now every Tuesday personally review a wine of my own choosing. I promise to only shop at the Summerhill LCBO so that I can get the best variety, and I also promise not to favor any particular nation as my French forefathers would have.
As the film let out well past 9:00pm last night I can only tell you that the Kipling Ridge Baco Noir available until 11pm at the grocery store on Dupont, is not worth a positive review and should only be opened after watching 2 straight hours of people drinking wine every 60 seconds on a really really large screen.
See Bottle Shock, and when you do be sure to bring at least a bottle with you for the screening. It made Bottle Shock just that much better, and I could feel the jealous giggles from other patrons as our bottles clanked to fill our disposable theater cups.
ITS MUSIC DISCOVERY DAY!!! YAY!!!!
Its time for a musical mind blow. Yes enlightened few that visit, today is a hurray kind of day for you and your ears. I am going to throw a couple things at you that you may have heard, but judging by their myspace listens, if you have you are even more in tune (pun!) then I.
First something old: The 80s are rarely remembered for Toronto orchestral blues rock, but push aside Duran Duran the thirsty tree is featuring The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir.
Headlining this year’s Hillside Saturday lineup is this precursor to Broken Social Scene which includes BSS core member Andrew Whiteman along with other Toronto noteables Kate Fenner, Jason Mercer, Chris Miller, and Dave Wall to name a few. The Bourbons are basically the Cabbagetown super band that I was fortunate to be introduced to thanks to their own personal wannabe south african Yoko. THANKS V. Good luck in Guelph Bourbons.
Check out their Myspace or listen above for a sample, this is Canadiana at its finest that went away well before its time.
And for something new, check out Toronto based Hooded Fang which is just making me sway uncontrollably at my desk at the moment. They are playing the Rancho Relaxo tomorrow night (friday the 20th of July for those who don’t know what day it is today — get a job)! Its $6 and we can sway together. Thanks to Dan from TWM for introducing me to this group.
When I first graduated, I was fortunate to work for some cancer centres around Southern Ontario. I was assigned to review systemic therapy wait times for the different nodes of cancer service throughout regional geographies and from that look at the possibility of communication methods that could remove wait time barriers for patient service throughout those regions.
Great project, unfortunately a little ahead of its time and needs a little more theory supporters before funding could make it a effective aid tool.
Last night I witnessed just how far off, modern communication tools are to reducing wait times.
No technology could have improved our 5 hours in a waiting room last night at Women’s College Hospital’s urgent care centre.
One doctor. In TORONTO (even Cobourg has two at a time)!!! One doctor for say 20 people that waited, and waited for their 20 minute diagnosis and prescription du jour.
If a quiet urgent care centre in the country’s greatest megapolis cannot process 20 people over the course of HALF A DAY, I am left with little confidence in the five year window I recommended (three years ago) to begin the adoption of inter agency communication methods to improve the scheduling disaster that is Canadian health care.
We need to be treated a little more like cattle. Prod me, stick me, throw me in a line. Screw this private room nonsense, I want a drug wielding carousel that throws me in and out quicker than I can say back spasm.
URGENT must stand for UR GEtting Nowhere Tonight
The only salvation was a local crazy man that came in with the goal to convince everyone he was Chelsea Clinton and that Bill and Hilary said he needed to get an enima before he could come back to the white house. Not only was he delusional, his manifestions were stuck in the 90s
A typical collective repurposed the drop zone website in 2008 to include a greater emphasis on social networking and resource sharing for participants. As always, online registration and sponsorship features were made possible by Artez Interactive.
The drop zone is a national fundraising campaign that sees fundraisers given the opportunity to rapel down highrise buildings in 10 cities across Canada.
The website acts as a registration, sponsorship, resource guide and lounge for participants and supporters.
Learn more at www.thedropzone.ca