Learning Aesthetics

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
I think when most of us started to listen to Bob Dylan we assumed that we were part of some community that shared a certain hipness denied to the rest of society. Maybe so, but it kind of missed the point. The [...]

photo credit: Nesster
Up to this point I’ve been assuming that I didn’t have a student readership, but now that I’m teaching a class…
Oh well, my real point is that we can’t turn off the electricity, so I may as well post this.  This Tweet just in form Michael Wesch: “Chacha … new ways to [...]

Over lunch today I suggested, probably naively, the possibility that just as ‘technology’ had made dictation and secretaries pretty much obsolete, and that ‘technology’ might just be in the process of doing something similar to managers and hierarchies. My companion, correctly assuming that I was proposing some sort of program that might be ‘implemented’, [...]

One of the problems with the multiplex approach is figuring out where to put things. My political bent has been made fairly clear over on SightWork and arguably doesn’t belong here. On the other hand the upcoming election is so important that conviction must trump other concerns, and besides this is a really interesting presentation [...]

Despite my ‘terminal degree’, neither of the hats that I claim give me any authority to comment on being an ‘academic’; sometimes I think it would be fun but I don’t really know enough to have an actual opinion.  On the other hand it seems worth while to  put out some provocative pointers to knowledgeable [...]

Picking up on yesterday’s theme, and on a post from a while back; dean David Rubin postulated that ‘texting’ was, I don’t want to put words in his mouth but something like, “…replacinging traditional communication forms and thus discouraging face to face social interaction in class.”  Something bothered me about that, but I couldn’t put [...]

Paul Gandel has set up a series of events that allows the Information Technology staff to meet with various Deans and members of the University administration. Last week’s meeting was with David Rubin Dean of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communication. By his own admission Dean Rubin isn’t a big fan of technology. [...]

A while back there was a common aphorism in the information technology world: “The Web changes everything!” From our current perspective it’s apparent that we may have been over optimistic; some things have changed many have remained pretty much the same. What’s really difficult to comprehend is the effect of the changes or their possibilities. [...]