I haven’t been able to shake this days-old post by Jeff Jarvis, journalism provocateur, bar none. I suspect he’s right about the only metric that counts in the new digital world. Here’s the essential graph: Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating,…Continue Reading…
After SARS hysteria swept through the media in 2003, David Rothkopf, writing in The Washington Post, called it an “information epidemic”–or “infodemic.” He defined “infodemic” as thus: A few facts, mixed with fear, speculation and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies, have affected national and international economies, politics and even security…Continue Reading…
What might a “taxonomy of new-media animals” look like after the great Darwinian shake out? Check out this forecast by Matt Pressman at Vanity Fair’s Politics & Power blog. No surprise: he gives the “Inky mammoth” species poor chances of survival.
I can’t wait to hear what the real anthros over at Savage Minds have to say about the Pentagon’s idea to replicate them.
Howie Kurtz at The Washington Post seems to think so.
Lost amid swine flu frenzy is the import of yesterday’s speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on climate change and foreign policy. But the ever reliable Keith Johnson at Environmental Capital caught it: What was really interesting was Ms. Clinton’s argument about the economics of tackling climate change. Basically, she said that curbing greenhouse-gas…Continue Reading…
It happens every summer when tourists pass through the ancient burial caves on their way to Mt. Pulag in the Philippines: they can’t keep their hands off the mummies. According to the Philippine Inquirer, local officials are still promoting the popular trek this year, but they “have a piece of advice for visitors: respect the…Continue Reading…
Right now the biggest contagion is fear. So if you’re looking for varied, broader perspective, the N.Y. Times provides it here.
In the coming days, lots of people are going to be dazed and confused (and increasingly edgy) from the Swine Flu-athon already in media overdrive. I’ve been trolling around for a one-stop shop that offers virus authority in a readable, lighthearted manner. Maggie Koerth-Baker to the rescue, courtesy of boingboing.
This thoughtful essay argues for reconciling the institutional divide between history and archaeology. Daniel Lord Smail, a professor of history at Harvard, writes that The discovery of “˜deep time’ during the middle of the 19th century has long been understood as a transforming moment in the histories of biology, archaeology and geology. We are only…Continue Reading…