Category Archives: Expert Analysis

You gotta see the video of Shelly-Ann Fraser’s interview after winning the 100-meter dash. Braces + big smile + Jamaican accent = very cute.

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NBC is almost getting it right. Almost. You can watch videos of Olympics online, but only if you install some Microsoft product. You also have to sit through ads before any video you watch, and occasionally as interruptions of longer videos, but I can understand all that. What they’re finally doing successfully is they’re making it easier to see any and every sport you wish to see. The mainstream media has been very slow to catch on to effective use of the internet for events like the Olympics. The Tour de France has always flirted with online re-broadcasts, but they’ve never really done enough. I’m sure there’s some sort of economic reason — French TV probably negotiates with various networks around the world (like the sub-par Versus network which airs the Tour in the US), and they most likely don’t want their potential viewers stolen by the web.

But it makes a lot of sense to offer archives of sports since they have such a limited broadcast life. People don’t want to see re-runs of most competitions. You’re not going to watch the quarterfinals of last year’s March Madness multiple times, are you? But you might want to see re-broadcasts soon after the original one. In fact, the networks don’t have much to lose by posting videos on the internet 30-60 minutes after the original, do they? The initial TV broadcast is still optimal (since sports watchers need to know the results live, it seems), but a quickly-available internet archive of those events would be cheap and would only bring in more revenue if you do what NBC has been doing with the advertising.

This is really the first Olympics where I’ve been able to watch most of the sports I’d like to see. Swimming and gymnastics are fine, but if all that drama gets to be too overdone (what network hasn’t milked the Olympics for all the sap it can?), I can opt for rowing or equestrian or sabre. Or I can re-watch the men’s 4×100 meter relay (best finish ever).
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It’s a favorite past time of many Americans and, indeed, the world at large, to make fun of how dumb the citizens of this nation are. On any number of late night talk shows, you can see in interviews on the streets how many people don’t know who Hillary Clinton is or can’t tell you how many states are in the United States. Jay Leno does it with his “Jaywalking”segment, and you can bet there are plenty of these sorts of displays of Amercian stupidity abroad, like Australia’s “Chaser Non-stop News Network” (CNNNN), which came to American cities a few years back and seemed to edit out anyone with a high school education or higher. Of course, stupid people are funny; I’m not saying we shouldn’t laugh (“The children are right to laugh at you, Ralph.”). But are people really that dumb?

I admit to writing off the general public as pretty idiotic, citing evidence in the success of Reality TV and the fact that Dubya is our president, just to name a few things. And of course, the internet only furthers my theory. Specifically, those facets of the internet which contain lots of comments. Take one look at a popular YouTube video and you’ll see some top-rate idgets. A typical exchange involves calling someone gay; scolding that person with impassioned, misspelled words; critiquing previous posters’ spelling; some unsolicited preaching about the evils of the Chinese government; a follow-up berating how little Americans know about China and how they should STFU; and finally a mass write-off of all previous commenters as complete and total dumb-asses or maybe fags. All this might be in response to a video of Pokemon.

This cycle of stupidity is so ubiquitous that it provoked a series of skits by collegehumor.com about how ridiculous such a dialogue would be in real life: one, two, three.

What do real life debates have that the internet doesn’t? Moderation.

Two definitions of moderation apply, actually — the first being the avoidance of extremes and the second being an additional party that guides the contributions of those engaged in the debates.

In an organized debate, for instance, a moderator keeps the discussion focused and civil, makes sure that all parties involved have equal opportunity to voice their opinions, decides on and filters questions for the debaters, and can often see with clarity the stalemates that arise in a debate and decide when it’s best to move on to the next topic.
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When I teach my Science Fiction course to high schoolers, inevitably the question arises whether technology is harmful or beneficial. It’s an overly simplistic question meant to spur debate, but I’ve noticed in the past five or six years that fewer and fewer kids find technology disturbing. And so, I tend to lean that way in discussion, citing things like pollution, global warming, genetically modified foods, sounding the alarms about how we’re all headed toward a metaphorical Matrix. And if none of that works, I start talking about the joys of being in the wilderness and the fact that contact with dirt makes people happier.

Where the discussion really gets interesting, however, is when we delve into virtual reality territory. There are those who claim that living in the Matrix wouldn’t be so bad — like Cypher in the movie — except their argument isn’t that “ignorance is bliss”; their argument is that virtual worlds can be more fun than the real world.

I’ve seen what these kids are talking about. When I was in middle school, I had a Sega console. Not the Sega Genesis. The original Sega. And there were a few games called role-playing games, which usually involved dungeons and towers and grassy meadows that you rode your horse through. One such game was called Ys; another was Golvellius; and there was a third one called Phantasy Star which had really cool dungeons on multiple planets, no horses. Actually, according to wikipedia, Phantasy Star was the first “story-drive” RPG released in the United States, but whatever. The point is that these were all role-playing games and as such, required the player of the game to become the main character of the story unfolding over the course of the gameplay.

Don’t all games do that? Well, yes, to a certain extent many of them do. But from what I can tell, RPGs differ in how much they suck you in. An RPG is a time vacuum. And when you finally force yourself to turn it off at 2:00 in the morning, you don’t necessarily feel a sense of satisfaction. Maybe here’s where I should stop talking in second person. I don’t necessarily feel a sense of satisfaction. In fact, I’d often feel quite the opposite — a sense of having been duped, of having spent a lot of time and having very little to show for it.
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In recent years, along with increased talk of Web 2.0, there’s been talk of the “We Generation.” What does this mean? And is it a fair label?

First, a quick review. We’ve heard various appellations for recent generations: Generation X, Generation Y, the Millennials, Echo Boomers, Generation Z, Generation C. You can’t really get a straight answer on what’s what, but most sources I’ve looked at say that Generation X follows the Baby Boomers and includes those born between 1965 and 1981. It’s actually 1980, but everyone says give or take a few years, so I did (just to get my wife, born in ’81, in my generation). Us Generation Xers are relatively small (48 million in the US); Gen Y, which follows us and which we’ll say is from 1982 (exactly) to 1995 (give or take five years), numbers about 71 million. They’re sometimes called the Millennials, too. But when they end and the next generation starts is a little up-for-grabs.

It’s also a little up-for-grabs what to call this most recent generation. Some have, quite unimaginatively, dubbed them Generation Z, and there are plenty of other names floating around, but many of them center around the idea that these kids (born circa 1995, we’ll say — just to keep it simple) are products of the Digital Age. Hence names like “The Google Generation.”

My current high school students are straddling the fence between Generation Y and The Next One. They have had cell phones around their entire life; same with the internet and email; they’ve never had a rotary phone; the Soviet Union has never existed in their lifetime; they have only known two presidents; the Berlin wall hasn’t existed. The list goes on.

But in terms of media use, I’m seeing some very different trends in my current batch of students from those who were in high school a mere five years ago. Consider that YouTube was created in February of 2005. The blogging craze took off in 2004. The very first iPods came out in 2001. Google became a publicly traded company in 2004. MySpace was founded in 2003; Facebook was founded in 2004. Web 2.0 was labeled as such in 2005. Wikipedia was launched in 2001. The first commercial camera-phone in the U.S. was available in 2002.
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I just finished a book called The Brief History of the Dead. The first chapter of it was originally a short story published in The New Yorker, and you can see it by clicking these blue words. In the novel, there’s a character who tries to figure out how many people he knew in his life. He tallies 42,000, though he eventually comes to believe that the number must be more than that, perhaps closer to 50,000 or even reaching as much as 70,000.

I haven’t tried this myself, but I suspect it would be quite difficult to tally everyone I’ve known. And in many cases, the distinctions would be a little blurry. I certainly know the students I’ve taught and the parents I’ve conferenced with. I know the clerks at the grocery store, even if I can’t tell you their names. I know hundreds of colleagues and neighbors and teammates from over the years. But do I know the flight attendant who served me orange juice on my cross-Atlantic flight to Brussels in 1998? Do I know all the telemarketers who called my residence before I got on the national no-call list?

Surely, I can’t remember all the names of everyone I’ve met. And if I peruse my grading books from years past, I might chance upon a student whose name sounds familiar, but whose face I can’t recall. But when we bring various media into the mix, the gradations of knowing get more complicated. If my only contact with someone has been over the phone (the stubborn AOL customer service rep who wouldn’t let me cancel my account comes to mind), do I know him? What about instant messaging? I don’t chat with strangers, but in recent years, I have been known to opt for chat tech support over phone tech support. Last year, a rep from Linksys helped me get my wireless router up and running after it mysteriously crapped out. She had some plain Jane name — like Jane or something — but I’m pretty sure that a lot of those tech support people, especially the ones based in India, take on a more American-sounding name. So I likely never knew her name.

But there are plenty of people on the internet whose real names are withheld for some reason or another. I’ve interacted with people in forums (again for tech support; forums are great for when your warranty is up and the company who made your failing device will no longer help you), but they have names like MicJagger and lordvader129. And I’ve actually spoken to people over xbox live who have names like Mr. FuzzyNickel (I called him Fuzzy for short).

And then there are “friends” lists. Though it may be difficult to identify who I know, it should be easy to label a friend, no?

Web 2.0 loves social networking. Facebook and Myspace are the most popular ones here in the States, but there are several others (shown on this map of the world based on their popularity), and there are, of course, other methods of becoming acquainted with someone. You can follow people on tumblr and twitter; you can “add as a contact” on flickr; you can become allies or rivals on pmog; you can join all sorts of hobby-based “communities” where you interact with others (poets.com is one); and of course, there are all sorts of internet dating sites (I know of at least two very compatible married couples who met over the internet, so it must work in some instances). The list goes on.

But for those of us who haven’t used the internet much for social purposes, the whole concept of friendship in cyberspace is really strange. Let me tell you about six fictional people who have (not actually) requested to be my friends on Facebook.
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