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This is absurd. So is this. More from down under. Hardcore, redefined by a vegan - Great Divide is not cake. New ideas about dope and cancer. More thoughts on Twitter soon. Onward.

#IranElection: After The Weekend

After purposely staying away from Twitter for 24 hrs and returning to it today we see a shift in the discussion and a vast increase in users as a result. The parallel stories of the event itself and the created event of the so-called Twitter revolution have taken over the mainstream news. #CNNFail now can only complain at the tardiness of the coverage while the tag itself has become News. Clear-headed reporting is now coming in thru veteran newspaper journalists alongside the constant presence of a growing participatory audience. Clay Shirky comments that Twitter allows empathy, the ability to not just sympathize but also actively engage. Meanwhile a story we’d been paying close attention to (and engaged via web 2.0 tools) is the continuing plight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea. That story only just broke in MSM and now is all but buried as the relentless news cycle moves forward. It’s worth noting that story in light of this participatory ‘revolution’ in that they are young videographers functioning for new-media outlets – are they warranted the same rights as a newspaper reporter? Are they any different than Roxana Saberi, in light of the way journalists are being muted today? The very definition of journalism comes into question through events like we’re participating in now, with Iran. How and by whom information is parsed, how it’s provider’s are persecuted are paramount issues faced by everyone engaged on the net. Shirky also draws comparison to Chicago in 1968, when the catchphrase was ‘the world is watching’. Now the world has moved beyond watching, to taking part in the media. If the media was the message, now it is the machine we use to communicate. Currently the world is primarily engaged in one story; we forget that pirates still terrorize the oceans and young reporters are held prisoner in dangerous countries. Concerning is the notion that not only do we only crave engagement with one big story at a time, we view only one side of that story. Amid the questions ‘not’ being asked enough in the #IranElection Twittersphere: why are there no postings from the other sides? Iran has far more than two parties, all of them quite vocal. Yet it appears that only the green Mousavi side is using the technology to be heard. When we see the images through YouTube and Flickr there is little doubt that the masses in the frame represent all, yet mostly we read only Green commentary. The dialog over the images on the MSM networks almost never discusses what is being viewed, so there is a harsh disconnect and lack of a full understanding of meaning in the sequences playing out behind the plastic haired presenter. This disconnect is echoed in forwarded bytes of out-of-context video on the Internet. If you dig around, you can find reputable sources – mostly print journos –presenting other sides. But you have to dig around, and in the fervor of phenomenon such are being witnessed with Iran it’s difficult to bother, to not be swept up in the energy. Constant renewal of information, combined with the disassociation afforded by ‘distance’ on the web, is a heady brew. The perceived ‘action’ of Tweeting is more often ‘reaction’ to the mass of other Tweets. There is no pause, only ‘go’. It’s addictive, in the way video games are. The brain is engaged, yet simultaneously disengaged. A tricky balance to strike. Our willingness -in mobthink - to not pause, creates a vacuum. When we don’t step back and question what we’re viewing on our PC’s, or how we’re engaging in it, we’re doing a disservice to ourselves. The difference between firing off a reactionary email and regretting it later is that email allows the same passivity of taking a letter to the postbox. The ability to think twice, to have written the email, saved it as a draft and sleep on it. Maybe, you wouldn’t hit send in the morning. Remembering to take a breath isn’t so easy if you’re keyed up and actively engaged. Twitter, SMS, FaceBook, comments sections on blogs, chat rooms, user groups and forums all feed off our willingness for the instantaneous. The delay of long-form engagement is erased in 140 characters or less. It becomes a conversation, gilded with a mask of anonymity, the gift of speed and an ability to reach thousands, millions of other folks just like you. To some degree, the 2.0 engine accelerates on mobthink. When we can all feel the rush of connecting with someone dodging teargas and batons, it is reminiscent of the experience provided by a good action movie. Or, as noted yesterday, the retelling of a fight. There’s action, and you’re involved! Even if it’s from a swivel chair in front of a computer screen. Twitter itself faced choices, possibly enhanced by the State Department, about scheduling service that would have downed the lines so to speak. Recently they publicly turned down offers of sale. In creating a lean and mean operating system for their service they’ve made the easiest social networking tool to use. And one of the most difficult to regulate. As an entity, Twitter’s users are discovering how to regulate ourselves. As a business, it is shrewdly generating value while standing alone as a self-governing social site. Is what’s happening in Iran a revolution? Perhaps by political definition, as commented here by Richard Sambrook, it isn’t. Is the participation of millions in the evolving discourse a revolution? Perhaps it is.

#IranElection: Contrasting Views of The Twitter 'Revolution'

A lot has been made of web 2.0 journalism lately -here's the BBC's Richard Sambrook with the voice of reasoned experience. And here and here's commentary on the trending of CNN (and Mainstream Media in general) during the past week. Here's a few more items of note. We spent a lot of time on Twitter the past 72 hrs trying to determine our own take on events in Iran, and came to find the limitations of 'open source' reporting quickly overtook valid reports. The abundance of re-posted information, under the guise of individuals being 'the one who found this nugget' or that nugget of information was overwhelming. The beauty of Twitter is, it's all there. The post originating from ground zero doesn't need to be re-posted 100 or more times, yet that's exactly what happened. The mob psychosis familiar to anyone who's read Buford's "Among The Thugs" merely transmuted from the street to the internet. Everyone want's to be involved. Armchair revolutionaries excited at the prospect of cutting edge technology and a passion fueled by rapid-fire posts from the ground made the Twitter experience a personal one. It was like being able to tell a million of your best friends about the barroom brawl you weren't really a part of. Worse, there was little to no questioning of the validity of the Tweets streaming out - allegedly from Iran. Many very well were coming 'from the source', but how many were planted, faked, or otherwise provocatively placed to incite the fire? Not too many people stopped to ask. Or if they did, they quickly got caught up in what at it's peak amounted to over one thousand 'updates' per minute and went back to participating rabidly. At a certain point, there was no new information to tell. Concurrently, there was a lot of harsh criticism of CNN and Mainstream Media for NOT breaking in 'live' and reporting the story. CNN and the major networks have long ago shifted from being newswire style services to being programmed infotainment. The Iran election certainly isn't the first major international story that they've not covered well, or covered late. The fact that folks are upset at this lack of coverage is welcoming, but also a bit misguided. Meanwhile, the unfettered use of social networking and citizen-based 2.0 types of media as journalism is also welcomed, but requires a thoughtful approach to both reading/digesting the information and using the technology that provides it. What we've seen with #IranElection is more of a mobthink approach than a mindful one, at least thus far. We're very supportive and intrigued by the shift in news media from traditional sources to socially active ones, but a grain of salt is needed. There has been a rush to label The Twitter Revolution without properly analysis, and that run's counter to good journalism of any stripe. The use of Twitter and other 2.0 tech is causing paradigm shifts to old news and journo models, but at a cost. The floodgates are open and in order for these powerful tools to find a true value, they must be treated with respect and used wisely. We encourage clicking on all of the embedded links in this post and carrying on to click on their respective links. In case you can't be bothered, here's a relevant excerpt from Richard Sambrook's blog linked in the first paragraph which sums up the point we're making here. "If you, as an average news consumer, relied on Twitter you might believe all sorts of things had happened, which simply hadn't, running a high risk of being seriously misled about events on the ground. You might at best, have simply been confused. You probably wouldn't have thought Ahmadinejad enjoys much popular support at all. But if you had a reasonable understanding of social media, how to set up and assess feeds, how to compare and contrast information, if you had a reasonable understanding of news flows, a developed sense of scepticism, and an above average understanding of the political situation in Iran, you would have emerged much better informed than the lay viewer relying on TV or Radio news." UPDATE: Cyber attacks - good or bad? More here. UPDATE: Twitter users change location info to help 'hide' opposition posters in Tehran. UPDATE: Things to do and not to do on Twitter.

Gone Surfing

June Gloom

Mad bike design work from Finland. And France. Bring on the bicycle pinstripe! Even before the Tube strike, bike use grows in London. More about Obree's madcap handiwork. Brian Vernor flies the flag in Africa. Cargo bikes are the new fixie; Brad Q called it years ago. Kohl, calling it, prior to recanting. Omerta indeed. Driver gone mad. Blog award candidate for most repetitious use of the F-word. Since the real TdF is apparently letting a convicted coke fiend compete, why not let the crooks ride? Kevin Kelly on the new economy, socialism2.0, and technophilia. Viva.