An oldie but a goodie. The folks at ROFLCON just announced that Miss Teen USA South Carolina will be the emcee at the upcoming SF-ROFL thing (August 29th).
Unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to get to this one – and not because I can’t find San Francisco on my map. Unlike many U.S. Americans I believe in building up our future for our children and that our education here should help the Iraq and the Asian countries. ;)
As appropriate for a conference by that name, the folks at the Center for Public Media at American University have made available a ton of content from Beyond Broadcast available online.
I’ve mentioned Chris Kelty‘s Two Bits as part of my summer reading list. Although I have the PDF sitting in my “to read” folder I think I’m waiting on the hardcover I ordered from Amazon. Seems like the kind of book that requires more reflective reading.
Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet (and How to Stop It) is quickly rising to the top of my summer reading list (about which more to come in a later blog post). The distinctions he draws (based on his recent talks, see video here, here, and here) between sterile and generative platforms, and the concerns he raises about contingently generative or tethered platforms, seem to me right on target, and consistent with the issues Tim O’Reilly has been raising (along with, of course, many others) about how to translate the freedom behind free software and the openness behind open source into a world in which services and data live in the cloud.
One major place where the conflict between fully generative and contingently generative comes into play is on online video. YouTube‘s terms of service should give any independent video maker pause – both in terms of the license rights they claim and in terms of the susceptibility to take down on the basis of broad criteria[1].
Two things make me hopeful, though, for the future of video on the open web: Miro and Kaltura. Read more…