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January 14, 2007

Democracy in Fifteen Seconds

I have a new column up on Flow. It's about a contest sponsored by CBS inviting participants to submit 15-second videos to YouTube, with the winning video possibly being aired on Super Bowl Sunday. I think the contest is an interesting one, but I'm not quite sure I'm satisfied with whether I adequately explained my reservations about how "participatory culture" has been framed recently.

As usual, there are a number of interesting columns in the current issue of Flow, several of which are pertinent to my current writing project, including Jennifer Warren's "The Final Frontier: Myth and Meaning in Science Fiction Television," Jean Anne Lauer's "'They finally killed off Kat': Battlestar Galactica's and the Limits of its Politics," and Hector Amaya's "Film is the New Low, Television the New High: Some Ideas About Time and Narrative Conservatisms."

Update: Just a quick pointer to my syllabus for my "Technology in the Language Arts Classroom" and the course blog. I decided to experiment with Google's page creator following Michael's advice. I found the page creator a little clunky, but like Michael, I wanted the page to be accessible to anyone and was looking for something relatively easy to use.

Posted by chuck at January 14, 2007 6:28 PM

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Comments

Happy belated NEW Year. I've been ill and continue to recupe. How was the MLA? I really should take the time to scroll back through your old entries and see your views. Too bad I am on dialup and a budget. Dialup is frugal way to keep contact -- no overheating of information. Weez also seems to be making a comeback. Hope to write more soon. I luv our exchanges. Prada is so close to the truth PRAVDA, eh?!

Posted by: Francois Lachance at January 14, 2007 8:20 PM

Hi, Francois. I'm sorry to hear that you've been ill and I hope your recovery is swift. And am also sorry that you're confined to dialup--I've certainly missed your comments lately.

MLA was okay--caught a few panels and did some networking. I've been so caught up in writing this article that I haven't spent much time blogging or blog reading, so I actually feel a little out of touch myself.

Posted by: Chuck at January 15, 2007 8:47 AM

Nice syllabus! You're right that Googlepages is a little clunky. And sometimes it kills my web browser and I have to start again.

Re your Flow column, which I liked very much: now there's the Dove thing during the Academy Awards (the announcement of the ad has been a big attraction on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIRS95CbJNw). Are there really that many people out there who have always dreamed of shooting a soap commercial? I always thought people were annoyed that TV shows spend too much time selling soap.

Posted by: michael at January 16, 2007 10:54 AM

Thanks, Michael, on both counts. I noticed the Dove contest when I was reserching that article. I think Chevy is also doing a similar contest for the Super Bowl. But I wasn't sure how to work either one into the article. Mostly because the "selling soap" angle was less interesting to me. But at least that'll give me another excuse to watch the Oscars.

Posted by: Chuck at January 17, 2007 10:41 AM

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