fascinating!

I am studying tape cassettes at the moment myself. Looking forward to reading your future posts on any retro media related topic. peace.

After sometime, I think I can understand what’s going on: it’s not that you don’t understand it, it’s just that you assume that user-generated content is the norm. You don’t understand why it’s a big deal because it’s normal for you, not because you don’t believe it’s important (as some of us might think if we weren’t reading you before, as that’s the normal context of such a phrase).

Your blog is about social software. Software enabling users to talk, to become active, present, share and co-develop in the process. Compared to that state-controlled (as in frequencies) broadcast media, like radio or television where the you can’t participate, just consume and assume a passive role seems anachronic.

There is a qualitative difference there, and most people aren’t realizing how big the changes caused will be. Yesterday I was reading an inteview by Al Gore (yup, that one) where he connected 1) the the press to the creation of a discussion that resulted in Iluminism, 2) radio and television to the appearance of dictatorships in the 20th century (because they enabled one-sided propaganda without any counter-point or response possible) and 3) the Internet as the new discussion place (“that could save democracy”).

As you, I’ve got to the point of assuming the Internet exists and that it is like it is. Keeping a conversation with my parents helps a lot in this (my father doesn’t even have an email address). There’s a huge difference these days between Internet users and non-Internet users. Let’s just try to keep in touch with that other strange world anyway.

Libraries are increasingly allowing users/patrons to generate content. This seems like a big “duh” to me, but I think lots of people who have been in the information world think of users as not particularly worthy of generating content, or maybe that the content they generate won’t fit in with a “look and feel” that the particular library/company wants to present to the public.

User generated content is an absolute must, in my view, for libraries because part of a library’s role is to encourage “the free exchange of ideas”…. including what patrons/users think/know/feel….

Let the information flow.

Oh, and about the real topic of this post:
Brilliant. I am always looking out for news on how publishers/producers/etc. are going to make a buck within this tsunami of free content!

Also, I recently found this blog and I am very happy that I did .

Ummm… perhaps because it reverses the systemic roots of hegemony – based in a few having control over media and hence creation, dissemination and authority of knowledge – that have existed for a millennium and a half (give or take a couple of centuries)? (Refer to McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy, and associated writings for more.)