(I composed this post last night)
As I arrive, Dee Dee is talking about Full Spectrum Warrior, a military recruiting video game developed by USC on a $2 million DoD grant. "USC is completely in the pocket of the Department of Defense."
"Of course, we shouldn't leave out the girl's games... the boys are getting sent to Iraq, and the girls are getting sent to the mall... THere are peaceful video games." She shows us a game "that's a little lame" because it didn't get a $2 million DoD grant. It's a game about the budget of the DoD.
Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be a wi-fi signal here at American University's Center for Social Media. I'm taking this down in AbiWord and will post to the blog shortly.
"Because of the availability... of these wonderful tools [community media] is very important around the world... There are all kinds of organizations around the world that are doing community media."
Dee Dee was involved in the (marginalized) civil society work at the World Summit on Information Society, where her group projected a Negativland film on Disney's restrictive IP practices on the side of the WIPO headquarters.
She also mentions Petri's (Prometheus Radio Project) work setting up radio stations in Tanzania.
Q&A
I ask Dee Dee how we can connect the people, the facilitites and other resources, and most importantly the traditions and values of community media to the generation of kids obviously excited about the personal media they can make, but don't seem to understand the deep power of media.
Because I was finishing my question, I missed the exact quote, but Dee Dee makes the point that these centers can be a place where people connect to make media., which is so different than using a webcam to film one's pet. It's about communities getting to know each other "and they can see the work that people do."
Dee Dee plugged my work with Reclaim the Media around the November FCC hearing! Thanks, Dee Dee.
One of the audience members, with experience in film and who is just learning about PEG, suggested sending "one of you guys" to university film programs. She made a really good point about engaging students in PEG who would tell their friends to watch, building a new constituency.
Dee Dee: "Part of the problem with public access is what I call the Wayne's World [stigma]... They want people to think of public access as a couple of guys wanking off in their mom's basement...." It's so much more important as a civic tool, for youth education, etc.
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"To be sure, [society] cannot exist except through the individuals who serve as its substratum; it is, however, something more than a collection of individuals. A whole is not identical to the sum of its parts, even though without them it would be nothing. In the same way, by coming together in a definite structure..., men [sic] form a new entity which has its own nature and its own laws." -Emile Durkheim, A Course in Sociology
"
Why do wars and revolutions happen? We do not know. We know only that to produce the one or the other men [sic] form themselves into a certain combination in which all take part; and we say that this is the nature of men [sic], that this is the law" -Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
"A phase transition is a sudden, global change in behaviour arising from the interactions of many constituent particles" -Philip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
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About Me
- Nathaniel James
- Washington, DC, United States
- In my professional life, I'm the Campaign Coordinator at the Media and Democracy Coalition. Beyond my commitment to advancing the values of justice and democracy in the media sphere through policy change and advancing community media, I have an intense interest in the social structure and process of intra and inter-organizational collaboration; social networks and social network analysis; network theory; complex systems; and emergent phenomenon. The views expressed here are my own and don't reflect the positions of any organizational entity.