Celebrity Twitter Overkill

How could I not post this?

The Social Moose Thanks BJ Emerson and Tasti-D-Lite

Back on April 27, we were delighted to have BJ Emerson of Tasti-D-Lite as a guest speaker in our class, not the least because he brought us free samples. It was marvelous to hear him talk about his own experiences and approaches to social media in a business context, and we were fortunate that he allowed us to video his talk. It's not possible to present the class in its entirety, but here are some excerpts from his time with us:
















And so, the Social Moose, aka the Spring 2009 Interactive Media class at Fordham University thanks BJ Emerson and Tasti-D-Lite for a delicious discussion of social media!

Social Moose Goes YouTubing

For our final class, we did some interviews for YouTube, and here are the results:

Domino's Effects

I'm just providing the links here, check it out at your own risk:

The Domino's Effect from Social Media Today

and

the response from Domino's: An Update to Our Valued Customers


Responses are welcome!

The Story of the Internet

OK, just a quick note here, to say that this video is really well done, and I like the way it shows how a number of different developments in different kinds of technologies, in different nations, and at different times, all came together to form the internet. Really impressive work!



Of course, taking a big picture perspective, we might say that the bias of electric technologies has been towards greater convergence of technologies and services--this is a point McLuhan made decades ago, and Mumford before him. It's not that the internet was inevitable, there are many different ways that things could have worked out. The evolution has been dynamic and fluid, and chaotic, like a stream, but like a stream, it has followed a certain, unmistakable direction.

McLuhan Remix

This is a post I just put up on my own blog, thought it would be a good addition to The Social Moose as well.

So, I recently heard from Jamie O'Neil, an assistant professor of digital media arts at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. Canisius is a Jesuit school, like my own Fordham University--in traditional parlance, we are sister schools. And Jamie is a media ecologist who was prompted to contact me by my friend, sister media ecologist, and fellow Media Ecology Association board member Ellen Rose from the University of New Brunswick. That's in Canada, you know...

So, Jamie is also a performance artist, and he has an alias, Kurt Weibers, or I guess you could call it a stage name, pseudonym, or what have you. Here's the deal, in his own words:

Jamie O'Neil is a video/performance artist, writer and teacher. In 2002, he created the virtual identity of Kurt Weibers for usage online, in videos and live performance seminars. Kurt Weibers is the spokesman for Global Point Strategies, which developed Navel Software for organizational change, as well as numerous motivational presentations on topics ranging from creativity, listening, time management and synchronicity, to quantitative research methods for understanding culture. Kurt Weibers works as a reporter, business consultant in Norway and a DJ / VJ (on the side) the latter role being the reason for his involvement in the McLuhan Remix project.

This write-up is taken from his McLuhan Remix website, which is worth a look. It includes some explanation of the remix or mash-up phenomenon, and its relationship to Marshall McLuhan, as well as a short video essay entitled, naturally enough, McLuhan Remix, which is made up of three YouTube videos. You can play them continuously on his McLuhan Remix page, but I will also embed them here for your convenience, dear reader:

McLuhan Remix: Prologue 1/3



McLuhan Remix: The Medium is the Mix 2/3



McLuhan Remix: Epilogue 3/3





There's other interesting material on kurtweibers's Channel on YouTube, which you can explore if you care to.

The bottom line, for me, is not so much that McLuhan was prescient, but simply that he was identifying the characteristics of electricity, electrical technology, and the electronic media environment, much as Lewis Mumford had done before him. Most of what is being hailed as new and unprecedented about contemporary digital technology is, in fact, characteristic of electric technology in general, and was recognized by media ecologists like Mumford and McLuhan over the course of the 20th century. That is why McLuhan is more relevant than ever today, as we continue to electrify just about everything we can. You might say that what we are doing is in one sense expanding the electronic media environment, but in another filling it in or filling it out, or to put it another way, coloring in between the power lines. Remixed drinks, anyone?

Digital Ethnography

In class we viewed some of the YouTube videos created and uploaded by my friend Mike Wesch. You can take a look at his YouTube channel Digital Ethnography by clicking on the title, and subscribe. But let's also embed some of his outstanding videos here at The Social Moose.

We can start with the final version of his award-winning The Machine is Us/ing Us:



And his outstanding follow-up, Information R/evolution:




And how could we not include A Vision of Students Today?



And here's an extended lecture that is well worth an hour of your time, An anthropological introduction to YouTube:

Marketing Books in the Digital Age

This YouTube video provides a great deal of insight into the book publishing industry as it functions in the digital media environment:




Or not.