The following entry is the “SFW” (i.e., PG-13) version of: This Blog Entry Has Been Rated NSFW What is “age appropriate” viewing? Who determines when you can see what? Let’s begin with some representative vignettes. The first from the print-centric paradigm of my youth. When I was a teenager in the seventies, growing up in the South, there were visible, physical boundaries marking what was fit for consumption by...
What is “age appropriate” viewing? Who determines when you can see what? Let’s begin with some representative vignettes. The first from the print-centric paradigm of my youth. When I was a teenager in the seventies, growing up in the South, there were visible, physical boundaries marking what was fit for consumption by those who were “under aged.” At the back of the local used paperback bookstore, a curtain...
On December 21st, 2010, the Home News reported that Tyler Clementi’s parents filed notice of their intent to sue Rutgers University. In the notice, the Clementi family’s lawyer contends that the university failed to protect Clementi from the “unlawful or otherwise improper acts perpetrated against” him. The notice goes on to say: it appears Rutgers University failed to act, failed to put in place and/or failed to implement, and...
In Part 1 on Virtual Communities and Embodies Realities, I moved from Tyler Clementi’s virtual community on justusboys.com to the embodied community of his dorm. In Part 2, I will focus on a number of embodied communities at Rutgers and then, in the remaining posts in this thread, I will continue the discussion of Clementi’s correspondence with his virtual community. Here are a handful of examples of local efforts at Rutgers to...
My Facebook inbox contained a friend request this morning from a young woman who has three profile pix, including this one: Friend Request, Blurring Added I don’t know her and don’t believe I’ve ever seen her. When I received the request, we had no “mutual friends”–meaning none of my 174 friends on Facebook is friends with her (two hours after the request, the young woman and I now have “1 mutual...
“This is not a ‘phone,’” Dr. Englander told the parents who looked, collectively, shellshocked. What you’ve given your child “is a mobile computer.” This quote comes from “As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catchup,” the latest cage-rattling piece in the Times’ ongoing coverage of technology’s disruptive influence on the family. It’s easy enough to interpret parental cluelessness of...
What better way to sum up the last couple of weeks’ meditations on the transformative powers of Web 2.0 than WikiLeaks? When Paul and I make our presentations on the future of higher education, we begin by stipulating that the dominance of digital media is not inevitable at some future time, but rather is already a fait accompli. Here’s one way to illustrate this fact: a few months back, the New York Times ran an article with a...
In Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong makes the startling–and since much debated–claim that writing “heightens consciousness,” because it alienates the writer from the present moment. He goes on to explain: Alienation from a natural milieu can be and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and understand fully, we need not only proximity, but also distance. This writing provides for consciousness as...
