Raising the touch-screen generation
At NewsFOO earlier this month, I gave an Ignite Talk about the joys and challenges of raising a child in this digital, always-on interactive era.The talk follows. (Also- check out the other NewsFoo talks, including Jay Rosen’s harrowing The Abyss of Observation Alone.)
Update: Things I’ve observed since giving the talk 4 weeks ago:
- Last week, I took O. on her first American Girl Store visit. (It was not of my, or her volition– an out-of-town friend I hadn’t seen for 25+ years was visiting with his daughters.) O. was excited– I’ve never chased her around a store as much as I did here. To my relief, however, she seemed more into the displays and animals then she did in the dolls. Afterward, despite it being her naptime, I took her to the nearby Lego Store. The highlight of the store, besides the giant Lego dragon and Woody, was the pile of bricks in the middle of the store. O. went into a zone, focussed on building a two-brick tower with as many colors as she could find. Her hypnotic-like state was reminiscent of what she’s like when she’s deep into Netflix on her iPad.
- This month O’s become much more into pretend play and has begun to request stories from me at bedtime. This is awesome– I’m wonder when I can break out The Hobbit– but also has me feeling the heat to come up with some fresh material. Most of my stories involve some combination of her, family members and baby animals going to the park.
- We’ve been on vacation for most of this week, during which time O. has been surrounded by new people and places and my wife and I haven’t had to work, much. Perhaps not coincidentally, O. has only requested a screen once since we left the airplane, at the tail end of a 4 hour road trip.
“The coming broadcast apocalypse”
Instead of packing for my Christmas holiday, I spent Friday morning in a Twitter discussion about the state of podcasting, interactive audio and the state of broadcasting with Rob Bole, Rekha Murthy, Adam Schweigert, Josh Stearns and Benjamen Walker, among others. I summarized our exchanges on Storify. A couple of concluding thoughts:
- Anyone chatting about podcasting over Twitter is part of a weird, nerdy, nice of information consumers and technology users. We are the 1%, not the masses, and using our experiences and preferences as a basis for anticipating the desires and behaviors of the 99% is dangerous business. (Of the two dozen or so people I’ll be spending the holidays with this week, maybe two could tell you what podcasting is. One is my spouse, the other is an audio producer.
- Apps killed the podcast star: Despite the above, I now spend a lot more time with mobile apps like TuneIn Radio and Rdio then I do with audio streams that I subscribe to over iTunes. Pandora has 100 million listeners. I don’t know how many people subscribe to podcasts, but I’m pretty sure it is nowhere near 9 figures.
- Like its cousins from the 00s RSS and citizen journalism, podcasting never fulfilled its promise as a vibrant mass medium. Remember the Dawn and Drew Show? Podcasting today is, for most Americans, a link in the iTunes store. Podcasting has become so marginal that the Pew Internet & American Life Project has done no research on the medium since George W. Bush was president.
- Technology has advanced since podcasting’s emergence in 2004-05. As one friend observed,
“Podcasting was briefly a necessity when Video Was Hard. Youtube webcam videos ate podcasting.”
- If you ever find yourself in one of a spontaneous group Twitter chats I suggest adopting a hashtag as soon as you see it gaining momentum. Such a marker would have made tracking and summarizing this conversation easier.
Three Things Heard Last Night Watching Zuccotti Sweep
As is my habit, I woke up around 3 last night and in my half waking state rolled over to see what was happening in the world, aka Twitter. I woke up a bit more when I saw that the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park was being rolled up by the NYPD. Some things I recall seeing and hearing while in limited consciousness:
1. Along with approximately 9,999 others, I found myself watching live video of the aftermath provided on UStream by @Iwilloccupy. (Our host made sure to mention the number viewers about once a minute.) He interviewed a young smoker with cool glasses who reported that a 1,000-fold uptick in the number of her Twitter followers during the interview. He also was physically confronted by a group masked in bandanas who objected to being filmed.
2. The only live #ows audio I could find was on WBAI. (The number of WBAI listeners at that hour were probably fewer that the number following @Iwilloccupy.) I didn’t hear any from the streets, but listeners were calling in with summaries of coverage on other radio and television stations. One caller, after summarizing what he heard on WOR, thanked the BAI team, noting “I think your coverage is a little bit biased and paranoid, but I appreciate it.”
3. WBAI ran headlines from Al Jazeera English. The lead story was Syria; the top US story concerned the NBA labor dispute. I took that as an affirmation of what the world sees as important in the US: no NBA is more relevant to most people’s live than the travails of a group of protesters in a city park.
9 Reasons I’m (Trying to Be) A Washington Nationals Fan
A Chicago friend invited me to a Nationals-Braves game over last weekend. Despite the fact that it started to rain as I entered the stadium, I left feeling excited about a potential new sports relationship. On the train home I thought up nine reasons for me to try to become a Nationals fan:
- Proximity. Nationals Park (“the nation’s first LEED-certified professional sports stadium”) is three stops on the Metro from my apartment. The door-to-door trip took me less than 25 minutes. I’m unlikely to ever again have such access to a baseball stadium. I don’t feel guilty in switching horses, for both my father (from Dodgers to Yankees to Mets to Brewers) and grandfather (Giants to Orioles) adjusted their baseball allegiance based on where they were living. are raising a child.
- Mike Rizzo. Writing for FanGraphs, Jack Moore says the Nats’ general manager “has brought some tremendous talent into the Nationals system, largely with the help of the number one draft pick both years he’s been in charge. He deserves credit for signing both players, but what’s more interesting is how Rizzo has handled the free agent market.” Baseball Prospectus gives Rizzo credit for “tacit planning instead of haphazard stumbling.”
- Stephen Strasburg. (Strasburg’s severe arm injury was announced the day before I took up residency in DC., which, coupled with that rain shower upon entering the stadium, endears me all the more to this club.)
- Guns N Roses: Two-thirds of the Nats’ starting outfield walk to the plate to the tune of Axl and the boys: Jayson Werth had November Rain and on Saturday, at least, Michael Morse started an at-bat with the opening of Paradise City.
- DC pride. Nationals Park may have a higher proportion of fans rooting against the home team than any other pro sports arena. That makes me want to root for the home team all the more.
- Harper Bryce. (It’s a sad statement on a franchise when it’s two most exciting players are unlikely to see the field until next year at the earliest.)
- Great catchers. Nats Park features representations of two of the best catchers of all-time: Pudge Rodrirguez is winding down his career in person, and a statue of Negro League legend Josh Gibson awaits you at the park’s entrance.
- Nats blogs. I’m enjoying discovering new voices who care about the Nationals, including blogs like Federal Baseball and the Nationals Enquirer and Twitterers @washingnats and @NatsPhaseTwo.
- The Cubs. Sigh. My hometown Cubs lost me last summer when the team’s new owners the Ricketts decided to let manager Lou Piniella stick around last season because they found him to be a nice guy.
- Montreal. Formerly the Expos, the Nats carry the baseball legacy of the city where Jackie Robinson broke the pro baseball color barrier.
Chap hop: I’m old
I’ve reached the point in my life in which I’m learning about new hip-hop genres via the frontpage of the Wall Street Journal.
“I’m in” and Facebook
Top three Facebook search results for “I’m in,” (on this morning of the Obama re-elect announcement):
“Later in life they will want to build an identity”
Among the highlights of this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival for me was the opportunity to tag team with Dan Sinker on Hacking Kids: How to Raise a Digital Native. (With apologies to John Palfrey and Urs Gasser.) It was a “Core Conversation,” not a panel, which apparently meant 360 degree arena seating next to a loud jam band session.
Tech News Daily has a nice summary of the hour, we also captured some of the discussion with a #nuevodads tags.
Andrew Kuklewicz had a good tip for this Disney-phobic parent of a girl: tell your daughter “princesses love math.”
Among 80 or so parents and parents-to-be in the room, it was our 18 year-old SXSW staffer/monitor who had one of the best lines:
“It might seem nice now, and it’s nice that you want to reserve their domain name and be so involved, but you have to understand that later in life they will want to build an identity. Remember, your child might want to use that name for themselves.”
(Other SXSW highlights included seeing old friends, riding in the back of a pedi-taxi with Harper Reed, and receiving a Code for America sweatshirt from Tim O’Reilly.)
On Wisconsin
I’ve kept an eye on events in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend. I followed interesting conversations over Twitter, Facebook and even with real live human beings.
My main conclusions: a) Wisconsinites, at least the ones I know, are generally awesome people, and b) public-sector unions is a complicated issue likely to be listed in lots of 2011 “year in review” articles. Here are a couple of other thoughts I’ve had:
1. I find efforts to conflate the labor protests (against a governor selected by the people of the state some 100 days ago) to the revolution in Egypt ridiculous.
2. Via a friend’s Facebook wall, I saw this reflection from a longtime constituent of Scott Walker.
Having lived in Milwaukee County for most of Walker’s tenure here, he does not have the capacity to compromise. Every year his budget for the county was summarily rejected by the board, he would veto theirs and they would override his veto. He draws a lot of his mystique with his base by not bending to the forces of reason or compromise. …This is the man that in response to a 67 page economic plan from Tom Barrett, published a 68 page plan with two-three word per page.
3. I had some fun chats on Twitter, and over dinner, with (otherwise traditionally liberal) friends convinced that public sector unions, at least in some circumstances, run counter to the public good.
MLB.com chooses PR over journalism
I’d had this week circled on the calendar for months for three words: Pitchers and Catchers. That cherished right of spring reminds me that baseball is the subject of much of my favorite digital media. The MLB mobile app is one of my favorites, allowing me to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of Vin Scully and Jon Miller. This week I’ve focussed my podcast listening on newfound pleasures from FanGraphs, WEEI (I’m not a Red Sox fan– yet– but it is the best team-based audio coverage I’ve found), Baseball America– I’ve even taken to ESPN’s Baseball Today weekly cast– though I may reconsider now that Seth Everett’s gone.)
This excitement for digital baseball content was lessened with the revelation that MLB.com has decided to function as a PR agency instead of a news organization. Like Craig Calcaterra, I was skeptical but open-minded when Major League Baseball launched its own reporting agency. I’ve found it to be a mostly useful service: yes, the reporters worked for the teams they were covering, but I saw less puffery in its coverage of the Chicago Cubs, say, than I did in coverage from WGN Radio (which until recently shared the same corporate owner as the baseball team.) Calcaterra has the story at NBCSports: Chicago White Sox Mark Buehrle criticized Michael Vick in quotes published by MLB.com. After publishing the article, MLB had second thoughts, MLB had second thoughts and deleted a Buehrle quote– without any explanation from Mark Merkin, the author of the story, or anyone else. Murray Chass identified a similar questionable editorial decision late last year.
Granted, in this world of ours, reporting about grown men who hit balls with sticks is not a high priority. Nevertheless, I feel like a sucker. Luckily, there are plenty of other ways for me to scratch my baseball itch, so I can scratch MLB from my RSS feed without worry.
Lessons from Justin.tv?
It seems so long ago now– Barack Obama was a darkhorse candidate with a month-old campaign, Twitter had just launched at SXSW, the Washington Post had just revealed the deplorable conditions for US veterans at Walter Reed Hospital and Blake Griffin had just played his final high school basketball game. And in mid-March 2007, Justin.tv was just getting started, with “livecasting.”
It was a silly idea, as Justin seems to admit, but for a couple of weeks in early 2007, I was hooked.
Yesterday on TechCrunch, Justin Kan, the project’s namesake and co-founder, considered the reasons for the show’s failings, and its successes. He emphasizes that they made progress despite the lack of a plan, relevant experience or industry knowledge:
- We were passionate.
- Early stage investing is often about the people, not the idea…we worked well together and even if we were working on something totally inane we were going to stick it out with the company and iterate until we found a business model.
- We sold the shit out of it. Everyone we knew was excited for Justin.tv. Why? Because our excitement was infectious.
