A Fairy Use Tale

In light of this week's discussion about and readings on copyright, I wanted to post this video on fair use:



It's one of my favorite videos on YouTube.

Babyz and Vagina Guitars

On our class message board, we’ve been discussing Miss Bimbo. Klara Kim mentioned The Aberrant Gamer’s take on the game Miss Bimbo. Miss Bimbo seems like a pretty bad idea as something targeted at "tweens" (I agree with The Aberrant Gamer on the cringeworthiness of this word!). But as a social satire I think it's kind of fun.

In that article, The Aberrant Gamer mentions something that's been bothering me for a long time, that even when girls take interest in traditionally male hobbies, they are still being marketed to as Grrlz rather than young consumers.


Imagine™: Babyz

For instance, in The Aberrant Gamer’s previously mentioned column, she mentions a game called Imagine™: Babyz. Here's part of the description of the game from amazon.com:

"-As a babysitter, take care of up to six babies. Feed them, play with them, take them for walks in the garden, and keep them healthy.
-Spend your hard-earned money on new baby outfits, toys, or food, or on new furniture for your house.
-Customize and clean your house with fun mini-games: vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, and more."

At least Miss Bimbo strives to be over-the-top and satirical. I guess Imagine™ Babyz is just a new kind of more complex Betsy Wetsy for the DS generation, but it still bothers me that girls (girlz?) are so deeply encouraged at such a young age to regard reproduction (especially up to six kids!) as a fun play thing. Imagine™ also gives young girls (and let there be no mistake, they’re definitely aimed at girls. The covers of the game all have (mostly white) women on them, except for Babyz, which has three (white) babies on it) a digital look at four other careers “relevant to what girls in this age group have indicated they are most interested in”: Fashion Designer, Figure Skater, Master Chef, and Animal Doctor. I won’t even begin to comment on the limited scope of careers that Ubisoft seems to think young girls should be aspiring to or the fact that only the Veterinarian—erm, sorry, Animal Doctor path actually requires a college degree.


If Miss Bimbo is alarming because it encourages eating disorders and negative body images amongst a population already fraught with eating disorders and negative body images, isn’t Imagine™: Babyz just as guilty in a teen pregnancy sense? According to Planned Parenthood, one million teenagers (97 per 1,000 women aged 15–19) become pregnant each year. This is obviously not including women under 15 who become pregnant each year. Furthermore, “teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely than their peers who delay childbearing to live in poverty and to rely on welfare.” Lucky for them, not graduating high school only knocks out one potential Imagine™ career field.


Daisy Rock Guitars

I remember talking with one of my friends back in high school about girly guitars. Our local guitar seller had a few choice items in sparkly pink and purple, much like the Daisy Rock guitars. She told me about how almost every time she went to the store whether to buy a guitar or to just pass time while waiting for her (male) friends to finish perusing the store, the store clerks would try to push her to play one of these sparkly instruments. It was more amusing than offensive at the time and we joked about it; “Look, most of the people who know me already know I have a vagina, so I don’t really need to advertise it on my instrument.”
I just discovered Daisy Rock Guitars. They have a special line for younger girls called the Debutante line:
http://debutante.daisyrock.com/
These guitars come in a wide variety of colors ranging from Bubble Gum Pink to Atomic Pink with the occasional Princess Purple or Awesome Blue (only available in daisy-shape) thrown in for good measure. There is only one guitar that isn’t blatantly girly and that’s the Ruby Red Rock Candy Electric Guitar Pack, though the Ruby Red seems a little more like hot pink to me.
The guitars come in different shapes, as well. Four years ago, my friend and I were joking about the idea of a sparkly girly guitar being a musical declaration of vagina-ownership. Now they’re actually making girly guitars in shapes of classic vagina symbols. They make heart and star shaped ones too.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of encouraging young girls to learn an instrument. I just don’t see why they can only achieve this with pink sparkles.

All About Blogs

The latest issue of The New York Review of Books has an article that reviews 10 different books about blogs & the effects of blogging:

Blogs, by Sarah Boxer
The New York Review of Books · Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14 2008

If you're interested in learning more about the history of this phenomenon, or thinking about the differences between this medium and traditional print media, it's an interesting read.

Note: I'm not sure how long that link will work without a subscription. I can't find online access through UIUC, so if you come back to this in a couple weeks you may not be able to read it.

Privacy & Connection - An Introduction to Social Networking

Can I brag a little? I am very lucky to work with a fantastic electronic resources librarian. She just wrote an article outlining her concerns with getting into online social networks and explaining the differences between them. I think it's great for users at any level, but would be particularly useful for people who haven't begun to poke around these sites yet.

It's published in a legal website, but totally applicable for anyone else and you might find her extra insight into privacy issues helpful if you haven't set up a "public" web presence before.

Social Networks for Law Librarians and Law Libraries, or How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Friending

By Debbie Ginsberg and Meg Kribble, Published on January 19, 2008
LLRX.com: Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals

In the article, she covers 4 networks that would apply to any of us: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Ning. If anyone would like to check out an example profile, or if are already "on them" and would like to link to classmates, here are links to my profiles:

Musings on "meaningful content"

I think the point of discussions in class is to make us think in new ways about old ideas or issues. If so, our first class has already succeeded. What it made me think about was how enormously complicated it is to measure information flow and media use, as well as to internalize why we measure these things in the first place. This may sound a bit confusing at first, so let me elaborate.

The studies by the Kaiser Foundation and Pew's well-respected annual reviews of media use are important indicators of how people use new and old communication technologies very generally. They are also used as one basis of many for numerous contentious arguments amongst the public and between some activist organizations on what types of media content are considered "legitimate," "good," "educational," and so on.

My initial response to these arguments has up to this point been that they should be of our main concern. Controlling media content, as far as I can tell, has never been a good idea in itself, what with the First Amendment and all. Coming from a background in the political economy of communications, I have been more interested in looking at who owns the media outlets, who pays the journalists, who employs the producers of news and entertainment shows, etc. I have even worked on a project to study whether corporate ownership in fact increases indecent media content on various outlets.

But today's discussion has really laid out some important aspects of the indecency debate to which media policy and political economy do not relate. These include the ways children choose to use the media that is available to them. Why choose certain content over others? Why are Myspace and Facebook so prominent? Yes, Merchants of Cool points out that there are actual individuals, companies studying how they can create products to advertise to young people, ultimately looking for ways they can profit off the creativity of youth. And that is definitely related to economics, to market forces, to the pressure for companies to compete through sales.

But the lines do blur when we think about what is or is not educational, informational, useful. Not only is it questionable why TV is singled out as more trashy and stupid than other media forms (as discussed in class), but one is also unsure about what portions of media content are creative and important. As I watch the CNN coverage of caucus after caucus after primary, I am struck by the lack of useful information that reporters are giving us about the candidates. It's just like any other trashy media content.

And what about what people consider to be entertainment? Who says reality TV in itself is bad, if it just distracts people from their lives for a little while?

(OK, I wholeheartedly disagree with the previous sentence. But others might not.)

But the point is, it is simply impossible to define what the public wants. I really wish I didn't have to feel this way, but I do. I think everyone has their own opinion of what public needs are, what is quality entertainment and news and what isn't, and when indecency and morality in media content isn't defined by corporations, it is defined by communist or dictatorial regimes.
Is there really a good way to measure these things?

The best way to go forward, I guess, is to try to figure out ways for people to become educated about their media system, media production, media content analysis, media policy, and then allow them (through stringent legislative means, if necessary) to have the ability to create media content that expresses their own viewpoints. If it's about trash, let it be. As long as it's personal, it means something.

I may change my mind about all this tomorrow.

Thinking about E-Mail

I have had an e-mail account for almost 20 years now. Early on, it was primarily an alternative means of chatting with my friends, then a means of connecting to folks within my professional milieu. Now, as I'm sure you all are keenly aware from your own lives, e-mail has taken on a life of its own. It's become the primary channel for keeping up with friends, family, work, hobbies, and more.

As the role of e-mail has changed in my life (I'll keep this personal), the expectations associated with it have changed too. For instance, sometimes when I e-mail colleagues, I may not get a reply for a couple of days. Now, I'm a busy and thoughtful person, so I *should* know that it's not always possible to respond to e-mails immediately; I know I can't do it most of the time and don't want to do it just as often. Yet, I, like may of you I suspect, find myself expecting more immediate replies.

Why? What's changed? How are conventions for this particular communications medium developing and shifting? What boundaries and guidelines do we want to have for e-mail in our personal and/or professional lives?

E-mail has changed expectations in another way; in this case they're the expectations my students have. Generally, students seem to expect quick replies to e-mails (and hey, e-mail may not even be the right tool). Sometimes students are unhappy if I don't provide direct links to full-text resources that are available online or through databases. Often, students seem willing to write things in e-mails that they would never say to me aloud. My experiences are far from unique: my colleagues here and at Indiana would tell you many of the same things. In fact, college instructors across the country share these experiences.

I earned my MLS in 1992-1993. E-mail was not universally required. I still typed many of my assignments. I did not own a computer. Online databases or even CD-ROM databases were expensive luxuries. The World Wide Web was just starting. I mention all of these things as context. If I wanted to get a copy of a class syllabus, I waited until the first day of class or I looked at the 3-ring binder in the library to see what previous semesters' syllabi contained. If I wanted to ask an instructor something, I called him on the phone or made an appointment. If I wanted an article to use in a paper, I went to the library, located the journal in the stacks, and made a photocopy. If I missed class, I asked a friend for notes.

My expectations for the interaction between teachers and students, then, come in some measure from another time. I'm not a complete dinosaur: I've been teaching students at a distance since 1997; I made my first web page in 1995; I incorporated e-mail and the Web into high school projects in 1994. I sincerely like computers and the Internet and assorted other technologies.

What's the point of this post? Well, if you're not already having to ask these questions about your technology-mediated communications with a generation more technology-native than you are, you will. Start thinking now. What will your communications future look like? What expectations will you question?