C4 / Communications Conversation
The Center for Future Civic Media is collaborating with the MIT Communications Forum to host an ongoing series of conversations about media and civic engagement. Click here for full article.
CMS News Archives
May 27, 2008
May 17, 2008
Podcast: "Remembering Los Angeles in the Digital Age: Pat O'Neill's The Decay of Fiction"
Los Angeles artist and special effects virtuoso Pat O'Neill filmed The Decay of Fiction (2002) in the landmark Ambassador Hotel, once the center of Hollywood celebrity culture. His film blurs the boundaries between architectural investigation, urban documentation, and aesthetic exploration. At once a poetic homage to classical film genres, it is also a suggestive indication of how remembering the city is changing in response to new technologies. Edward Dimendberg is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and German at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (2004), co-editor of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (1994), and currently serves as Multimedia Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
May 16, 2008
Podcast: Communications Forum: "Youth and Civic Engagement"
The current generation of young citizens is growing up in an age of unprecedented access to information. Will this change their understanding of democracy? What factors will shape their involvement in the political process?
Lance Bennett is Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, where he founded and directs the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement.
Ingeborg Endter is the outreach manager for the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and a graduate of the electronic publishing group at MIT's Media Lab where her research focused on creating collaborative community uses of the Internet. She previously served as a program manager for the Computer Clubhouse Network, a collaboration between the Boston Museum of Science and Media Lab that provides an after-school learning environment where young people from under-served communities use technology for creative self-expression.
Alan Khazei co-founded City Year, which enlists more than 1,200 young adults, in 16 communities across America and in Johannesburg South Africa, for a year of full-time community service. He is currently founder and CEO of Be the Change, a non-partisan citizens' civic organization.
Continue reading "Podcast: Communications Forum: "Youth and Civic Engagement"" »
May 15, 2008
GAMBIT Creates Game for Visually Impaired
A new computer game developed by MIT and Singaporean students makes it possible for visually impaired people to play the game on a level field with their sighted friends.
Sandbox Summit Advisory Board Announced
Sandbox Summit, the organization created to explore how technology is affecting the ways kids play, learn and connect in today's digital world, has announced the formation of its first Advisory Board. The announcement comes as summer, the unofficial season of play, is about to begin. Drawing from a variety of fields, the roster of accomplished professionals includes academics, educators, policy makers and toy developers. The Sandbox Summit 2008 Advisory Board members include: Scot Osterweil, Creative Director, MIT Education Arcade, et al.
Podcast: Communications Forum: "Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly"
Much discussion of our impending digital future is insular and without nuance. Skeptics talk mainly among themselves, while utopians and optimists also keep company mainly within their own tribal cultures. This forum challenges this unhelpful division, staging a conversation between Yochai Benkler and Cass Sunstein, two of our country's most thoughtful and influential writers on the promise and the perils of the Internet Age.
May 14, 2008
Podcast: "The Show Business High Wire Act: Walking the Tightrope Between Studio Filmmaking and Independent Production"
In the year 2008, artists and businesspersons navigate the vast divide between the world of independent filmmaking and the Hollywood studio system as the lines between the two become increasingly more blurred. As pop culture integration - the fusing of music, sports, dance, event programming, reality, and other subcultures geared toward mainstream audiences while highlighting the genre demographic - has become the lifeline for both the artistic and commercial filmmaker, where do you find the happy medium, or is there one anymore? Writer, producer, distributor, and president of Tri Destined Films, Gregory Anderson has been called a part of the "new" Oscar Micheaux movement as a trailblazer for independent film distribution. Gregory created Stomp the Yard, one of the most profitable dance films of all time, and produced, marketed, and theatrically distributed the independent film Trois, one of the Top 50 highest grossing Independent Films of its release year according to Daily Variety.
May 13, 2008
Podcast: "Slightly More Than Expected from a Band of Novelists: On How and Why a Group of Writers Called Wu Ming Set to Disrupt Italian (nay, European) Literature and Popular Culture (and then Came to Boston to Brag About It)"
Wu Ming 1 is a founding member and representative of the Wu Ming Foundation, a collective of writers from Italy. Most members of the collective were deeply involved in the Luther Blissett Project, an international experiment in culture jamming, radical pranksterism and guerrilla mythology that ran from 1994 to 1999. During that time, a group of LBP activists wrote a controversial novel titled Q, which was published to much acclaim in 1999. In January 2000 the authors of Q founded the Wu Ming Foundation, which takes its name from a Chinese word meaning either "anonymous" or "five names" depending on how the first syllable is pronounced. The name is meant both as a tribute to dissidents ("Wu Ming" is a common byline among Chinese citizens demanding democracy and freedom of speech) and as a refusal of the celebrity-making machine which turns authors into stars.
Henry Jenkins to speak at Games for Change conference in NYC
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Chris Crawford (original founder of the GDC), Prof. Henry Jenkins (MIT), and Prof. James Paul Gee (University of Wisconsin-Madison) are all confirmed speakers for the upcoming Games for Change NYC conference, to be held June 3 and 4.
Games for Change is a conference about using video games and game technology for altruistic purposes.
May 5, 2008
Eric Klopfer to receive Education Award from American Institute of Biological Sciences
Eric Klopfer, Scheller Career Development Professor of Science Education and Educational Technology, Director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP), and Co-Director of CMS research project The Education Arcade, will receive the Education Award on May 12 from the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The award is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to education in the biological sciences, at any level of formal or informal education.
Education Arcade project featured in US News & World Report blog
Project iCue, a collaboration between the Education Arcade and NBC News, was featured in the Dave's Download blog on the US News & World Report website.