Posts tagged with ‘culture’

Where I finish with the sentiment that multiple online identities should be encouraged.

From the site:

Transatlantic Network 2020 member, Zadi Diaz, discusses the future of cities, the networked world, and the benefits of managing multiple online identities.

The British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 programme (britishcouncil.org/​tn2020) connects young leaders from across Europe and North America who bring various cultural and social experiences together to act on global issues.

We believe bringing these future young leaders together will strengthen mutual understanding, respect and trust between both continents.

The TN2020 network focuses on three key areas: Sustainable Living; Creativity and Innovation and Building Resilience in Communities.

This week in Berlin, members from various transatlantic networks will discuss the big issues for the next decade and how they will affect the world we live in.

Join the conversation on Twitter (#TN2020) or Quora:

Why are cities becoming more important than countries?
qr.ae/​OlZv

What new business opportunities will arise from the networked city?
qr.ae/​Olej

How will notions of work and play merge?
qr.ae/​biad

How can we overcome the generation gap in understanding of networked society?
qr.ae/​OlZq

What consequences do multiple online identities have on professional life?
qr.ae/​wEIz

Watch more TN2020 videos at youtube.com/​user/​Transatlantic2020

culturite: Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear? With so much recent discussion about the relative permanency of our digital selves and the virtual impossibility, let alone desirability, of self-removal from the online world vs. the need to preserve our digital existences for posthumous posterity, Evan Ratliff’s remarkable 2009 project/piece/ARG, VANISH, for Wired is worth revisiting & reconsidering. Is it even a question of how to disappear completely?

culturite:

Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?

With so much recent discussion about the relative permanency of our digital selves and the virtual impossibility, let alone desirability, of self-removal from the online world vs. the need to preserve our digital existences for posthumous posterity, Evan Ratliff’s remarkable 2009 project/piece/ARG, VANISH, for Wired is worth revisiting & reconsidering.

Is it even a question of how to disappear completely?

House Republicans unveil plan to end federal arts and humanities agencies and aid to public broadcasting

hydeordie:

Any way you want to describe it, the Republican Study Committee, made up of about 165 GOP members of the House of Representatives, on Thursday announced a budget-cutting plan aimed at slashing federal spending, and it calls for the elimination of the nation’s two leading makers of government arts grants: the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Also on the chopping block is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The arts and humanities endowments each get $167.5 million a year; the broadcasting agency, which supports public radio and television, gets $445 million.

Can we do a repeal and call it the “LIVELYHOOD AND JOB MURDERING ARTS BUDGET CUT REPEAL” ?  Do you think that would work and we would get more support from the right to keep funding for the arts?

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (First Lady of France) - Quelqu’un m’a dit

(2003)

Check out this video. It’s a discussion I had about bi-racial hair with Al Letson and Hari Kondabolu for the Skin You’re In series on WorldCompass.

In the first part of the video a young girl vents her frustration with her hair through spoken word poetry. In the latter part of the video (at the 5 minute mark), we talk about (or I talk about) our own frustrations. I admit to spending about an hour straightening my hair with the ol’ heat iron… and it just ends up getting wavy at best. Bad hair days take a whole new level when you have very curly hair… and my hair is cloud puff curly. Many times I love it, and other times I just want to shave it all off. But what’s interesting is how through that frustration we can achieve a deep type of self-acceptance. Mainly because the hair will not give you a choice. It’s like a weed. :)

I’m curious to know from the curly-headed mop crew (especially the girls), do you notice a difference in the way people react to you when you wear your hair curly? When I wear it curly, people think I’m just wild and creative, when it’s straight I get taken more seriously, especially at meetings. What’s your take?

Memo: Youthful Ignorance Is Not Cute

Whose ignorance?

I was reading this article and found the video included in the post, from the HBO Documentary Smash His Camera, really interesting. In it, a young woman tries to identify past cultural icons in black & white photographs and fails pretty miserably. The photographer, pioneer paparazzo Ron Galella, goes on to say how when he was in his prime, there were hardly any photographers around. How now his picture taking is finished because the iconic stars are gone. How there are so many photographs of so many people…

I thought it was indicative of today’s cultural documentation. In the past, people dug deep into the few icons we had. They provided large focused points of conversation - large cultural hubs.

Today, because of the many choices in media consumption and media output, our cultural hubs and icons are not the monolithic bright lighthouses they once were. We can pick and choose where we want to dig deep. We can search for conversations beyond our geographic locations. These communities may not be as big and shiny, but they’re definitely more passionate, and because they’re widespread, they provide different social and cultural perspectives. The people who are doing the documenting now have to go past the first layer of “documentation” and provide something richer, something more personal. A different viewpoint.

So, while some may snort at this young lady for not knowing much about the pop-culture icons of the 60’s and 70’s, she may know a lot about her own tailor-made icons of Parisian fashion circa 1947.

*Hat tip to @charleshope for introducing me to the article via a link on @missbhaven’s Facebook page. ;)