Culture and Society

In the accustomed UN manner, talks are moved forward by everyone agreeing to do nothing about anything: Rich and poor countries have settled most of the key disputes that had threatened to derail this week’s United Nations digital divide summit. After two days of talks in Geneva, negotiators reached deals …

Dan Gillmor has a report on amazing technology in Hong Kong that allows TV over broadband, real broadband, not the poky nonsense we have here in the U.S., but the system is also autocratic. Is this our future as well? If the future of television is taking shape here, our …

This sounds like an excellent showcase for non-traditional “media art,” and a great excuse to actually create that “thing” that’s been sitting in the back of your brain: How Can YOU Resist?: LA Freewaves 9th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts Accepting applications beginning January 1, 2004. Postmark Deadline: February 15, …

Thanks to Jim Vickers of Cleveland Magazine for including us in a fine article called “Hot Blogs,” which examines the concept of blogging and several Cleveland area blogs, including Dawn’s: www.dawnolsen.com Blogger: Dawn Olsen Content: The wife of wp.tbomedia.co.uk founder Eric Olsen, Dawn has been writing her “Up Yours … …

New song and music video from Willie Nelson called “Jimmy’s Road.” With just Willie singing and backing himself on guitar, the song is a spare folkish story of “Jimmy” from childhood to soldier to casualty. I guess it works okay as a song – I am predisposed to like Willie’s …

Our own Kevin Aylward of the Wizbang Blog has staked out territory in the blog awards arena. Resembling the Grammys for award granularity, readers may vote on various categories until the cows repatriate, so to speak. If you are a member or a reader of Blogcritics (and you are reading …

Mac Diva told us about iPod jacking last week, but this is this week: Media Lab Europe, research partner to MIT Media Lab, is testing tunA, a software application that employs Wi-Fi to locate nearby users, peek at their music playlist and wirelessly jack into their audio stream. Pronounced like …

Could the MPAA’s anti-screener campaign have turned out any worse? It has been a PR nightmare, it has called into question the very integrity of the Academy Awards, it has created a very public rift between independent producers, actors, directors, and critics against the “establishment,” AND it hasn’t even worked: …

More lawsuits from the RIAA – “Merry Christmas, you’re a statistic”: The RIAA is firing off a new wave of lawsuits and lawsuit-notification letters to users whom the RIAA alleges have illegally distributed significant amounts of copyright-protected music files online. The group is filing 41 new lawsuits and sending 90 …

Our John Mudd is pissed – apparently there are others: Some business owners who depend on Google driving Internet users to their Web sites are angry over a change to the top search engine’s ranking system, which they say threatens to dent their revenue during the holiday shopping season. One …