I Wish My Picture on the Cover of Time was Photoshopped a Little

In old news, me and you and my baby brother and my slacker cousin and my cross-eyed uncle were all named Time's Person of the Year. Well, people. And we are not alone. Everyone who uses the Internet, in fact, was named a Person of the Year, for contributing to what they call the "new digital democracy". This translates to rampant usage of MySpace and YouTube (also the invention of the year).

Here is some of the most flatulent rhetoric, courtest of CBC:

"It's about the many wresting power from the few," wrote Lev Grossman, Time's technology writer.

[The internet is] a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.'-Lev Grossman

Grossman also pointed out that blogs are "often more immediate and authentic than traditional media."

Uh-huh. So by stealing and uploading copyrighted material, advertising your musical taste and sexual proclivities, and rambling about your vacation in Tunisia, you are suddenly part of a digital democracy that provides you with agency over the dominant powers that be and also allowing more authenticity to bloom on the Net?

In the words of Philip, I ain't drinkin that Kool-aid.

In the Interim...

OK, so the conference was really productive, interesting, surprising, and above all saturating (9 presentations in 9 hours, plus socializing at coffee breaks, lunches, and wine and cheeses). Met plenty of cool people, and heard some great research, and came away with some pretty astute observations ("the nature of the digital environment will influence the type of research collected"). Don't have the time or energy to post today or tomorrow, as they are and will be sapped by both wedding and travel requirements. So, in the meantime, I am linking to the Digital Girls projects, which was well-represented at Trials and Tribulations by Sandra Weber, Claudia Mitchell, Jacqui Reid-Walsh and Shanly Dixon.

Keep your fingers crossed- entered many a contest to win a honeymoon!

Discussing Trials and Tribulations

Not going to be blogging any more today, because I am going to the Trials and Tribulations conference on research methodologies in digital environments. It's going to be pretty interesting- Mia Consalvo, Marinka Copier, Jacqui Reid-Walsh, Sandra Weber, plus some of my favorite budding profs like Shanly Dixon and Sara Grimes. It was organized by the former and Kelly Boudreau, and I am especially looking forward to this morning's "Youth and Technololgy" panel.

So I leave you with a picture of Kelly, Shanly, and their GameCODE colleague Regina, from the Canadian Game Studies Association symposium.