Wiki University-- Maybe. It's time to pull the plug on PowerPoint - 06 Nov 2008 - Computing. Time to rethink corporate presentations In the era of the podcast and myriad other pervasive, rich media, view-anytime communications technologies, do we need live presentations? PowerPoint has become synonymous with the slick technology salesman type, ratcheting up his acquisitive hard-sell spiel.
Dressed like a modern-day mobster of the 1930s in his crisp Italian suit, peacocking around the stage. No tie; ties are passé. He reeks of deception. Held captive, the audience suffers the pitch and disarming platitudes before he attempts to infiltrate their psyches with nefarious sales techniques. The punters mostly comprise corporate conscripts, taking it all in; all that is missing is canned laughter.
I do not like corporate presentations because so few are any good. More poignantly, we seem to live in an age where everything requires a presentation. I wonder how many company communications gurus have questioned this PowerPoint-driven herd mentality. Market ideology and the myths of web2.0. Anarchy of distance. Blogging, the nihilist impulse. Media theorist and Internet activist Geert Lovink formulates a theory of weblogs that goes beyond the usual rhetoric of citizens' journalism. Blogs lead to decay, he writes.
What's declining is the "Belief in the Message". Instead of presenting blog entries as mere self-promotion, we should interpret them as decadent artefacts that remotely dismantle the broadcast model. "An der rationalen Tiefe erkennt man den Radikalen; im Verlust der rationalen Methode kündigt sich der Nihilismus an. Der Radikale besitzt immer eine Theorie; aber der Nihilist setzt an ihre Stelle die Stimmung. " Max Bense (1949) Weblogs or blogs are the successors of the '90s Internet "homepage" and create a mix of the private (online dairy) and the public (self-PR management). Instead of merely looking into the emancipatory potential of blogs, or emphasizing their counter-cultural folklore, I see blogs as part of an unfolding process of "massification" of this still new medium.
There is a quest for truth in blogging. "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" By Jaron Lanier. (JARON LANIER:) My Wikipedia entry identifies me (at least this week) as a film director. It is true I made one experimental short film about a decade and a half ago. The concept was awful: I tried to imagine what Maya Deren would have done with morphing.
It was shown once at a film festival and was never distributed and I would be most comfortable if no one ever sees it again. In the real world it is easy to not direct films. I have attempted to retire from directing films in the alternative universe that is the Wikipedia a number of times, but somebody always overrules me. Twice in the past several weeks, reporters have asked me about my filmmaking career.
Reading a Wikipedia entry is like reading the bible closely. The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself. No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. These Web-based designs assumed that value would flow from people. Learning.now . Has MySpace Contributed to Generation Me? SecondLife Concerns | D'Arcy Norman dot net. I want to preface this post by saying I'm not trying to attack SecondLife, nor any of its supporters.
My sole intention is to identify what I see as some important issues that need to be addressed when individuals and organizations investigate moving into SecondLife. There are many people doing very cool work in SecondLife, and I respect them for it. I now pull on my asbestos underoos… I've been following much of the SecondLife cheerleading over the last year, watching as it got hyped higher and higher as The Next Big Thing That Will Change Everything. And I've been getting more and more nervous about it. As a piece of technology, SecondLife is really amazing. It's a seamless integration of multiple virtual realities, providing ways for individuals to come together and interact, create, and play in a pretty impressive 3D environment. Imagine! Except, it isn't. But what, really, is SecondLife? Sure, the Croquet system isn't as mature as SecondLife. Criticism of connectivism.