I had the fortune in participating in the Find the Future event, which was part of the on-going Celebrating 100 Years exhibition and series of events marking the century-old Main Branch of the New York Public Library. I spent 12 hours locked up in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building with Robert. We were playing a game which involved finding objects labelled with QR code, more on that later.

The best discovery of the night was located in the exhibit of artifacts from the library’s research collection. This crappy photo, taken without flash on a iPod touch, is a manuscript by Jorge Luis Borges, which was written on graph paper. Without overly romanticizing his process,  graph paper is supremely fitting for an author who wrote literary works about the finite library (The Garden of Forking Paths, 1941), interactive fiction (The Library of Babel, 1941), and the limits of science and data collection,  (On Exactitude in Science, 1946).

Support the NYPL.

I hope that everyone’s mailed back their 2010 US Census forms, which are due April 1, National Census Day. While it’s a rather arcane approach to studying people’s location, it is still important because of its scale, use to allocate federal funding for community services, and use for updating electoral districts. One thing I really love about the census is that it’s mandated in the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3.

Now that it’s 2010, they also have a interactive  Google Map which display participation rate. Dubuque City, Iowa gets the gold star so far for a 70% return rate, which is well above the 52% national average. What makes this mapping project successful is that it raises questions (and potentially provides answers) about participation rates, location, and the allocation of resources, but in a way that is easier that reading at tables of the underlying data. They also provide widgets to display results.

However, what would really be great, of course, is if they released data sets to the public.

As the journalism and news industry continues to churn and find its way to a sustainable future, the New York Times made an open call to its readers to submit their photographs with captions to document the last decade in photos. I am rather surprised by the general lack of “best of the 00s” media coverage. Perhaps, it’s because we are also too busy cautiously looking towards the future. Regardless, it is important to be look back and think about the past before we go barreling forward. Happy New Year!

(composite image via Flickr and Pandora.com)

I know that Spotify is all the rage, but it doesn’t have a public release in the US yet, and invites are still a bit rare States side. So, I’ve been finally playing around with Pandora at work, and came to the realize that there is real intelligence and even, fortune telling in Pandora’s recommendation engine.

When Paula asked me a question about what project she should work on next, Pandora voluntarily kicked out Anyway You Want It by Journey, which made us stop in our tracks (so to speak.) It only took me a moment to realize the potential wisdom that Pandora imparts. Ask it a question, wait for the next song, and get an answer.

It’s like magic or visiting a psychic, only better because it’s free and you can hum or sing along. The answers are also much more interesting than the static answers from the standard Magic 8 ball. Plus it gives you something to do while Gmail is down.

Here is an actual record of our questions and Pandora’s answers.

Paula: What will my roommate be like?
Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode

(We’re not sure if this good or bad?)

Me: How am I going to like my apartment?

This Must Be The Place I Waited Years to Leave, Pet Shop Boys

(Honest!)

Susan: What am I going to have for dinner?
Toxic, Britney Spears

Paula: What am I going to be when I grow up?
Man Eater, Nelly Furato

Susan: What am I going to do for Labor Day?
Drive, The Cars

Ray: How is my project going?
Calabria 2008, Enur… you know that song, which was played in every retail store for the past two years, and finally made it to that “dance battle” Target commercial. Not sure how that applies to my current work project. Oh Pandora, just when we think we understand you, you uphold your mysterious ways.

Try it out, and let me know how it goes!

I must say that I’m impressed that Amazon.com continues to innovate on the e-commerce services, which is perhaps why they are still the market leader. I’m don’t think sliders are the answer to everything or can be applied everywhere. When it comes to shopping for diamonds, there are several factors which control the cost of them, such as size, color, and flawlessness. the slider interface give the user control over what your needs are makes shopping much easier. (Thanks for the tip Jen.)

On November 6, I didn’t run out to buy a paper. I thought about it for a second. I decided that I have more than enough stuff and because newspapers aren’t archival. Because they are designed to be disposable, newsprint disintegrates over time. I asked myself, “why bother?” When the paper eventual would turned brown and brittle, would I ever want or try to read it? Or would I just log on to nytimes.com and look it up? Of course, then I thought, what nytimes.com look like in 20 years.

Not that it matters, because the newspapers sold out all across the country during all this thinking. And I more concerned about getting a train to Philadelphia.

In retrospect, it’s interesting to observe in a time when newspapers are shutting down and laying people off, on the day after a historic election for many reasons, people still wanted to sought out the newspaper as a physical token of the event.  A copy of the New York Times apparently sold for $400, not a bad return for a one dollar investment in less than a week.

Did anyone bother saving a screen shot of the New York Times website for November 6th?

I wonder if the selling out of print newspaper was a generational phenomenon. Did Millennials, the so-called redubbed, Generation O, view this edition as someone to save?

On Wednesday, November 12, I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of the New York Times Special Edition. The parody issue of the Times dated July 4, 2009, with articles full of a hopeful future. (I wonder, however, what the Yes Men and others had planned if Obama had lost.)

This elaborate campaign took months of planning and reportedly hundreds of volunteers.  It seems that they will someday be collector’s items, according to Alex S. Jones, who wrote a book on this paper titled, “The Times.” Score one for ironic outcomes.

We, as a culture, still value scarcity. My newsprint copy is worth than my screen from nytimes-se.com. The vessel is worth paying for, but the content is not. Now the two have been irreparably divorced. And we want and expect the content to be free.  However, there are times like the 6th and 12th of November 2008, that we found ourselves returning to treasuring the vessel.

For those two days, we were back to the 20th century, where people sought out the print newspaper.

What this its last hurrah?

Walking out of the C/E Spring Street stop, I got a “free NY Times” from a guy passing them out to riders leaving the station. I sort of knew something was up because it was a lot thinner than normal. Another clue is that it’s dated July 4, 2009, and full of articles talking about a future, where Gitmo is closing, oil companies are nationalized, and the National Health Insurance Act passes.

Here’s a screenshot of the site, nytimes-se.com, which has slow downloads times. A lot of people seem to be hitting the site, whose owner looks like a pseduonym, Ginsu and Treadmill Technologies?  I must admit that they did a good job mimicking the paper and web versions.

UPDATE:

I leared from Trebor Scholz‘s, that the prankster activists group, the Yes Men are somehow involved, and have posted some video, which I can’t see because  I’m guessing the servers are still being overwhelmed with data requests.

On November 5th, I noted an important turning point in my media, among all the celebration of electing Barack Obama.

I didn’t watch any of the TV coverage on election night. I just had a few websites open to track reporting from different areas. I mostly stuck to the New York Times, that had the best interactive map, and the San Francisco Chronicle to get some West Coast reporting on things like Prop 8. I could also easily compare what states the sites were calling (it’s not always the same) and focus the races of course interest, Al Franken’s Senate race in Minnesota, for example.

It was interesting to note how the newspaper sites covered when TV programs called races, as their round about way to report results early without “really” reporting results early. But shortly after 11:00pm, I was alerted that Obama won, just like everything one else who were glued to their television sets.

Before 11:00 pm:

After 11:00 pm:

What did I miss from not having the TV on? Reporters, pundits, and anchors with often little meaningful to say as returns slowly are released. It was refreshing just to get the data. On the other hand, the decision also meant I had wait a whole day to learn about CNN’s Princess Leia Style Hologram.

We’re in the final stretch of a long presidential campaign, which is a watershed election for many reasons. The more obvious having to do with the race and gender of the candidates. However, there are lesser ones which are important as well. One aspect that people tend not to think as deeply about is the fact that we are increasing getting the most insightful political commentary from comedians like John Stewart of the Daily Show, David Letterman, and Tina Fey and the other cast members of Saturday Night Live. This observation is not my own, Charles Kaiser of Full Court Press, among others, have long championed Stewart and his staff writers for their dead-on political analysis.

With the country spending $10 billion a month on the war in Iraq, US banks struggling to survive and the world slipping in global recession, the increasingly ugly political presidential race blares onwards towards November 4th. This moment should be the time for journalists to step up and make sense of the world. And yet they seem two steps behind the joke makers. As long running dailies are turning weekly, traditional news outlets such as print newspapers, need to be making themselves more relevant, not less.

John Stewart’s interview with Peggy Noonan a few weeks ago was telling.  In the interview, Stewart at one point, gives an impassioned plea to his guest on how the politicians can get away with rhetoric which treats the public like children. The reason of course is that the people as well as journalists allow it to happen. (It’s the same reason for why the debate have been reduced to 90 second sound bite speaks which are so tightly controlled, that nothing meaningful is said.) It was so rare to as any journalist or tv personality show that he really cares about the country’s well being, rather an partisanship or sidestepping responsibility in the name of staying objective.

Similarly, the McCain / Letterman bro-mance turning sour was amusing to watch from start to conclusion. What does Letterman have to lose by a continuing barrage of criticism after being personally lied to by McCain on a phone call saying that he has to go to Washington to deal with the financial meltdown. Letterman’s cut to McCain getting make up with Katie Couric, during the taping of Letterman’s show he skipped was priceless. Further, in McCain’s kiss and make up appearance (which reeked of PR control,) Letterman pursued him on the qualifications of Palin and if he really thought Obama was a terrorist, in a way that journalist rarely dare to attempt. McCain tried to side stepped the questions, with rhetoric of “many words are said in politics.”

I can’t help but wonder if one of the main problems is that the journalists fear criticizing and questioning politicians, will result in losing access to their sources. Just like fashion writers who shred shows and don’t get invited the next season. This fear may make short term sense, but journalists will lose out in the long term. Stewart, often uses his television home of Comedy Central, the airer of South Park, as cover for expressing honest political views. “I can say whatever I want, because I follow potty mouthed cartoon boys!”  Actually he can say what he wants because he gets a lot of viewers online and offline, people blog about his segments, and lots of people of all ages do consider the Daily Show as an important source of political analysis. For this reason, he knows he can dig and deconstruction of McCain, as well as, Obama, because he knows that politicians realize his influence. Especially because the Daily Show will go on with or without them. The show doesn’t need direct access, so they don’t worry about being blacklisted.

Traditional journalism, especially newspapers and magazines are in trouble, and I’m really surprised by the response when there is so much to talk about. I usually don’t rant like this here, so in my follow up post, I’ll offer an alternative path on how journalism can regain it’s relevance.

Links to blogs with smart things to say about journalism:

Press Think – Jay Rosen

Buzz Machine – Jeff Jarvis

Unclaimed Terrortory – Glenn Greenwald

I finally made it to the New York Art Book Fair after being out of town last year. I think I learned about the first one a couple of days after it ended, which is quite typical for me.  In any event, there was the high and low brow and everything in between.

Image source: The Thing

I met Will Rogen and Jonn Herschend from The Thing Quarterly, which sends its subscribers a piece of art every quarter. I had just heard about it a couple of weeks ago, when I was out in SF, where they are based. It’s not quite publishing, although it’s definitely a self-described periodical, and a bit more like those organic local food subscription services where they mail you a box of kale or carrots or melons once a month, except its art and of course its quarterly.

I was pleased to find out that they were super friendly, and we had a short, but interesting conversation, on publishing. When I asked them if their backgrounds was in publishing, I found it of note that they said they are artists. That answer is personally great to me because I’m really intrigued in publishers (if you want to call them that) from non-traditional backgrounds.  I finally got my tax stimulus check from the federal government, and a chunk of it may just go towards a subscription, especially because Jonathan Lethem is on the docket as an artist. Will and Jonn are in town participating in various art organizations in the city of the rest of the week.

Stuart and David of Dexter Sinister had a table, and it always fun to talk to them, especially about geeky things like the text editor Tex. I ended up buying something that was quasi-expensive and actually deserves an entire post of its own later.

Image source: An Atlas of Radical Cartography

At the table next to Dexter Sinister, I met Alexis Bhagat who co-edited “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” which is a collection of essay and maps.  Coincidentally, Brett introduced to me the collection when I was at UArts a few weeks ago, funny how things work out that way.  The maps touch everything from oil to surveillance to garbage production. He was fun to chat with as map have been on my mind lately.

J Morrison was selling silk-screened man purses for a suggested donation. He had young women helping him silk screen images on the spot, and everyone was wearing matching colored tee and shorts. His assistants made a bag to order, for a good birthday present, which was my next stop after the fair.