This is a “Wordle” cloud. Also known as a ‘cloud tag’, which is a way to label posts on a blog or pictures in a Flickr account and provide readers/viewers an easier way to navigate to content that matches their interest.

Wordle is a site that allows you to take your own blog, any website that has an RSS feed, or a bunch of text and create a cloud. The larger the word, the more instances of it in the blog/feed/text. They also have amassed a gallery of all the clouds that others have created. The one at the top of this post was created by an anonymous user on the term “media literacy”.

I’m fascinated by the use of these clouds. They deliver a message in a very interesting way, boiling down what someone says to content. It completely disregards context, dispatching with any notion of perspective or world view the author may have.

Does it present information in an important, revealing manner? It certainly presents it in an interesting and new way. To demonstrate this, the cloud on the left was generated when someone took Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia and the one on the right was generated from the text of President George Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address.  I think it’s interesting to compare the two. Eye-opening, no. But definitely a new way to engage someone in the discussion.

*due to technical difficulties, I was unable to create a wordle for The LAMP’s website - bummer!

Davin Hutchins over at the American News Project did a recent video exposé on the brand spanking Newseum in Washington, DC. It’s pretty critical of this multi-million dollar facility that celebrates the 1st Amendment and calls itself the “World’s Most Interactive Museum”. I haven’t been to it yet, but I’ve heard from those who have that it is overwhelming, but not captivating. Even though it is heavily sponsored by big corporate Media companies, it has an admission fee of $20, which seems prohibitive when a museum like this should be open to all comers.

Check out the video over at American News Project site and feel free to offer us your comments if you have in fact visited the institution.

Whenever I encounter a criticism of the media by the media, I become IMMEDIATELY skeptical. Seems such a one has landed in my RSS Reader. I subscribe to well over a dozen blogs and journals that touch on some aspect of media literacy. One of my favorite (and oft-cited here) urls is Ypulse. It does a fantastic job of accumulating posts from other sources about our youth and media. Most times, it typically gives a little blurb about the article they’re highlighting and lets the reader figure out their own opinion on it. Sometimes, they editorialize. And, sometimes there editorial gets it wrong.

Such is the case with their link of the news that Jamie Lynne Spears (younger sister to Britney) has finally had, at the age of 17, her much discussed and anticipated baby. Ypulse takes the opportunity to use this announcement as a way to address the recent discovery of a pact made between a large group of teenage girls in Gloucester, MA to purposely get pregnant. They take the stance that part of the reason this pledge was made at all was because of all of the recent coverage of celebrities (and in the case of Jamie Lynne, underaged) glamorously caring their babies to term. They back this up with the MTV article, and then follow it with a link to a CBS News report on the pregnancy sorority. The article is loaded with assertions that have no academic data to support, but what’s worse is CBS’ inability to point the finger at themselves, and report as if they were independent of their own network’s celebrity-glamorizing programming.

This segment particularly grabbed my eye:

“Of the students who are pregnant in Gloucester High now, Ireland speculated to Chen, “Maybe they felt lonely or something.” She agreed that Hollywood attaching glamour to teenage pregnancy may also have had something to do with the situation.”

Is it just Hollywood who’s attaching glamour to teenage pregnancy, or is the Tiffany network at fault too?

I came across a photo exhibit put together by Balakov, a photographer who posts his work on Flickr, which consists of his reimaginings of very famous images from the 20th Century…as portrayed in Lego toys.

I like this one a lot because it captures my memory of the very famous shot that i’ve seen reproduced multiple times on postcards and posters. But, there is one aspect that’s missing, which i think makes this stream of historical photos revisited brilliant. Because they are Lego toys, the dangerous feat that makes the original photo so dramatic is missing. Those men dangling their legs off the steel girder suspended in the air were tempting fate, however these toys are not in harm’s way. You don’t have quite the same reaction to the successor as you do with the predecessor.

 When we take a look at another photo redux of his that focuses on a much more violent moment captured on film, we can really see the effect toys as substitutes has on the overall experience of the viewer.

On February 1st, 1968, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executed a Captain from the Viet Cong army. Eddie Adams’ photographic capture of it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Balakov’s reproduction does not evoke the same vivid angst and terror of the original. While the Lego figures share the same manufactured smile, it withholds the painful grimace of the Viet Cong soldier in the original image. This is an excellent exercise in how images influence our emotions, how they tell stories, and more importantly, how they define history.

I invite you to check out the rest of the series he put up, where he also has links to the originals he is paying homage to.

We’ve been meeting with numerous schools in Brooklyn, chatting with both educators and parents about the services The LAMP can provide to them, and there is one subject that seems to elicit the same wide-eyed fervor from all of the audiences: Internet safety

The term itself is misleading. It limits the discussion to just the ways we are supposed to safeguard our homes from predators and criminals looking to use your highspeed or dial-up connection as an entry into your homes. What really parents and educators are looking to find out, once you get past the common sense practices one should employ to allow for safe web experiences, are why do our youth want to spend so much time online creating virtual avatars of themselves just to navigate in and out of digital worlds.

We’ve held numerous discussions, put on demonstrations and will even be hosting a public forum on the June 4th about the subject. It’s a topic that resonates with everyone who has a young person in their list of responsibilities, and i would like to hear from those of you out there who feel they too would benefit from an active dialogue on the topic.

-How worried are you about your children’s use of the Internet? How relaxed are you about it?

-How curious are you about what draws them so passionately towards this medium? Are you curious about how it may be interacting with or altering the way they see and relate to the world?

 Let us know if you’d like us to come to your school/community center/church/etcetera to carry on this conversation with you.

I was going through my RSS reader, where I have cataloged a long list of blogs that I follow, when I came upon a very interesting Ypulse (a great source for information regarding media and youth) link:

- My Beautiful Mommy (WTF? Plus like mother like daughter?Gag) (Boing Boing) (Jezebel)

I clicked on the first link, where it took you to a story on boingboing.net about a new children’s book called “My Beautiful Mommy”. The book covers the various plastic surgery “improvements” a mother of a young daughter goes through, trying to explain to the little girl how these changes will make her mommy better. It’s written by a plastic surgeon named Michael Salzhauer, whose intentions for writing this surgical enhancement-themed tale are obvious

Immediately, I was shocked. I was OUTRAGED. How Dare HE?!? I wanted to craft a scathing post, criticizing this unethical practice of marketing plastic surgery = happiness to children, and even using the classic format of a child’s book to do so. But, I scrolled further down the page to find an update to this post.

Turns out the book is self-published, and it isn’t going to be appearing in your child’s bookbag anytime soon. PHEW! What a sigh of relief.

Or is it?

What I was reacting to were the remnants filtered through various blogs and online journals of a nearly hysteric piece on the book in Newsweek. How can a book that’s self-published and who’s ISDN# was rather difficult to locate warrant a lengthy article drumming up paranoia? What is Newsweek attempting here? I can’t help but think that Newsweek was attempting to gain publicity for itself on the back of a rather meaningless publication from a plastic surgeon with poor judgment.

“Find item that has potential to alarm”

+

“Shock publicity and journalism”

=

“Newsweek viewed as Public Defender and do-gooder ”

The formula isn’t new, for sure, but its still alarming. How Ypulse reacted to it is something I’ve wanted the LAMP itself to be aware of.

We seek to be a resource for youth, parents and educators, and in this day and age of easy self-promotion through blogs and other publishing methods that spurns the content creators to pump out as much as possible, there is a real impetus on responsibility for those organizations who seek to be effective and not alarmist. It’s important to remember when seeking publicity can also fan the flames of hysteria.

The folks over at mobileYouth.org, a site that has been tracking the various media consumption trends of our youth, posted an article on what they see are the 7 key trends in youth marketing.

Most of them are surprising, so it’s definitely worth a look. A few have been referenced by us at the LAMP here regarding the offering of more and more free content by brands and artists. It appears that youth are growing more and more indifferent to brands, and the prospect of loyalty to one merchant isn’t so reliable.

However, the most surprising trend was their #3 in the list:

Facebook fatigue.

It appears that the once exclusively youth-focused social networking site has been overtaken by all the 30-somethings and their profiles. This happened as Facebook tried to capture more of the market, relaxing the once student-only restrictions. Our youth, being ever-resilient and adaptable individuals,  are choosing to stick with MySpace and Bebo.

I like that youth seek a social media and networking site all their own, but what I think is important to glean from this trend is their ability to accept and integrate new technology and media into their lives. This is a skill that their parents and educators should also have.  This way, adults can keep pace with the youth they care for and teach, and they can also keep the dialogue fresh.

Many of us rely on the MTA for our mode of transportation. Whether we use the buses, the subways or both, we are somewhat at the mercy of the Transit Authority when it comes to our commuting experience. Luckily, there is an organization that takes great effort in providing a critical analysis of the MTA’s transportation network. NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group) has been running a Straphangers Campaign for over 10 years, where they release a report card on the various subway lines based on the following criteria:

• Amount of service - scheduled amount of service
• Dependability of service - % of trains arriving at scheduled time, breakdown rate
• Comfort/usability - chance of getting a seat, interior cleanliness, adequacy of in-car announcements

Based on how well a particular line does in these areas, NYPIRG gives the line a grade from A to F. I was contemplating these criteria, and felt that they fall just short of what should determine a subway line’s quality. Depending on where you’re going and how long your commute is, you are a captive customer which I am sure is something the MTA realizes when they contemplate the advertising they plaster all over their property. I’ve often looked at the ads, some that have run in one form or another since I first moved to the city over 8 years ago, as a nuisance and a contributing factor to how comfortable my commute is.

I believe that NYPIRG’s Straphangers should include an evaluation of the advertisements in subways, buses and stations. Perhaps the following criteria could be considered:

• % of ads that are Public Service Announcements for MTA policies
• % of ads that are timely or out of date
• % of ads that are inappropriate for the typical audience a particular line serves

This last one is particular important because the MTA acts as a proxy school bussing system, and i wonder how many parents would approve of the Department of Education consenting to let beer companies advertise on the big yellow buses.

As some of you may know, the popular rock band Radiohead released its latest album a few months ago in a manner that both sticks it to the recording industry as well as embrace the different distribution outlets the Internet offers.

Another rock band has followed the example by Radiohead, but has expanded its offering even more so. Nine Inch Nails (NiN) has announced that it will offer tracks from its new 36-track album free for download. The music is not just from their own site, but they are also making it available through other download sites like BitTorrent.  And the innovations do not stop there.

They are also releasing it via a Creative Commons license, which is a new type of intellectual-property copyright. This allows users certain permissions to use and alter the product, which is really the revolutionary thing about what NiN is attempting with their latest album. They are inviting their fans to create videos to their music and upload them to an online film “festival”. This is truly a collaborative effort that Web 2.0 allows.

In an NY Times article on it, NiN bandleader, Trent Reznor has this to say:

“…we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.”

That’s how we feel at The LAMP. We believe in working with what is going to be around to try to find ways we can use the technologies to improve our lives rather than ignore them.