Tech+Maven


 * 777: Design and Management of Digital Collections**

For this project, I was to develop a five minute presentation on a reliable source for finding new technology trends. My blog of choice was that of Boing Boing, a long reputable source for all things tech related. Please note that the trends listed were current as of November 2011.

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For this assignment, I chose to highlight the popular group blog Boing Boing, found at __[]__ . I have been following Boing Boing for a while now, with my interest in the blog first being piqued by my involvement in Twitter around 2008/2009. The constant retweets of posts from the blog by my favorite comedians led me to first see Boing Boing as an endless source of entertainment. Please see “Sleepy Korean Baby is Mysteriously Adorable” at __[]__ . As I followed the blog more closely, I found that it was not only a source of entertainment but also a source of technology related topics that correlated with my interests within the field of library and information science. The blog proved to be not only my go to source for the latest meme but also my go to source for up to date information on copyright, cool gadgets, intellectual property and the fight against internet censorship.  I do not think that Boing Boing does anything to absolve itself from being seen as a very liberal and left-wing forum. The many posts on and support for the Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy movements definitely support that ideology. But Boing Boing also highlights concepts that blur the lines between politics, information literacy and civil liberties. For example, there are multiple posts on the building and the destruction of the Occupy Wall Street Library. Politics and arguments of loitering aside, the posts introduce an interesting idea of a pop-up mobile library and the dangers of relying on only paper materials. In an instant, 5,000 painstakingly cataloged books and materials related to the Occupy Movement were destroyed. If anything, this instance proves the importance of digitizing our cultural heritage as it shows that not only can nature impact our collected information but humans as well. What was termed as an “emergency response” to the destruction of the physical Occupy Wall Street Library was the launch of __[]__ , a place for occupiers (and others) to access information related to this historically important time in our country. (Admin, par. 1).  As I was working over the summer with Scholar Commons, USC's institutional repository, I was following the story of Aaron Swartz, the hacker activist, also termed “Hacktivist” (Jardin, 2011). Swartz is a well known programmer, who helped to build the Open Library website ( __[]__  ), a division of the Internet Archive ( __[]__  ). The story that unfolded on Boing Boing was that Swartz was arrested for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR utilizing MIT's computer network access. What was interesting to me about this story was its correlation to the work I was doing for Scholar Commons. Of course, my work was done under strict supervision, with great pains taken to ensure that the information was made available to users under the permission of the journal's copyright criteria. But the Swartz story begs this question: how much is too much at any given time?  Being a fan of the DIY ethic and making technology available for all to use, the technology related posts on Boing Boing appeal to me greatly as the gadgets they promote usually envelop both of those concepts. One of my favorite posts has to be about a TED talk given by Johnny Lee in which he demonstrates his Wii remote hacks ( __[]__  ). A school or library could take advantage of their IT Department and turn a Wii remote into an interactive whiteboard. That's an interactive whiteboard for less than $50! The post also leads you to the site of Johnny Lee where you can download the software to make this happen, for free ( __[]__  ).  Following Boing Boing for as long as I have has given me a good insight into who looks to the blog for their entertainment and tech needs. All of the contributing editors for the blog, Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin have all been writers for the popular //Wired// Magazine. Because the editors have worked with this magazine and their interests lie in the same areas, many of the magazine's readers have migrated to Boing Boing because it is updated daily, is a more relaxed atmosphere and encourages a dialogue between its readers and the material. According to Fast Company Magazine, Boing Boing receives about 2.5 million visitors a month and boasts advertisers such as American Express and Verizon (Walker, 2010). What I really enjoy about Boing Boing is the diversity of information that it gives to its audience. I know of people from varied backgrounds, such as comedians, tech geeks, political activists and scholars who look to Boing Boing for their information needs. And it never fails to deliver.

 For my presentation, I chose to use Spicy Nodes as my method of delivery.

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