The next miracle (v11.1): Owen Youngman

Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy, Medill / Northwestern

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Monthly Archives: March 2009

Back at the scene

Last Thursday I was at the corner of Chicago and Dempster in Evanston to meet a couple of Medill undergrads at Starbucks.  They have asked me to serve as adviser for their summer project, which I won’t reveal here but which manages to combine my interests in social media, economic news, and cold, windswept climates.

It was September, 1974, and I was heading back to school after buying a birthday gift at the Practical Tiger in Evanston.  I remember it as a watering can.  Anyway, the car radio was loud, and as I sailed into the intersection of Chicago and Dempster, I was broadsided by an Evanston police car, lights flashing (and, evidently, siren wailing).

The cop wasn’t happy, and I soon was summoned to court.  And summoned, and summoned, because the cop also seemed too busy to appear and the City of Evanston kept getting continuances… Continue reading →

Growing Up on Facebook [NYT Mag]

 

Time spent on FB by age cohort (NYT)

Time spent on FB by age cohort (NYT)

 

Well, apparently there’s a new reason to fret about social networks.  Will they eliminate teen-agers’ incentive, and opportunity, to grow up?

 

“For all the discussion Facebook has prompted, its most profound impact may be to alter, even obliterate, conventional notions of the past, to change the way young people become adults.  … [S]omething is drowned in that virtual coffee cup — an opportunity for insight, for growth through loneliness.”

via The Way We Live Now – Growing Up on Facebook – NYTimes.com.

Why deliberate, or talk, when you can tweet? [NYT]

The assumptions and conventions of today are grinding against those of the day before yesterday. All that’s needed now is somehow to tie in the AIG bonuses…..

  • The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges. … [J]urors might think they were helping, not hurting, by digging deeper. But the rules of evidence, developed over hundreds of years of jurisprudence, are there to ensure that the facts that go before a jury have been subjected to scrutiny and challenge from both sides. 

via As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up – NYTimes.com.

  • Twitter entered the lexicon two years ago here when it was the darling of the South by Southwest conference, and it is now the event’s dominant platform, seeming to overtake actual conversation. Why talk when you can tweet?