Check out these two excellent posts from Lorenz over at anthropologi.info which provide some anthropological insight into the nature of distasters, as well as some great references.

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

'Disasters Do Not Just Happen' – The Anthropology of Distaster (2)

Howard Rheingold and Xiao Qiang are teaching a fascinating seminar at SIMS this fall called 'Participatory media and Collective Action'. It seems to be getting a lot of attention, so I predict hordes at South Hall come the start of class on Sept. 20th.

In a recent interview with CNN, Tim Berners-Lee makes some pretty standard comments, but throws this one in, which CNN curiously decided to highlight:

CNN: What will surprise us about the future evolution of the Internet?

BERNERS-LEE: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. …

Maybe Tim's got a point there. Kids who never knew a world without the Internet have a distinct advantage in the networked world. It's not to say that older folks can't learn those same skills, but taking them for granted allows a kind of freedom that they'll never have.

I occasionally think about running a study which tries to compare predominant uses and perceptions of ICTs among three distinct groups:

1. Adults who had their formative years in the era before the Internet
2. Kids' who had (or have) their formative years in an Internet-enabled world
3. Those of us who live on the edge and experienced the transition

It's this third group that's really fascinating to me. I am 26, and so I'm old enough to remember things like Apple IIc, Commodore 64, and original Nintendo. I also remember the first time I came across NCSA Mosaic in my school's library and thought 'What the hell is this?' I couldn't figure it out, and gave up. I didn't come back to the web for another 6 months. I was also a heavy user of BBSs – anyone remember those? I called BBSs all over the country when I was about 14. My parents were never the same after seeing those phone bills. I swore I would never upgrade to Windows 95 in 1997, but of course I did. I was excellent at Quake, and beat Myst. And now, of course, I'm in the thick of the wired world.

There are millions of folks out there like me – who shared their formative years with the Internet. How has that experience changed our perceptions and behaviors? Dunno! But it's an interesting topic, I think. And a once-in-a-lifetime chance. If the Internet is the killer-app of this century, then it's going to be a long, long time before another generation will live on the edge of a profound change in the world the way we did.

There's been lots of news this morning about Kayne West's departure from his script on NBC's start-studded relief special last night. Kayne managed to say, without getting cut off, what lots of folks are thinking. And while I don't think it's as simple as Kayne makes it sound ('George Bush doesn't care about black people', he said. But of course he cares! He needs their votes!), I think it's fantastic that he said it. His long outburst was broadcast live on the East Coast, but cut out from the West Coast replay of the event.

Two questions here are worth commenting on:

1. What business does Kayne West have turning a relief special into his personal soapbox?
2. What business does NBC have censoring his comments for West coast broadcast?

As to 1, I know a lot of folks have said they think Kayne West is a hypocrite, and he shouldn't have hijacked the show the way he did. I'm glad he did. Regardless of how big a hypocrite West is himself, I think he did a public service by breaking through NBC's pretense of putting on a completely value-free, politics-free relief effort. Celebrities, even when they're not particularly articulate, bring attention to issues which might be ignored by some. Right now the need is for relief. In the long term, Kayne West could help keep the attention on the real questions: Why was this allowed to happen? Why didn't relief come sooner? How can we close the class divide that causes problems like this?

As to 2, I think BOY does NBC suck. On the one hand you might say, 'Well, NBC is a corporation and they have the right to broadcast whatever the hell they want about this.' I tend to think that's a gigantic cop out. Media organizations shouldn't be beholden only to their bottom line – the business interests. They have an ethical obligation to care more about free speech and avoiding censorship because our society relies on them for that role. Cutting out some of West's comments because of NBC's political stance is completely disgusting in my opinion.

Take a look at the transcript or the video. (Thanks to Tomorrow's Fool).

Technorati Search: Kayne West

Anyone who's had to do some interview transcription knows that it makes you want to tear your fingers off. It's one of the most tedious things I have to do, so anything that makes it easier thrills me (probably too much).

Enter Express Scribe. ES is just a simple and well designed piece of software. It's got a lot going for it, beginning with the fact that it's free. But the basic operation does everything you want it to. You load in audio in any one of a number of formats (my files are almost all either wav or mp3), and move over to a text editor. ES sets up universal hotkeys for handling the audio.

So, for example I've got all my hotkeys lined up on the function keys: F2 = slow play (ES lets you customize how slow), F3 = normal play, and F4 = stop. On the other end I've got rewind and fast forward on F11 and F12. ES does all the little things that make transcription easier. The audio automatically bumps back when you stop (by a customizable amount, of course), the program remembers your spot in the audio, even if you quit and come back. It displays the current audio time in the task bar. And, of course, you can use it with a set of foot pedals if you have them.

5 stars, highly recommended!

Nope. But it sure is fun to think about. This is an interesting exercise in information quality. This site looks awfully legit., right down to the domain:

www.walken2008.com

The only vaguely humorous thing on the whole site is something you could imagine Walken saying anyway:

If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house.

But, like most things that seem a little too crazy to believe, it turns out not to be true:

Christopher Walken's Reps Renounce Candidacy