Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

International Communication Association conference is under way in San Francisco. I attended several sessions; like any other conference, some are interesting and some are dull like hell. One session that was worth noting was the presentation by “Digital Underground Story Telling For Youth (DUSTY). DUSTY is a collaborative program between the UC Berkeley’s UC Links Program, UCB Graduate School of Education, and the Joseph-Prescott Center for Community Enhancement. The program teaches multimedia production to allow youth to be empowered by self-expression.

In the presentation, members of DUSTY showed their works - films, music, video etc. The topics of their works ranged from neighborhood violence, Iraq war, etc. One audience member asked them how they picked their topics and their common answer was their everyday life.

It’s wonderful to see the youth, who are often demonized by mainstream media, express their understanding of world and educate us. At the same time, I was a little afraid that they would become the object of researchers. The room was full of scholars. I hope this is just my paranoia. At any rate, here’s my flickr set of photos of their presentation.

I shamelessly admit that I got addicted to Korean soap opera after 15 years of absence from Korean TV. Maybe this is age or something else but I have been missing home lately. Unfortunately (or fortunately) my homesickness led me to watch Korean soap operas in a perverted attempt to reconnect with my own culture. I know I am getting a warped view on Korean society but at the same time I’ve glimpsed some cultural changes in Korea that I wasn’t aware of.

I noticed that in soap operas, issues like homosexuality, AIDS, single mothers, divorce etc. that used to be taboo to discuss in Korean culture are now often part of storylines. For example, I’m currently watching a drama called “thank you” which is a typically-formulated Korean drama; however, it deals with AIDS and addresses people’s prejudices and the social stigma surrounding AIDS patients. Actually I found an AP article on this drama mentioning about how this drama is used to educate people with HIV.

Despite the limitation of construction of stories in soap opera, I think this demonstrates how cultural, social and political resistance take place in popular culture. It will be interesting to explore how resistance in popular culture connects to real social and political movements.

The Edge Annual Question - 2006

To the Edge Community,

Last year’s 2005 Edge Question - “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” - generated many eye-opening responses from a “who’s who” of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions comprised a document of 60,000 words. The New York Times (”Science Times”) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (”Feuilliton”) published excepts in their print and online editions simultaneously with Edge publication….

A book based on the 2005 Question — What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty, with an introduction by the novelist Ian McEwan — was just published by the Free Press (UK). The US edition follows from HarperCollins in February, 2006….

This year, the third culture thinkers in the Edge community have written 117 original essays (a document of 72,500 words) in response to the 2006 Edge Question — “What is your dangerous idea?”. Here you will find indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems — whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself — were not constructed by design; all have evolved. There is a new set of metaphors to describe ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all of the things we know in it.

Yahoo! Search - Instant Search.
“Instant Search gives you answers as you type — no more waiting!”

This beta application from
Yahoo next uses
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming to deliver immediately, as you type, a best match
for your search. This is certainly an interesting and flashy application
that may be useful in some search situations.

It is also interesting to look at the technology behind the application and how such technology might be of use to libraries. Ajax applications “look almost as if they reside on the user’s machine, rather than across the Internet on a server. The reason: pages get updated, not entirely refreshed.” (Ajax wikipedia article).

But this technology also has privacy implications:
Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You by Earle Castledine, devX.com, August 9, 2005.

Without comment, here are several articles of interest from
the last week or so. Have a good weekend!

• Academic Libraries Join in Marking September 11 With Discussions of
  What Freedom Means
• Roberts Errs on Side of Secrecy as White House Counsel
• Public Being Shut Out of Environmental Right-to-Know Hearings
• At long last, it’s Lockheed for electronic archives
• Audio overboard College students bypass new podcasting craze
• 
  Chaos to rule Internet in 2010
• 
  Clarke: Europe must trade civil liberties for security
• Wikipedia eclipses CIA

Mountain Voices presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development.

Characteristics of the U.S. Broadband Market by Donald Abelson, July 1, 2005, RITE Broadband Symposium. This FCC report provides current information on Broadband market share, High Speed line growth, cable modem growth etc.

Welcome to GreyNet, Your Grey Literature Network Service

What’s grey literature? It’s “Information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commerical publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity.”

THE GREY JOURNAL ~ FLAGSHIP FOR THE GREY LITERATURE COMMUNITY

The first issue of The Grey Journal, an international journal on grey literature, will be launched in the spring of 2005. This flagship journal crosses continents, disciplines, and sectors both public and private. The Grey Journal not only deals with the topic of grey literature but also is itself a document type that is classified as grey literature. It is akin to other grey serial publications, such as conference proceedings, reports, working papers, etc. The Grey Journal is geared to Colleges and Schools of Library and Information Studies, as well as, information professionals, who produce, publish, process, manage, disseminate, and use grey literature e.g. researchers, editors, librarians, documentalists, archivists, etcetera.

Spring 2005, Volume 1, Number 1 - ÔPublish Grey or PerishÕ

Project Censored 2005 - Top 25 Censored Stories

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Holds Corporations Accountable

#3: Bush Administration Censors Science

#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics

#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments

#8: Cheney’s Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#11: The Media Can Legally Lie

#12: The Destabilization of Haiti

#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron’s Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall

#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies

#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens

#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming the World’s Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

#22: Censoring Iraq

#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America

#24: Reinstating the Draft

#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World

Iraq’s library struggles to rise from the ashes
by Rory McCarthy. Tuesday December 21, 2004.
Guardian Unlimited.

The daylight burning of the library, which the invading US military did not protect, was one of the first costly failures in the post-war chaos of occupation last year. Now it is slowly being restored. But in a country where recent history remains bitterly disputed, resurrecting the library and national archive has turned into a remarkably sensitive and political operation.