What Media Writings Most Influenced You in 2007?
Please help me put together a reading list of 2007’s most influential books, articles and blog posts about media, technology, the internets and such. Pieces need not to have been published in 2007 to qualify for the list– they just need to have inspired, influenced or otherwise effected how you thought or worked this year. You can send suggestions to ohnsbracken at gmail; I will publish the top results on my blog at johnbracken.net on December 20.
Clarification added December 12, 2007:
Hopefully, this question will remain up here until 12/20.
Answers (18)
The Machine is Us:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
http://www.lifehacker.com/
http://www.consumerist.com/
Are definitely in my top two.
Clarification added December 6, 2007:
And of course http://www.nytimes.com/
"Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy to Win in the Digital Age" by Annette Moser-Wellman at www.http://www.mediamanagementcenter.org/innovation/innovationreport.pdf
Links:
Markus Prior, /Post-Broadcast Democracy/
http://www.amazon.com/Post-Broadcast-Democracy-Inequality-Involvement-Psychology/dp/0521675332
Prior looks at the impact of cable on political polarization. His work offers a somewhat terrifying look into the civic downside of the long tail.
Philip Tetlock, /Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?/
http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good-Know/dp/0691128715/
Tetlock's work takes a hard look at predicting the future. He focuses on political predictions, but the lessons apply broadly. The implications for a Web 2 world are subtle: some aspects of social networking can potentially encourage better prediction and consequently better decision-making, but other aspects encourage bad prediction, and there is no apparent, easy way to ensure that the more favorable patterns dominate.
Matthew Salganik et al, /Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/854
Salganik and colleagues created an experimental market for music and studied the effects of social network information. They discovered that social sharing of information (e.g., recommendations, pos/neg reviews) did not greatly alter the judgments of quality, but that they substantially increased the inequality of outcomes, creating more blockbusters and more dogs, and making prediction of which songs would become blockbusters or fail dismally effectively impossible. The experimental nature of their evidence is particularly powerful. Their findings have some potentially important implications for how intellectual property producers and especially cultural heritage organizations may want to approach their marketing activities.
Our annual media guide has at least two original features on the changing media landscape and blogs that might be of interest. Of course, the whole "Getting On the Air, Online and Into Print" guide is considered the bible for nonprofit communicators, as well as the media relations industry in Chicagoland. Go to www.newstips.org for more, or visit our blog [below]. I can send you PDFs if you want. thom@newstips.org
Links:
Thom C also suggests these experts on this topic:
Rich G
Associate professor, director of digital innovation at Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University
I am focused on trying to understand networks (especially social networks) and their implications for journalism and for civic participation.
These have been the most thought-provoking things I've read:
Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison, "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" (http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html)
Three old fashioned analog books:
* David Paul Nord, "Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers"
* Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, "Linked"
* Peter Monge & Noshir Contractor, "Theories of Communication Networks"
Ric H
Senior Business Manager at The Co-operative Group
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (5), Telecommunications (3), Wireless (3), Travel Tools (1), Non-profit Management (1), Information Storage (1), Web Development (1)
surely the only one that counts is FSJ?
Links:
My reading list has a distinct UK bias (since I live here). OFCOM's 2007 market report may sound a little dry but has some fantastic statistics showing the pace of change in media. The BBC's 'Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century' grapples with an increasingly urgent issue although is, I think, flawed. And David Hendy's fascinating history of Radio 4 - where you can still find some of the best of British journalism.
Links:
Greg B
Content Strategist, Community Builder, Newsroom Manager with Flair for Editorial "Edge" and Media Brand-Building.
Best Answers in: Career Management (4), Web Development (2), Regulation and Compliance (1), Education and Schools (1), Mentoring (1), Business Development (1), Public Relations (1), Business Analytics (1), Derivatives Markets (1), Hedge Funds (1), Personal Debt Management (1), Distribution (1)
Clay Shirky in Wired, on the Meganiche.
Huge, absolutely huge.
Links:
I'll go for 2 pieces on infrastructure:
Tim Wu's "Wireless Carterphone" paper, which is one of the touchstones of the fast developing debate about open wireless infrastructure (and which is also a good read if you just want to know more about why you hate your cellphone carrier).
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962027
And Jackson, Edwards, Bowker, and Knobel's "Understanding Infrastructure" which could serve as a background piece for the first--and for many other debates about the relationship between social and technical systems.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_6/jackson/index.html
Lauren Weinstein's blog post on Google (following the Facebook privacy fiasco)
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000334.html
I also really like Joel Fleishman's book, The Foundation.
John,
Although there are many good books and articles, I find that over the course of the last year what I use most and get the most out of are tips, stories, ideas, projects, speeches I see mentioned on Romanesco and J-Lab and few other alert sites they and others point to. These are the places I am finding the newest ideas and references to material I am looking for to move the Center for Public Integrity forward. Thanks. Bill
John,
I am surprised about how few books I've read this year. The internet has sucked me in and, of course, WoW (World of Warcraft) has sucked up my TV time.
Twitter has been surprisingly compelling. Yes, there is a huge amount of noise if you follow the wrong people. Following people that are close to you though is surprisingly useful and joy inducing. <http://twitter.com/> (If you're on a Mac using Twitterific makes Twitter much more useful.)
While not a written piece, Larry Lessig's initial lecture on Corruption is quite inspiring. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2171306322262202538&pr=goog-sl>
Ars Technica keeps me up to speed on both digerati and technical issues. <http://arstechnica.com/index.ars>
The Oil Drum keeps me apprised of the state of our oil addiction and how we're not dealing with it. <http://www.theoildrum.com/>
Marginal Revolution keeps me balanced on economic issues from my liberal tendencies. <http://www.marginalrevolution.com/>
Andrew
Links:
Hi John,
Nice question. Impressive that "media writings" have come to signify blogging in addition to books. The answers you've gotten also show the relevance of blogs in this area. Few posts/bloggers who totally rocked my water cooler world this year:
* Dave McClure - On all things Facebook
* Social Graph - Brad Fitzpatrick's thoughts on the Social Graph
* Fake Steve Jobs a.k.a Dan Lyons (http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/)
* Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst
Links:
- http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
- http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/marketing-faceb.html
- http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/10/innovation-at-linkedin-from-b...
Mario S also suggests these experts on this topic:
Bob Somerby's Daily Howler blog (dailyhowler.com) excels at identifying how the witless political media shoehorns its reporting into artificial narratives that are then impenetrable by actual reality. Somerby also exposes the same political press corps for its utter inanity and focus upon the superficial and superfluous, and its lack of basic reporting skills. I find his work irrefutable and essential, and many of his ideas informed my own criticism in the past year.
The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
- Broad reading on how fiber optics and other technologies effect knowledge worker labor and political landscape.
Links:
Solove, Daniel. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2007.
Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks is not beach reading, but it's terrific, well worth the effort.
And Doonesbury's various media-related threads of course (if you collected just the media-related ones going back a couple years, you could probably teach a perfectly decent seminar using only those as the discussion materials)
