The Blogs of War

My father is a U.S. Air Force veteran. When he ended his military career, he was a civil engineer. Before becoming a civil engineer, he was a load specialist for large aircraft, and before that was part of special ops. When my mother told me my father had been part of the military Special Forces, the first thing I thought was 'cool'. Obviously my dad can't really share his experiences with me, but he's done some amazing things. My mother provided a more somber recollection of my father's special ops. Career. He would be gone, sometimes for more than a year, and she would have no information about where he was, what he was doing, and if he was okay. She would occasionally receive a letter and still has some that he sent. It's obvious the letters were censored. Some of them have black lines covering the letters.
I feel if blogs were around when my father was part of military operations, my mother and father could have had the opportunity to contact each other more. And my mother would not have had to worry so much about him. That's why I find the milblog trend to be fascinating. To be able to contact loved ones in dangerous places has to give family members a tremendous peace of mind. I know my mother, for one, would have appreciated knowing he was alive and well on a more regular basis.
While understanding the benefits to milblogs, I also understand the reason the government might be concerned about the trend. It’s not okay to censor the blogs for opinion purposes, but if any of the information on the blog might be detrimental to a mission or could put peoples lives in danger, posting it should not be allowed. I assume most of the milbloggers understand the importance of not giving away vital information, but mistakes happen and sometimes what’s appropriate and not appropriate to display is difficult to discern.

Podcast 3: Commercial

Most of the commercial podcasts are relatively uninteresting, so I'm just going to pick a random one to write about. The lucky winner of my random pick is the Newsweek cover story podcast! I initial decided to listen to the podcast because one of the episodes was talking about outsourcing and another about job seeking, both topics I find interesting. At first I was worried that I wouldn't be able to follow the podcast because I don't read Newsweek, but it wasn't difficult. However, the interviews were very dry and I think I would have preferred to just read the Newsweek article than listen to people talk about it. On top of that, all the podcasts start out with an annoying ad for Sun micro-systems. I felt listening to it about 4 times was enough.

Podcas 2: My Fav

Found another podcast I don't mind listening to called Diggination. I can't tell if it's an independent podcast or not. I think it started as independent and then accepted sponsorship because it started the podcast I listened to with 'sponsored by ______.com'. The podcast is definitely longer than I'd prefer, but the content is interesting. The show is two guys talking about different news stories (in the episode I was listening too they were doing the podcast drunk too). The podcast is run in conjunction with the website digg.com and people go vote for stories of interest and they talk about those stories. I've only listened to one of the podcasts so far, but it is definitely interesting and entertaining.

Podcast 1: Independent

After going through many a podcast, I found a few that I enjoyed enough to listen to a few episodes. One is the Legal Underground which is a lawyer talking about different law related issues. The podcasts has several entries and you can listen to how the podcast developed over time. The first episodes were legal definition read by different people the lawyer knows (he even has his young kids read some of the definitions). Then, he starts podcasting about 'legal things that suck' which are my favorite episodes. Short, funny, and interesting. He talks/complains about every thing from copyright issues to having a judge yell at you in court. Then, the podcast developed further by adding a music introduction/announce and musical interludes. Also, the lawyer started talking about semi-seriously about recent events in the legal profession (e.g. Supreme Court nomination). The newer episodes are still interesting, and the music is a nice touch, but the podcast is almost twice as long.

Podcasts

My general impression of podcasts is that they are long, boring, and somewhat pointless. I found it difficult to listen to one all the way through. Podcasts are very much like talk radio and I pretty much hate talk radio, so it makes sense that podcasts aren't my cup of tea. I was also under the impression that most podcasts played some type of music. My general experience indicates that most have little to no music at all (unless you count 'background' music for their talking, which I don't). Even trying to find a podcast that plays songs is difficult. Most of the podcasts in the music section of itunes are people talking about music and the ones that actually play music, just play 'clips' for a few seconds. For most of the podcasts I listened to, the content would better formatted visually rather than with audio.

Wired article: 10 years that changed the world

It's always hard to predict the future and predicting the direction of future of the Internet was a will always be a difficult task. As someone who has never really known a time before the Internet, I find it interesting how many individuals and companies were skeptical about it's emergence. How could they not see the potential in creating networks of thousands, millions, and billions of people? It's easy to criticize because the Internet started out as a small and risky concept. And just imagine what will happen to the Internet in another 10 years because more likely than not, your predictions will just as incorrect as those who doubted the Internet years ago.

One of the topics I found most interesting in the article is the idea of the net as an AI and model of the human brain. For the past few years, the topic of the brain and computer as been fiercely debated in the field of psychology, one of my majors. I sat in my cognitive class, watching my professor lay out models of the human brain working as a computer thinking that a computer could never replicate in intricacies of the human brain. However, a network of several computers with interconnecting content like the web applies much more readily as a model of the brain. Memory models look at the brain as an endless numbers of connections between events, knowledge, and experience in a persons mind. The Web imitates these connections, and although the Web contains far fewer connections that the human brain, and as the article points out, the human brain only evolves to a certain point where as the Web is expanding rapidly every year. The metaphor is and interesting one and could lead to some interesting research in the future.

Email Mobs

My personal opinion regrading flash mobs is that they are trivial and somewhat passé. Most I've read about seem pointless and are created for spectacle and amusement. When they first appeared, it was interesting and somewhat exciting to see large crowds gathered and doing inane things, but now it just seems pointless. On Monday, an email mob appeared on the CU campus to worship the buffalo in front of the stadium. As many observers noted, there seemed to be more press and observers tham people actually taking part in the mob. It's not the first time Boulder has seen a flash mob either. In Aug. of 2003, a group met in downtown Boulder, pointed to the sky and proclaimed "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" This mob saw a turn out of more media reporters than actual participants. With so many more people observing and reporting on the event than actually participating, it becomes less exctiting. Email mobs are supposed to be fun and spontanious, but when they become more of a media spetical than a fun stunt, it takes away any charm they might have had.

I predict email mobs will not last long the way they are currently run and operated. It's amusing to see a large group of people doing random and unusual things, but after so many, they become less entertaing. In order to keep things interesting, different types of stunts which are more creative in nature are necessary if the mobs are to survive. If I were to personaly put together a email mob, instead of performing a useless stunt, I would try to have the mob perform some sort of civil service. For example, the mob could meet at a local park, pick up trash for a few minutes, and leave.