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Top Ten Albums of the Year

Over on my posterous blog (which is getting a lot more action than this place — sorry levjoy.com!) I just posted a quick rundown of my top ten albums of the year. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll link out. Enjoy.

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Categories: general.

By Josh
— December 29, 2009 at 5:04 pm

What Free Press does, and why it matters

Below is an email I sent to some friends and family, explaining why our work at Free Press is so important, and asking them to support us with anything they can – $5, $10, $15. Read on if for more about what we’re working on, and how you can help.

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Friends and family – I never, ever write emails like this. But this year is different. I’m now working at Free Press, a national media reform nonprofit devoted to increasing the diversity and accessibility of the media. Given that we are a nonprofit that depends on public support, I’m asking for your help.

As you know, the media — the Internet, TV, print journalism — is the lifeline of our democracy. Left or right or in the middle, we all depend on it to make sure that we have the facts we need to make sound decisions at home and in our communities. No matter what you do, you need a solid, dependable media system to help you do it. And I think you’ll agree with me that our media system needs to fixed.

That’s where Free Press comes in. We’re fighting for media reform on several fronts, urging the FCC and Congress to pass rules and legislation that would help create fairer and more accountable media. Here are a few examples of what we do:

We’re on the front lines of Net Neutrality, the fight to ensure that you will continue to have access to any kind of online content, whenever you want it — without big companies like Comcast and Time Warner getting in the way. This is nothing less the protection of online speech. More here: http://www.savetheinternet.com.

We’re pushing back against the proposed Comcast-NBC merger, which is simply bad for consumers and democracy. More about that here: http://www.freepress.net/comcast.

We’re just about to see success in the form of the passage of the Local Community Radio Act in the House, which would bring fresh music, news and views to thousands of communities across the country. Find out more at http://www.freepress.net/lpfm.

And we’re pushing to free your phone — supporting legislation and FCC action that would wrest power away from carriers like Verizon and AT&T and steer it toward consumers, so we can stop seeing such outrageous cell phone bills and actually have choice in the mobile marketplace. More at http://www.freepress.net/freemyphone.

There’s much more happening at Free Press; go to http://www.freepress.net to learn about it all.

And please – if you like what you’re reading, and support what we do, consider donating to the Free Press Action Fund. Even the smallest bit — $5, $10, $15 — helps. Go here to contribute: https://secure.freepress.net/site/Donation2?df_id=2260&2260.donation=form1

Thanks, and have a wonderful holiday season.

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Categories: general.

By Josh
— December 15, 2009 at 4:50 pm

Web design and “user myopia”

My non-designer approach to web and user interface design is decidedly functional. Beauty only gets you so far; I’m interested in what inspires people to take part in something, in what yanks them out of their bubble and makes them feel connected to something beyond themselves. Long essays just don’t scan well on the web, where everything you post is competing with a thousand other things for a user’s attention.

Nevertheless, the desire to connect is strong, and there are many ways to engage it, even if that engagement is fleeting. Bold headlines often do the trick. A sharp design that doesn’t call attention to itself, but appeals to users’ emotions, usually helps. But I’ve found that online designers, writers, and producers often overlook a simple fact about their audience: people rarely see what you want them to see.

I’ve spent much of my working life producing content meant to be viewed online, and whenever that content has involved words — as, um, this does — I’ve had the nagging feeling that my intended audience just won’t be able to focus on it. Not if there’s too much of it, and not if it doesn’t reach out and grab them in a visceral way. Every day, I labor long and hard over the text people will read in an email or a blog post.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m convinced that if I make the perfect argument people will see things my way.  I’m deceiving myself; most people never finish the piece, and never get to that witty comparison between “big media” and “bigger media” that’s buried in the 5th graf.

This disconnect between producer and audience applies to every kind of site.  You write a blog post featuring a complicated argument, and your readers take away the opposite point. You create a community site and make the registration and sign up process as easy as possible, but still no one can figure it out. Back to the drawing board you go.

Once again, users — accustomed to being immediately taken with a site, or else they take off — simply don’t always see what you want them to see.

Coder Jeff Atwood recently looked closer at this phenomenon. First, he jokes that users don’t read anything you put on the screen. But then he gets serious.

When I said users don’t read anything you put on the screen, I was lying. Users do read. But users will only read the absolute minimum amount of text on the screen necessary to complete their task. I can’t quite explain it, but this kind of user myopia is epidemic. It’s the same problem, everywhere I turn.

Perfectly put. As an online writer, that means one thing above all: don’t write one word more than you have to.

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Categories: general.

By Josh
— November 2, 2009 at 11:49 pm

TNR Gets Slightly Interesting, Act.ly Sprouts Wings

Below are some notes on links that have caught my eye over the last couple of weeks. Please enjoy them.

- The New Republic has, somewhat surprisingly, published not one but two pieces that made it on my radar this week. (I say surprisingly because TNR almost never makes it out of the Beltway and into my general awarenesss; I don’t think I’m alone).

One was Jeffrey Rosen’s Net Cemetery, an excellent overview of Net Neutrality for noobs. Rosen focused on the Comcast case in which the FCC punished the telecom giant for blocking peer-to-peer activity on its network. That case is ongoing, so keep a lookout for it.

The other piece is a piece against transparency (you read that right), by none other than Lawrence Lessig, who argues that the movement for transparency in government might not be the panacea it purports to be.

Here’s the setup:

These [transparency in government] projects assume that they are seeking an obvious good. No doubt they will have a profound effect. But will the effect of these projects–at least on their own, unqualified or unrestrained by other considerations–really be for the good? Do we really want the world that they righteously envisage?

These are fine questions. Read on for Lessig’s answers. In short, Lessig fears that transparency will unleash more bad than good, mistaking “reform” for what is really best for the public.

If you want a shorter, more biblical version, try this.

- I cried with laughter while watching this video, which used Xtra Normal, software that lets you marry a script to animation. The video describes the encounter between a graphic designer and his client, from the designer’s POV. I can sympathize, though I wince at the thought of which side I’m usually on.

- A great article by Michael Tomasky about the rise of the conservatives Tea Partiers.  Lots of wisdom in there, and lots to be afraid of.

- Finally: can tweets change the world? If Jim Gilliam has anything to do about it, then maybe it can. My pal Nancy Scola describes the evolution of Gilliam’s act.ly — a wonderful Twitter petition site — and through an exhaustive list of usage scenarios and users, makes it clear that Gilliam’s idea is just now starting to sprout wings. Fly, little act.ly, fly.

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Categories: Internet, activism, politics, technology.

By Josh
— October 14, 2009 at 10:54 pm

Net Neutrality, Non-profits, Non-sequitors

Some linkage, with notes:

- It’s been a big week at Free Press headquarters, as we’ve seen one of our signature issues — Net Neutrality — make huge strides toward becoming the law of the land.  I remember well when the Save the Internet campaign washed across the web back in 2006. I didn’t know much about Free Press then, but thanks to the campaign I knew about Net Neutrality and how important it was to protect the open Internet. It’s a great feeling to now be so involved in the issue, and helping it become a reality.

With a solid statement by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and followup statements from President Obama and some top congressional leaders (including Nancy Pelosi), it looks like, at the very least, the FCC is going to inscribe these rules in stone. That will be the cap of some very hard work by my colleagues over the years. Needless to say, there’s been a lot of backslapping in the office.

If this whole notion of network neutrality is a bit much for you to grasp, some recommended reading.  First, check out the New Yorker’s interview with Genachowski himself, in which the Chairman does a good job of laying out some fairly wonky arguments.

Then, see David Weinberger’s excellent posts on the issue. Weinberger is justifiably excited, as the open web is at the very core of what he’s been writing about for more than a decade. His good-natured, intellectual brand of humor almost — almost — hides his contempt for the telecoms that want to protect their fiefdoms and decide what content we can access, and when. Almost. (See the astroturf BroadbandforAmerica for a sense of the disingenuouses of the big ISPs).

- Seth Godin is valuing non-profits’ success with social media by the number of Twitter followers they have. Ok, so it’s not that simple, but he doesn’t go a whole lot deeper than that. As you might expect, nonprofit techies aren’t happy.

- Want to get retweeted? Here’s how. It might seem cheesy to work so hard for a retweet, but if you’re in the advocacy business it pays to get other people to spread your message for you.

- An oldie and a goodie: McSweeney’s on Email Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying To Give Out on the Phone. One of my favorites: MikeAtYahooDotCom@hotmail.com

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Categories: Internet, activism.

By Josh
— September 29, 2009 at 12:00 am

One Laptop Per Child, Four Years Later

Nicole and I are almost finished with the second season of Lost. Yes, we’re about four years behind, but better late than never.  And how about that hatch! That thing is so cool!

Since we’re going back around four years or so, back in November of 2005 I blogged about the One Laptop Per Child (formerly $100 Laptop) project, an idealistic initiative started by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte with the goal of arming millions of kids in developing countries with cheap, networked, Linux-powered laptops.  I had the chance to see Negroponte discuss the venture in person, and at the I end I was hopeful and skeptical at once.

To oversimplify his goal, Negroponte felt that just bringing these machines to kids in need would unleash all kinds of learning and innovation. Skeptics worried that there wasn’t enough of a focus on teaching kids — or their teachers — how to use these machines. Plus, by partnering with developing countries with vibrant black markets, there was a significant chance that these computers would never even make it to their intended recipients.

So how’d it fare? This month my former Change.org colleague Alanna Shaikh wrote a eulogy for the project.  Here’s a dose:

Americans wanted the OLPC. We fell in love with its tremendous promise and adorable shape. (note: I own an OLPC) We were the first market it conquered. OLPC launched a give one-get one promotion that let individuals pay $400 to donate one laptop and receive one for themselves. It was a huge success, except that OLPC wasn’t set up for that kind of customer order fulfillment. Laptops arrived far later than promised, and several thousand orders were simply lost.

Once the laptop finally started arriving in the developing world, its impact was minimal. We think. No one is doing much research on their impact on education; discussions are largely theoretical. This we do know: OLPC didn’t provide tech support for the machines, or training in how to incorporate them into education. Teachers didn’t understand how to use the laptops in their lessons; some resented them. Kids like the laptops, but they don’t actually seem to help them learn.

It’s time to call a spade a spade. OLPC was a failure.

But Alanna received serious pushback in the comments for her prognosis, with counter-arguments flowing in from Uruguay, Peru, and Cambodia.  And then, Negroponte himself chimed in:

The dream is not over. When OLPC started there were no low cost laptops. We created the category less than four years ago and it now represents almost one third of the world production of latops. I am not aware of too many technologies that have gone from “impossible” to such wide adoption.

The million laptops, our little green ones, that are in the hands of children, are currently in 19 languages and 31 countries. Another million are on their way. Not bad. But even better, these countries include Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethiopia, as well as places like the West Bank (and next month Gaza). Even better, eh?

I suggest you look more carefully at Uruguay, Peru and Rwanda. In the case of Uruguay, every child has one. That is pretty amazing. Peru is headed there. Rwanda too. In fact, we have moved our learning group (as of early June) to Kigali perminently, to be in the field and get the kind of feedback you claim we ignore.

Fair enough. And those stats about Uruguay are powerful indeed.  Negroponte did a get a little cheap, though. Admitting that the process of adoption has been tough, he writes that “Has it been harder than I expected? Yes. But do you know why? It is not due to what I had anticipated, things like corruption and logistics. It has been due to commercial interests and press, stories like yours.”

Ouch. There’s not a small amount of bitterness there. But we’ll let that go – maybe the OLPC project has legs after all.  I just hope it won’t be four more years until I write about it again.

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Categories: activism, technology.

Tags: , ,

By Josh
— September 17, 2009 at 11:17 pm

Catching up and clearing the cache

As I’ve written multiple times in the last few months (I know, it’s getting pretty old), it’s been tough times trying to keep up with blogging with all of the other stuff going on (trying to expose astroturf in Washington, working to free your cell phones from corporate oppression, raising a beautiful and ever-squirmy 10-month-old).

Even with all that and more taking up my time, there’s lots going on in this old brain.  So here’s what I’m trying: rather than auto-posting my delicious links (which is a nice way of keeping up, but very boring for you, my readers), I’ll revisit the sites I bookmark throughout the way and add some notes.  Kind of like Nancy Scola’s clearing the cache and Ezra Klein’s tab dumps.  Except, um, less frequent.

So:

– A big Pew study was released this week that seemed to contain conflicting reports. One hand, Pew’s people write, “the internet is not changing the fundamental socio-economic character of civic engagement in America.” Darn, I thought it was!

The issue is that, put bluntly, poor people still don’t vote nearly as much as rich people do.

But on the other hand,

Some 19% of internet users have posted material online about political or social issues or used a social networking site for some form of civic or political engagement. And this group of activists is disproportionately young.

That’s good, right? And doesn’t that point to greater involvement in politics from young people?

My former colleague Micah Sifry, sharp as always, picks up on the good news and expands on the study’s underreported positive note.

Expecting the Internet, which has only become a mainstream arena for politics in the last four years, to somehow erase, overnight(!?), decades of deeply ingrained cultural habits and deliberate governmental policy designed to reduce political participation strikes me as, um, a bit silly.

Rather, the more interesting finding of the Pew study is that there’s a new “pig in the python” in the generation of younger people who are using the Internet for political purposes at levels that literally blow everyone else off the charts.

- Debra Askanase, who blogs at Community Organizer 2.0, recently posted a case study of setting up a Facebook fan page for a big nonprofit.  I’ve been increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of fan pages, since they seem to be the best way yet of deeply engaging an audience of supporters outside of the standard email list.  There’s still work to be done, and the problem of finding and keeping supporters online still exists, but we’re getting closer to actually making social media useful.

- One of the many great things that came out of Netroots Nation was finding out about LittleSis, an “involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited by people like you.”  Basically, it’s a way to keep track of those powerful people who’d rather you didn’t keep track of them.

They’re doing some heavy-duty investigative reporting, working with the HuffPo to track down ex-Congressional staffers who are now health care lobbyists and Spot.Us to discover who’s behind the Bay Area’s big companies.  Go folks go!

2 Comments

Categories: Internet, activism, politics.

By Josh
— September 2, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Quick notes from Netroots Nation ‘09

Last Sunday I arrived back at Hartford airport (yep, that’s the home airport now) after a fun and fast four days in Pittsburgh at the Netroots Nation conference.

It was yet another moment to hang out with the traveling pack of online campaigners and progressives I’m proud to know. It was four days of panels, drinks, and the constant talking of shop. For us that means Twitter, Facebook, emailing, crowdsourcing, astroturfing, videomaking, petitioning, and general all-around campaigning. It’s always a great time, even if there’s never any water or snacks to be found and the organizers always seem to find the largest, most-oversized venues possible in which to stage these pinko events.

A few highlights:

- Seeing Andy Cobb’s fantastic parody of the Washington Post’s ill-fated Mouthpiece Theatre disaster for what felt like the 50th time. And meeting Andy Cobb.

- Watching Bill Clinton get questioned by bloggers.

Well, not really “questioned.” But there were a few questions in the heckling.

- Pittsburgh. What a wonderful city! Even the Kinko’s guys were beyond nice.

- Representing Free Press. It was great to be able to be a Free Presser here – with an actual mission – instead of looking for people to hire to trying to figure out who the cool kids were. I think Free Press is one of the cool kids.

- Seeing all of my friends. Ever since attending RootsCamp 2006, I’ve gotten to know a ton of wonderful, inspiring people who put their all into their work. Seeing them a few times a year always energizes me and makes me want to work harder and be better at the work I do.

- Feeling good knowing I was going home to Northampton, MA. If you’d told me a year or two ago that this was my home I would have laughed. But that’s where the hippies live! I would have said. Yet here I am.

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Categories: general.

By Josh
— August 20, 2009 at 11:25 pm