Moonwalking for real

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Howard R. Debs

40 years ago  this coming week man walked on the moon. Incredible feat (feet)! Today, the grainy video footage has been digitally enhanced through the auspices of a video restoration organization, and the “high def” version is quite a sight to behold. To see for yourself go to: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html

Communication comes in many forms using many means, and has evolved  from Edison’s audio “recreations” as they were called (records) to CGI (computer generated images); certainly we’ve come a long way – including quite literally from the moon.

The point I want to make is that communication technology – at any point in time – ordinarily comes ahead of our ability and full understanding of how to most effectively utilize that technology. We are always just scratching the surface of developing technology. Look at TV – consider what was “on” at the start – basically just radio with pictures (if you don’t count the test patterns which showed up when content was not being broadcast, which was a lot of the time in the early days). We had to learn how to use the new medium, and as we gained an understanding of it, we absolutely altered the way we used it.

The cell phone of yesterday is the smart phone of today. What will come next? Another “giant leap for mankind” undoubtedly.

Today, let’s remember all that has gone before – including the seemingly archaic footage (there’s that “feet” verbiage again) of a man on the moon July 21, 1969 – 02:56 UTC, i.e. Coordinated Universal Time (or July 20, 10:56 pm,  EDT)which without question led to advancements now and in the future.

(This is a Quick Takes post; very brief posts on very timely topics with more detailed discussion to follow as warranted.)

➡https://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/07/17/moonwalking-for-real/

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Filed under: American culture, communication vehicles, Quick Takes, society | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Blogs as today’s communication bargain

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Howard R. Debs

Over the past weekend a number of media sources – online and off – picked up on a story which I think may have originated in Chicago, my hometown, on Friday the thirteenth no less. We won’t call it “Black Friday” in this instance, instead we’ll call it “Red Hot” Friday. The basic point of all these pieces was that the hot dog is making a comeback in these hard times; it is construed as the “perfect recession food” Hot dog sales are “red hot” according to the site “Serious Eats” http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/03/the-hot-dog-as-perfect-recession-food.html#comments

Now I am a serious hot dog lover myself; the Mii on my Wii is “hotdogman” for goodness sakes. The buzz about the dog reminded me that this is the time of the little guy, the bargain. I pass up the fancy car wash with the waiting room sporting a flat panel TV in favor of one tied in with a gas station where I get pretty much the same hand wash for about half the price.

Blogs are in a way the bargains of today’s world of communications. The “hot dog article” posted at Chicago Public Radio http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=32792

references the opinion of Darren Tristano an executive vice president at Technomic Incorporated, a food industry research firm: “He says hotdog stands are set to capitalize on food trends-they’re cheap, the food is fresh, customizable, portable, and he says Chicago hot dogs taste really good. All of which makes them a strong contender for a great recession meal.” Just exchange the words “Chicago hot dogs” for the words “well prepared blogs” and I think you’ll see the attributes listed are comparable. The recipe for “well prepared blogs” will be given in a later post.

 

➡https://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/03/19/back-at-the-same-old-stand/

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A Jurassic Park kind of world

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Howard R. Debs

In many of today’s opinion pages, be they online or in print, readers were treated to a very insightful article by Kathleen Parker, titled “Weird new media world” in which, it seemed abundantly apparent to me, she was putting forth the premise that newspapers are a core communications vehicle of American society and conducted appropriately constitute the bedrock on which a free society is maintained. So granting necessary reshaping to conform to technological and cultural changes (I advisedly here avoid the term “advances” to describe such changes) the medium is important to retain. In her own words:

“Whatever business models emerge…newspapers have to focus on their traditional core of fact-based, serious reporting. We might add to that formula the need for a serious populace informed about the fragile thread that connects a free press to a free future. “

A number of considerations emerge from careful reading of her piece. Yes, I don’t have much need for the TV guide section of my local paper now that I have a TV guide accessible on my TV; so newspapers need to define themselves based on their “root” purpose to borrow a term from the computer age. A “root” directory in computer file systems is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy. It can be likened to the root of a tree – the starting point where all branches originate. (Paraphrased from Wikipedia). This is basic Marketing 101 of course. Amtrak isn’t in the business of running trains, they’re in the business of transportation. Find the “root” and stick to it she seems to be urging, and keep a first amendment bulwark in place in the bargain.

What is fascinating, is the “spin” this gets in the “comment room”; I just checked out one: http://townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2009/03/15/weird_new_media_world?page=2 and the majority of comments at this site are made by fire breathing persons who seem to have read only one word of her article, that word appearing as the last word of the article’s third paragraph and spelled b-i-a-s, “bias”. But the real bias, as I see it, is on the part of the commenters; which leads me to the book True Enough by Farhad Manjoo. The Publishers Weekly review of the book puts it this way: “Salon blogger Manjoo…in his perceptive analysis of the status of truth in the digital age, critiquing a Rashomon-like world in which competing versions of truth vie for our attention.” The book deserves more attention in a separate post, and the book deserves our attention in general because it presents a pretty disquieting picture of our future as a society of many different groups of “Dittoheads” as referenced in paragraph two of Parker’s article!

➡ https://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/03/16/a-jurassic-park-kind-of-world/

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Franklin Roosevelt invents the “fireside chat”

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Howard R. Debs

76 years ago today Franklin Roosevelt sat in front of a radio microphone and literally created a new communications “environment”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireside_chats

What I want to point out about the concept of the “fireside chat” as a communications vehicle is directly related to President Obama and the current situation we face as a nation. As “Communicator in Chief” president Obama has to ensure that for the duration of this national morass we are going through, that in all his communication efforts to the general public he essentially utilizes what I will call the “Roosevelt Approach”, so well crafted by FDR, and therefore Obama’s communications advisors – who were seemingly so astute on the campaign trail – need to revisit the rationale for the success of the fireside chat format. In this regard, as important as the content was, the character of the presentation within the framework of the media involved is what needs to be assessed from a communications standpoint. Keep in mind that this took place during the “Golden Age of Radio”; we now are in the “New Age of the Internet”, and I am not so sure that a talking head in front of a camera albeit,  a Presidential talking head – translates that well on a computer screen for the purpose intended, that being hopefully injecting confidence about the future. What is needed is to re-invent the “fireside chat” circa 2009.

➡https://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/03/12/franklin-roosevelt-invents-the-fireside-chat/

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Filed under: communication vehicles, public figures | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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