#karpf

[charliejaneanders]

I don’t see how else to make sense of it. 2022 was the year the 20-year tech bubble finally burst. 2023 was still bad for startups, and was full of bad headlines for the big platforms. And yet, in the markets, tech investors just took a deep collective breath and started inflating the next bubble, as though the previous year had never happened.

Silicon Valley runs on Futurity

[thoughtportal]

Paris Marx is joined by Dave Karpf to discuss Meta’s misguided attempt to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, how Wired Magazine has evolved, and why the tech billionaires are destroying the world.

                 Guest                      

Dave Karpf is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. He’s also the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy and Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy. Follow Dave on Twitter at @davekarpf.

[darshanan-blog]

The Thanksgiving Play: Review

The Thanksgiving Play running at @citylights tackles many hot button issues around culture, #diversityandinclusion and more.

The Thanksgiving Play Review  The Thanksgiving Play is currently playing in the Bay Area at City Lights Theater in San Jose. Written by Lariss FastHorse, it is a satirical play centered around attempts of four stage artists played by Sarah Dove, Keenan Flagg, Caitlin Gjerdrum, and Bryan Moriarty, to create, write and produce a play. These artists are attempting to create a perfect play that…

[thatstormygeek]

Of course ChatGPT is useful to underwhelming consultants in generating ideas for their slidedecks and reports that no one bothers to read. Of course its useful for entrepreneurship students brainstorming 25 new business ideas. Those activities are bullshit to begin with! ChatGPT doesn’t look like a disruptive, revolutionary tool to me. It looks like an incremental advance over the status quo ante. Students can use ChatGPT to cheat on writing assignments. That’s catastrophic for the extant cheating-on-writing-assignments cottage industry. But it doesn’t have much bearing on my pedagogy or syllabus.

[nextwavefutures]

The long boom that wasn’t

I spent much of the ‘90s working in a technology-related job, launching an interactive television channel for a cable company in London. One of the side effects of this was that I needed to know about the nascent internet, and to do this you needed to read WIRED magazine. At the time, this was like opening a vein and injecting yourself with Silicon Valley, before it became a vampire. And,…

[1hundred1hundred30]

18. Book - How To Age

Author - Anne Karpf Year - 2015 Rating - 8/10

What it is.

This books invites the reader to change the narrative around ageing - a concept that is often seen as a burden to society and the worst thing that can happen to people. Karpf instead offers us to see ageing as a time of growth.

What rates it.

The book turns out biggest fear, into our biggest hope; to age is a privilege because we get to grow, and we get to build on our experiences so that each one is better than the one before it. To frame ageing like this is the antithesis to our ageist society.

[benkaden]

Ansichtskarte

Aue Altmarkt

Reichenbach (Vogtl): BILD UND HEIMAT REICHENBACH (VOGTL) (III/26/13 A1/723/83 300723 01 14 0506)

Foto: Karpf, Oelsnitz (Erzgeb.)

1983

[filmcourage]

I've Made Documentaries For 20 Years... Here's Why I Had To Make A Narrative Movie - Rory Karpf

Watch the video interview on Youtube here.

[readingsquotes]

Tech libertarianism is, fundamentally, an ideology for people who are both cheap and lazy. That is the great advantage that attracts businesspeople to adopt a libertarian perspective on speech regulation. If your first instinct about content moderation is “I would rather not think about this, it shouldn’t be my problem, and I definitely don’t want to spend any resources on it,” then libertarianism is the ideology for you. ... It is bad and weird that Google, Facebook, Apple, and the rest of big tech have been left to play the role of regulator-of-last-resort. Their executives at times complain, at times correctly, that even if they have the right as private businesses to make these decisions, we would all be better off with some other entity making them. (The hitch here, of course, is that one reason we have reduced government regulatory capacity to make and enforce these decisions is that these same companies have worked tirelessly to whittle down the size and scale of the administrative state. It has been a project of attaining great power while foreswearing any responsibility. Which is, y’know, really not great!) .. This is why every tech CEO loves the libertarian approach to speech issues. Tech libertarianism holds that someone else (or no one at all) should expend resources on setting and enforcing boundaries for how your product is used. The essence of the position is “I shouldn’t have to spend money on any of this. And I shouldn’t ever face negative consequences for not spending money on this.” (It’s a bit like someone who refuses to tip at a restaurant and insists its because they believe philosophically that the whole system is unjust and restaurants ought to pay fair wages to their workers. Sure! Fair point! But in the meantime, here and now, you’re still being a cheapskate asshole.)

On Substack Nazis, laissez-faire tech regulation, and mouse-poop-in-cereal-boxes

Dave Karpf

Dec 14, 2023

[moviesandmania]

GARGOYLES (1972) Reviews and free to watch online

Gargoyles is a 1972 American made-for-television supernatural horror film directed by Bill L. Norton from a screenplay written by Stephen and Elinor Karpf (Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell). The movie stars Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall and Bernie Casey. The film is, perhaps, most notable for being the first showcase for the talents of makeup and special effects guru, Stan Winston…

[zlhg]

Is the” Earnest Internet” impossible to achieve on contemporary social media?

My professor Cristian talked in class about how they were looking at daily information sharing on private messaging apps. People don't spend a lot of time entering content, but they tend to express their opinions, share personal experiences, express their stories with emotion, and talk about the world rather than simply describe it in words. And most social media mobilizes the need for messaging, for example WhatsApp, Facebook, people can share their lives with familiar people, and share with strangers, but they also carry the risk of network transmission. As Hedrick et al. (2018) have mentioned that based on the "Earnest internet", communication science generally assumes that people behave rationally. There are also findings that social media has the greatest impact when social media use is measured as political expression. The web and social media provide ample opportunities to share text-based and multimedia expressions of personal political views. (Boulianne, 2017)

But without the premise of the "Earnest internet", social media can be a tool of contradiction. For example, “Disaster gilr”meme, she was standing in front of a burning house with a smile, and photographed by her father and quickly became popular, but the girl didn't mind the internet spreading her picture, which eventually sold for a high price. (Fazio, 2021)

Figure 1(Fazio, 2021)

On the contrary, “Star Wars Kid”, without his knowledge, his private video was uploaded online by a friend and accidentally 'exploded', he gained notoriety for his video content, which received 28 million views on YouTube, eventually resorting to the court system, a series of lawsuits were filed. (Zittrain, 2014) In addition to the accidents of people around us, there are also threats from social media strangers, as I have studied the negative effects of digital media on people with autism including online fraud, bullying, this is still a topic we need to study, how to reduce cyberbullying. This also goes against the core of the "Earnest internet", which is to act rationally and in good faith.

The development of the Internet has led to the rapid penetration of social media in all corners of the world, breaking the limits of time and space. If people do not look at what is happening with rationality and goodwill, public opinion will be misdirected, the following video addresses social health and the values that underpin them. If people are to be active in political discussions, and the video emphasizes 'active', then they must believe that the decisions of the decision makers are for the people and not for their personal benefit. But people usually interested in the boredom, the social hotspots and people's concerns may never be in focus, so it takes everyone's efforts to build a sustainable development area, this includes the responsibility of the media as well, as most people may not question the results of the reporting. But the contradictions of social media still exist due to the intertwining of interests, differences in knowledge levels, and the height of political thought, and the foundation of social trust is also unstable, so it may still take time to achieve the "Earnest internet" on cotemporary social media.

Reference:

Boulianne, S. (2017). Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe. Information, Communication & Society, 22(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2017.1353641

Fazio, M. (2021, April 29). The World Knows Her as “Disaster Girl.” She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/arts/disaster-girl-meme-nft.html

Hedrick, A., Karpf, D., & Kreiss, D. (2018). The Earnest Internet vs. the Ambivalent Internet. International journal of communication [Online], 1057+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A560927079/AONE?u=anon~cb6bca13&sid=googleScholar&xid=3e5c989e

Zittrain, J. L. (2014). Reflections on Internet Culture. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 388–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544540

[bluefly]

Nate Silver gives me the willies. His interview with Ezra Klein made my skin crawl, and I had to turn it off. Big overtones of the bros of my youth wanting to hear themselves talk...

Can't hide my head in the sand though. Might as well learn more second hand.

Edit: On second thought, I tried reading the thread and felt my anxiety rise. I'm out.

[douxlen]

The Fight Over Tim Walz’s Midwestern Appeal

New Post has been published on https://douxle.com/2024/08/10/the-fight-over-tim-walzs-midwestern-appeal/

The Fight Over Tim Walz’s Midwestern Appeal

Now that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has skyrocketed into the public eye after being named Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, voters have been introduced to his plainspoken, Midwestern communication style.

As former President Barack Obama wrote this week in his statement regarding Walz, “Tim’s signature is his ability to talk like a human being.”

Walz’s manner of speaking has already become apparent in his first days as a vice presidential contender and candidate. Walz’s jabs and jokes have gone viral and drawn attention from voters and the media, from Walz originating Democrats’ new strategy to call the GOP candidates “weird” to his reference in his very first appearance with Harris to a lewd Internet rumor about Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

Political strategists and experts say Walz’s style could be an asset to the Harris campaign. “The vice presidential nominees often take on the the role of attack dog, and the danger there is they end up looking nasty, but if you can do it with a smile and a wink and with some humor, you can convey that message without it necessarily backfiring on you,” says Travis Ridout, political scientist at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. “That’s the Midwesternism that will allow him not to sound nasty.”

George Washington University Professor David Karpf agrees: “Two weeks ago, delivering that line about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance just being plain weird wouldn’t resonate, but because the ‘Midwestern dad governor’ said that, he can deliver that line and have it land really well.”

Read More: How the Harris-Walz Camo Hats Became a Viral Hit

The contrast between Walz and Harris, who is from California and spent her early career in San Francisco, also lends stylistic balance to the ticket. Born in the small town of West Point, Nebraska, Walz’s roots run deep in rural America. “Where I grew up, community was a way of life. My high school class was 24 people. I was related to half of them,” Walz said in a video posted on social media to announce he was running with Harris. After high school, Walz spent 24 years in the Army National Guard, before moving to Mankato, Minnesota, where he worked as a high school social studies teacher and football coach until winning his first congressional election in 2006.

“The question is do people identify him as a Midwesterner when they see him and hear him? And the answer is yes,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “That gives him credibility inside the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and rural Pennsylvania.”

The Trump campaign has already begun trying to separate Walz from his Midwestern identity, instead tying him to a “West Coast” liberalism like the kind they argue Harris represents. On Aug. 6, the Trump-Vance campaign released a statement about “Radical Leftist” Walz as Harris’ running mate, calling him a “West Coast wannabe.”

“It’s no surprise that San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris wants West Coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden State,” Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote. “Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide.”

Vance has echoed this rhetoric, telling reporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday that Harris has “chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco-style liberal.”

Read More: For Tim Walz, the IVF Political Battles Are Personal

A Harris campaign official argues this comparison is strained, noting San Francisco is “a city [Walz] has spent virtually no time in and visited for the first time last month.” The official also points out that Vance lived in San Francisco and began his career there.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not answer TIME’s request for comment.

Walz and Vance in particular will battle over the coming weeks to establish themselves as the representation of the Midwest and to help their respective presidential candidates win over those crucial votes. Vance grew up in Rust Belt Ohio and became famous after the publication of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016. 

At the Republican National Convention in July, Vance used his first speech as Trump’s running mate to cast himself as a fighter for the working class. Throughout his speech, he claimed that he would work to elevate the interests of blue-collar voters, repeatedly naming Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. “This moment is not about me,” Vance said. “It’s about the auto worker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs.”

Now, as the Trump campaign attempts to paint Walz as a California liberal, Walz has begun highlighting Vance’s connections to Silicon Valley and Yale University to claim he’s the one out of touch with many Americans. When the campaign heats up, voters will take a gimlet-eyed look towards everything from finances to policies to upbringing to speaking style in order to, according to Jamieson, “certify a difference between Vance and Walz on whether they can still identify with the people they grew up with.”

[thatwritererinoriordan]

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail."

[nextwavefutures]

Looking for the money in the AI business

Looking for the money in the AI business—is it like the steel industry? Or Visual Basic? Or high performance productivity tools? New post. @ByrneHobart, @davekarpf, @AINowInstitute

I’ve been following the noise since ChatGPT was launched a few months ago, and am struck by the way that it seems to have fired up some of the old tropes about the inevitability of technology that emerged much earlier in the long digital wave. I’ve also seen some excitable chat about how AI is, somehow, going to be the backbone of the next long technology surge. Both of these assertions seem…