Perlmutter Dept. of State Talks: Manila & Kabul

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Some other blogging and elections talks: --David D. Perlmutter. International webtalk on "The American Elections and Online Social-Interactive Media" sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 3, 2008. Read: The transcript of the webchat. --David D. Perlmutter. Keynote Speaker. "The American elections." Tele-Video Conference sponsored by by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, October 21, 2008. Originally posted November 18, 2008 at PolicyByBlog...
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Saving Face on Facebook

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
A recent article for which I was interviewed, "Saving Face on Facebook,"written by Sarah Skelnik, appeared in Career College Central. One of the most interesting facts detailed in the article is that "one in 10 admissions officers visits social networking sites to check students' backgrounds." I am surprised that the number is so low, and I wonder whether a number of those surveyed may have been reluctant to admit that they are checking student applicants' backgrounds that way. In any case, background-checking websites--blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube--or any other Web content associated with you will only become more important and influential over time. Actually, the issue itself is fairly old. Mark Twain and President Harry Truman both asserted that you should never say or do anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable reading about on the front page of the newspaper. But in their time newspapers were strictly defined in a professional sense and reporters were hired professionals. Nowadays, citizen journalism has become a widespread phenomenon and everyone, it seems,...
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Texting Ourselves to Death?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
 [Image: Scott Frederick Starrett]   I hosted a conference and co-wrote the report for a summit of experts on the TOP TRANSPORTATION & ENERGY ISSUES FACING THE NATION* sponsored by The University of Kansas Transportation Research Institute (KU TRI), presented by The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics and theUniversity of Kansas School of Engineering, and funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation Research and Innovation Technology Administration & Federal Highway Administration. Our main point was that America has tried many times to create a national transportation policy over the last century, with the latest and most comprehensive attempt in 2000-2001. None of these ventures was conceived or executed at the presidential level save possibly President Eisenhower's "National Defense Highway System." Now humankind confronts interrelated crises of energy and transportation in a rapidly changing world where we must deal with spiking petroleum prices, decaying bridges, growing congestion in all modes, an aging and inattentive driver population, a shortage of adequately trained transportation engineers, and the diverse ramifications of global climate change....
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The End of Geoprivacy

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Ever have the feeling that someone is spying on you? Today, it's more likely that you are broadcasting enough information thatanyone can spy on you. In the most recent issue of Wired magazine, freelance writer Mathew Honan recounts his "I am here"adventures of a "3-week experiment of living la vida local." Using all the new technology (software and hardware) especially iPhone apps, he demonstrates how easy it is to be constantly monitoring your environment electronically as well as for everybody to know where you are. For example, with the program WhoseHere, you can send your latitude and longitude location and instantly get responses from other people in the area. The responses, needless to say, range from "I'm looking for sex" to "Really great coffee shop." Other interesting revelations: "Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map." In other words, people will know exactly where you were when you took the picture. Interestingly,...
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Ganja Queen and Media Ethics

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
In my Journalism Media & Ethics class we screened the HBO documentary "Ganja Queen," which told the story of a young Australian woman who was accused and then convicted of importing marijuana into Bali, Indonesia. The documentary raises a number of questions about the ethics of representation of true-life stories, especially in an age of online social-interactive media and "reality" television. First, to what extent does a broadcaster or documentary filmmaker owe it to the audience to update knowledge about a subject? In this case, there have been numerous developments since the documentary was filmed, some of which probably would radically change the audience's perception of events. Second, most ordinary people are not media-savvy in the sense of having the degree of self-awareness to know when something they are saying or doing looks wrong or suspicious on camera. Does a documentary filmmaker, especially in a criminal case, owe it to the subjects to help them be at their best for the camera, or is the goal to...
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