Art Mobs

I can honestly say that I don't think I have done another project at Marymount where I have learned and accomplished so much. I came into this class being somewhat technologically illiterate and I'm leaving just four months later with an abundance of knowledge. Through the Art Mobs project, I tried to be as involved as I could be by interviewing Prof. Rosenfeld and helping out with the interviews with Benton. I wish I could have followed through with doing more of the publicity aspect of it but finals week is not the best time to take on more responsibility. Once the New York Times article is out, I think a lot of people will download the podcasts and visit MOMA. Overall this has been a great class that I will definately remember when I look back on college. I hope everyone that participated got as much out of this project as I did.

cheers!

Linux and Walmart

Afer watching these two movies, I felt enraged at Walmart and Microsoft. I wrote a paper this semster on how Microsoft is the most anti-competitive company out there right now and how Linux finally after years and years is getting some recognition. I had heard of Linux before this year but never really understood the way it worked and this clip helped a lot. Linux is cheap and works with all sorts of older computers that many versions of Windows can not work with. MIcrosoft has made itself the head and is trying to make it so that no one understands or even knows about any other software providers in the tail. Linux has not put money into marketing in the way Microsoft has. The reason for this is because Linux is not trying to dumb down software for Americans. Instead, this company is speaking to the public as though they are real adults not the children that Microsoft likes to make us all. Brazil's government has already switched to Linux and so has Munich, Germany. It's happening slowly but people are realizing that Linux is another option and a better one. All it takes is time.

As far as Walmart is concerned, we have been hearing about this for years that this company treats its employees like shit. Did we really believe that we were getting these products for such low prices because we were paying Americans to make them? That is simply an equation that doesn't add up. What is crazy is that Walmart can be compared to Microsoft in the way that it does have some competition but Kmart and Target are worth less than half of what Walmart is so the competition is really none at all. Walmart is just another example of how our country is making the gap between the wealthy and the poor larger and larger. Danielle describes this in her post on the two clips. Julia believes that this monstrous company is actually good for America which is just ludicrous. Until people start realizing that these huge companies that provide us with cheap goods are being made with cheap labor and at some point there is going to be a big realization that our economy is an oligopoly.

chapter three- The Cluetrain Manifesto

Levine describes himself as a potter's son and this comes out through his Web design. He compares people who designed and design the Web as artits trying to make heir place and individuality known. While books and memos and other types of corporate media have authors that the readers don't necessarily relate to, the Web changes all this. The Web makes it so that the viewers can actually relate to the author. The author has a voice which Levine describes as "words that are directly channeld from people's hearts" and this, people believe in and want to listen to. Levine describes how we as consumers can easily tell the difference between the garble that goes through the corporate ladder and words that are actually being said with honesty. This comes from the same way we can tell if someone is unsuccessfully trying to multitask while on the phone with us. We can tell when we are not being paid attention to and in the same way we can tell when we are being fed corporate bullshit. The Web creates a way fr us to communicate with corporations that are trying to sell s products. There is a conversation we have instead of the traditional television one to many communication. The idea of chat takes away the opportunity for people to lie to a certain extent. The fact that chat is real time communication means that the person writing is on the spot all the time and if they do decide to portay themselves under false pretenses, they better be able to stick with it for the whole conversation because one slip up and its written so there's no way around it. Wouldn't it be interesting if politicians had to debate through chats? We would probably learn a lot.

Jon Dean posted that he relates to Levine in th way that he too had a mentor that worked with his hands and created pieces after many hours of trials. This is much like different Web pages that people are constantly trying to make better and more interactive with viewers. While Jill liked Levine's chapter better than Locke's, I much prefered Locke's writing in the first chapter. Even though they both discussed how the Internet is giving individuals more of an identity, Locke's informal writing was a much faster and easier to understand read.

chapter two - The Cluetrain Manifesto

This was the most empowering piece of writing I've read in a while. Weinberger describes how to be successful in the professional world, we all adhere to this certain code of "professionalism" which basically makes us all likke robots. We all wear certain clothing that is considered business appropriate, we talk about certain subjects that are deemed safe with our coworkers and we do not usurp authority. By following all these rules, we have the key to not necesarily be successful, but to keep our jobs in our cubicles that look exactly like every other cubicle in the office. In a sense, this code of professionalism is attempting to take away our individuality, what Weinberegr refers to as our voice. The Web is giving us back our voice or our individuality in the sense that online we have an identity and this may not be who we are in reality but that is not the point. The point is that we actually have some sort of identity which does not exist when we are simply employees in our cubicles. With the Web, companies have to be able to work in a chaotic environment instead of a carefully managed environment where the employees have no voice. All of us long to be seen as our individual selves and with the Web we can be when we're just in an office with no voice, we're no different than the worker next to us. My last job, I did not follow the professionalism criteria and became too close with my boss where the distinction between boss and friend became blury. When the time came to quit, this blurred line created a lot of problems. When interviewing and starting my new job, I was very careful to stick to the professional code so as to not make the same mistake. While I do not wih to become a worker from the 1950s, I also do not wish to deal with those same problems. The internet gives workers a way to have an identity and not get too close to other coworkers where problems would be created. While any identity at this point is necessary, Jon Dean believes that we are not just searching for any identity but more for an authentic self, which Deb commented on as well.

The most exciting part about this chapter was the idea that all businesses, to keep up with the times are going to have to change their way of opperating now. There will be no more employees that are robots where one person could be the next, coule be the next. Instead, thw Web is creating this new world for business that we are all anxiously awaiting. Right now is the begining. Businesses are first realizing that to succeed, they are going to have to stop keeping their employees under their thumb and let them have a voice and if they really want to be successful, the CEOs are going to have to actually listen to what these voices are saying. At the moment workers are reveling in the idea that they are now actual people with voices instead of robots and once that "wears off, we will begin to build a new world" (Weinberger 5.)

Chapter One- The Cluetrain Manifesto

So I quit my job last Friday just before getting on a plane and starting to read this first chapter. As the pages went by, I felt more and more confident about my decision to leave the company I was working for. In the chapter, Christopher Locke describes companies that like to work in a hierarchical setting in relation to everything including the company's intranet. I was working for a company such as this one. My boss did not trust me to come up with my own ideas or think for myself in any way because she felt it would jepordize her authority.As Locke descrtibes how these companies will soon go under if they do not get with the program of trusting their employees and letting them contribute to the company as a whole, this is the same for the company that I just left. My boss, like many of the CIOs described in the chapter was for "straight laced traditional business" instead of the rock and roll, improvisational business and in the end this will probably be the company's downfall. The company I worked for was a jewelry company and some of the pieces can be seen at Vivre. My boss, like many of the ones described in the article, expected to be able to tell people anything and expect them to believe it, and want to buy our product imediately. The only problem with this is what was talked about in the chapter about how people simply are not going to go for that anymore. People now want to know the facts about what they are spending their hard earned money on not what the company wants them to know. If a consumer can't find something at a certain company, he or she will go someplace else. The people who created the internet wanted it to be a place where people could get the facts. They were not interested in some worker being held under a higher power's thumb being told what to say and when to say it. These peope were free-thinkers and from what Locke has to say, if a company is going to survive in the coming years, they are going to have to let loose and let their employees do the same.

What people need to realize is that the Net isn't just another way to market and sell things. It is not an extension of the television. It is an entity unto itself. Locke describes how Yahoo started out as just another part of the masterpiece but now that it has gained power, it seems to be aligning itself with the like of Disney and K-Mart. The advertising ideas that thes e companies are trying to use the Net for are pase and the Net is not about old ideas. Instead the uses for the Net are far more forward thinking than anything these large companies have forseen. Jon Dean thinks that the change that I'm speaking about is coming around alot slower than everyone would like but nevertheless, change is on its way. Anthony's post talks mostly about how Locke describes the internet as a tool for entertainment rather than communication, it's original use. There are many people who agree with this view Douglas Rushkoff's book Coercion describes this in great detail. My own oppinion is that the internet is an amazing tool for communcation, but I cannot deny using it for entertainment purposes, in a way they go hand in hand.

globalization and outsourcing

The essay by Barry Lynn that was found on FindArticles explains the many problems the large companies of America are experiencing or soon will experience. Most of the large companies in America started out having verticle integration with all or most of the production taking place within the United States. The example Lynn gives is Ford. Ford had all of their production happening in one place in Michigan. What Ford and many of these other companies have learned is that when you have part or even all of the production taking place in other countries where labor is cheaper than in America, these products can be made faster and for less money. Many of these large companies have taken this to a level where America has become dependent on all of these other countries for its' products. While the folks in Washington like to turn a blind eye to this and deny any depedancy on other countries like China, the fact of the matter is that were a devastating earthquake hit Taiwan, Dell and mony other companies would be out of commission for weeks. The problem isn't that the executives of Dell won't be able to get the parts from their subsuppliers, it's that the subsuppliers won't be able to get their parts from the sub-subsuppliers who the executives don't even know. It's as though this verticle integration through out the world has become a system where the people who are supposed o be in control aren't really in control. It's one thing to look at this as our world turning into Marshal McLuhan's Global Village but that would be if we simply looked at the communication aspect of this. This isn't simply making the world a smaller place because of our ability to communicate around the world easily, this is creating such strong interdependencies that American companies are losing control of themselves. The main issue here is that when big companies outsource across the world, it takes away the power from the American company itself. The executives of these large companies don't really have the control. It is the sub-subsuppliers that have the control over these large companies because one small mess up at that level will hurt the company for weeks. What is even more crazy is that these companies don't have any alternate plans. That is one of the most important rules in business to be able to make their product another way if one way fails, but these companies have no alternative plan for when one of these countries like Taiwan has an earthquake, or a tsunami hits. For more on how companies aren't looking into the "what ifs" (alternative plans) check out Alexis' Blog.

Our relationship with China is one of such dependence that a war between these two countries is nearly impossible. Beijing is quickly gaining the power and control over most of America's large companies. Other countries such as Mexico, the Phillipins and Brazil all clamour for more American factories in their countries because it is thought that these plants will stop inflation and create jobs. However, while these factories may stop inflation, they also stop growth within the country and we all know about the working conditions for the jobs that are created. Having all of these different parts of each company all over the world also makes it easier for companies to hide money in certain places and then the executives who have made all of the money by hiding the debts and making the stock go higher can simply say that they had no idea of what was going on because they don't really control all parts of the company. This is what the Enron executives are doing. The company was so big that how could they know everything that was going on with in it all over the world? Also, the portions of the company that are being made in other places besides America, aren't even specifically part of that company. These parts of the big companies are separate entities unto themselves that the larger companies don't have a say in how or when they operate. To find out about how Sony has their walkmans made in other countries, check out Anthony's Blog

While in the 1950s after the second world war, many countres in Europe joined their steel and coal companies to prevent one country from going to war with the other country because it would hurt their economies too much. Instead of going about this joining in an organized way, America has simply jumped into a large number of countries economies with out any sort of rules writen beforehand. This has created a very dangerous situation. All of the prduction is taking place outisde of America causing Americans to only play a role as the consumer instead of the producer. We're just supposed to sit back on our ever-growing asses and buy what people in other countries have made for us.

Atlanta

SO I spent the weekend in Atlanta (aka hotlanta) and I was once again reminded that it is the worst city I've ever been to. I'm not even going to compare it to any cities in Europe because it's a waste of time but it lacks the culture New York has, the superficiality LA has, the politics DC has, and the history Philly has (not to mention the cheesesteaks). The entire "city" if you can even call it that has this ass backwards way of doing everything! It's crazy! Considering my boyfriend goes to school there, I am there somewhat often and everytime I fly home, something terrible happens. And this trip did not break the cycle. On the night I was flying home, there was a hail storm that delayed my flight for four hours. It wasn't as though I could spend those four hours not waiting at the airport because the people at the airport said that my plane could leave anytime between the scheduled time and the estimated time four hours later. I can't imagine this happening anywhere else! People in New York have too much to do with their time for something like this to happen. Anyway this is my latest rant about Atlanta and there will probably be one next month after my next trip.

Even though the shopping isn't great in Atlanta, you can find some good places t shop on Ana's Blog. If you're looking for a job, or apartment check out craig's list on Dawn's Blog Also, the Atlanta Braves do not compare to the Yankees and I know Becca would agree with me.

bosses

What I can't understand is why bosses always have to suck. If you ask anyone about their boss, he or she will always respond with something negative which always outweighs any positive. What is even more interesting is that your own boss's negatives always outweigh the negatives of someone else's boss's negatives. I know plenty of people who are bosses but I know them from outside their work and it's as though they have turned off their "asshole" mechanism after they have left work. It's as though this mechanism turns on and off with their clocking in and out. Incredible.

Anyway, three sites that I visit most often are The Rolling Stones, Televisionwithoutpity, and sadly, Marymount.

first post

This is my first experience with blogs and so far so good. I think it's fun to shop at eluxury.