New Metaverse Session: Ethan Zuckerman
John Swords and I recorded a couple of new Metaverse Sessions while we were down at South by Southwest, one with Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online and one with Jamais Cascio of World Changing. Johnny has just posted Ethan’s session (incorrectly labeled #9, even though it’s #10), and there’s some really interesting stuff there. Ethan talks about how Google Maps was used to heighten political awareness in Bahrain, how LiveJournal has become the blogging tool of choice for politically active adults (not kids) in Russia, and the “cyber-utopian dominant narrative” in which everyone gets along in the same online place. We also explore some interesting question of how cultural backgrounds inform the use of technologies, questions that don’t get much discussed (or thought about) in most our metaversal questions. A really cool guest to have for the Sessions, and highly recommended listening.
Feeds
[…] One way to identify cool people: they’re willing to talk with you even when you disagree with them on issues near and dear to their hearts. Mark Wallace and John Swords both care passionately about the emergence of new three-dimensional spaces like Second Life. I don’t - well, I do, but I think the hype greatly exceeds the current importance of these spaces. But Mark and John are gentlemen and they sought me out at South by Southwest to do a podcast, which ended up focusing on things I think are cool - online activism in the developing world, questioning the cyberutopian myth, ways to get geeks to pay attention to the South. It’s half an hour long and covers a lot of the ground I’m trying to cover in talks these days, like the talk I’ll be giving at the New School next week with danah boyd and Trevor Sholtz. Give it a listen if you’re interested… […]