This is Jeremy Rifkin on climate change, the financial crisis, the energy crisis, food and, yes, shifts in modes of publishing/media forms. It’s all about new forms of distribution creating local/hyperlocal possibilities away from centralized control (and blundering) … “if people hear nothing else from what I’m saying … distributed, distributed, distributed”.

A film by Kate Ray. Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Two things of interest to us this week regarding climate change and the ongoing battles surrounding climate change waged through the media (and elsewhere). In ARTS2090 I mentioned the Michael Mann “hockey stick” visualization of climate change (links in the climate change section of the week 9 lectures notes for ARTS2090). This statement signed by prominent scientists is in part a response to the continuing harassment of Michael Mann (more here). Here are some comments about this the scientists’ letter. Meanwhile, in MDCM3000 we’ve been talking about persuasion and via media campaigns. Here is an interesting piece of what is called détournement …. Greenwashing … a very sophisticated use of persuasive techniques in order to undermine the effectiveness of others.

This is basically a music video made from 3d renderings of fractals, but it’s interesting in terms of information aesthetics. We can now visualize complexity as never before.

Staubkaskade [The Cascade and its Dust] from Stefan Pautze on Vimeo.

This is simply the clearest set of comments on the iPad, by the inimitable Adrian Miles. This is really what it’s about.

This article on the removal of Downfall parodies from YouTube by the film’s producer, has it all: the commons, debates over copyright, remix, intermedia engagements, and note the last paragraph on the database—the power of the archive once again.

The ABC has an extremely interesting project that is just beginning. It’s an alternate reality “games”/story that is played out over several media and IRL. It’s on the Bluebird AR site and it’s called How I Can Change The World.

This is a really great guide to using picture sharing sites and more in activism, or in fact anything remotely looking like citizen journalism. Use these resources while they’re there as part of the Commons!

This is a nice site documenting a film that sums up much of what we’ve been discussing (archive, variable modes of publishing, etc). It’s called 5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown, and it documents the documentary maker, Shelly Silver’s, local area, it’s past and present.

Following on from Gillian’s lecture on the Commons in ARTS2090 but reproduced here in MDCM3000. (What used to be only) print journalism is getting very interesting. Never really a commons in the full sense, but not quite not a commons, it became more of one with the Internet. Now there are attempts to enclose the commons again. If anyone is going to succeed in this it will be the New York Times. They are very carefully training readers into new modes of publishing as they go, before putting up carefully variegated-threshold paywalls in 2011. One example is this NY Times reader you can download. They also have a fairly extensive notification and feed set up, and have thought about their online layout and general design (which combines a sense of the old and new NY Times very well).