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Thursday, 07 February 2013

Daily Twitter Links for Thursday 7 February 2013

Here are today's must-reads:

1. Edward Muybridge: Grandfather of the GIF: 

image from www.newrepublic.comThe coin of the realm in today’s techno-visual culture is the GIF, a file that supports brief animations repeating endlessly. GIFs had a moment of particular resonance last summer, when extraordinary displays of athleticism from the Olympics were converted from full video into short loops, recurring endlessly, devoid of meaning aside from the aesthetic. Then came the presidential election, with its loops of the candidates at their most ill-at-ease; and after the Academy Awards, reaction shots of every unsuccessful nominee will probably appear. For its power to reveal through repetition, the GIF has became a medium unto itself. The Oxford English Dictionary named “GIF” the 2012 word of the year.

This is the legacy of Edward Muybridge, an English-born, late nineteenth-century photography pioneer famous for his study of a horse in motion. You’ve probably seen it at some point: a jerky film of the animal running. Muybridge devised the image to help settle the question of whether the four feet of a horse ever rise off the ground at the same time while trotting. (They do.) He went on to document all manner of motion, ending his career with often openly sexual nudes. Trotting horses and black-and-white bodies may seem far from the varied nature of contemporary photography and film. But moving images stripped of narrative context—a medium Muybridge mastered more than a century ago—are the visual currency of the moment. Muybridge broke down motion in order to help his contemporaries understand it; today we break down motion to understand a little more about the ephemeral details of life.

2. Apple’s war on porn is a front for its battle against Android: 

Did you know that the Web is crawling with porn? Horrible, filthy stuff clutters the wonder that is the Internet, with sites like YouPorn guzzling 950 terabytes of data transfer each day, according to this incredibly interesting yet totally safe-for-work report from ExtremeTech. And hey, if you don’t believe me, justlisten to this song or get the creepy trenchcoat-wearing guy in Google Chrome’s incognito mode to share some secrets.

There is one place that isn’t filled to the brim with pornography: the App Store. Apple’s policies for what is and isn’t allowed into its app marketplace have created a nanny state of software, where anything resembling pornography is banned and anything that could even show pornography, like a Web browser, is slapped with a 17+ rating and has to display an “[App name here] contains age-restricted material” warning. You know, for the children.

But how much of a difference does adding an “age-restricted material” warning make to someone who is, say, 16? Clicking or tapping on “OK” no matter what a modal window says and lying about your age are two of the first things you learn when you start using technology. A whole bunch of early teens and even pre-teens can install the app no matter how many warnings Apple puts in front of their eyeballs. The only difference is that Apple gets to say that it’s doing everything it can to create a family-friendly experience — and can point at other operating systems as ignoring those values.

3. "We Ask That You Do Not Call Us Professor": 

Karen Gregory is an adjuct professor at CUNY, and the syllabus for her introduction to labor studies course includes a section on what being an adjunct means, means, exactly. Her full explanation is below, but to start, here’s a fact from Inside Higher Ed: If an adjunct teaches four courses per semester, they will make “$21,600 annually, compared to starting tenure-track salaries that average $66,000, according to data from the American Association of University Professors.” Highlights from Gregory’s syllabus:

• “CUNY presently employs 6,541 full-time faculty, counselors, and librarians. Despite record breaking enrollment, that is 4,512 fewer of such positions that it provided in 1972.”

• “Adjuncts are not regular members of the faculty; we are paid an hourly rate for time spent in the classroom. We are not paid to advise students, grade papers, or prepare materials or lectures for class. We are paid for one office hour per week for all of the classes we teach. We are not paid to communicate with students outside of class or write letters of recommendation. Out of dedication to our students, adjuncts regularly perform such tasks, but it is essentially volunteer labor.”

• “To ensure that we remain conscious of the adjunctification of CUNY, we ask that you do not call us ‘Professor.’ We are hired as adjunct lecturers and it is important that you remember that. You deserve to be taught by properly compensated professors whose full attention is to teaching and scholarship.”

And the most-read link I tweeted today was:

These are some of the other things I've been tweeting about today:

Follow me on Twitter @peterjblack.

And you can get my latest links anytime on my Rebelmouse social media front page.

Posted at 09:52 PM in Daily News Links |

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  • Peter Black
    Lawyer, lecturer, blogger, geek and obsessive compulsive Twitterer

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    This blog speaks freely about law, politics and the internet. While the focus is on Australia, developments in other nations around the world are considered as well.
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