Dominique Lowell » globalization http://www.dominiquelowell.info information imagination communication Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:26:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The infinite landscape…shift happens http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/02/the-infinite-landscapeshift-happens/ http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/02/the-infinite-landscapeshift-happens/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:16:21 +0000 dominique http://www.dominiquelowell.info/?p=133 Somehow in the last 24 hours I have managed to stumble upon two very insightful but totally different Scott McLeod/McCloud’s.  The first is a cartoonist, Scott McCloud, and I saw his TED Talk referenced in a blog so decided to check it out.   I’ve been exploring the TED Creativity themed videos lately – which is how I discovered Jay Walker’s Library of Human Imagination, (one of the few things that truly deserves the modifier “awesome”).

So besides being a beautiful use of video presentation tools, the real “A-Ha!” moment I had watching Scott cartoonist McCloud was his observation that the web environment is not limited to the page.  Yeah, duh, but beyond that it is a window to an infinite landscape.  So much of how we view text is entrenched in the necessary evolutions of print based environment (like page limitations, the reading of left to right or vice-versa depending based on the physical limitation of a page).  It is this visual iconography that is being redefined, and is at the center of how we interpret, well, everything.

Speaking of interpreting everything is Dr. Scott McLeod and Karl Fisch Shift Happens, which emphasizes once again the need to rethink how we see the world (a very Brechtian/Galileo/Thomas Kuhn concept and one I like inherently).  The video speaks for itself, but tied in nicely to my stumbling across a HASTAC discussion in which the Global Middle Ages project was referenced.  Amazing to consider how ethnocentric most readings of history are.

Perhaps it is an Enlightenment of some sort we are hurtling towards…

]]> http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/02/the-infinite-landscapeshift-happens/feed/ 0 in the 7th moon, the chief turned into a swimming fish and ate the head of his enemy by magic http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/01/in-the-7th-moon-the-chief-turned-into-a-swimming-fish-and-ate-the-head-of-his-enemy-by-magic/ http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/01/in-the-7th-moon-the-chief-turned-into-a-swimming-fish-and-ate-the-head-of-his-enemy-by-magic/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:33:47 +0000 dominique http://www.dominiquelowell.info/2009/01/in-the-7th-moon-the-chief-turned-into-a-swimming-fish-and-ate-the-head-of-his-enemy-by-magic/ Further adventures in the global community…
I came across an essay by Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard called The Polyglot Internet in which he discusses the problems of machine translation (see previous post) and the danger of linguistic isolation on the internet. Despite the massive globalization of user generated content with more opportunity available to interact with people of your own culture there is less incentive to share across global barriers.
“This in turn may fulfill some of the predictions put forth by those who see the Internet acting as an echo-chamber for like-minded voices, not as a powerful tool to encourage interaction and understanding across barriers of nation, language and culture.”
I thought, wait a minute, so I couldn’t find Farsi (Persian) in Google Translator, I know they have Chinese. However it appears that unless you’re dealing with romance languages machine translation doesn’t cut it. A comparison of the English text provided on the site with the one Google Translate chugged out is, well, let’s just say it’s difficult. Zuckerman looks to peer generated translation. Peer generated is the Internet way…
Ahh, but there’s always music! The title of this post is the title of a CD I just picked up by Kasai AllStars, a group from the Congo who have a beautiful mishmosh of traditional instrumentation along with bizarrely distorted and amplified ones (due to amps constructed from abandoned car parts and such). It’s awesome. And who could resist a title like that?

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