The Delancey Underground project seeks to transform an abandoned trolley terminal into New York City’s first underground community green space.

Beneath one of the least green areas of the city, the Lower East Side, lies a massive, unused space nearly the size of Gramercy Park.

This project envisions using an advanced solar technology to channel sunlight underground, enabling plants and trees to grow.

Coverage in New York Magazine

The Team

James Ramsey created the Delancey Underground idea and the related solar technology. He is the owner and founder of RAAD Studio, an architecture and design practice on the Lower East Side. James is also a former engineer for NASA, where he focused on satellite technologies.

Dan Barasch is Co-Founder of the Delancey Underground project. He is currently VP at PopTech, an NGO focused on promoting socially innovative applications of technology. Dan has previously worked within New York City government, as well as at Google, UNICEF, the 9/11 Survivors’ Fund, and the World Affairs Council.

R. Boykin Curry IV is a founding board member of the Delancey Underground organization. He is a partner at Eagle Capital, an investment firm based in New York. Boykin is a co-founder of Girls Prep Lower East Side and Girls Prep Bronx, and a co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform.

Lee-Sean Huang is advising the Delancey Underground project on online outreach and campaigns. He is a designer and strategist at Purpose.com, and a faculty member at SVA’s MFA Design for Social Innovation.

I recently appeared with my colleague Alessandra Orofino in the Fast Company article “An MFA Degree For Designers Who Want To Change The World” by Michael J. Coren.

So you want to change the world? Cynics may send you off to Wall Street or a white-shoe law firm. Those with gumption will look for another way. The new Master’s of Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation has opened its doors just for them.

“We’re adamant this not be a program where people sit in a classroom and talk about how great it’s going to be when they go out and change the world,” says program chair Cheryl Heller at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, and a board member of PopTech. “It is helping designers go beyond self-expression, which is how most designers are taught, and how to put [design] into practice to create a change.”

Read the full article here.

For Movement strategy Director, we want someone who can architect major projects for clients, and create and run new partnerships and incubated ventures. As you know, our 3 core disciplines are marketing/communications, strategy consulting and political organizing — so the ideal candidate will be very strong in at least one of these areas (e.g. a super talented political organizer who has helped to start or build a movement organization). Full job description

For CTO, we’re looking for a world-class team leader to oversee all aspects of technology, from the overall vision, to the buy/build/integrate decision-making process, to development and deployment of the organization’s applications and web presence, and management and growth of the technology team. Demonstrated interest in technology for social change and mass digital participation is a must. Full job description

Please let me know if anyone springs to mind – whether currently employed or not. For the right person, these roles are an opportunity to shape and direct major areas of a rapidly growing (approaching 50 people) organization.

We’re also offering a finder’s fee of $5k to the person who makes the referral (cheaper than hiring a recruiting firm) as a token of thanks.

My Purpose colleague, Alessandra Orofino, and I will be teaching at SVA’s MFA program in Design for Social Innovation when the department opens in fall 2012.

Social innovation is the application of new strategies and models to solving the challenges the world faces and to strengthening society.

The MFA in Design for Social Innovation will prepare students to apply the principles and ethics of social innovation as filters for understanding and as a discipline for engaging with and improving the world through design.

Graduates of the program will be more than graphic designers, filmmakers, advertising creative directors or interactive systems designers. They will be all these, mastering all the skills and knowledge of how to apply them to have a positive impact on business, society and their own lives.

Check out the department website for more updates.

I worked with Joey from BareBurger, an organic burger restaurant in Greenwich Village, Murray Hill, and Astoria to create this flyer for their Japan disaster relief fundraiser promotion.  They will be donating 20% of their sales next Tuesday, March 22, to Red Cross efforts in Japan.

Download PDF version of the flyer

If you are interested in giving a 5-7 minute Ignite/Pecha Kucha-style presentation about your artistic, activist, interactive, or just awesome work, email me at leesean [at] purpose (dot) com.

The blog started out as an experiment back when I lived in Japan from 2003-2006. It was a way for me to document my experiences and to keep in touch with those around me and friends and family far away. After I moved to NYC, it continued to be a public diary and chronicle of interesting things going on in my life. But with the explosive and ubiquitous rise of Facebook and Twitter (and to some extent Flickr), it was faster and easier for me to share links, photos, and other experiences through those other channels. When I was doing my masters at ITP, this blog became almost exclusively a place for documenting the work I was doing there.

I have certainly worked on music sporadically over the last few years, whether it was collaborating with JC Cassis, the Hepnova tracks Nicholas and I have worked on for transistor troubadour (an album in progress), or even the experimental pieces I composed at ITP.  But I’ve had a lot going on lately since then, working full time at Purpose and taking up capoeira as well.  I’ve always had many different interests and have gone through life exploring them. And I have not been as focused as I now feel like I should have been.  But this is not a blog post about regret, but about moving forward.  Now the various threads of interests are starting to coalesce, and I’ve realized that I should focus and take my musical interests more seriously.

Lots of disparate things have happened, but they all make sense when I look at them together.  They are signs (if you believe in those, and I’m not sure I do, but any how), that music is the way forward.  Nicholas from Hepnova and I talked about 2011 being “the year of music” during our last recording sessions in Phoenix in late December/early January.  Joe and I had grand ambitions to start a band called Welcome Lucky Cat.  We bought ukuleles, which I’ve played around with, and we even did a photo shoot.  As an aside, this performance of Bohemian Rhapsody by Jake Shimabukuro is amazing.  And I love his quote about how if everyone played ukulele, the world would be a better place.  I mean, how can you be sad, even on a depressing rainy day like today with a ukulele.

Anyway,  The band thing with me and Joe didn’t work out, but our collaborations did result in the song Petrosino Square, which I co-wrote with Joe, with musical contributions by Nicholas.  I’ve really been getting into my capoeira training, not just for the physical and mental workouts, but for the opportunity to learn the musical side of the capoeira tradition as well, through learning to play the pandeiro, the berimbau, and learning to sing the capoeira songs.  More recently, I was asked JC Cassis to be in her band, Xelle’s music video, “Party Girl.” Being in rehearsal and on set with the ladies from Xelle and the other fabulous party people in the video, I was inspired by their dedication and passion for their musical métier and they way they treated their work as both art and craft.

That brings us to today.  It’s a grey, rainy, nasty NYC March day.  I haven’t left my apartment, except to take out the trash.  But I’ve finally had a day in to think, and to reflect.  I spent the morning making some breakfast, and catching up on my news and RSS feeds.  I love to spend rainy weekend days in, listening to music, writing, and making my own.  But it has been a long time since I have had this opportunity.  In particular, I was quite moved by James Blake’s “Limit to Your Love”, the part when the sub-bass drops is really amazing.   I was also listening to an NPR interview with James Vincent Morrow earlier today.  The opening to his track, “If I Had a Boat” is hauntingly beautiful.

Ok, I think the rains have washed away my creative block.  Now it’s time to finish the transistor troubadour album.

Clay on the 2008 US Beef Protests in South Korea

Clay on lolcats

Clay on the Gneezy and Rustichini Haifa day care center study

Clay on the Grobanites for Charity

Cognitive Surplus on Amazon

Follow @cshirky on Twitter

Can a company really deliver happiness?  That is a question that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh tries to answer in his new book, Delivering Happiness (out today!). He certainly delivered happiness to me as a blogger when I received a free review copy of the book a couple months ago.  With that disclosure taken care of, let me go into what I hope will be a fair review.

Delivering Happiness was a quick and easy read.  Hsieh writes in a casual conversational style and claims in the introduction that he did not employ a ghostwriter.  I finished the book the night I got in the mail.  Despite his own self-deprecation about his writing ability, I appreciate the conversational tone and the authenticity of his personal voice.  As far as books written by CEOs of successful companies go, Delivering Happiness is definitely not douchey.  I have to admit, I don’t usually read business management books, nor have I ever shopped at Zappos, but I was intrigued by the offer of a free book.

Hsieh delivers sage business advice in a simple and earnest way while interweaving it with his own personal narrative. As a brief aside, in the spirit of Hsieh’s personal narrative style, I’ll interweave some of my own personal narrative into this review.  Hsieh and I have a lot in common.  We are both the sons of Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in suburbia.  Both of our last names start with H.  And speaking of the letter “H”, to drop the H-bomb, we both went to Harvard. We were both forced (um, I mean, strongly encouraged) by our parents to learn piano and some sort of string instrument growing up (in Hsieh’s case the violin, in mine, the cello).  I have to admit, as someone who didn’t grow up with many Asian-American role models outside of my own family, these kinds of commonalities made me really identify with Hsieh’s story and personal journey.

Hsieh emphasizes the importance of building a strong and distinctive corporate culture as the path to business success.  He has done this at Zappos by maintaining transparency and a personal touch in management, and hiring and training employees in a way that infuses Zappos with its distinctive culture.  For example, Hsieh talks about how prospective employees are asked questions like “how weird are you?” and how Zappos offers new employees $2000 to quit after their training period just to make sure they are getting people who are really committed.

Just so I don’t come across as a total fanboy, the last paragraph will be critical. There were a few awkward bits in the book.  One is just a slightly typography technicality, but my designer side can’t help it.  There are several fonts used in the book, but the one used for quoting the Zappos Core Values Document (page 159), was a bit hard to read for such a long excerpt (maybe they have changed that for the final publication version though).  In terms of content, the part about Hsieh’s first experience with rave culture could have been shorter, and might have been a bit self-indulgent, but once again, I appreciate the personal, almost naive candor and honesty, and very much jive with Hsieh’s persona as a “hip, iconoclastic CEO” (I got that one from the book cover).  At the same time, the side note about how much Hsieh loves Red Bull was just plain weird (tacky product plug, or just an over-enthusiastic fanboy?).  Then again, if I ever get the chance to write a book about myself, I would welcome gladly the sponsorship of any of my uppers of choice (any matcha or yerba mate producers out there reading this?).

Don’t take my word for it though.  Delivering Happiness is a breezy entertaining read for anyone interested in building different kind of corporate culture, that optimizes both financial success and, well, happiness.  I’m happy I read the book and happy that you made it all the way through my review.  Have a nice day!

Delivering Happiness Official Homepage

Buy Delivering Happiness on Amazon

Donate to LIVESTRONG and receive a FREE copy of Delivering Happiness

Follow Delivering Happiness on Twitter

More press for I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG, an online interactive experience I worked on at Purpose:

TechPresident: Avaaz Co-Founders Seek Purpose Driven Consumer Life

Huffington Post: Julia Moulden on How to Use Technology to Change the World

Cool Hunting: This Week’s Picks

PSFK: Online Game I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG Raises Funds, Awareness, and Social Empowerment

Previous post: I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG in the NY Times

I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG by Purpose in the NY Times Media Decoder Blog!
I was in charge of the music and audio and also worked on animation and visual/interaction design.

Stuart Elliot reports:

A new agency whose name, Purpose, signals the kind of campaigns it hopes to produce is creating for Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong initiative that fights cancer, a virtual version of an annual bicycle race.

The effort is in the form of a game called I Ride for Livestrong. The online race began on Wednesday and continues through May 23, which is the end date for the actual race it mirrors, the 2010 Amgen Tour of California.

I’ve just been featured as one of “100 Passionate People” of Taiwanese-America on TaiwaneseAmerican.org! View my profile here.

About the 100 Passionate People Project:

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and the 2nd week of the month is Taiwanese American Heritage Week. TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to present the profiles of a wide cross-section of everyday Taiwanese Americans who many of you have told us that you find personally inspiring or passionate about what they do. Each day this month, we’ll present about three people, of all ages, generations, and careers until we reach 100 people.

Make no mistake, this is NOT the 100 “most passionate” people, because we know there are many more folks to connect with or hear about who also fit this criteria and deserve to be highlighted, too. With your help, we will find them. This project is just the beginning.

For now, this is a glimpse into the diversity of our community and a collection of their stories and opinions. In the future, we’ll be planning other “100 people” projects based on various themes (i.e. tech, community leaders, moms, etc.) and eventually grow our project into a historical archive chronicling the stories of Americans of Taiwanese heritage.

If you know of someone who you think should be profiled this month or in one of our future projects, please send this link to them: http://bit.ly/cSZvf4

Here’s a new groove for #MusicMonday: an updated version of the Hepnova track You’re For Me with vocals by the fierce and fabulous Ms. JC Cassis.   The original version of You’re For Me was on our eponymous 2009 album and featured vocals by Hepnova co-founder Nicholas Dibiase.

The electric guitar solo (you know, the part where you wonder, “who invited The Edge to this Silk Road hoe down?”) was played by the brilliant Dr. Bob Devine.  And the crazy synth sounds you hear near the end come from the legendary Swedish SidStation.

Here are some reviews we have been getting:

JC calls You’re For me “a down-and-dirty country banger in the style of Johnny Cash.”

Mediocre Student says, “I like JC’s voice. and the pipa at the beginning. it’s like Detroit Chinatown. Your music has kind of a limping, offbeat rhythm which is a nice contrast to the incessant and calculated thrust of the bullshit Gaga house music I’ve been hearing in the Castro.” (*Actually the “pipa” sound is just a really cheap toy nylon string guitar, but also probably made in China, so I guess we are on the right track.)

Prestonism: “RAD to the MAX”

@ToniaMBartz: “GORGEOUS”

@KrysVS: “i would give it a “wow” to a “very wow”

@ClowerPower: “I could picture this on the soundtrack for a Tarantino film!!! ”

@AlexBerger: “A very fun retro feel!”

@JackAlert : “Can’t wait for #MusicMonday! Awesome new @Hepnova mix:… I think I might be in love with @JCCassis“

Last night the Trustees of the Awesome Foundation New York met in person for the first time to get the ball rolling.

Photo (clockwise from top left): Jesse Chan-Norris, Lee-Sean Huang, Sam Lessin, Steve Rosenbaum, Douglas Repetto, Dawn Barber, Clay Shirky, Colin Nedercoorn, Brandon Kessler, Catherine White, and Chris Dixon

Reminder: Grant applications are due at midnight tonight! Tell us why your project is awesome and deserving of a $1000 dollar grant. Submit proposals here.

The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences is kicking off 2010 by announcing the official launch of the New York City chapter.  I will be serving as the NYC chapter’s Dean of Awesome.  More details on The Awesome Foundation Blog.

The current micro-trustees of The Awesome Foundation NYC chapter include:

• Catherine White
• Caterina Fake
• Chris Dixon
• Sam Lessin
• Clay Shirky
• Colin Nederkoorn
• Jesse Chan Norris
• Douglas Repetto

With 2 more to be announced!

cshirky: The New Yorker still runs cartoons of crazy people carrying placards. What do 25 y.o’s make of that? In their world, crazy people have blogs
8:07 AM Nov 15th

leesean: @cshirky 25ish y.o.’s like me make mashup/remixes of crazy people with placards and put them on YouTube http://bit.ly/x0BQV
10:28 AM Nov 15th

cshirky: RT @leesean: @cshirky 25ish y.o.’s like me make mashup/remixes of crazy people with placards and put them on YouTube http://bit.ly/x0BQV
1:14 PM Nov 15th

I created Jump (The Bailout Bash) with Elizabeth Fuller for a class at ITP last year (Communications Lab with Marianne Petit).

LIVESTRONG Day – October 2, 2009 – is a global day of action to raise awareness about the fight against cancer. Sign up to host your own event and help us reach our goal of 1,000 events in communities across the world.

We’re helping an amazing eco-friendly cleaning products company with their online presence and sales – follow them on Twitter @HerbNOrganics

We built the website for the Market on Mill, downtown Tempe’s community market, in less than 24 hours and set up their interactive media. We’re also doing content and photography for them.

We’re bringing a new, amazing music artist, José Alarcon, to the digital world for the first time, handling all production and branding – peep JoseGuitar.com.

Nicholas is getting ready to rock a presentation / workshop on our design philosophy at the groundbreaking Phoenix Design Week event.

Lee-Sean is busy preparing to speak on the same at Pecha Kucha at ITP in New York.

We’re helping a local environmentally-conscious large-format printer and signage company develop compelling promotional content – stay tuned!

We’re working with a major provider of recycled IT service parts and electronics to revamp their Web presence and marketing strategy – watch this space!

We’re producing new music, some foreign tunes with our unique electroacoustic sound! Check out our Bandcamp page for the latest!

And hecka more neat stuff!

What can we do for you? Drop us a line — Services [at] Hepnova [dot] com

Cross-posted from hepnova.com.

JC Cassis and I performed at The Tank on Wednesday as part of the three-day ITPalooza music festival.  We played our dance-pop songs to an intimate crowd and managed to get rock the house despite all the technical difficulties.  I also got to see my friend Natasha from Arizona who came to the show.  We hadn’t seen each other since high school!  Thanks to Mike Rosenthal for the space and to Roy Vanegas for organizing the whole thing, as well as to everybody who came out to support us.

Here’s our set list from Wednesday night (click on the links to hear/download recorded versions):

• ODI et AMO
• Halfway
• I Don’t Want You
• Anything You Want
• Dance Dance Dance
• Hands Off
• Everybody’s Crazy in New York
• Can’t Stop

Photos by Catherine White
Update: view video of our performance here. Thanks to Milena Mepris for the video.

The working title of the new collection is Transistor Troubadour.  We are planning on doing some more covers as well as some Hepnova originals and to continue to develop the unique electro-acoustic sound that has emerged in previous Hep tunes like “You’re For Me” and “Again Tonight.”

Check out the new Hepnova tracks on Bandcamp. More tracks in the Transistor Troubadour collection are in the works, so check back often for more music!

Lyrics after the jump:

En la plaza de mi pueblo
Traditional

En la plaza de mi pueblo
dijo el jornalero al amo
“Nuestros hijos nacerán
con el puño levantado”.

Esta tierra que no es mía
esta tierra que es del amo
la riego con mi sudor
la trabajo con mis manos.

Pero dime, compañero,
si estas tierras son del amo
¿por qué nunca lo hemos visto
trabajando en el arado?

Con mi arado abro los surcos
con mi arado escribo yo
páginas sobre la tierra
de miseria y de sudor.

Märk Hur Vår Skugga (Fredmans Epistel #81)
Carl Michael Bellman

Märk hur vår skugga, märk movitz mon frère
Inom ett mörker sig slutar
Hur guld och purpur i skoveln den där
Byts till grus och klutar
Vinkar Karon från sin brusande älv
Och tre gånger sen dödgrävaren själv
Mer du din druva ej kryster
Därför Movitz kom hjälp mig och välv
Gravvård över vår syster

Lillklockan klämtar till storklockans dön
Lövad står kantorn i porten
Och vid de skrålande gossarnas bön
Helgas denna orten
Vägen opp till templets skriftprydda stad
Trampas mellan rosors gulnade blad
Multnande plankor och bårar
Till dess den långa och svartklädda rad
Djupt sig bugar i tårar

Så gick till vila från slagsmål och bal
Grälmakar Lövberg din maka
Där ditåt gräset långhalsig och smal
Hon än glor tillbaka
Hon från Dantobommen skildes idag
Och med henne alla lustiga lag
Vem skall nu flaskan befalla
Torstig var hon och uttorstig är jag
Vi är torstiga alla

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

[...]

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and math texts with free, “open source” digital versions.

With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Among the article’s interviewees is Neeru Khosla, co-founder of the non-profit group CK-12 Foundation, which develops “flexbooks” that can be adapted to state educational standards.  (Khosla has also been featured on OpenEd and on the Creative Commons blog.) Khosla explains the virtues of the flexbooks:

You can use them online, you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customize them, you can embed video. When people get over the mind-set issue, they’ll see that there’s no reason to pay $100 a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free.

The article uses terms like “digital textbooks,” “free courseware,” “open source,” and “open-content,” but what exactly do these terms mean? While there is reference to the adaptability and customization digital texts, the article does not explicitly mention copyright.  While digital delivery of educational materials may solve some of the cost barriers of education, without an explicit understanding of terms like “open” and “free,” legal and social barriers remain.  As far as I am concerned, government-funded “digital textbooks” or “free courseware” should be as free as possible from copyright restrictions (licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution license, the least restrictive of CC licenses) or in the public domain.  Only then will they be truly available for sharing, collaboration and reuse.  The fact that they are simply “digital” or “available on the Internet” alone is not enough.

The road to a digital future for education is not without its bumps.  Lewin brings up the issue of a the digital divide: “Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.”

The increasing adoption of digital textbooks may save on some costs, but will also require additional investment in computer hardware.  But the real issue at stake is not just the economic costs of education, but instead the need to focus on increasing the accessibility of knowledge.  In order for learning resources to be truly accessible, the issue is not just online vs. offline, digital vs. print.  To reach their maximum social and educational potential, learning materials in the digital future  will need to free from excessive copyright constraints (with clear open licensing like CC-BY or public domain declaration) in order to allow teachers and students the maximum freedom to legally share, modify, and improve upon them.

Also check out Jane Park of ccLearn’s post from last September: “Back to School: Open Textbooks Gaining in Popularity.”

I am taking a pledge suggested by the film and now refraining from visiting aquariums and aquatic mammal shows.  I will also be sure to buy dolphin-safe seafood.  Here are some main points of the film:

• Over 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered in Taiji every year
• When the dolphins are caught, some are sold to aquariums and wildlife shows, while the rest are killed for meat
• Dolphin meat, as well as the meat of other whales, contains dangerous levels of mercury, but the mayor of Taiji has tried to give away the contaminated meat for school lunches
• Sometimes dolphin meat is deliberately mislabeled and sold as “cleaner” whale meat
• Mercury poisoning from eating contaminated seafood could result in symptoms similar to those of Minamata Disease

Towards the end of The Cove, former Flipper-trainer-turned-activist Ric O’Barry walks into an International Whaling Commission conference with a video monitor strapped to his chest playing graphic footage of the Taiji dolphin slaughter, exposing the international delegates to the horrors of whaling.  In another scene, O’Barry stands with the video monitor playing the same slaughter footage in the middle of Shibuya crossing, taking the message directly to the Japanese people.   But how can the filmmakers increase their impact among the Japanese public?

O’Barry’s SafeJapanDolphins.org is accepting donations to help with targeted media campaigns and screenings of the film in Japan, but I don’t think the movie is available in Japan yet.   I would suggest that the filmmakers release footage of the dolphin slaughter (or ideally, the entire film) under a Creative Commons or similar open license, that would allow the film to be freely shared on the internet, allowing people to see it even if it is not playing in their local cinema.  Certainly this would be a way to get around powerful government and business interests in Japan who do not want the film to be seen by the Japanese people.  Imagine of video of the slaugter “went viral” on the internet.  Imagine concerned Japanese people being able to view the footage on their cellphones and sharing the video with their family and friends.  That is when real change will begin.

I realize that documentary filmmaking is not cheap.  Indeed, I do believe that the heroic people who made the film possible should be financially supported for their work.  But we cannot let the complications of copyright stand in the way of promoting an important story and saving the dolphins.  Perhaps the film can be freely released online under a Creative Commons license after the theatrical run is completed, or when a donation threshold is reached.

Some have criticized The Cove’s filmmakers and the dolphin freedom activists for being racist or neo-colonialist against the Japanese.  Indeed, Japan is not the only country that hunts whales.  “White” countries like Iceland and Norway hunt whales too.  I think all countries should be held responsible.  I lived in Japan for three years, I love the country, but I disagree with the dolphin hunt, that hardly makes me a racist (in any case, I’m Asian too).  It is unfortunate though that the film did not give more of a voice to Japanese people opposed to the dolphin hunts.  They do interview a few Japanese people opposed to the slaughter, but these Japanese people are not the main protagonists in the film.

It is interesting to note that while whale hunting has been part of Japanese culture for hundreds of years, it was the Americans who occupied Japan after WWII who encouraged the resumption of whale hunting as a cheap source of protein to feed the war-torn country.  But today, Japan is a rich country and they don’t need to eat whale meat for protein any more.  In fact, most Japanese people do not eat whale meat, and do not consider dolphin to be food.  When filmmakers showed people on the streets of Tokyo and Osaka footage of the dolphin slaughter, they were surprised and horrified.  Hopefully, the film will be available in Japan soon to raise greater awareness.

Go see the movie and take action!

Links

• The Cove Official Site
• SaveJapanDolphins.org – Take Action
• TakePart.com/TheCove
• CNN – Dolphin slaughter brings charges from both sides
• YouTube – Dolphin Swim Programs & SLAUGHTER Linked!!!!
• YouTube – Dolphin Slaughter in Japan
• Petition – Help Save Japan’s Dolphins
• NY Magazine – The Cove’s Richard O’Barry on Secret Dolphin Slaughter — and Flipper’s Suicide
• NY Times – The Cove: From Flipper’s Trainer to Dolphin Defender
• CS Monitor – Review: ‘The Cove’
• Roger Ebert’s review of ‘The Cove’
• 日本でのイルカ保護にご協力ください
• Whale Love (日本語)

1. Washington Post writer Ian Shapira writes an article about business coach/’generational consultant’ Anne Loehr: Speaking to Generation Nexus: Guru Explains Gens X, Y, Boomer To One Another
2. Gawker blogger Hamilton Nolan picks up the story: ‘Generational Consultant’ Holds America’s Fakest Job
3. Shapira complains that Gawker stole his story: The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)

My take

Shapira’s claim that Gawker did not properly attribute him are unfounded.  The Gawker post links to the original article and to Loeher’s generational cheat sheet.  Hyperlinks are the footnotes and citations of our generation (as Loeher would probably say). I’m giving my advice for free: my generation thinks that generational business coaches are B$.  We live in a cut and paste culture; computers lower the barrier to making derivative works, as the next section of this post will demonstrate.  The subject of the original article was pretty ridiculous to begin with, as if it were tailor-made for Gawker fodder.  Gawker added value to the original with its snarky commentary. (Ms. Loeher, is snark a characteristic of my generation too?)

If Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would probably say, “the only thing worse than being blogged about is NOT being blogged about.”  While we are on aphorisms, let me give you some more free (useless) advice about my generation, courtesy of Descartes, updated for our times: Blogito ergo sum. “I blog, therefore I am.”

I don’t think Gawker is so much ruining journalism as Shapira claims as much as it is Maybe the WaPo should stick to actual news coverage and investigative reporting (after all, this is the newspaper that exposed the Watergate scandal, but “old media” can’t just rest on its past laurels).  “New media” like Gizmodo is going to give newspapers a run for their money in terms of business model.  Newspapers can either adapt their business models and learn to compete with the supposed “pirates” (“piracy is just another business model“), or they can fail.  They can revamp their content and delivery models, or they can streamline and specialize in what they do best.  But here’s a hint for being hip with the kids: complaining about the death of journalism is old news and kind of played out.

Or, in a move of desperation, they can throw down the gauntlet and start an Internet turf war like Shapira has done, which is actually a very Gawker-esque thing to do.  (What would Anne Loeher say about how that reflects on Shapira’s generational values?) It certainly has succeeded in getting people’s attention, but I hope this is not the sustainable business model the WaPo has in mind.

Commentary from the blogosphere AKA aggregation adds value

Stowe Boyd: As Media Economics Shift, Old Media Can’t See The Forest, Only Trees

So, at core, the issue here is something larger. Who owns the world of discourse? Who is allowed to profit, and in what way, from the actions of participants in this web sphere?

Various arguments could be made about fanciful mechanisms.

• Imagine a world where people are paid to read stories, basically getting a kickback from publishers from ad revenue. (Hasn’t caught on.)
• We could weigh the value of every link pointing to or away a piece on the web, and a complex, Google-pagerank-ish algorithm could figure out to six decimal points how much everyone owes each other each week. (Impossible to implement, I bet.)
• Authors could attempt to demand that no one should link to their pieces, or clip any information from them without permission or recompense. (Counter to fair use provisions of copyright and free speech protections.)
• Companies like the Washington Post can put everything behind a paywall. (Good luck.)

These mechanisms hinge on old thinking about value.

The web is a place where connection trumps content: content isn’t king, context in a web of meaning is king.

Rachel Sklar: Did Gawker Rip Off The Washington Post? Yep.

The blogosphere has done something weird to the media industry: Now, the imprimatur of having contributed something is not the original byline, but whether your piece was “picked up.” Pickup provides that extra stamp of relevance, that what you did is worthy of inclusion by the all-important aggregators — the outlets which determine the days need-to-know stories, so busy people with no time to read any of it will at least know what’s up. Yes, yes, congratulations on getting your little article published in a top national newspaper — but a Drudge/Romenesko/HuffPo/Gawker link? Awesome!

It’s not just about traffic, it’s about affirmation: You’re on to something. You’re relevant.

Zachary M. Seward: Gawker and The Washington Post: A case study in fair use

Words in Post article: 1,527
Words from Post article quoted in Gawker post: 226 (15%)
Original words in Gawker post: 204
Labor devoted to Post article: about 2 days
Labor devoted to Gawker post: 30-60 minutes
Cost of Post article: roughly $750
Cost of Gawker post: roughly $20
Revenue generated from Post article: unknown
Revenue generated from Gawker post: roughly $200
Blog links to Post article: 7
Blog links to Gawker post: 4
Rank of Gawker post among referrers to Post article: 2nd
Rank of Post article in Google search for profile subject: 3rd
Rank of Gawker post in Google search for profile subject: 6th

Matthew Ingram: Gawker, the WaPo and the death of journalism

I’d be willing to agree that Gawker could have — and maybe even should have, in an ethical sense — mentioned Shapira and his story specifically. But there is no way in heck that a post with three links and an explicit reference to the source constitutes anything approaching a “rip-off” or the “death of journalism.” How about the death of hyperbole, and the rebirth of rational debate about the value of linking and traffic, and/or the ethics of sourcing online? That would be nice.

emptywheel: The Stealing Wars: What’s Good for Gawker Is Good for WaPo’s Slate

Shapira has a point about this particular instance of Gawker’s abuse of etiquette. But he misses all the ways that this information economy is a multiple-directional exchange, one the WaPo is as happy to engage in as Gawker.

VOXPOPULI: How Alan Denton And His Gawker Henchmen Are Ruining Journalism Forever

So, what’s the point of all this? Shapira points out that what took him a day to produce took Gawker less than an hour to claim as its own and make ad revenue from. Newspapers and other traditional media are certainly not the only form of journalism, but they are the ones that 1. pay well enough for one to live a decent life as a working journalist and 2. have (had?) the resources to allow for real news-gathering, which takes time and effort. And with newspapers fading away, there’s less original content for blogs to re-purpose as their own.

On the other hand…blogs are more fun, or can be, and I myself am a Gawker regular. Blogs are a lot less formal and the best don’t, after all, just cut and paste without adding a bit of their own eleven herbs and spices. In the age of the Internet, information is an increasingly free commodity.

Appendix

This is totally tangential, and I doubt you’ve made it this far, but I’ve had my own brush with Nick Denton’s blogging empire before.  Gizmodo picked up my head(banger)phones project from the ITP Winter Show last December.  They misreported the programming language I used to execute the project.  I posted a comment to correct them, but the post was never corrected.  Oh well, I enjoyed the 15 seconds of Internet fame while it lasted.  You could always read the official story about the head(banger)phones on LEESEAN.NET.

In case you haven’t heard enough from Shapira:

Washington Post staff writer Ian Shapira will be online Monday, Aug. 4, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss his Outlook article titled “How Gawker Ripped Off My tory and Why It’s Destroying Journalism.”