Blog 5 POW

This week’s POW goes to Kenton’s post, “Trigger Fingers Turn to Twitter Fingers,” a clever title that he takes from a Drake song he quotes for us. Not only does Kenton’s post catch our attention right away from a summary of a rap battle, he uses that battle and the song lyrics that ensued to make important points about why this kind of fighting, trolling, and other obnoxious behavior happens on Twitter.

Drake says, “trigger fingers turn to twitter fingers” and follows two lines later saying, “I’m not the type of n**** that’ll type to n****s”. What he is saying here is how the people nowadays are to scared to confront one another and turn to the internet as a form of vigilant protection, but he is not scared. This is very true. On the internet, anyone may say whatever they want and never reap any physical consequences. Why do we feel the need to do this however? Why speak outrageously on the web, then hold solemn in public?

Kenton then answers this question with two key points. And the way he designs those points to stand out to us enhances the already excellent design of his blog. If you haven’t looked at it yet, check it out. It’s a work of art and incorporates text, visuals, and even music incredibly well. Keep up the good work, Kenton!

Blog 2 POW

This weeks POWs exemplify why we do a blogging project and how useful commenting can be.

The first post is Mitchell’s: Have Copyrighting and Trademarking Gone Too Far?? In it, Mitchell asks us to think about the potential limitations of restricting copyright too much, particularly in terms of creativity.

This is not to say that today’s youth cannot be creative, but it is more difficult and their are many hoops to jump through, sometimes requiring large sums of money to be paid.

Mitchell helpfully, though, gives us a workaround to paying all that money by including a YouTube video that explains how to get permission to use various kinds of sources. So, one of the reasons I love your blogs is that we get great new resources like this one: 

(Also check out the great questions at the end of Mitchell’s post!)

The other thing that I love about blogging is that it exposes us to different viewpoints. In the week’s other POW, Is Remixing Right?, Chandler asks us to think about the opposite point of view. What if it were our own work being stolen?

It is this balance that is all to important in a capitalistic society where new innovations can improve the lives of millions while copy-cats attempt to make a quick buck. So how would you feel if someone were to take your work and make millions?

Taken together, I think these two posts ask us to think about how we define what is creative and what is truly new from two different perspectives–both valuable contributions to our thinking on this topic!

Blog Requirement Reminders

You will post your first blogs for Thursday. Here are just a few reminders about the requirements and tips we talked about last week to help you get started. Remember: the purpose of the blog assignment is to give us your take on any of the topics we’ve discussed the previous week. For this first post, any of our previous readings are up for grabs.
Here are the requirements:
-a reference to and direct quote from at least one course reading
-a link to and summary of an outside source
-a second link, image, video, etc.

And here are some tips for good blogging:
-write a clear title
-try to catch our attention right away with an interesting opening
-use in-line links when linking to other sources
-end with questions that you’d like people to respond to in the comments

Check out the “About Blogging” document on Moodle for more information. Can’t wait to read your posts on Thursday! (Bonus if you’ve read this far! The first person to comment on this post will get to choose the music for our first blog day.)