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John Perry Barlow: ‘People want to bypass the mass media’

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The co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the current wave of media realliances ‘the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic’

John Perry Barlow is a retired cattle rancher, a lyricist for The Grateful Dead — and the theoretical architect for the cyberspace community. He spoke by phone on May 24, 1996, from a New York hotel room after a speaking tour of Dusseldorf and Paris.

Do you think people are generally tired of the top-down model of journalism, where professional journalists decide what’s important for the public, where it’s all push and no pull?

They’re absolutely sick of it. Most people have become profoundly skeptical of what they read through mass media. For all intents and purposes, the mass media have become a collective hallucination. People want to bypass those channels to increase the level of direct experience, to have a much more direct contact with reality and with the subjects they feel closely about. And so, to the extent that people can disintermediate, that’s what they do. [Read more…] about John Perry Barlow: ‘People want to bypass the mass media’

James Fallows: The Net will transform — not displace — mainstream media

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The noted media critic and former editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report discusses the future of online journalism

Harvard-educated, a Rhodes Scholar, a former chief White House speech writer (for Jimmy Carter), former Washington editor of The Atlantic Monthly and former editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, James Fallows is one of the nation’s foremost press critics, on the strength of his 1996 book, “Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.” He responded to questions on the state of the online media in an e-mail interview on May 7, 1996.

In an “On the Line” online interview earlier this year you said one advantage of the Internet is that it gives people “the ability to find ways around the bottlenecks and strangeholds of the mainstream media.” Can you expand on that? What are some of the ways in which it allows ordinary citizens and amateur journalists to get around those bottlenecks? [Read more…] about James Fallows: The Net will transform — not displace — mainstream media

Nicholas Negroponte: The revolution will be digitized

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In which the Guru of the Digital Generation discourses on McLuhan, electronic neighbors and square dancing

Nicholas Negroponte, 51, founding director of the Media Lab at MIT and Wired magazine’s popular columnist from its inception, is one of the leading lights of the digital revolution.

His 1995 book, “Being Digital,” looks at the implications of the new technologies for global communication, interpersonal relationships, censorship, and our very notions of reality. This transformative technology will fundamentally alter how we learn, how we work, how we entertain ourselves — essentially how we live.

J.D. Lasica caught up with Negroponte via modem on March 21, 1995, during the author’s world book tour. [Read more…] about Nicholas Negroponte: The revolution will be digitized

Photographs that lie

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Welcome to journalism’s newest ethical nightmare: digital enhancement

This article appeared in the Washington Journalism Review, the Boston Globe and the Sacramento Bee in 1988-89.

Afew years ago I wandered into one of those seminars touting the wonders that digital technological would someday bring to photography. Up on the screen, a surreal slide show was in progress: Joan Collins was sitting provocatively on President Reagan’s lap. Click. Joan was now perching, elflike, on the president’s shoulder. Click. Reagan now had a third eye. Click. Now he was bald. Click. And on it went.

The man from Scitex, one of the high-tech outfits that makes these machines, was saying that computers could now alter the content of photographs in virtually any way. It’s all done electronically, with no trace of tampering.

The audience, clearly dazzled, tossed off a dozen or so questions about whether the machines could do this or that. Finally, a hand shot up. “Nobody’s said a word about the potential for abuse here. What about the ethics of all this?” [Read more…] about Photographs that lie

The death of an idealist

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This article appeared in The Sacramento Bee on Oct. 1, 1988, as well as in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on Nov. 13, 1988.

As dusk neared, the sun sent crazy orange streamers skipping across the surf. Two skateboarders snaked by on the pavement, a Frisbee toss away. A seagull hung in midair, caught in the sea breeze.

A perfect day for a funeral service.

On the Venice beach, 100 people — most in their 30s, some sporting sunglasses —had gathered, settling into the blankets and folding chairs that made a half-circle on the warm sand. [Read more…] about The death of an idealist

Gov. George Deukmejian on the Armenian genocide

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Gov. George Deukmejian
Photo of the governor by J.D. Lasica

California’s governor reflects on the Armenian genocide — and how it still affects his people’s spirit

This Q&A with the sitting governor of California appeared in The Sacramento Bee and was reprinted in the magazine Ararat. It was one of the few one-on-one interviews Deukmejian granted during his governorship.

By J.D. Lasica

Gov. George Deukmejian, who is looked upon as a source of pride in the nation’s Armenian community, has made public discussion of the Ottoman Empire massacres a recurring theme of his administration. The governor’s parents emigrated to this country from Armenia in 1907 and 1909, before the massacres of 1915-18. Following are excerpts from an hourlong interview conducted by J.D. Lasica:

Let’s start off with your early years. Were there some Armenian traditions that thrived in the Deukmejian household?

Oh, absolutely. My parents were very much involved in Armenian community activities. My father used to participate in some of the Armenian fraternal organizations. … My mother was actively involved with what they called the Armenian Relief Society, which is like the Armenian Red Cross. My mother used to sing at a lot of different Armenian events and functions, and my sister was a very accomplished pianist and so she had to play the piano while my mother sang. And obviously little Corky, as I was called in those days, used to have to go along to all these events.

Where was your home?

It’s in a village called Menands, New York. It’s like a suburb of Albany. [Read more…] about Gov. George Deukmejian on the Armenian genocide

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