Media

Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, indeed

By Michael Fraase

Saturday, 27 June 2009 02:28PM CST

Section: Media

Hung, drawn, and quarteredFirst the Wall Street Journal publishes a breathless article announcing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant. The article was unsourced and disgraceful in its violation of the Apple chief executive’s privacy. Then the New York Times got all pissy about being beaten to the scoop and published a ridiculous story about Apple’s corporate secrecy.

Now this, from the Times on the death of entertainer Michael Jackson:

“The death of Mr. Jackson was the latest Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle that is specific to Los Angeles, with the customary body-slamming paparazzi, weeping celebrities, grim-faced officials trying to maintain dignity and tourists seeking their succor along Hollywood Boulevard, where the police were forced to place barricades on Friday to hold back the throngs seeking to peer at his star on the Walk of Fame.”

You’re kidding me, right? Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, body-slamming paparazzi, and tourists seeking their succor? If that’s not the worst piece of “news” reporting I’ve ever read, it has to be in the top two.

Never mind that the photo caption at the top of the article notes a billboard “tribune” at the 02 Arena in London. The billboard is presumably a tribute.

Everyone makes mistakes—even stupid ones—but the US paper of record is really, really slipping.

No links because links are votes and represent a value of exchange on the web. The Journal and Times are undeserving lately.

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The lost manuscripts: Mac hypermedia introduction and overview

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 23 June 2009 07:42PM CST

Section: Media

Macintosh Hypermedia Volume I, Reference GuideIn 2003, I had a catastrophic equipment failure in my office. My working hard disk—including all of my manuscripts—and its backups were destroyed. Back then I never archived my projects, only backed them up, redundantly. I thought that was enough. I was mistaken. In referring to my earlier writings, I discovered that much of that writing holds up pretty well, so I’m reproducing it here for reference and the record. This article is the introduction and overview from Macintosh Hypermedia Volume I, Reference Guide (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1990).

The concept of hypertext, and its more recent hypermedia branchings, has not changed much since first envisioned by Vannevar Bush in 1945. It has taken this long for both the hardware and software to catch up. Now, with the introduction of the Macintosh hypermedia software tools such as OWL International’s Guide and Apple’s HyperCard, we have the beginnings of nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way we deal with data, information, and knowledge.

These software tools, however, are only half of the complete hypermedia solution; to be really useful, they require appropriate hardware that is only now beginning to appear. Apple’s recent introduction of a CD-ROM drive targeted for the mass market signals the first acknowledgment by a major computer manufacturer of this vast opportunity to reshape the way individuals work with overwhelming amounts of data and information, and, in turn, refine that raw data and information into useful knowledge tools.

The availability of appropriate hardware and software solutions for the Macintosh community leaves only a single stumbling block to overcome - a somewhat typical chicken-and-egg dilemma. Few CD-ROM titles will be available, and most will be of questionable quality and innovation, until a terminal mass in unit sales of the CD-ROM drives themselves is reached. Conversely, few CD-ROM drives will be sold until unique and plentiful titles are available. This is at least partially addressed by Apple’s entry into the CD-ROM drive market with a reasonably priced unit that is sure to appeal to a broad base of users.

The foreseeable CD-ROM products, however, can at best be termed first generation and as few as two years from now will be seen as terribly obsolete. CD-ROM is a read-only storage medium (it’s only half-literate; it can’t write), and as Ted Nelson said, “... a read-only medium in this day and age [is] intrinsically oppressive.” For this reason, CD-ROM will not play an equal role (relative to the hypermedia software tools) in the work proposed here; it will be surveyed, along with other mass-storage devices as guideposts to future incarnations of more appropriate hardware.

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Wall Street Journal finds the bottom

By Michael Fraase

Saturday, 20 June 2009 03:25PM CST

Section: Media

Wall Street JournalMost people with chronic health problems are much more private about their health conditions than I’ve been. I made the decision early on that I would operate in full disclosure mode about my health. This wasn’t a gradual process with me. I was all-in from the start. But make no mistake; the choice to disclose was mine and mine alone.

It took me a couple of years after my kidneys failed in 2000 to figure out that my days of working 16-18 hours every day were over. I researched what my obligations were with regard to disclosure and found that there basically were none. But I felt something—not really a moral obligation—but something that told me the best path for me was full disclosure.

When I went to work for Utne Reader in 2002, for example, I disclosed my condition—because not disclosing it would have placed an undue burden on the small publishing company. We worked it out so I’d work 75-percent time, thereby not qualifying for company-paid health insurance. Both parties were satisfied with the arrangement. When I went to work at the University of Minnesota in 2006 I also disclosed my condition. My health condition—and associated costs—wouldn’t make much of a dent in the University’s fiscal situation, but I disclosed in the first interview anyway. Why? To this day I’m still not sure except that something told me it was the right thing to do.

But it was my decision.

Last night, in one of the worst pieces of “journalism” I’ve ever seen, the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant about two months ago. The bylined work was totally and completely unsourced. Sources amounted to an unnamed “person familiar with the thinking at Apple,” a corporate governance attorney that has no relationship with Apple or its board, a surgeon in Saint Louis who has never treated Jobs, a Saint Louis transplant specialist who, also, has never treated Jobs, and “people who have seen him” at the Apple campus.

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