1. Your turn to Evaluate me.. we'll take the first 15 mins to conduct the faculty evaluations..any volunteers to pass out/take them to LT124? thanks.
In a 5 - 0 decision, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules for unlicensed use of the televsion white spaces. It is a landmark decision for the Commission, heralding a new era for wireless innovation and more efficient and democratic use of the airwaves. Open and free access to unused TV channels will enable “WiFi on steroids," helping to bring affordable wireless broadband to rural America and underserved urban areas as well as encouraging new and innovative wireless devices.
Since 2004, the Wireless Future Program has been a leading advocate for opening vacant and unassigned television channels, also known as the TV "white spaces", for unlicensed wireless devices. We are pleased with the Commission's decision and thankful to all of our partners in this effort, including the members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition and the Wireless Innovation Alliance.
FCC Adopts Rules For Unlicensed Use of Television White Spaces.
The Merchants of Cool - PBS FRONTLINE REPORTThey spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the "next big thing" that will snare the attention of their prey--a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year.
They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?
FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in "The Merchants of Cool." Produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, the program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today's teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.
DUE Thur. November 13th PAPER/BLOG ENTRY on the Persuaders/Merchants of Cool
2-3 pages on the techniques and tactics used to by marketers to manufacture desire, appeal to our emotions, and create a branded "culture".
Show how these (and other similar) tactics of persuasion are being used to communicate with consumers today
Think about what types of new communication techniques the future may hold for these marketers.
“Political advertising ... is just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies.”
Bob Garfield, Columnist, Advertising Age
So who are these marketing wizards, and how do they decide what works and what doesn't? For answers, we nominate this excerpt from The Persuaders, a 2004 FRONTLINE classic that looks at the sophisticated niche marketing tools advertisers use to customize messages for particular constituencies.
In the excerpt, correspondent and media critic Douglas Rushkoff visits with Republican political consultant Frank Luntz, a venerable practitioner of the persuasive arts and a master at telling people what his research says they want to hear.
HOMEWORK FOR 10/13 THURS:
1. VOTE!
2. Make sure you have READ p. 207 Reclaiming the Public Airwaves
CUWin
10/27By 10/30Money created as interest-bearing bank credit is a magic trick, a fraud - now 3 centuries old; one that very few people have seen through despite, or rather because of, its utter simplicity.
It is my intention to make this mysterious debt-money system comprehensible to everyone. It is also my intention to foster sufficient understanding of the problems with this money system that citizens will be motivated to join the monetary reform movement and/or create local alternatives to the global monetary system - a system in which most of the productive people of the world are collectively chained to an ever-increasing and perpetually unpayable debt.
This is a system designed for elite control of the people by those who have given themselves the privilege of creating money. It is also, I believe, a system that is designed for catastrophe. As the movie explains, there can be no sustainable civilization without a sustainable money system.
1. Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when the government could just create all the interest free money it needs itself?
2. Why create money as debt? Why not create money that circulates permanently and does not have to be perpetually re-borrowed in interest in order to exist?
3. How can a money system based on perpetual accelerating growth be used to build a sustainable economy?
4. What needs be changed to allow the creation of a "sustainable economy"?
The Fight for the Future of Media lays out "5 questions you (the public) can help the FCC Answer. These questions assume, although, that the big business interests and political policy-makers that currently control the airwaves are the ones that should control the airwaves.
