Earthblog

The “Broadcast Tapes of Doctor Peter,” a compilation of video diaries from the late Peter Jepson-Young, a Vancouver “doctor in his 30's” dying of AIDS in the early 90s aired on both CBC and HBO. In it, the young doctor chronicled the decline of his body, ravaged by the little understood and highly stigmatized disease, for the entire world to see.

How social networking online translates offline

You’re in a crowded restaurant with a close friend. In between appetizers and the main course, she tells you she got into another argument online. And the result was a dip in her total ‘friends’ count on Facebook.

The online dispute was over a grammar error. Your friend joked with an online comrade about spell check, punctuation and syntax. But a smiley-face emoticon was insufficient to demonstrate she meant it all in jest and she was soon de-friended.

How the Arts will survive new media

What do Blockbuster, Borders and the music industry have in common? All have been bombarded by the competition, but not just any competition, online and technologically enabled competition.

For Blockbuster the entire film industry is changing. Netflix, Apple TV and Hulu services offer streaming video of the latest movies and television. Brick and mortar outlets like Blockbuster were being undercut by an unseen competitor. Slowly customers began to try and eventually switch to online services. Now Blockbuster is a fraction of its former size and has recently been sold to a foreign investor.