A moment with CJ Holmes

This entry is almost my first ever weblog (known as a blog from here on out) and definitely the first of its kind in even a remotely professional context. When I was seventeen, I briefly had a Livejournal.com account with a title borrowed from the timely movie, “Sideways.” This current blog is inspired by its requirement for a class project. However, I envision this blog as something I will continue into the future with posts of at least once per week. Readers: (if I ever develop any) please hold me to this promise.

A little background information on myself. I am currently a master’s candidate in the Center for Information and Communication Sciences (test) at Ball State University. Within this information and communication sciences degree I am focusing on the area of human communication and its affects on the “world at large.” I am a fellow with the Digital Policy Institute (test) where I conduct policy research for the Institute’s senior fellows and update a digital policy log (test).

I come from a small rural town in Michigan, Alma, where I grew up with my parents and three siblings. We are all lifelong competitive swimmers, with three out of us four competing collegiately (You can expect my bragging about them more later). I traveled east to Massachusetts and Amherst College for my undergraduate career. There I studied political science with a focus on Middle Eastern Studies. I spent a semester studying abroad in Egypt and I hope to return to the region in the next 3-5 years to continue my immersion learning there.

My intellectual interests include, but are certainly not limited to, Middle Eastern Politics and social construction, domestic politics, human communication, dance (hip hop and modern), and popular culture as it affects the “American experience.”

In that this blog is professional and not merely a personal dalliance, I envision this blog focusing on contemporary events and how they affect the American marketing landscape. And any other personal radar events that somehow relate to my professional focus. Happy reading.
Contact me with comments @ cholmes09@gmail.com

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 04:43 PM | Permalink

Blogging is a web-centered medium of communication. With the format of this blog, and the content within my posts, my blog is much more information based, than communication oriented. Unless people respond via email, then my blog can only function as one-way communication, which isn’t really communication at all. This concern is why I have provided my email with every post. However, developing the habit of response within my blog increases the likelihood of its occurrence. Therefore I post this entry near the beginning, with video images of myself dancing. Such provocative content might incite a few emails to be sent my way, and if it creates habitual communication between myself an others, then it is much more likely that my blog could be communication based.

Popular/Commercial Hip-Hop Dance:
test

Afro Caribbean Hip-Hop/Reggae Hip-Hop:

Modern and Tap Experiments:
test

Favorite Pieces from my Amherst College Colleagues:

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 04:52 PM | Permalink

Throughout the course of my first semester in the CICS program, I have been inundated with the term Web 2.0. I would not consider myself an expert on the subject, nor do I imagine that any or my reader’s come to this blog for an informative lecture. So, I will provide only the briefest summary to prove that I know at least a tiny amount before I add value to the topic.

I frame my view of Web 2.0 between the ideas of collaborative information sharing, and user-centered design, though the subject goes far beyond these two bullet points. When I look at a website now, I examine it for instances of collaboration between authors, or even links to other sources of data. Authors will link to blogs or videos or even other articles to enrich the point they are making as opposed to relying purely on their own knowledge base. This function within a website is an acknowledgement that no-single place can be the authoritative location of information for a searching user. A user of the internet is going to browse, and browse quickly, and thus involving other bits of information from the web actually aids an author.

Furthermore, I am amazed at how websites are utilizing the idea of web 2.0 and seeking to make every action on the web user centered. Such attention brings the user inside the site’s domain, and if this inclusion is informative or enjoyable it will force the site into the individuals daily actions, his routine. Such incorporation ensures the eyeballs on content that is the lifeblood of a web page.
Recently I have been surprised by how much Web 2.0 is utilized by news websites. In a previous assignment on the structures of weblogs I examined the Huffingtonpost: (test).

“Centralized Conversation within The Huffington Post:
The Huffington Post is organized in a fashion that centralizes information flow and then gives a platform for communication about this information. The line quickly blurs between simple factual reporting and the expansive communication related to that information. The format of The Huffington Post is one in which there are both posted news stories and posted news blogs. Within each story and each blog entry there are alternatives that relate to other news stories and weblogs within The Huffington Post world. This system centralizes information and focuses the conversation. This conversation occurs both in the general sense of the complete subject on the weblog, but also in a specific conversation that is presented below each post. In this focused area there are simple reaction buttons, “important, funny, typical, scary, outrageous, amazing, innovative, funny,” that allow for general reader feedback and participation. Additionally, there is also a traditional comment option. This combination results in an all-inclusive discussion carried out below each entry within the website.

Spreading the Huffington Conversation:
Furthermore there are numerous options linking each entry with social media, carrying the discussion out into the world. By linking this information-centered discussion with Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, that evolving, progressing conversation is presented to the world. Expanding the conversation aspect further is the resulting snowball effect, which brings more traffic, and more participation, back within Huffington’s blog universe. And this redirect is the essential final portion of analyzing The Huffington Post. The existence of the website in the digital universe affects the communication of that universe in an extensive way by bringing everything outside its realm in, taking that product and spinning it back out into the universe, and then, like a boomerang, flying back within the its arena bringing even more participation with it.”

(ICS 601: capstone project for group 2, 2009. pgs: )

However, shortly after I completed the assignment, the structure of test shifted to a more Web 2.0 format that is slightly similar to the Huffingtonpost’s. I use Reuters every day as my primary news source and so the change was affecting. I took a look at the web pages of my past main news sources: the BBC (test) and New York Times (test). There were portals for organizing subject information, and related recommended news stories linking the user with news of their choice. Furthermore there were numerous locations to display user comments and other content responses. On Reuters there is even a user save function so that a reader can hop around the web but still find content on a return trip to the Reuters page.

Searching for a touch of normalcy, I went to the Wall Street Journal’s homepage assuming that the notoriously dry news source would have a more straightforward format. However, their platform test was barely distinguishable from the others.

It is an interesting thought experiment to consider how user-centric news has become. With camera-phones and their video capability, everybody can be a field reporter, publishing their journalistic forays on YouTube. If the content is consumed by the masses, then the big news sources even pick it up and the story becomes codified, hard news.

So, I guess I should not be surprised by the adaptation of these news sources, especially in relation to the struggle with low circulation issues in hard copy press. However, in the Web 2.0 format I could not help but feel as if the credibility of the source was lessoned, that I was just reading some random internet blogger’s opinion: interesting, but far from factual. Maybe this perception should always be applied to “the news.”

source: test

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 04:59 PM | Permalink

At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards there were two big winners that were relatively new musical artists. The MTV video music awards do not have a long history of acknowledging the top talent in the industry. Instead these awards serve mostly as a superficial vanity affair (sorry Kanye West: test). However, the side by side acknowledgment of two polar opposite rising stars in popular music paints an awkward and confusing picture. On one hand you have the boundary pushing Lady Gaga.

I could take a moment to discuss whether or not I consider her talented, but such subjective analysis is not too useful in this discussion. Instead there are two overwhelming truths that need to be acknowledged in the case of Lady Gaga: she is very popular and thus is affecting that amorphous “popular culture,” and she is definitively outside the norm of musical artists. Despite the influences of Madonna, David Bowie, and Andy Warhol on her career she is a unique performer in American popular music.

Contrasting these images of burlesque fashion and blurred sexuality is the “tall glass of milk,” that is all American girl, Taylor Swift. She is blond, beautiful, and nineteen. Her songs include a plethora of teen angst love anthems and her country music twang is aligned more with the stereotypical tastes of Sarah Palin’s"real Americans" than they are with the avant-garde art crowd.

So why do these artists matter outside of musical critiques and their fan followings? They matter in terms of how they shape the popular culture, and simultaneously reveal information about its current position. When attempting to market to the American people, the state of popular culture HAS to be considered. And these stars already are proving to be relevant. Rhapsody currently utilizes Gaga’s boundary pushing single “Bad Romance” to promote its services:

Taylor Swift is the front-woman in a “Band Hero” video game ad:

Clearly both artists are still within the music field in terms of the product they represent, but this beginning of representation is a sign of things to come. Even if these individuals don’t end up starring in a plethora of commercials, advertisers have to weigh the direction of their commercials as they seek to tap into these two cultural arenas.

I wonder if there will be a winning formula. Will America’s popular culture shift more towards the differentiation that Gaga represents or will we stick by traditional homespun romanticism? Or will we remain split and divided with marketers picking either elixir decided by the leanings of their target audience?

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:05 PM | Permalink

One of the assigned blogs for this spot (for the class that launched this foray into blogging) is on the European Renaissance. Since this topic is even beyond the scope of a book, thesis, paper, or my limited blog, I am going to focus on the aspect of patronage within this Renaissance.

The European Renaissance is traditionally viewed as the bridge between the middle (or dark) ages and the modern era. The time frame that is considered the borders of the European Renaissance, encompassed several revolutions in intellect and social culture, but the popular conception of the period revolves around its artistic elements.

The family that sponsored a great many of these artistic undertakings, and undoubtedly emerge as architects of the European Renaissance, is the Medici family, with Lorenzo de’ Medici playing the role of foremost patriarch. It was the enormous support from this family that cultivated the careers of art greats Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Furthermore, it was from this wealth of artistic expression that occurred during the renaissance, that other social revolutions sprang. Huge progress was made in the areas of mathematics, physics, philosophy and the general human intellect. Without this renaissance, the development of humanity would have been retarded.

I want to note briefly that this last point is very Western-centric and therefore not universally true. Civilization was dormant in neither West nor East Asia. Furthermore, numerous catalysts of the European Renaissance were injected by the Muslim invaders from North Africa that spread through Spain and even into France, and by the rise of the Ottoman Empire and its close proximity to Eastern Europe. I have explored these topics academically in the past, and merely wanted to touch on them briefly here. For fairness sake.

However, the role of the Medici family and their supported artists in shaping the modern European culture is undeniable. I was struck by how important a role this groundbreaking art played and I wonder if our current society needs to further invest in art. There is this amorphous, collective, joke about “modern art” and how any individual could do it, how it is not “real” art. There are always attackers (test) of the National Endowment of the Arts and I cannot imagine many individuals claiming in good conscience that progressive art is as completely supported as in the time if Lorenzo de’ Medici. While I cannot prove this by objectively comparing spending figures, if the statement is considered true, what does that say about the related progression of human intellect? In a world of chaotic change (Peters, 1987) investment in the arts, in progressive humanity, seems essential. But I never majored in Art History. These are just the (legitimate) observations of a progressive thinker.

Sources:
test

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Holmes, 2007. Research Paper on Muslim Spain. Survey of Arab History, The American University in Cairo

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:11 PM | Permalink

In my blog post on the European Renaissance, I chose to focus on the idea of patronage and a relative lack of it, could be harmful to the progression of human intellect. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is an aspect of contemporary human development that is very reminiscent of the social revolution that was the European Renaissance. This aspect is the Information Renaissance.

Jay Edwin Gillette discusses this idea of an Information Renaissance in a paper titled: “Leadership for the Information Renaissance: Clarity, Challenges, Opportunity.” Gillette characterizes the “context” of the contemporary era as “a knowledgeable society driven by an information economy.” (Gillette, pg. 2) He compares the expansion of the accessible Human knowledge base courtesy of the Internet, to the expansion of the accessible Human knowledge base developed by the establishment of book publishing technologies developed during the European Renaissance. I would agree that the access to information these two related developments provide, paves the way for substantial increase in human potential.

Gillette discusses in this paper how “the movement and use of information” opens the door to renaissance individuals, provided they take the necessary steps to utilize it. He sees the necessary steps relating to the development of personal leadership and an ability to add value to all organizational involvement and actions undertaken.

I like the model that Gillette develops and it creates an interesting lens to view the daily developments in the field of information sciences. I believe that this expansion of the web, and the expansion of its collaborative elements, does create a renaissance in terms of human experience.
However, it is personal caution that keeps me from celebrating the logical understanding of either an existing, or impending, renaissance. I am not sure that the collaboration elements of the web will ever develop past the point of a method to enrich self-interest.

Non-dynamic proponents of free market capitalism would dismiss my caution as a naïve intellectual fancy, the type of fancy prevalent among young professionals not yet educated by the experiences of the “real world.” I would answer that the economic and physical strife of many humans on this planet is evidence that free market capitalism was only the first step. It was an enormously successful step, and so I would argue that the next step is an economic renaissance, not an economic revolution. However, the overwhelming struggle in the world suggests that a next step is indeed both needed and inevitable.

So I caution that this information renaissance, unless it develops beyond its self-interest dominated direction, is only half a step. It is only the first part, of a greater renaissance that will augment our free market existence and move towards alleviating much of this existing suffering.

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:13 PM | Permalink

I have witnessed an interesting progression over the years in Gap “dancing" commercials. Gap advertisers have for a few years back, exhibitioned dance as a medium to hawk their clothing. In a search through my wardrobe, a clothing reporter could conclude that I am a bit of a “Gap man,” and so it is from such expert background that I wonder: How are Gap and dancing connected?” I concluded that it was an attempt to connect Gap with an artistic image, while injecting the brand with youthful vigor. This conclusion is supported by a progression of commercials that I compile here.

First we have Claire Danes and Patrick Wilson doing a bit of a partner ballet

Then we have something a touch more exciting, but still very traditional. A swing number

Things begin to get interesting with an all-inclusive holiday commercial. While the message of inclusion is intended to be the focus and the selling point (“All different type of people wear Gap”) the style of dance that conveys the message is much more “hip-hop” oriented. So it connects the hip dance movements, with the hip idea of diversity

Finally, the version currently plastered across the airwaves, is this “No-Tech” commercial.

The image presented is very contradictory and, I think revealing. It is definitely a hip-hop inspired dance. (see the hip-hop group “The Jabbawockeez here:)

But the racial make up of the dancers is overwhelmingly Caucasion (there is a person of color stuck in the back). With hip-hop being originally an African-American art form the racial make-up cannot be a simple coincidence. Even the title of the song, “No-Tech” is revealing. Hip-hop music is being related to technology. The message is that our minds/contemporary times are technological, and future oriented. And that future is an urban, hip-hop, mix. However, the commercial reassures us that in the face of this progress, we can turn to the comforts of the heart: flannel and our (all-white) friends.

I am not accusing the Gap of a racist commercial. Rather I think that its marketing structure, relative to Gap’s previous dancing trend in commercials, is interesting. Before they used dance to make Gap more hip, now they use it to sell the familiar. Furthermore, I would be highly intrigued to read the market research behind this latest commercial, especially relative to the race of the casted dancers.

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:15 PM | Permalink

In any academic community, the issue of plagiarism is a constantly present subject. In the first week of classes of my undergraduate career, and in the first week of classes of my graduate career, I was showered with information about plagiarism and warnings regarding the institution’s reaction against plagiarism’s appearance. Institutions, such as Emory University, even have associations I would label as plagiarism institutions. test

However, plagiarism is not simply relegated to the realm of immature students. It is a constant issue within the professional scientific community. As Dave Mcmullin observes in reference to the research fraud of Jan Hendrik Schön,

" [R]esearch suggests that scientific fraud is widespread. In a comprehensive study involving 4,000 researchers from 100 faculties, a University of Minnesota research team found that one in three scientists sometimes plagiarize, and that 22 percent of all researchers admit to sometimes handling data carelessly. . . . Fraud seems most likely to pop up in the research of unmonitored scientists who are working alone on irreproducible research."

Source: test

Famousplagiarists.com even has an entire website dedicated to documenting the noteworthy historical plagiarists. For example, Shervert Frazier was a Harvard Medical School professor who plagiarized paragraphs of published articles that were then discovered by a graduate student. He had to resign his position (although he did receive a position at the Harvard affiliated McLean Hospital and was able to continue with his career).

However, the nature of the Internet, its collaboration among individuals and proliferation of information, makes plagiarism much easier. It is easier to plagiarize, both intentionally and mistakenly, and it is easier to get caught. But the conceptual question is how has the nature of plagiarism changed? At what point does collaboration move beyond, into plagiarism? How extensively does one’s citing of sources have to go? Could an acknowledgement be sufficient?

When it comes to plagiarism of a professional and scientific nature, however, there is considerably less grey area. If an individual is publishing scientific research then they need to prove their findings every step of the way, and all content has to be either cited or original. Furthermore, extensive care needs to be taken to ensure that all results are not doctored or manipulated towards some sort of intended results.

A concluding thought question is how this nature of scientific research has changed, and will continue to do so, with the expansion of accessible information on the web.

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:21 PM | Permalink

There is a type of blogging that has expanded with the rise of video media sites such as YouTube and Google Video. This different type is the video blog. I cannot personally imagine particularly enjoying this format of blogging. Furthermore, all content will be less organized and not as extensive in terms of the information it presents. However, by speaking into the camera, the communication components of the video are increased.

Anyway, here is my entry of a video blog discussing an idea of communication from the television show “The West Wing.”

Email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:24 PM | Permalink

This entry marks the end of my blogging experience as it relates to the class assignment. This blog was supposed to unfold over the course of a semester. Instead the ideas and notes of the blog have unfolded over the last month or so, but I procrastinated actually posting and so all posts are at one point in time. In relation to the assignment, I upped the content (I have written over nine pages single spaced) both in terms of quality (I hope) and volume.

I know that the intention of the assignment was continued blogging, and in this area I have clearly failed. Yet the introduction to blogging was helpful. I plan on continuing this practice over the rest of my time at CICS and in a measure of good faith, will blog every day after this assignment until the end of the semester.

That is to say, here is the result of my weblog assignment, and I will add value over the remainder of the semester. Furthermore, I will add my experiences regularly from that point out. Happy Reading!

And as always, email me feedback at cholmes09@gmail.com. Lets Communicate!

Posted by Charles J Holmes at 05:25 PM | Permalink