Attention, Boston Reasonoids

Jesse Walker | February 20, 2007

This Saturday at MIT I'll be moderating a panel called "Participatory Culture" at the Beyond Broadcast conference. My co-panelists will be Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, of Four Eyed Monsters, Kenny Miller, of the MTV Global Digital Media Team, and Elizabeth Osder, of the Yahoo! Media Group. Other speakers that day will include Reason contributors Henry Jenkins and Drew Clark -- a veritable Reasonpalooza.

More on the event:

On February 24th, MIT Comparative Media Studies will host a conference in collaboration with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The one-day event will be held at MIT, and is entitled "Beyond Broadcast: From Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy." It will bring together industry experts, academic leaders, and political activists for panel discussions and focused working groups.

Attendees will explore the means, the message, and the meaning of the post-midterm, pre-presidential YouTube moment. Broadcast media have long played a powerful role in shaping political culture and mediating citizen engagement in the democratic process, and the conference will examine how participatory culture is putting the tools of media creation and critique in the hands of citizens themselves.

The plenary sessions will take place in Kirsch Auditorium in the Stata Center, followed by breakout groups. There will also be an evening reception in the Wiesner Building, called "Demos and Drinks," showcasing groups that are doing exciting work related to conference themes.

The full schedule is here. Registration information is here.

Comments

|2.20.07 @ 2:10PM|#

Ignoc: Will moonanites be allowed to attend? The last time we showed up in Boston the people were terrified by our presence.

Ur: Yeah, bunch of wussies!

Ignoc: The next time we may have to bring out the mega-quad-power-laser.

Ur: Tremble in our might, Boston wussies!

JimmyDaGeek|2.20.07 @ 2:19PM|#

I would love to hear that someone showed up in a moonanite costume :)

I wonder if the authorities would promptly show up to arrest them...

|2.20.07 @ 3:34PM|#

Yeah, we all know how progressive Boston is when it comes to ads.

|2.20.07 @ 4:20PM|#

There will be a YouTube of this panel won't there. Because it will be totally lame if there isn't.

|2.21.07 @ 10:47AM|#

I'm looking forward to Mayor Menino's speech, "I Told You Kids to Get Off My Lawn!"

tros|2.21.07 @ 11:27PM|#

Shit! I hope there are more Reason events in Boston in the future because I live there but on Saturday I am going to see Daniel Pinchbeck talk to Alex Grey at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. I am sure all Reason readers will agree he definitely has some splaining to do, I will be sure to project the unwavering gaze of Reason the best I can. MIT is a very cool place, and quite frankly it is pretty funny to me that there is going to be a panel discussion on participatory culture. I hope the people on the panel will shut up and listen to the people in the audience, I am sure they know more about it than you do.

Mooninites will undoubtably be in attendance, although we try to keep a low profile lest we be confused wwith HIPPYS. We will be synchronizing the MIT mooninite community with the larger planet brain later this month. I am praying for a multitude of ingenious inventions that will help save the planetary environment.

For anyone interested in the "post youtube" environment I would suggest the album The Battle of Los Angeles by Rage Against the Machine. Serious visionary poetry, without a doubt. I wonder how he knew we were goin to invade Iraq again way back when he wrote it. At first I thought he was talking about the first time, but then he says "more for Gore or the son of a drug lord". Interesting.

P.S. Any science fiction geek worth their salt has been holding their breath for the "post youtube environment". The bullet from our quad laser is enormous, there is no stopping it. It already passed Carl and now it is about to bounce off of his house and hit him in the ass.

But then he's probably just going to show up mysteriously in the next episode as if nothing happened. Damn!

Gaia|2.21.07 @ 11:43PM|#

ALL YOUR FASCIST INSECT BASE ARE BELONG TO US