The Jakers - Jake Johnson - A Blog of Christian Reflection

Detroit: The City of Ruins

April 10th, 2010 § 2

Here’s an absolutely haunting slide show posted originally on The New York Review of Books of the many ruins that are within the Detroit MSA. Ironically, I was just talking the other day with a friend about how much the economy has devastated Detroit. These pictures really bring home the that conversation. My hear goes out for the people living there. It’s truly a depression for them.

via blogs.nybooks.com

Go Big Red!

March 25th, 2010 § 1

Five years ago I graduated from Cornell University with the assumption that the only time I’d ever see any Cornell sports team again would be on the off-chance that I was actually in Ithaca again.

Times have changed.

Tonight, my Big Red are playing against Kentucky in the Sweet 16. I’m not going to pretend we can win this game. But I sure hope we can. Either way, there’s no denying that the Cornell Big Red basketball team is something very special this year.

ESPN did a front page feature on them today. It was fun to see them on the front page, and the article is a great read. Here’s a good snippet:

What Cornell has done this season isn’t just surprising. It’s borderline miraculous.

While the NCAA is busting renegade schools and coaches for slipping backdoor benefits to players, Cornell can’t even slip its players a scholarship.

At Ivy schools it is pay to play in the literal sense, the member institutions of the Ancient Eight holding onto those ancient principles of no athletic scholarships and damning its flagship programs to compete with two arms and a leg tied behind their backs while hopping on the other foot.

The price tag at Cornell this year for tuition, room and board: $50,114. Even though Ivy schools can work out creative financial aid/grant packages, the sticker shock is often enough to turn most families away.

Mix in a basketball budget of $821,000 in 2008 (compared to $8.5 million for Kentucky) and the dollars and cents don’t make sense.

You can read the rest of the article here.

And Go Big Red!

Is Ronnie A Part of Your Church?

March 24th, 2010 § 0

Fun (and very corny) video found at Timmy Brister’s blog. Any similarity between Ronnie and members of your church community are purely coincidental.

Social Media: Relationship Inflation?

March 23rd, 2010 § 5

Stumbled across an interesting article by Umair Haque over at the Harvard Business Review, “The Social Media Bubble”. Haque wonders if the rise of social media isn’t unlike any other cultural or economic bubble that creates inflation and then rapid deflation. In this case, the social media bubble creates relationship inflation:

Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency inflation debases money, so social inflation debases relationships. The very word “relationship” is being cheapened. It used to mean someone you could count on. Today, it means someone you can swap bits with.

Thin relationships are the illusion of real relationships. Real relationships are patterns of mutual investment. I invest in you, you invest in me. Parents, kids, spouses — all are multiple digit investments, of time, money, knowledge, and attention. The “relationships” at the heart of the social bubble aren’t real because they’re not marked by mutual investment . At most, they’re marked by a tiny chunk of information or attention here or there.

He then goes on to list 5 factors that he belives lends credibility to his hypothesis.

Trust

Even though the rate of relationships has grown exponentially, the level of trust, Haque argues, hasn’t. How many of your social media friends would you trust to watch your children?

Disempowerment

Far from empowering people, Haque argues, the Internet is becoming a tool for the old gatekeepers to manipulate in a fresh new way. We aren’t free of PR tyranny, we’re seeing thousands of new PR opportunities coming our way. Governments aren’t being undermined by social media, they’re using it to suppress people.

Hate

I’ll just go ahead and quote Haque here: “Far from fueling meaningful conversation, today’s ’social’ web is a world full of the linguistic equivalent of drive-by shootings.” Might be the truest thing he wrote.

Exclusion

People aren’t actually forming new relationships with people of varying backgrounds, but rather experiencing the ultimate realization of the old adage “Birds of a feather flock together”. Haque writes, “But rarely are the gaps between differences bridged. Yet, that’s where the most valuable relationships begin.” Not sure I believe that the most valuable relationships begin at bridging gaps of difference…but then again, maybe my viewpoint will make Haque and I great friends.

Value

Finally, Haque postulates that if our online relationships were really that meaninful to us, we’d be willing to pay for the services that provide them. Instead, the social media entrepreneurs are forced to find intrusive and often unwanted ways to “monetize” their services apart from charging the end-user.

Interesting points, but not sure how I feel about them.

How about you? What value do you place on your online relationships? Where do you agree with Haque? Where do you disagree?

You can read the rest of the article here.

[Photo by aeioux]

Bloggery…It Aint’t New

March 18th, 2010 § 0

If you’ve ever complained about blogs and bloggers, lamenting the seeming degeneration of quality communication in the modern internet-driven world, then you have to read the New York Review of Books article on pre-modern forms of communication that serve as precursors to blogging. Here’s a snippet:

Blogging brings out the hit-and-run element in communication. Bloggers tend to be punchy. They often hit below the belt; and when they land a blow, they dash off to another target. Pow! The idea is to provoke, to score points, to vent opinions, and frequently to gossip.

The most gossipy blogs take aim at public figures, combining two basic ingredients, scurrility and celebrity, and they deal in short jabs, usually nothing longer than a paragraph. They often appeal to particular constituencies such as Hollywood buffs (Perez Hilton), political junkies (Wonkette), college kids (Ivy Gate), and lawyers (Underneath Their Robes). Politically they may lean to the right (Michelle Malkin) or to the left (Daily Kos). But all of them conform to a formula derived from old-fashioned tabloid journalism: names make news.

How new, then, is bloggery? Should we think of it as a by-product of the modern means of communication and a sign of a time when newspapers seem doomed to obsolescence? It makes the most of technical innovations—the possibility of constant contact with virtual communities by means of web sites and the premium placed on brevity by platforms such as Twitter with its limit of 140 characters per message. Yet blog-like messaging can be found in many times and places long before the Internet.

You can read the rest of the article here.

This is a great reminder that human nature is always the same—no matter the calendar year or cultural epoch. We shouldn’t be surprised that blogging often slides into libels and half-truths about celebrities—including high-profile Christian leaders. It’s not that blogging is an example of cultural degeneration as much as it’s proof of a degenerate human condition as old as the hills.

Blogging (and the Internet) just makes it easier for us to expose our true nature by democratizing the process. In the times past, only a select few had the “privilege” of trashing people in a public forum. Now we all can.

Instead of greedily devouring the gossip and slander propagated by these select few, we can now participate…and that’s much more fun—and satisfying.

The only thing that should surprise us is that we didn’t think of it sooner.

[Photo by pshab]