What difference does it make who is speaking?

Thanks to an ongoing discussion with @twigz that has now taken place over so many days and channels that I expect she’s ready to unfriend me (or worse), I’ve been thinking on the role of the author in networked digital culture and how it might be different from the established role of the author.

At the very end of his essay, What is an author?, Michel Foucault imagines a dramatic shift in the cultural role the author plays in the “modern” era that he so carefully lays out in the rest of the essay:

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A Little Bird Told Me

I’ve been working in educational technology for the last 14 years: first at OMSI, then at Portland State, and most recently at rSmart, focused on Sakai open source collaboration and learning technologies. As of February 2013, I have joined former data-journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s startup, Little Bird, here in Portland, Oregon, as Doorman: leading marketing, sales, … Read more

Back Fence: @xolotl, @rael & @jshardison

This last April I had the privilege of telling a story on stage at Back Fence PDX, the innovative storytelling event brought to us by @melissalion and Frayn Masters at Portland’s Mission Theater. At Back Fence, regular folks get up on stage and each tells a true, personal, unrehearsed story that lasts no longer than … Read more

Thought Experiments for Sakai: Keep It Simple Like Twitter & Draw Good Boundaries Like Drupal

I admit I’ve been lurking in a very slackernly manner in all the discussions in the Sakai community about content authoring, 3akai, UX, K2, Sakai NG and other unpronounceables, so I’m sorry if all this is a day late and a dollar short. Feel free to ignore me if you’re part of Sakai and are … Read more

Tweeting My Horn

Purely by accident, I happened to run into Rick Turoczy (@turoczy) of Silicon Florist fame on the day Steve Woodward (@oregoniansteve), the Oregonian reporter, was interviewing Rick about Twitter. Several of us Portland tweeters ended up helping Rick talk twitter, including the indefatigable Bram Pitoyo (@brampitoyo) and connectrix Katherine Gray (@ThisKat). Not sure we did … Read more