We Shoot Horses, Don't We?

This just in: Carbondale and Marion are both "civilized towns" according to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Dale Bowman in a Sunday article. Thank you, sir. We accept your half-hearted complement in the backhanded manner in which it was reluctantly given.

What was it about us you most appreciated? Our indoor plumbing? Our acknowledged mastery of the incandescent bulb? Our gramophones? Horseless carriages? The word usements that we structure?

I guess Chicago is the city of big shoulders because it's citizens get so much practice shrugging.

Cast Down Your Pods Where You Are

What's the 411, SIU?

Did you know SIU-E's been talking talking smack about you again? Yeah, yeah, I know. You can punk them any time you want. So you say.

Seriously though, where's the U's podcast? You know that Allegheny College in Pennsylvania has their own podcast, don't you?

Who is being punked now, Saluki?

You could be creating rich media content, information for alumni and prospectives, in-depth profiles of events and people, and you are still wasting time sharpening your number twos so you can fill out attendance sheets? C'mon dog, paper? You sure you wouldn't prefer some papyrus or vellum or something? Perhaps you were hoping to scratch some hieroglyphs on a nice, flat rock? That hill over there would be great for sending smoke signals, in case you're wondering.

I don't mean to be getting down on you, though. I heart your educational mission. It's just that where the U goes, the city tends to follow. As for us, the people of the city of Carbondale, we're all just walkin' here! Do you want to be the car of indifference that almost runs us over as we cross the street of localism? Should we slap the hood of the car of indifference with the hands of social darwinism? Or would you rather be the Joe Buck of encouragement who leads us across the road of technological change to the sidewalk of community potential?

And don't you try to sneak out of the room, Southern Illinoisan. We see you trying to take that danish back to your cubicle. Why can't you be like your sister, The San Francisco Chronicle Podcast? She knows how to give us "the story behind the story". She knows the value of letting her readers hear directly from her sources. Remember how we talked about adding value and how on the web primary documents are more valuable than narrative description?

And which one of you left the towel of economic development on the floor of shrinking budgets in the bathroom of urban planning?

Talking the Walk

Super Empowered Individuals Unite!

Mark your calendars everyone, because Friday is national Silver Surfers Day! (in the UK) It's a day of education and awareness promoting the idea of web literacy for folks 50 years and older.

With plenty of local support for adult education (Hi, JALC!), wouldn't this be a great event for us to celebrate as well? I mean, there is no real online community until all of us are fairly represented, is there? You know the young punks are always going to represent. (Hi, young punks!) But sometimes some of the rest of us appreciate a good old-fashioned nudge from the unwired world to get us going.

We could even do this event in conjunction with other web literacy promotionals.

How about "Critical Mass: online edition"? People surfing wirelessly on their laptops scattered randomly around the sidewalks of downtown Carbondale impeding pedestrian traffic and serving as a visual map of local web hotspots?

Or even a "Surf to Work Day"? Hundreds of local folks doing their jobs from home, meeting for synchronous chat at a pre-determined place and time (online). Prize for the "least-travelled"? Lunch ordered online and delivered? (travel to front door will not count in determining awards) [My spidey-sense tells me Dave may have explored this idea before.]

There's still time to make the local web a haven for local people. More generations of folks online means more opportunities for finding Consumer Created Content online.

Are you down with the CCC?

Buzzworthy

An interesting recent study produced as part of the Pew Internet and American Life Project attempts to quantify the effects that political blogs and political blogging have had on the wider landscape of politics and the mainstream media. The report focuses its inquiry on a short "A-list" of political bloggers who are seen as making an impact on public discourse.

Of course the major event that seems to have brought blogs into the national political consciousness is the so-called "Rathergate", or the controversy that surrounded allegedly forged memos presented by Dan Rather in a CBS news report on Bush's national guard service. The Pew report goes into absorbing detail about how A-list blogs created buzz around those memos and amplified questions about their authenticity.

Is the blogosphere a new fifth estate, on a level with mainstream media's forth? Not yet, according to this study. However, the study's authors do assert in their conclusions that:

the national discourse could benefit from a sector favoring transparency over opacity, conversation over presentation, small pieces over big works, flexibility over anchorage, incompleteness over conclusiveness, documentation over description, and, paradoxically, individuality over institutionalization.

So, the blogosphere (as represented by a few A-listers) comes off well, all things considered. But the biggest winners in a world that values vigorous political, social and community-building discourse online could be average citizens in cities like ours -- as our local governments use technology to find creative ways to include us in the policy-making process (webcasts of city council meetings, anyone?).

In an age where transparency begins to trump the traditional opacity of our governmental networks, and where we can see how and where our political sausages are made, we just may end up getting better, more palatable, more satisfying sausages.

Hello, Downstaters! Sincerely, the Cliff Dwellers

“Downstate” defies any single definition. For some Illinoisans, downstate begins at the southwest city limits of Chicago. Others would claim that any area north of I-80 is “outstate,” and that downstate does not really begin until one reaches Bloomington.

The above (and below, for that matter) is a excerpt from the Honorable James R. Thompson's entry in the endlessly diverting online Encyclopedia of Chicago.

Nor is there agreement on “Southern Illinois.” Most believe it begins south of Springfield, but hardcore Southern Illinois residents don't claim any territory north of Carbondale. . . . “Downstate” is a state of mind more than a state of geography. Although acres of corn and beans will never be confused with Michigan Avenue, the plain fact is that Chicagoans and downstaters think—and speak—differently.

So push aside that plate of corn and beans and find your way to the Chicago Encyclopedia's website. Although, personally, I'd love to see more authored entries on individual writers -- especially my favorites.

The Jungle receives an obligatory write-up. As does Studs Lonigan. Sister Carrie? Natch.

But where's The Pit? Or how about Floyd Dell's Moon-Calf? (Ok, ok. He did title it "Moon-calf". There's my answer.) Or anything by Robert Herrick? And I dare them -- I say, dare them -- to write up Bertram Cope's Year.

Of course, those are just my own idiosyncratic choices. Still, I was happy to find an entry for Ring Lardner, my own personal favorite Chicago writer. For a treat, here's the opening of Lardner's short story, "Haircut":

I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain't no New York City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don't have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.

There you go, Carterville! Happy?

Now, who will create the online Encyclopedia of Southern Illinois? It would certainly be a boost to regionalism, our Honorable Mayor's conceptual flavor-of-the-month. Beyond that, don't we deserve something more than a passing mention in someone else's encyclopedia?

Illinois Boy to Hoosier Daddy

Get 'er done.

Wine Online

Supreme Court clears way for online wine sales | CNET News.com: "Online shopping received a substantial boost on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state governments may not prohibit residents from ordering directly from out-of-state wineries.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court said that Michigan and New York had enacted protectionist laws that unconstitutionally discriminated against wineries from other states.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the states' claims of possible lost taxes or shipments to minors could not justify taking such strong measures against direct shipping. 'The states have not shown that tax evasion from out-of-state wineries poses such a unique threat that it justifies their discriminatory regimes,' Kennedy wrote for the majority."

Mark your calendar for May 18

At the last Carbondale to Cyberdale meeting in February, it was announced that Carbondale to Cyberdale would be going to a quarterly format instead of the existing monthly format. The next Carbondale to Cyberdale meeting will be on Wednesday, May 18, 2005, where the tentative topic will be: Internet Advertising.

The breakfast will be sponsored by Regions Bank (formally merged from Regions Financial Corporation and Union Planters Corporation). The breakfast will be served in the Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Center, 150 East. Pleasant Hill Road, Carbondale at 8 a.m. There is no cost for this event.

For more information go to Southern Tech web site.

Bloggers learning tools of reporting

Bloggers learning tools of reporting: Bloggers -- those Internet-based writers without rules -- are fighting back against criticism that their work is unreliable, libelous or just poorly written.

More than 300 of them were in Nashville Friday for a weekend conference heavy on training in techniques used by journalists in what bloggers term the mainstream media.

A classroom full of bloggers sat at computer stations at the Freedom Forum at Vanderbilt University, learning how to access government statistical databases and analyze the material in them."

Research Park groundbreaking

The Southern Illinoisan reports: Research Park Groundbreaking Ceremony: "Dignitaries and Southern Illinois University officials turned a little dirt Friday afternoon to start construction on the second major building to go up at the Southern Illinois Research Park since its inception in 1999.

Legislators, including U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Belleville, and State Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, and university leaders, including Chancellor Walter Wendler and board of trustees Chairman Glenn Poshard broke ground on what will be a

[The $2.8 million, one-story, 20,000-square-foot multi-tenant facility in the park on Pleasant Hill Road] . . . will house graduates of the Small Business Incubator program, located in the Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Center already on park grounds. The building can house up to 15 firms and will take a little more than a year to complete.

Ray Lenzi, SIU associate vice chancellor for economic and regional development and executive director of the research park, said the facilities in the park will inevitably create the technological jobs people will want.

'Most of the things we now take for granted, including cars, planes, cell phones, computers and the Internet, did not exist in 1900,' Lenzi said. 'Similarly, the technology, jobs, work force and businesses for this century, for our children and their children, must and will be created by us if America is to maintain its competitive advantage and prosperity.'

Lenzi said SIU brings world class arts, athletics and academics to Southern Illinois. The research park component will bring the technological jobs in the region, making sure it is ready for the next phase in the American work force"

Blogs Will Change Your Business

Blogs Will Change Your Business