Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He is the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and the author most recently of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, which won the Zócalo Book Prize...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
CountryUnited States of America
cute moving lists
Cute. I'm on the waitlist to beta a new product, and have been offered the chance to move up in the list if I tweet about it. Not doing so.
talking want stopping
Talking about 'stopping globalization' is unrealistic - and probably not what anti-globalization protesters actually want.
thinking people creative
People want to be thought of as something other than a source of money. They want to be thought of as creative, thinking people.
decision bigs curator
Curators are great, but they're inherently biased. Curators are always making an editorial decision. Those biases have really big implications.
simple people needs
If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems?
internet
The Internet has not become the great leveller that it was once thought it could be.
real names identity
Reddit names are unconnected to real-world identities and it's commonplace for users to create 'throwaway' accounts to reveal sensitive information.
writing listening cabins
When I'm playing with circular saws, I'm offline (though often listening to podcasts) and when I sit in the cabin to read or write, it's wonderful to be offline for a few hours at a time.
gun media research
Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity.
book sleep technology
I fear that I can no longer travel without technology. Twenty years ago, I loved getting on a bus in West Africa and taking off for a city I'd never been to before, relying on advice from out-of-date travel books and fellow passengers on the bus. Now, I end up using TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps. I probably eat and sleep better when I'm on the road, but I miss the mystery of travel when it was more random and unpredictable.
people important movement
You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.
challenges information way
The Internet challenges traditional ways of distributing and processing information and so encourages new standards and behavior.
names interesting way
On Twitter, if you want to quote someone else, you say, 'RT, re-tweet, that person's name, and then what they said before.' And it's a way of essentially saying, 'I'm not saying this, but my friend said this and I thought this was interesting.'
agreement people promise
People who know me well have learned to insist that I commit to obligations by opening my laptop and putting them onto the appropriate calendar or list - a verbal agreement and a promise to remember won't work.