My Take on Morozov’s Net Delusion

Because of Hurricane Sandy, my New Technologies class had to make up the class in some productive way. I assigned the students the Evgeny Morozov book, Net Delusion: The Dark Side of the Internet. In addition to reading the book, each students had to write a 200-word response to a question I posted about the differences between Morozov’s argument about Internet freedom and what Clay Shirky’s utopianism of the creative possibilities afforded by global digital networks.

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I recorded a twelve-minute summary of the book’s first three chapters, hoping that I would reinforce the students’ perceptions of what they read. I even recorded my summary as a talking-head video, but then I got the idea about editing the video into short segments, along with titles. However, the video was recorded as H.264 HD video, and it was almost impossible to edit on Final Cut Pro. I tried iMovie, but I kept getting import errors so I gave up. Thankfully, I had also set up a USB microphone to record the audio on my computer. I was able to edit this audio very easily, sadly without the visual chapter markers.

If I didn’t have flu and had more time, I would tried harder to edit the video. But then again, it was just a talking-head video. Aside from my sweaty brow and my gaze directed off the screen, what else could you see from the video? After all, didn’t someone say that they preferred radio to television because the pictures were better?

N.B.: I am way out of practice with speaking to a microphone.

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