betajames

we are experiencing it as the completely overburdened and chaotic environment that it is. But that doesn’t mean people should stop publishing online. It just means that we need better filters. Because in fact, the over-publishing of content has been a normal problem since the invention of the printing press. It’s just that we had ways of ignoring things we didn’t care about. The problem isn’t getting people to shut up, the problem is creating filters to help people find their way to things they want.

"It's about having a record of what both the first-person participants in history and its spectators were saying," Raymond says. "Wouldn't it be amazing to have the broad and immediate reaction of people to Pearl Harbor?"

No question. But for most people, Twitter's charm is the way it cuts to the social media chase.

"I used Facebook a lot, but Twitter is my new social outlet," says Sandra Springer, 42, a UPS driver from Mason, Ohio. She hopped on eight months ago and hasn't looked back.

"It may only be 140 characters, but oddly it feels so much more interactive than other social media," she says. "Maybe because it's real time, but it just feels more personal to me."

This is why videogames are so interesting; they are, in effect, bottled external worlds, into which we can momentarily plug our inner worlds to see what happens. Each game is a little feedback loop, allowing the player both to imprint his actions into a world, to leave his little mark -- even if only in a high score table -- and to absorb, from a simplified sketch with no social or practical consequences, a new way of being, a new way of doing things.

Some people are more concerned with leaving their mark, others more with expanding their horizons. Some give more, some take more. The point is that in their essence, videogames encapsulate this dynamic between the two. They are a study in cause and effect; the easier those worlds are to affect, the more useful a response they give, the more the player owns actions and consequences alike, the more satisfying the experience.

Colleges should consider making the switch, too. Three-year curriculums, which might involve two full summers of study with short breaks between terms, would increase the number of students who can be accommodated during a four-year period, and reduce institutional costs per student. While there would be costs for the additional teachers and staff, those would be offset by an increase in tuition revenue.

Meanwhile, institutions that go quiet in the summer, incurring the unnecessary expense of running nearly empty buildings, would be able to use their facilities year-round.

Finishing in three years could be a challenge for students who need summer jobs to pay tuition. But three years wouldn’t be the rule, just the norm: like today, students could take an extra year or two if needed. And while it might be more expensive in the short term, getting out the door after just three years would allow young people to enter the workplace that much faster.

As the original NES game explains in the opening section: to depict Kirby you just draw a circle, some nubs for arms, shoes for feet, and then add a face. You can project anything you want into that because the face could be anybody’s. It’s interesting that the original game and several others have stressed and even encouraged people to draw Kirby. It taps into other aspects of people’s imagination because they can recreate Kirby however they like outside of the game. A quick doodle of Kirby looks just as much like the little pink ball as an expert rendition, there is no skill barrier to drawing him. Contrast that to something like Mario or Link, which people still love to draw, but can potentially be disappointed when their work doesn’t look like the original. Being able to draw Kirby easily removes a barrier to the avatar so that people can feel a greater sense of authority and control over it.

What exists in its place is a composite film that has been restored and spliced together with Special Edition scenes and sections from other, later prints. There exist enough film copies and back-ups to re-create the film, however, so nothing is impossible in terms of a more classical high definition re-release.

"There are some people who are just plain great at making music. That's not who I am," he says. "However, I can succeed at making music that works as dumb body music, but that can also meet someone in the middle if they want to investigate our songs in a deeper way. I know the things I can do: I understand music and I trust my taste. And taste is important." What this essentially means is that LCD try to make sophisticated music within the simplest possible parameters. Some might call such a goal pretentious; if they did, Murphy would not mind.

Even when Iggy Pop and the Stooges were finally admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year, and Iggy turned up to collect his award in a black suit, he soon ripped his shirt off. "Why do I always take my shirt off?" He smiles, "Hey, I have worked with shirts. I worked with shirts for a period in the Seventies." He pauses meaningfully. "It's to get across." Another pause followed by a stare so intense it could blow an amp. "To get closer to you. It just gets across, like a lonely sax. It reaches in a way that works for me." It clearly also works for the crowd inside the Music Hall of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn: a group of hipsters complete with kooky glasses and shrink-to-fit jeans, plus celebrities and media folk, who either provide the human waves for Iggy's crowd surfing, or storm the stage – to the evident horror of health and safety officers.

It is difficult to quantify how many Facebookers are frustrated enough to hit the delete button and go searching for greener pastures. One measure is a Web site called QuitFacebookDay, which is calling for Facebook users to close their accounts en masse on May 31 and has attracted nearly 13,000 commitments so far. Another site, called FacebookProtest, which is asking disgruntled users to boycott the Web site on June 6 by not logging in, has drawn roughly 3,000 supporters. In addition, a group on Facebook created to protest recent changes has swelled to more than 2.2 million members.

Of the three social media platforms studied, news-oriented blogs share the most similarities with the mainstream press. Bloggers almost always link to legacy outlets for their information, and politics, government and foreign events garnered the greatest traction.

There are, however, also some clear differences. While the biggest topic areas overlap, there was considerable divergence in the specific news events that garnered attention. In less than one third of the weeks did the blogosphere and traditional press share the same top story.