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Experience history with COMS 300 in Fall 2023.  (Click thru image for details.)

Learn to use an 18th century goose quill on parchment; set type by hand; send & receive morse code; use cryptographic techniques;  and experience the history of newspapers, photography, radio, cinema, TV and computers.

Sign up for COMS 300, #16209,  T-Th 11-12:15, during add-drop this fall.

Peace on Earth, 1939 — Hugh Harman’s animated short  was a break from the light-hearted tradition of animation in the 1930s. The MGM cartoon was a serious plea for peace just as World War II was starting. It depicted never-ending wars and the last people on earth killing each other, followed by animals rebuilding society using the helmets of the soldiers.

“Permit me a final word, if you would,” said Jim Gardner, retiring Philadelphia ABC affiliate news anchor, in his final address to the audience Dec. 21, 2022.

“The American free press has been under attack, not by forces from other countries, but from elements embedded in our own society, and even our own government. It worries me deeply.”

Gardner went on to quote Thomas Jefferson’s words to John Jay in 1786, “Our liberty can not be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”

“We are not the enemy of the people. Serving the people, you the people of the tri-state area, with responsible and unbiased journalism. This is our mission now and in the future. And if we falter, you damn well better let us know, for your benefit and for ours.”

By Kristi Hines, Sept. 2, 2022
SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL 

Randy Suess and Ward Christensen introduced the Computerized Hobbyists Bulletin Board System in 1978.

While initially designed to help the inventors network with fellow members of a computer club in Chicago and generate content for their club’s newsletter, it eventually grew to support 300-600 users.

CBBS still exists today as a forum with posts dating back to 2000.

As modems increased speed, bulletin board systems became more popular with computer users. Using the telnet BBS Guide, you can travel back in time and see over 1,000 bulletin board systems.

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By Jackie Llanos Hernandez

The Richmond Mercury
Feb 15, 2022 

A new license plate could be added this summer to the more than 250 options Virginians can choose from if the House of Delegates passes and the governor signs a bill to introduce the design commemorating a newspaper founded by emancipated men.

The bill to create a license plate in honor of the Richmond Planet passed the Senate unanimously last week. Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, introduced the bill on Jan. 21 with Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, as a cosponsor. However, the effort to increase awareness of the history of the pioneering Black newspaper started last year when Tappahannock native Reginald Carter started gathering the 450 preorders needed to kickstart the process before the General Assembly’s session began.

“It was definitely a sigh of relief,” Carter said of his reaction to the bill passing the Senate. “You know, sad that we’re not done, but this is a major step in the process that has been achieved.”

The Richmond Planet caught Carter’s attention while he conducted research with a Tappahanock genealogy society to tell the story of a lynching that took place in the area on March 23, 1896. That’s when he encountered articles by John Mitchell Jr., the editor and publisher of the newspaper who had been born into slavery and became an advocate for civil rights in Richmond and elsewhere in Virginia.  Continue reading →

The Conversation asked three experts on social media, technology policy and global business to offer one specific action the government could take about Meta’s Facebook service.

LET USERS CONTROL THEIR DATA 

Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University

Social media sites like Facebook are designed for constant interaction to engage users’ attention. To rein in Facebook, lawmakers must first understand the harm that results from algorithmic manipulation on these platforms. One thing Congress could do is make sure Facebook gives users more control over what data the company collects about them and why.

Most people who use Facebook are unaware of how algorithmic recommendations affect their experience of the platform and thereby the information they engage with. For example, political campaigns have reportedly tried to manipulate engagement to get more traction on Facebook.

A key aspect of providing such transparency is giving users greater access to and control over their data, similar to what’s proposed in California’s Consumer Privacy Act. This would allow users to see what personal data Facebook collects about them and how the company uses it. Many people don’t realize that Meta has the ability to make inferences about their political preferences and attitudes toward society.

A related issue is data portability tools and rights that allow users to take the data, including photos and videos, that they shared on Facebook to other social media services. Continue reading →

From the roof of the nine story Westinghouse K Building at the East Pittsburgh Works, radio station KDKA first covered the 1920 presidential  election a century ago. Westinghouse publicity claimed the election night broadcast was “a national sensation,” but that is only part of the story.   In fact, three other embryonic ratio stations were also broadcasting the election results that night —  the Detroit News’ “Radiophone” service, a temporary Saint Louis Post-Dispatch radio station, and the Buffalo Evening News broadcast through an affiliated with an amateur station.

The fact that KDKA is best remembered is probably because the station was a leader in radio technology with pioneering engineer Frank Conrad and also that the content of the broadcast was better organized with the help of Duquense University. About 1,000 people heard the election results in Pittsburg, thanks to Conrad’s suffragette wife, Flora, who helped organize listening parties. Flora had something to celebrate that night too. It was the first national election where women could vote.

Eugene Patterson was an editor for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution when he wrote this editorial of Sept. 16, 1963, a day after the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, which killed four children. The editorial is a classic in American journalism and probably the best of the 20th century.  

“A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.

Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand.

It is too late to blame the sick criminals who handled the dynamite. The FBI and the police can deal with that kind. The charge against them is simple. They killed four children.

Only we can trace the truth, Southerner — you and I. We broke those children’s bodies.

We watched the stage set without staying it. We listened to the prologue unbestirred. We saw the curtain opening with disinterest. We have heard the play.

We — who go on electing politicians who heat the kettles of hate.

We — who raise no hand to silence the mean and little men who have their nigger jokes.

We — who stand aside in imagined rectitude and let the mad dogs that run in every society slide their leashes from our hand, and spring.

We — the heirs of a proud South, who protest its worth and demand it recognition — we are the ones who have ducked the difficult, skirted the uncomfortable, caviled at the challenge, resented the necessary, rationalized the unacceptable, and created the day surely when these children would die.

This is no time to load our anguish onto the murderous scapegoat who set the cap in dynamite of our own manufacture.

He didn’t know any better.

Continue reading →