Closing Keynote, 2008 NMC Summer Conference, Princeton University
Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

New media technologies make it easy for us to circulate, appropriate, transform, and recirculate media content on an unprecedented scale. It is part of the mythology of MIT that young people learn to become engineers by taking apart household gadgets and putting them back together again. Can we say the same thing about contemporary artists and humanists — that they learn by breaking down and remixing elements of their own culture? We falsify the creative process when we teach young people that great art comes from single and isolated intellects rather than emerging from the creative engagement with and appropriation from older cultural traditions.

The John Lennon Bus was special feature at the 2008 NMC Summer Conference, where conference participants had opportunities to tour the bus and even get their own 15 minute session to record a sound loop. A special one day workship was made available for conference participants who signed up on our wiki; 7 participants were chosen to spend a full day experience where they recorded a song and created a video.

At the closing session, everyone at the conference got to see the video Where do We Go created by the group known as the "Digital Philosophers"

Get Flash to see this player.

The Digital Philosophers include:

Presentation from the 2007 NMC Symposium on Evolution of Communication

As the landscape of technology changes daily and new information is created, distributed, mashed up, and distributed again and again...the nature of how we communicate citations is becoming confused. While the Creative Commons license and the trend of public domain publishing exists, there are no intuitive ways to cite within virtual worlds, and governing bodies like the MLA and the APA have not provided directions to cite from virtual world documents (notecards, text chat, object text, and scripts). This lack of communication is frustrating to academics and students using virtual worlds for education and research.

Larry Johnson, CEO, The New Media Consortium
NMC Symposium on Creativity in Second Life

Why is the range and diversity of self-expression in spaces like Second Life so broad? What is it about these environments that are producing the phenomenal growth seen over the last few years? What is it that makes people willing, even eager, to spend hours online interacting in virtual space? A complete novice to massively multiplayer environments two years ago, today Larry heads up an effort by the New Media Consortium that is deeply engaged in exploring questions like these. His journey parallels and illuminates that of many others.