Slashdot Mirror
The Monrovian Analog Blogger
An anonymous reader writes "Motherboard.TV reports, 'In Monrovia, Liberia, there’s a guy taking the matter of a lopsided, state-run media and reshaping it into a free-of-charge, independent news-aggregator—all accomplished with dry-erase board and couple markers. (Sorry, internet!) Each morning, at 10:45 AM, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up and heads down to his bulletin board to post the day’s news, culling together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never see. Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as the country's — and probably the world's — only analog blog.'"
He'll probably be properly "censored" soon. Can't have the state lose control of the media...
Seriously though... props to him for taking a stand!
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Just another case of "blog" being used to describe something that people have been doing for ages. And now it's suddenly all great and shiny.
wait til gnaa hears about this.
it's a blog analogue! ...
Thanks, I'll be here all night.
I love this idea. It's straight-up. I used to use a white-board to schedule development for the team for the day. This is even better. I love it!!
He could take a picture of the board and then duplicate it onto paper. News, on pieces of paper! That way they can take the news with them to read it at home, on the train...they can share it with their family and friends. Avoid the crowds of people standing around all trying to read the same board.
Some people might like to receive the news on pieces of paper at their home for convenience's sake. He could offer a pricing model whereby they commit to a certain number of months- and it could be called a subscription.
Of course, eventually, someone will point out that he could communicate the news faster and cheaper to his subscribers if he did it electronically. He'll probably have to wait until the technology matures, though.
Please help metamoderate.
Hear that? That's the sound of a joke, going right over your head.
Please help metamoderate.
Each morning, at 10:45 AM, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up
That's the kind of job I want.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So apparently Slashdot is sooo out of touch they have forgotten why the word "Bulletin" precedes the word "Board" for a bazillion years before now? They never heard of a marquee?
Besides, wouldn't every single printed op-ed page in every newsPAPER be an "analog blog?"
I mean really posting news isn't even blogging, because blog is short for weblog, not webnewscaster.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
"organic carpet"? Keep up, man!
It's a Rich Self-replicating Content Distribution Network (rsCDN(tm)). It complements outdoor architectures, beautifies connected ecosystems, and synergizes with the real world. Periodic maintenance ensures minimal use of vertical resources!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This is both awesome and scary at the same time.
Awesome because he's bringing news to the masses, in a way that they can afford it and understand it.
Scary because he is selecting the news they get to read, and translating it first. That means he's able to put his spin on what his readers read.
For all we know, he could be an employee of Fox News.
-David
You mean printed blogs?
Did you catch Tux @ 3:21 :)
Here we had this before, but I suppose that similar examples can be found also in the ancient Greece.
what will it be when a news gets the liberia slashdot effect ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Thank goodness he can't have comments, look at the inspiring material /. has to offer in response to one man's struggle against a state-controlled media. They used the term analog blog because he's not printing a paper or taking the news to anyone, he's putting it all up on a blackboard and people are coming from miles around to see it. And we the people of the internet have nothing better to do with our lives than pick apart the semantics of the news report and mock it because it's been done for a long time. No, it's not some incredible new technology, but it is something incredible that deserves admiration, not your smug, sarcastic leering.
Did anyone else noticed that Linux nerd at 3:21? Behold Microsoft, they are everywhere, and they are spreading.
I know the tone on slashdot is more on the humorous side, but seriously, stop belittling this.
After the war, Liberia had no functioning utilities for over 14 years - no sewage system, no water, no electricity, no telephone. Nowhere - not even in the capital!
Without painting a stereotype, Liberians aren't exactly known for their entrepreneurship. This man should really be applauded for what he is pulling up despite difficulties.
If it is a blog, how do I read his old posts? Yeah, he's got a few boards there with older stuff on it, but what about what he said last year? Does he have a huge stash of them and (carefully) store the old ones in a shed somewhere?
This man deserves a Nobel.
Mostly harmless.
I expect the copyright goons are already on their way.
My mum was a schoolteacher, and some trendy young adviser came round to give a presentation on this new "multimedia" thing, and my mum's answer was "Oh, you mean just like Audio-Visual Tools? I've been doing that for thirty years."
Yeah, but the new addition of dry erase markers must modulate voltage levels into something useful, somehow...
Analog electronics are at work somewhere in this high-tech device!
>>>Yeah, because newspapers, diaries, and broadsheets have never existed before.
Not just newspapers, but the idea of posting news stories on a public bulletin board dates all the way back to New York City in the 1890s..... or even earlier. People would stand outside Wall Street or store windows, and read the headlines scrawled across chalkboards. It ain't something new.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
every morning you wake up at the Crack of Doom?
I was struck by the question is this an "analogue of a blog" or a "blog created in an analogue manner"? The former I suppose I am ok with but if the latter, I would like to point out that analogue is NOT somehow the "opposite" of digital.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
Check it out. There's a dude in the crowd ... in LIBERIA ... reading a CHALK BOARD BLOG ... and wearing a t-shirt clearly sporting TUX, the Linux penguin.
Our thing is mainstream now, I guess?
I looked around for the names of her four sons -- but couldn't find them. Even wikianswers had a post asking for their names, an as yet unanswered question. There's a certain amount of press-coverage density that's required before real transparency thrives. Liberia isn't there yet. Here's hoping it gets there before another tyrant starts wreaking havoc there.
"the word, "Mercy", is gonna have a new meaning when we are judged by the children of our slaves" ...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Right, analogue is the opposite of digitalis!
More seriously, if you read the fine summary, you'd have the answer to your question. Your lame attempt at irrelevant pedantry betrays a more fundamental refusal to think or investigate what you're talking about. Do you complain that a "hot dog" is simply a canine with elevated temperature, and should not be used to name a kind of sausage? For this kind of discourse, "analog" is shorthand for computer-free and "digital" is shorthand for computer-based.
Not just newspapers, but the idea of posting news stories on a public bulletin board dates all the way back to New York City in the 1890s..... or even earlier. People would stand outside Wall Street or store windows, and read the headlines scrawled across chalkboards. It ain't something new.
I'll go with even earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses
I'm pretty sure that everywhere there was a post near a town square, there has been an analog blog. Hell, isn't that where we get the term 'Post' from?
Even without that, there was always the town crier.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Why am I still seeing this type of story?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
At 3:20 in the video, there's a guy wearing a t-shirt with Tux on it.
Dinomite.net
I think that that Linux loving Monrovian is responsible for the driver compatibility of the chalk board (CUPS?) . That, or he does the LaTeX ...
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
Analog means that a voltage or current is analogous to another physical quantity, therefore the term analog computer (google it). For instance the voltage in a circuit is analogous to the pressure in your voice -- hence analog recording and processing. It can also be applied for non-electrical parameters -- the depth/width of the groove in a vinyl record for instance. You can also build pneumatic PID industrial process controllers -- they used to have those some decades ago -- those are analog machines, though not electronic. Of course you could also sigma-delta modulate the voice and record it as a stream of pulses -- it's still analog, the pulse density is the analog of the voice pressure. Once you throw in a clock and convert the pulse stream into multi-bit words and add and shift them in a FIR filter, then you're digital. Yes, you can say that analog is the oposite of digital, since there are no other means of processing and storing information that exist yet (or that I know of at least).