Call for Submissions: Your Digital Nation
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Frontline’s Digital Nation is a multiplatform project that aims to “capture life on the digital frontier” by exploring the use of technology and how it effects our day to day lives. Part of the project is a feature where visitors to the Digital Nation site are invited to submit videos that discuss the role technology plays in our lives.
Submissions can be video, photo collage, audio or animation, and should be three minutes or less. You can discuss the given topic in any way you choose, but just in case you find yourself stumped, Digital Nation has provided a list of questions you might like to explore, such as:
Does technology make us closer or more distant?
Unplug for a day (or a few hours!). Document yourself living the low-tech life.
Is technology increasing our productivity? Is this a good thing?
How do you parent in the age of the internet? What are the challenges?
And who is that fine, furry-looking fellow in row two, far left in the image above? None other than SMITH’s own comics editor, Jeff Newelt. Jeff tells a heartbreaking tale of a four-word text message he received from his girlfriend—”we need to talk”—and the breakup hours later. Jeff says he immediately performed “digital surgery” on Facebook and elsewhere, protecting himself from information and images that he knew would make his heart hang even heavier.
For more on the project, give this post over at Frontline a read. Then submit something. After all, everybody has a digital story—what’s yours?
Congratulations Jeff! and I must say I have been all over the world and met hundreds of interesting people, but you are at the top of my ‘people list’ I wish I could play twenty questions with. I have been a Harvey Pekar fan since picking up my first copy of American Splendor back on Jericho Turnpike on Long Island (no reason to give a free store plug here). I have also been trying to follow “Shooting War” but am having a difficult time of it, the medium is great but I don’t always live where mail is available or the internet is past 1997 technology (and I haven’t been able to order it). I am incredibly interested in this Digital Nation project but how do we submit? Do you want raw footage for you to edit or a finished three minutes? I have no interest in holding an iPhone next to my toaster and musing over the space program, but I know the impact of technology first hand as I have stood on a mountain on the border with Pakistan at 9,000 feet and re-enacted a scene from a “can you hear me now?” commercial with my future wife letting her know the battle was over and I was safe and sound.
I am glad to see you are living the dream, Jeff, and that you have lived your life the way you would have seen it when you were 14 years old, Congratulations! Tell Harvey he has a fan that carries with him an old beat up copy of American Splendor #2 with him all over the world, and thank you for putting it on paper.
[...] Adapted from “Call for Submissions: Your Digital Nation.” [...]