Want to read something in particular? Click on the Vote! link at the top to submit your top choice for the subject of Perez’s next poem.

Or feel free to follow Perez_Clinton on Twitter for real time thoughts, updates, riddles and rhymes!

That the text was a multimedia piece affected the writing process in that Perez was constantly aware of how she could incorporate other media into the text, and also that she needed to make my text that much stronger so the audience would not be distracted by links and widgets. The blog format is simplistic and professional in order to convey a tone of sophistication and credibility, as the poem itself employs a bit of juvenile humor; Perez added scholarly arguments, and links to their articles, as well as links to pop culture quotations to create a balance between the two.

The strengths of the blog format chosen to present the text are in the interactive widgets: there is a calendar to keep followers informed of Perez Clinton events, a link to Perez_Clinton’s tweet stream on the page so that the audience can see Perez Clinton’s thoughts in real time, and even a polldaddy poll for readers to vote on which topic they would like to read about next. The weakness is the chosen theme: while the site is easy to navigate, there is an abundance of white space (because Perez has only created one poem as of yet) and the site looks barren. Had she been able to construct several poems and upload them as posts, the page would not look so empty and unfinished. As this is a blog, and she has only completed one blog post, it’s fair to say this is a work in progress, but the one poem that is finished is a final work. Perez added other applications that require interactivity before they can begin to display: for instance, she added a box at the bottom right corner of the screen to stream the most recent reader comments. At this time, with no reader comments, this box is empty as well.

Perez strikes an effective balance between appearing as a credible bearer of information (through the linked articles to scholarly essays and the newspaper-like appearance of the blog itself) and an entertainment site (in that the poems are aimed toward a younger, non-news-crazed audience who may find the blog theme ironic, which would add to the humorous aspect of the site).

All in all, although the site itself is unfinished (as there is only one blog post), his post and the surrounding widgets/theme accomplished Perez’s goal for this project: to inform just enough to get a reader interested in completing further research (as Perez knows she is not an expert) and entertaining enough to ensure that the reader will return and perhaps explore other academic issues raised in future poem posts.

Thanks for your time! I hope you enjoy PerezClinton.wordpress.com and follow us on Twitter (Perez_Clinton) for Perez Clinton updates and events near you!

Added onto Gore’s system, created during the Cold War grind

This version of the internet, dubbed Web 1.0

Incorporated HTML coding and it ran REALLY slow

A black screen with neon font was a standard in computing

And the remedy for most everything was, generally, rebooting

Data was typically static and controlled by a single source

Copyright was law that defined what was mine and what was yours

The internet we use today is the second generation

Web 2.0 is the community we know that emphasizes collaboration

Data is interactive and fluid—easy to navigate

Where people from different places share and recycle e-space

Flikr, blogs and wiki, where the exchange of info is public and free,

Blur the lines that establish authorship and privacy

It’s easy to take property for granted, turn a blind eye or conceal

But just so you know it’s not the common, it doesn’t happen to every guy and it IS a big deal

More questions like these will arise, with the internet evolving

And these lines that confuse the laws that we use present problems that need solving

Influential scholars like Jensen, Lessig and Keen

Argue the validity of copyright—that it’s all about the green

“Web 2.0 ‘empowers’ our creativity, it ‘democratizes’ media,”

[that] “it ‘levels the playing field’ between experts and amateurs,” is the idea

It does so from it’s nature: that we collaborate and share

But unlawfully utilizing copyrighted material certainly isn’t fair

Keen suggests “another word for narcissism is ‘personalization,’”

which seems to be a common trend among my generation

Just take a look at YouTube mashups, remixes and such

Not to mention the Google books scandal, thank you very much

I aspire to be a writer, and to be employed in a few years

a these changes in this industry will undoubtedly affect my career

I have many leather-bound books (and my apartment smells of rich mahogany)

But their images, text and ideas are not mine to “have” legally

If these authors are so esteemed, shouldn’t they assume a rose by any other name

But the issue generally hinges on using their work for a personal gain

Citing references is tedious but it’s what we’ve got that works

But even in academia we’re still tweaking out the quirks

This is an issue of separation in a collaborative environment,

and if this keeps going the way it’s going, I won’t see progress before my retirement

Perhaps it’s time to just go with the flow and abandon the “me me me”

A wise man once said if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need