Jon Garfunkel

I'm a software architect in Boston, Massachusetts. My day job is working for a software company in Cambridge that makes business process management software. A hobby of mine is doing research into media structures, the output of which you see here. What is "media structures"? In short, it's more than just "interactive" or "new" media-- it's about the structures which underly such media, and how they affect how people communicate. I use my programming skills in PHP, Java, XML to build software, and all of it goes into Civilities.

I try very hard to pursue this research as an amateur . There's been a lot of developments in this field over the last several years and it's difficult to stay independent. It's been suggested to me that I enter a graduate program to pursue this with more dedication; that's always a possibility.

Questions? Email me at: jon (at) civilities.net

Published Work

• Can Media Get Beyond Reactive Response to Tragedy? PBS MediaShift, 4/20/2007
• The Tangled State of Archived News Footage Online, PBS MediaShift, 8/27/2007

Notable Mentions on the great Interweb

• University of California at Berkeley Journalism School, Course J298 Syllabus, Fall 2007
• How to rescue your reputation from the New York Times and Google, Jack Shafer, 9/6/2007 
• "Jon, your post at Comment Management Responsibility: A Proposal is very detailed and thought provoking, as well as way more comprehensive than anything I'd thought so far." from Tim O'Reilly, April 2007
• "Jon Garfunkel is doing some amazing writing..." from Boris Mann, April 2005
• "this amazing site which is considering many of the things we consider but is way ahead of us on a lot of stuff" -- reflection by Colin McEnroe, Hartford journalist and teacher of a new media class at Trinity College, November 2005
• "Now, there's one man in the blogosphere who has thought a lot lately about diversity, particular gender diversity in our online community. Jon Garfunkel has done quite a bit of research..." from Elisa Camahort, March 2005.

Professional Memberships

• Online News Association, associate member
• Content Management Professionals (and Massachusetts chapter member)
• Association of Internet Researchers

Conferences

• attended Voting, Bits, & Bytes, Berkman Center for Internet Studies, December 2004
• guest attendee at Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility, Berkman Center, January 2005
• led breakout session at Massachusetts BlogLeft, Worcester, December 2005. "Where the technology will lead us"
• attended Gilbane Content Management Seminar SF 2006
• presented on panel at MediaGiraffe Project Conference, UMass-Amherst, June 2006: "The Internet As An Advocacy Tool -- Case Studies"

Reading File

• What I read via RSS feeds, more or less
• What I read directly, more or less
• What I bookmark

Fun facts

• Birthday: April 1. Hence my Fool Disclosure.
• Grew up in: White Plains, NY.
• Higher Education: B.S.E., Electrical Engineering, Princeton University 1998.
• Ways to misspell my name: John Garfunkle, Garfinkle, Garfinkel, JonSequitor. (or WentDancing)
• Not regularly confused for: Jonathan Garfunkel, Founder and Director of Tibet Education Network
• Named after: my father's grandfather, John Kivo. Thus, Hebrew name is Yohanan.
• Middle named-after: 32nd President (Franklin)
• Vehicles: 1998 Honda Civic, 1998 Trek 930.
• Electric bill for January 2006: $95, running Civilities server and electric heat.