In this special bonus issue of IDMAA, we bring together three stimulating articles, each focused on a unique element of the role that digital technology plays in our everyday lives. While the world of the digital has become mainstreamed across the globe, we are still in an infancy stage, struggling to make the best use of what it can offer us as individuals and as members of various communities. One of the goals of the Journal of the International Digital Media Arts Association is to serve as a forum where professionals can work through the challenges and powerful potentials of this arena, and the authors of this issue do precisely that.

Cynthia Wang explores the world of Apple and its company control over the technological devices consumers have embraced. In a world of ever-escalating planned obsolescence, Wang examines the intricate structures of power at work with Apple’s careful manipulation of what their devices “can do” and the ways in which digital natives skilled in technology have circumvented these limitations. You’ll likely look at any Apple device you own in a new light after reading her narrative of struggles between corporate strength and hacker ingenuity.

Jessica McDonald also examines organizational structures and their interplay with individuals, focusing in her article on not-for-profit organizations’ attempts to harness the power of social media. Exploring the concept of social capital, McDonald points to the ways in which NPOs (and scholars) often fail to reimagine what political and social activism might look like in the 21st Century from the perspective of citizens. Her article sheds new light on how political activism can operate in the world of social media and the need to approach this domain with an open and creative mind.

Finally, Angela Diamos offers us a brief think-piece on her experiences as an educator in the field of digital art and the possibilities and challenges of using digital media to teach about it. Emphasizing to students that digital artists need to embrace a future of constantly re-learning and re-conceptualizing, Diamos describes her pedagogical approach and suggests methods that engender community, creativity, and technological rigor.

The editing team of IDMAA’s journal is pleased to share these invigorating and thoughtful pieces with you and we look forward to your feedback through our website, at http://www.idmaa.org/journal/

—Sharon Marie Ross, Associate Editor

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In this issue

• V8N3: Fans, Followers, Friends, and Subscribers: Effective Use of Social Media for Nonprofit Organizations

  By Jessica McDonald | April 9, 2011

  It is hoped that these findings will illustrate social media users’ behavior and attitudes toward online advocacy, and offer insights into effective methods for social capital formation via the social media platforms.

• V8N3: Teaching Digital Media: A Hybrid Approach

  By Angela Diamos | April 9, 2011

  Digital media is by definition a technology based investigation and as digital media’s relevance grows in contemporary culture the tool, computer software and hardware, needs to be taught as part of a foundation of skills […]

• V8N3: Tinkering with the iPhone: Subversion and Re-Appropriation of Power in Apple’s World

  By Cynthia Wang | April 9, 2011

  “You have a video recording application 33 on your iPhone?” I stared incredulously at my friend’s iPhone, which, from the outside, looked a lot like mine. When I bought my iPhone 3G back in the […]