March 2002 Archive Page

"Storytellers - specialists in the art of conveying human emotions -- rule this future. And in this future, everyone is a storyteller. Everyone creates the collective experience. Everyone creates the collective intelligence." Dale Peskin

--Preparing for the Coming Era of Participatory NewsOnline Journalism Review)

"Just 11 years after it was born and about 6 years after it became popular, the Web has lost its luster. Many who once raved about surfing from address to address on the Web now lump site-seeing with other online chores, like checking the In box." --As the Web Matures, Fun is Hard to Find (New York Times)

"The instructions in this manual explain more about how to get fired than about how to succeed at work.... For instance, employees are asked to follow 'rules' that include stealing, disobedience, and excessive absenteeism (or should they have been termed 'actions that may result in termination'?)." (Suggested by Jason Amdor.) --Worst Manual ContestTechnical Standards, Inc.)

(NPR) --100 Best Fictional Characters since 1900

I can hardly believe it, but Space Food Sticks are back! Can this be for real? [Checks calendar.] Nope, it's not April 1 yet.

"Whether made by the Gap or American Eagle, a pair of khakis with a 32-inch inseam and a 34-inch waist will fit you just about the same. A Panasonic phone will plug into the jacks in your home as easily as a phone from AT&T.... Today, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are close to 800,000 global standards. But go back a century and a half and you find an American economy in which there were literally none." --Turn of the Century [the standardization of screws]font color="#000000"> (Wired)

2-year-old Morgan was broad-sided by a man who admitted he was distracted by his cell phone. Morgan was killed; the guy on the phone got a $50 fine and 2 tickets. --Don't talk on the phone while driving.

(PBS) 
A report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teenagers (teens talk back). --Merchants of Cool

There has always been a gap between those people and communities who can make effective use of information technology and those who cannot. Now, more than ever, unequal adoption of technology excludes many from reaping the fruits of the economy. --Digital Divide Basics

It may turn out that the “digital divide”—one of the most fashionable political slogans of recent years—is largely fiction. --Debunking the Digital Divide

"After one too many bad presentations, I decided to see if I could do something about it. Back in my hotel room I decided to show what Abe Lincoln might have done if he had used PowerPoint rather than the power of oratory at Gettysburg." Peter Norvig --Gettysburg Address on PowerPoint

"Computer technology was supposed to replace paper. But that hasn't happened. Every country in the Western world uses more paper today, on a per-capita basis, than it did ten years ago." --The Social Life of PaperNew Yorker)

I have a small collection of text-based computer games that you can play via a web browser.  These online versions won't let you save and restore games, but they ought to get you started. --Interactive Fiction Online Gallery

The first space colonists will probably take their faiths to the stars. The reference to "Star Trek" in the title of the article is cute, but Star Trek: The Next Generation was almost universally hostile to religious concepts (except when aliens presented them, that is). The more recent TV show Bablylon 5, although created by an athiest, has a more optimistic view of religion in the future. --Star Trek Chaplains? (UPI)

A progressive critique of Bush's response to the 9-11 attacks, interpreting Bush in terms of George Orwell's bleak totalitarian novel 1984:  "1984 has arrived. In his address to Congress Thursday, George Bush effectively declared permanent war -- war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy." --Bush's Orwellian Address

"'Nigerian Money Offers' zoomed from the seventh to the third most common type of online fraud last year, and the reason is obvious. In days gone by, the scammers had to canvass potential victims one at a time by fax and snail mail; now they have the speed, cost-effectiveness and anonymity of the Internet at their disposal..." --You might have a Ph.D. if...b> (WashPost)

• ... you pontificate on the ontology of home appliances that you cannot operate
• ...you take your children to see "the library carrel where Mommy lived for six years
• ...you tell people you meet that you've just graduated from "the 19th grade"

(14 Mar) Nigerian E-Mail Hoax (SF Gate)

"Asked by the firing squad commander if he had a last request, James Roges said, 'Why yes. A bullet-proof vest!'" Christopher Orlet --The Last WordsVocabula Review)

The survey, published by an organization promoting "World Book Day," probably does not count time spent in chat rooms, reading web pages as "reading", but the news item does not raise that issue. Related question: has feminism harmed boys? --Girls Read Twice as Much as BoysBBC)

A "collaborative hyperdrama" purports to be the archives of a young psychiatrist offering his services to the employees of a dot-com.  "Through transcripts of therapy sessions, patient diaries and logs, doodles, personnel records, telephone conversations, and other written and graphical materials, the Company Therapist is designed to allow a deep exploration of its characters and their stories." --The Company Therapist

Fine-Tuned is a free, text-based game, playable in many formats. From a review by Adam Cadre: "Not only has the author created an absolutely wonderful world, full of 'anti-autoists,' roving herds of goats, and fist-shaking train engineers, but it dares -- and manages to pull off -- a number of pieces of participatory comedy, which is much harder to pull off than just writing a bunch of funny lines that always show up.... I laughed so hard I thought I'd die. But what really impressed me was that I had to make the joke happen, or rather, the author had to set things up such that I would..." --Fine-Tuned: An Auto-mated Romance

"In 1044, a Chinese manual on producing gunpowder-based weapons included cannons, bombs for lobbing at invaders, two-stage rockets, and land mines." Chinese researchers stumbled across the formula for gunpowder while researching what they called the "immortality pill".  What forces control the way inventions end up being used? Mark Robinson --Accidental Geniusb> (Wired)

The genius of Web sites for accommodating multiple points of view is nowhere better illustrated than in the recent on-line craze for public diaries, or "blogs." The term is a shortening of Weblog - and also the name of the easy-to-use technology available at www.blogger.com: "Push-Button Publishing for the People." Jeff Warren --Point and Think (Globe and Mail)

September 11, 2001.It's been six months since

If they throw this renegade hacker hero in jail, it'll be the first time he's had a steady place to stay in five years. --He Hacks by Day, Squats by NightWired)

: "No more blog blog blog!" -- line not quite spoken by Captain Kirk ("Miri," Star Trek).  --William Shatner's Weblog

"Not telling someone where you got your information from is a kind of power stroke, effectively sealing your book off from any possible scrutiny, debate or challenge." Kathryn Hughes --The re-vision thing: Why are contemporary biographers and historians so afraid of footnotes? (Guardian)

In 1085, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book. In 1986, the BBC spent £2.5 million to create an electronic version. While William's original is still in fine shape, there are no computers capable of reading the laser discs on which the BBC version was published. --Ancient Domesday Book Outlives Electronic Versionb> (Ananova)