Cyberculture: January 2003 Archive Page

Your name is Masakati, which means "White Queen" in the language of the Scorpion People. You were named this before you were hatched, when the serpent witches foretold to your mother Essekunit, the Tangeri Queen, that her child would be as great a ruler as had been not seen in this Age: that you would be Queen not only of the Tangeri but of all the Scorpion People, and take back the lands stolen by the Empire.

--The Wheel, Masakati Episode 1: The White QueenInterfable.net)

The beginning of a collaborative fantasy story. At the end of the chapter, readers vote on what happens next. Set in an interesting world that borrows mythology from the Zodicac. I rather enjoyed the multi-chapter story I read a few weeks ago... this is a new story.

"Leonardo figured things out by looking at them, thinking about them and taking them apart. That compulsion to tinker has led many modern hackers to claim Leonardo retroactively as one of their own." --Da Vinci: The Pith Behind the ManWired)

Nice backgrounder for the Da Vinci exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Since most blogging tools are both free and addictive, it's no surprise that the sales cycle has been eliminated. Better yet, point and click blog designs mean that there's minimal consulting - either customization or configuration - required to set up your blog. The result? Weblogs are spreading like wildfire - by some accounts, the market is growing as high as 25% a month." John Hiler's June, 2002 article was found via Kairosnews.

--Blogs as Disruptive Tech -- How weblogs are flying under the radar of the content management giantsWebcrimson)

A student in my Writing Electronic Text course had an epiphany a few weeks after she chose to write a weblog for her term project. Like most newbie web authors, she had fiddled endlessly with the design of her first website, but the weblog software handles all the design for her; when she suddenly realized that weblogging is about writing, not about web design, her weblog really took off.

"My mother used to say that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing; the Internet demonstrates this point beautifully. Oh sure, these days everyone is concerned about the proliferation of porn, but the medical information on the Net is also widespread, disturbing and... -- for those prone to, shall we say, extreme concern for their health -- dangerous." Ceinwen Giles

--Internet HypochondriaGlobe and Mail)

A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not, of the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain;
And drinking largely sobers us again."
-- Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism."

The "Pierian Spring" is the source of the water that allows the muses to bring inspiration to authors. I never really noticed how relevant that whole passage is to the Internet.

Wired has published an article about the open source encyclopedia Wikipedia reaching its 100,000th article. This item first started appearing in weblogs last week. Once it's made its way to Wired, it will be read by the editors of more mainstream publications, who may want to feature it in articles for the general public. (Blogdex lets you track blogger links to the wikipedia press release, to see who first thought it was newsworthy.) Any news editor who wants to serve young, technologically savvy readers had better be paying attention to weblogs. Tracking Wikipedia Press ReleaseLiteracy Weblog)

I've contributed to the Wikipedia articles on interactive fiction, usability, Elia Kazan, and maybe a half dozen others.

"Only cranks, mystics, revolutionaries and wealthy dilettantes wrote without some form of pecuniary support, whether patronage, salary, direct sales, residuals, or the penny-a-word piecework compensation offered by pulp-magazine editors.... The Internet changed all that." --Independent Content Providerv-2 Organisation)

"The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and the users of MS-DOS-compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory. It tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reachóif not the Kingdom of Heavenóthe moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment." Umberto Eco's 1994 essay turned up on an index to Marshal McLuhan Studies.

--Mac vs. DosMcLuhan Studies)

"The problem may be that they are simply bored with the conventional curriculum, says the study, titled Morphing Literacy: Boys Reshaping Their Literacy. The study found it is a myth that boys do not read. While they are less interested in fiction or traditional literature than girls are, they read more on the Internet and memorize vast amounts of detailed material from games or stories they read in the newspaper, the research showed." Julie Smyth summarizes an academic report, but doesn't say where it was published.

--Study says boys do read, they just don't read booksNational Post)

Another telling quote, which reminds me of Sugata Mitra's minimally invasive teaching philosophy: " The researchers found boys are becoming literate "in spite of school instruction," and may end up better prepared for a career because their skills are more useful than being able to write a narrative or analyze a work of fiction....They found boys spend large amounts of time on chat sites and Web sites to get tips on how to "cheat" or compete at video games, read books about animals, sports and fantasy, and will pick up magazines and newspapers to read hockey scores, entertainment stories or news about things relevant to their lives, such as the death of Napster.

Vocation
"I want to be a Bohemian, Rachel."
"A what?"
"A Bohemian, a hanger onner around the arts"
"I thought you already were - all that cafe society poetry stuff"
"Yes, but it's kinda hard on your own - do you want to be one too?"
"Erm, can't I be a bum instead?"
Elin Merriman

--Fifty Word FictionAlistair Fitchett)

Click the question mark to view a random story, click N to see the newest, or click S to submit your own.

"[B]eing innovative flies in the face of what almost all parents want for their children, most CEOs want for their companies, and heads of states want for their countries. And innovative people are a pain in the ass.... [S]ome things?the nature of higher education among them?will have to change in order to ensure a perpetual source of new ideas. " Nicholas Negroponte --Creating a Culture of IdeasTechnology Review)

"Rightly or wrongly, record companies are detested by politicians (for corrupting youth), by webcasters (for demanding royalties), and by their customers (for inflating prices). Musicians and songwriters are famous for loathing the labels... Radio and MTV aren't in the industry's corner... And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into..." Charles C. Mann --The Year the Music DiedWired)

"This is all part of the Big Flip in publishing generally, where the old notion of 'filter, then publish' is giving way to 'publish, then filter.' There is no need for Slashdot's or Kuro5hin's owners to sort the good posts from the bad in advance, no need for Blogdex or Daypop to pressure people not to post drivel, because lightweight filters applied after the fact work better at large scale than paying editors to enforce minimum quality in advance. A side-effect of the Big Flip is that the division between amateur and professional turns into a spectrum, giving us a world where unpaid writers are discussed side-by-side with New York Times columnists." Clay Shirky

--The Music Industry and the "Big Flip"Shirky.com)

Another quote from the same article: "The internet has lowered the threshold of publishing to the point where you no longer need help or permission to distribute your work. What has happened with writing may be possible with music. Like writers, most musicians who work for fame and fortune get neither, but unlike writers, the internet has not offered wide distribution to people making music for the love of the thing."

The web is still primarily a text medium. Regardless of what the future holds, people have already had longer to figure out how to use text online. Until the day when we can talk to our computers in natural language ("Computer -- tea. Earl Gray. Hot.") , any innovation is welcome -- such as an interface that lets you query a music database by humming a few bars of the song you want to find.

"Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org ), a community-built multilingual encyclopedia, is announcing that the English edition of the project has reached a milestone of 100,000 articles in development.... Wikipedia is a public WikiWikiWeb, a website where anyone can edit any article at any time. Users build upon each other's edits, and vandalized articles are quickly repaired by restoring an older version. In Wikipedia's second year, thousands of volunteer editors from around the world have added 80,000 entries to the English version and 33,000 more to the other language editions of Wikipedia. This surge in growth has made Wikipedia the world's largest and fastest growing open content encyclopedia and the largest WikiWikiWeb.'' --Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Reaches its 100,000th ArticleWikipedia.org)

Inspired by Wikipedia, in July of 2002, I launched a collaborative open-content Glossary of Interactive Fiction, which seems to have plateaued at about 180 or so terms. Anyone is free to suggest or revise an entry.

"I went on a mission of etymological research. In this article you'll learn how the term, born of canned ham, moved into BBSs and MUDS and then was applied to USENET postings and E-mail. I've put in a short history of the earliest big spams, including a special page about the first E-mail spam from 1978. (You'll be astounded to see which net celebrity defends the spam. But we were all younger then.)" Brad Templeton --Origin of the Term "Spam" to Mean Net AbuseTempletons.com)

"I think it's possible to stop spam, and that content-based filters are the way to do it. The Achilles heel of the spammers is their message. They can circumvent any other barrier you set up. They have so far, at least. But they have to deliver their message, whatever it is. If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no way they can get around that." Paul Graham --A Plan for SpamPaulGraham.com)

Minimally Invasive Education: "This is a system of education where you assume that children know how to put two and two together on their own. So you stand aside and intervene only if you see them going in a direction that might lead into a blind alley." Sugata Mitra put a computer with a high-seed Internet access into the wall of a filthy slum. Almost instantly, slum children were using the computer to surf the Internet, paint pictures, and play music. "If computer literacy is defined as turning a computer on and off and doing the basic functions, then this method allows that kind of computer literacy to be achieved with no formal instruction. Therefore any formal instruction for that kind of education is a waste of time and money. You can use that time and money to have a teacher teach something else that children cannot learn on their own."

--India: Hole in the WallGreenstar)

The children didn't know what a "File" means, but they knew that if you clicked it, you could save and load your pictures. Some didn't even know what a "computer" is, but their creativity and curiousity more than made up for it. Another interesting quote from Mitra: "only reaction we got from adults was, 'What on earth is this for? Why is there no one here to teach us something? How are we ever going to use this?' I contend that by the time we are 16, we are taught to want teachers, taught that we cannot learn anything without teachers."

On 18th January 1903 Marconi sent a wireless transatlantic message from U.S. President Theordore Roosevelt to England's Edward VII: "In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved in perfecting the system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of the American People most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and the people of the British Empire." Jordan Shutov --100 Years of Wireless CommunicationWWW)

"The public water system is somewhat unpleasant to think about. Basically, the stuff you flush down the toilet gets sent through a filtering system. That system 'treats' the sewage until what remains is sufficiently pure to send back to you as drinking water.

As content intermediaries, publishers perform an analogous function. Individual software writers, authors, and musicians produce something close to raw sewage. The computer programs, books, and music that people buy are closer to drinkable water." Arnold Kling

--Content is CrapTCS)

A rather icky image, but no Internet personality is known for subtlety. The title is a reference to Bill Gate's 1996 essay "Content is King."

On Jan 17, 1998, maverick webmaster Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story on his weblog. (Actually, Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog" only a few weeks earlier, so I doubt anybody used that term for Drudge's website back then.) Drudge has posted an understandbly self-congratulatory piece about his website. To refresh your memory, here's part of what he wrote:

"At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month." Matt Drudge

--Drudge's Website Broke Clinton Sex Scandal 5 Years AgoDrudge Report)

"Most writers know the value of an informative title, but many beginning web authors don't know that each web page needs two kinds of titles. The in-context (IC) title always sits at the top of a page, with the rest of the document immediately beneath it.... The out-of-context (OOC) title is frequently displayed by search engines or archive pages, as part of a long sorted list." Dennis G. Jerz --Titles for Web Pages: In-Context and Out-of-ContextLiteracy Weblog)

The document referenced above is indebted to a 1998 AlertBox column, "Microcontent," which is far too geeky for my newbie web author students who need the excellent lessons it contains.

"An act of reading electronic language involves:

1. Setting up an electronic language environment;
2. Selecting particular input into the electronic text;
3. Receiving the output;
4. Analyzing what the electronic text does."

--Someone Writing about Their Reading of GoogleTechnacy Weblog)

I'm reminded of Espen Aarseth's definition of Cybertext -- a system that includes not only the array of bits in memory or phosophors on a screen, but the whole thing -- including the software used to create and view the text, the hardware (keyboard, mouse, monitor), the power grid that runs the whole system, and even (without stretching the point too much) the whole system of laws, guidelines and practices that control what sort of text gets created, distributed, rewarded, penalized, etc.

According to Jenkins, "Technacy primarily is about a new consciousness, an extended consciousness beyond oracy and literacy that encompasses the problems posed by a new language order - electronic language." I'm very happy I found this website. As soon as I get my course syllabi set up next week I'm goint to spend more time here.

"2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world."

Top 5 gaining Google queries from 2002:

1. spiderman
2. shakira
3. winter olympics
4. world cup
5. avril lavigne

Top 5 declining Google queries from 2002:

1. nostradamus
2. napster
3. world trade center
4. anthrax
5. osama bin laden

--2002 Year-End ZeitgeistGoogle)

This listing indicates that the world is moving beyond the events of 9.11.2001. I had toyed with the idea of making Morrowind my next comptuer game purchase... the fact that it's 9th on the "gaining" list makes me more confident it will be a good use of my limited free time. The singers on this list mean nothing to me, though I've used Eminem (7th gaining) in class when my students complained that the rhymed verse of Moliere's 1660's play Tartuffe was unrealistic. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

"Welcome to Google Village. This is part of a wider project exploring, analyzing, detailing and educating people on the issues to do with the new skills required to communicate now and in the next century. Literacy is no longer the key attribute to desire, work for and acquire in this world of electronic language (where people communicate across the internet). What we require now is Technacy." Elwyn Jenkins

--What Does it Mean for Internet Dwellers to Live in the Google Village?Technacy Log)

"Google Village" is a play on Marshal McLuhan's concept of the "Global Village." I'm glad I found this site. Perhaps fittingly, I stumbled across it while searching Google for new references to my own name.

"There may well be people who abandon Neuromancer on the grounds that it's riddled with sentence-fragments, but, in a sense, the sentence-fragments are there to scare off readers who aren't ready for that, and to encourage those who want to see the envelope of language pushed even further, the pedal taken even closer to the metal? I do know how to write formal standard English without making a great many mistakes." --William Gibson's WeblogWilliamGibsonBooks.com)

In his novel Neuromancer, Gibson coined the term "cyberspace". Now Mr. Gibson has a weblog. Welcome to the blogosphere!

"The high-tech industry plans to launch a sophisticated new lobbying campaign later this month to strike back against Hollywood in a battle to shape rules of the road for new digital technologies. The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project....hope to convince Congress that strict copy-protection legislation that sets technological mandates would stifle innovation, harm consumers and threaten an already suffering tech industry." Heather Fleming --Tech Industry to Take on Hollywood over Digital RulesMercury News)

Before you jump up and down cheering, note that Microsoft is one of the companies behind this new legal strategy. The end result will be to put more power in the hands of technology monopolists, instead of the publishers of entertainment media. So either way, you'll still have to pay to let Hollywood entertain you.

"You find technology virgins everywhere: Teachers who insist on getting detailed training for every new piece of technology that shows up; librarians who refuse to figure out the Internet text searching tools; doctors who won't use computer technology because it is beneath them; managers who deny their employees access to the Internet. Common to them all is that they are severely middle-aged -- in soul, if not necessarily in body -- and still think of PCs and the Internet as something new and extraneous to their jobs and lives, something they can choose not to be involved with." Espen Andersen

--Stamp Out Technology VirginityUbiquity)

See also Henry Adams's "The Dynamo and the Virgin" (1900). An excerpt: "As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,-scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair's-breadth further for respect of power,-while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force."

"Proposal. Develop a false website and organization concentrating on the newest national concern: videogame addiction and violence. This organization is called Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (MAVAV, www.mavav.org). There is a great amount of stereotypes about people who play videogames (anti-social, depressed, unintelligent) and a lot of videogame violence bashing and blame (scapegoat) by the media and the government. So I decided to play off this, exaggerating all the common stereotypes, creating absurd facts, and officially linking violence in videogames to killers. :)" David Yoo --Interactivity Final Assignment: Create a Hoax. Submission: "Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence" (Parsons School of Design)

For years, undergraduates everywhere will be citing this website in their freshman composition papers. Hint to students: look for peer-reviewed academic journal articles, not web pages that pop up in response to a google.com search!