Cyberculture: August 2003 Archive Page

The anonymous e-mail offered $5,000 to any vendor capable of promptly delivering a collection of far-fetched gadgets for conducting time travel. Among the mysterious devices sought by the message's author were an "Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement" and an "AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor." --Brian McWilliams --Building a Time Machine by Spam (Wired)

--Nerds and Geeks (Kairosnews)

Over on KairosNews, blacklily8 playfully taunts editor Charlie, "Can you tell me what the difference is between a geek a nerd? You seem to be the expert!"

I had a minute before heading home for the day, and thus spake Google:

http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=geek

http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=nerd

The Jargon Lexicon notes that the word "nerd" probably derives from the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Circus," but as I recall reading that book to my son (it was one of a dozen or so Seuss books we regularly checked out of the library) I'm fairly sure it was spelled "nurd".

Such concerns about donations have been raised in fields of study as diverse as auto engineering and medicine, but Microsoft'sdonations are a special case. Because students are likely to keep using the technology after graduation, they help to maintain Microsoft'ssoftware industry dominance. -- Ariana Eunjung Cha --Microsoft'sbig role on campus : Donations fund research, build long-term connections  (MSNBC/WashPost)

Slashdot Takes 'Gullible' out of Dictionary

Geek community website Slashdot has posted a link to "Why computer virus writers are useful and we should thank them", which purports to be a transcript of a teleconference with "Samuel D. Forrester, one of the most famous immunologists in the world".

Journalism 101... check your sources. I'll help you. Google for Samuel D. Forrester. Nothing (although Google will soon pick up on the Slashdot story, much to Orlowski's dismay).

Note "Forrester"'s definition of immunology:

Immunology is the study of the complex and sophisticated immune system. The immune system is a network of cells and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by "foreign" invaders or germs. The body provides an excellent environment for germs. When they do break into a system, it is the immune system's job to keep them out or to seek and destroy them.

Now, see this definition, from the amazingly acronym'd AAAAI, where the I stands for "immunology":

Immunology is the study of the complex and sophisticated immune system. The immune system is a network of cells and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by "foreign" invaders or germs. Our body is susceptible to invasion from germs. When the germs do break into the body, it is the immune system's job to keep them out or to seek and destroy them.

(Tip of the hat to dilger on Kairosnews.)

The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn't be read anymore. --CD-Recordable discs unreadable in less than two years (CD Freaks)

The site has posted a rough translation of the Dutch text.

Next to page views and hit counts, the blog indexes are a good way to see if your story has people talking -- with either good or bad feedback. Plus, marketing folks at media companies are starting to watch them, and PR people are using them to track companies and product releases, according to David Sifry, who runs Technorati. --Mark Glaser --Weblog Indexes Help Journalists Track Stories -- and Boost Their Egos (OJR)

I am cutting the whole thing into paragraphs, using my very sharp scissors. I will read a paragraph at the time. I will read it disjointed and jumbled, and see what I can do about the argument before me, without linking it to the devastating argument over or under on the page. Doing this I am asserting my power over the criticism, which, right now, does feel like an attack. -- Torill Mortensen --Panic Attack (thinking with my fingers)

Torill is preparing for her dissertation defense, which involves responding in a very public venue to criticism written by three experts in her field.

I daresay that in the months since she completed her dissertation, Torill has been doing more blogging than grappling with the specific issues that formed her 400-page dissertation. So she is going to chop up her committee's comments into blog-size chunks, defamiliarizing the old-media scholarly essay, forcing it into the realm of the trackback, the ironic quip, and the fisk -- a realm where Torill feels she comfortable.

But you've already spent years preparing for this defense, Torill -- you can draw on that, along with your mastery of connection-building weblogging, to pull through. Good luck!

A New Zealander who sent millions of junk emails out every day has shut his business after his personal details were posted on the web. --Spammer ducks for cover as details published on web  (New Zealand Herald)

Spammer Shane Atkinson was outed by the Juha Saarinem of the NZ Herald. But like Pez candies lined up inside their plastic dispenser, new spammers are probably stepping forward even now. B*stards.

Cyberslackers, egosurfing, data smog? All three terms have entered the English language, according to the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of English, who have added 3,000 more words to the 350,000 words and phrases in modern usage. --Charles Arthur --Internet terms make entry in dictionary (The Independent)

Contemporary English still contains a host of idioms that date from the mechanical era. We "spin our wheels" or "stay on track." We might "hammer" an opponnent in a debate, or complain that "the pieces don't fit". Even some computer terms owe their origins to the mechanical age -- the "line" in "online" and "offline" referred originally to the assembly line.

This is Dan Rather's profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlayed on the back of Patrick Stewart's head. It's recombinant phrenology. The elements of phrenology recombined in ways that follow the rules of irrational logic, a rigorous methodology that follows nonrational rules. It is a structure for following your intuition and your obsessions. It is the hyperfocused scribblings of the mad and the gifted. -- David Byrne
--Learning to Love PowerPoint (Wired)

Byrne uses PowerPoint as his medium. His commentary on Dolly the genetically engineered sheep is also very good.

Alas, the searches prove fairly elusive. But boynton found Sylvia Plath Engineering so intriguing and poetic a concept that she thought the only thing for it was a Googlepoem. Here are some edited couplets freshly compiled:

plath sylvia plath on engineering
engineering, accounting, working

Nonfiction Technical Romance Sports
the engineering part poets

own sketches the: Cognitive
by Sylvia Plath. - - "You leave

to express deep emotions toward
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard

engineering. A Marriage of True
and as scaffolds for tissue
--Sylvia Plath Engineering (boynton)

One day in the future all the lights in the city go out. The turbines stop, the telephones become quiet, the traffic lights shut down, TVs dim and computers download, and elevators wedge between the office towers’ floors. Hospitals with battery-run backup supplies stay functional, but the banks and the stock exchange with their E-Money, the government offices and transnational boardrooms, the TV studios and radio stations, the cafes and bars and restaurants, are all unplugged. We’d be engulfed by a night unlike anything anyone has known since before the Edison Illumination Company lit up New York City in eighteen eighty-two, extending the hours of the day, turning the streets into a twilight spectacle of artifice, priming the crowds for the first time to watch and wait. --Powe's Outage (via Matthew G. Kirschenbaum)

MGK points towards a timely book: B. W. Powe, —B. W. Powe, Outage: A Journey Into Electric City (1995)

But "computers download"? That makes no sense in this context.

"The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction.... In creating community software, we are, to some extent, trying to create a third place. And like any other architecture project, the design decisions we make are crucial. Make a bar too loud, and people won't be able to have conversations. That makes for a very different kind of place than a coffee shop. Make a coffee shop without very many chairs, as Starbucks does, and people will carry their coffee back to their lonely rooms..." Joel Spolsky --Building Communities with Software (Joel on Software)

Will has almost finished the code for adding comments to postings on this blog... actually, as far as he's concerned, he pretty much has finished, but I asked for a "preview comment" feature. Will sent me the above article, which makes a good point:

Q. Why don't you show people their posts to confirm them before you post them? Then people wouldn't make mistakes and typos.

A. Empirically, that is not true. Not only is it not true, it's the opposite of true.... It's like those studies they did that showed that it's safer, on twisty mountain roads, to remove the crash barrier, because it makes people scared and so they drive more carefully...

Hmm... this makes some sense, but then I can think of plenty of times I've botched a comment with malformed HTML, and I really appreciated the ability to preview. I suppose comment pages don't really need HTML, do they? Maybe simpler is better.

But I do think it's important to note Joel's community is all about software development... the behaviors he has observed may be particular to or more prominent in software developers. Perhaps readers of a weblog on literacy will behave differently, and will prefer to see their post in-context before the submit.

But maybe I'll be a weasel and ask for a prominent "Post Without Preview" button and a smaller, less obtrusive "Preview" link. Well, this is food for thought.

Update: Nick writes: "How about 'I'm Feeling Lucky'?"

"Yes, the game business is increasingly reliant on movie licenses and sequels. It is less willing to take big risks, particularly in themes or audiences. But that risk aversion reflects an industry that largely is making fewer, bigger titles with absorbing, often branching narratives, well-written dialogue and much larger budgets -- as much as $10 million or more -- for audiences of growing maturity and sophistication.|Combine that with the increasing technological proficiency of the current set of gaming consoles and more capable PCs, and what players are getting are games that technically and artistically are starting to realize the true power of an industry Holy Grail -- the interactive movie." Suneel Ratan --Games Close In on Citizen Kane  (Wired)

I think it's sadly limiting to discuss computer games in terms of how well they emulate cinema. We have to pull our terminology from somewhere, of course.

"When students in Biloxi, Miss., show up this morning for the first day of the new school year, a virtual army of digital cameras will be recording every minute of every lesson in every classroom.|Hundreds of Internet-wired video cameras will keep rolling all year long, in the hope that they'll deter crime and general misbehavior among the district's 6,300 students -- and teachers." Greg Toppo --Who's Watching the Class? Webcams in schools raise privacy issue  (USA Today)

This article goes beyond the typical "privacy rights eroding" comments you'd expect to find, and even interviews a teacher who likes the cameras:

Page, a former biology teacher, granted open access to anyone who wanted to view his classroom, no password required. He says families tuned in regularly and loved it. ''You could see if the kid was wearing the same thing they left the house in that morning.''

I do think it's very sad that we even have to consider turning schools into panopticons.

Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher and social reformer, published his plan for the Panopticon penitentiary in 1791. Essentially, it was for a building on a semi-circular pattern with an 'inspection lodge' at the centre and cells around the perimeter. Prisoners, who in the original plan would be in individual cells, were open to the gaze of the guards, or 'inspectors', but the same was not true of the view the other way. By a carefully contrived system of lighting and the use of wooden blinds, officials would be invisible to the inmates. Control was to be maintained by the constant sense that prisoners were watched by unseen eyes..... Beyond the metaphor, a model of power also lies in the concept of the panoptic, and it takes us well beyond the Orwellian jackboots and torture, or even the rats. The normalizing discipline, the exaggerated visibility of the subject, the unverifiability of observation, the subject as bearer of surveillance, the quest for factual certainty - all are important aspects of the panoptic as model of power. The question is, to what extent are all these necessarily present in each context? Sociologically, is electronic surveillance panoptic power?" (Lyon, "From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon.")

Be warned; this is a (strictly hypothetic) Google fan's nightmare.

• 2014: Google, using its Geolocation feature, starts to heavily censor content for certain countries. Entering "Hitler" at Google.de returns zero results.
• 2015: Google buys the Yahoo! Directory and removes the DMOZ Open Directory Project.
• 2016: Google is successfully sued by Microsoft for spidering Windows Servers. Also, Internet Explorer 9 won't allow accessing anything but MSN search.

--Phillip Lessen --The Rise and Fall of the Google Empire (Google Blogoscoped)

From Phillip Lessen's Google-focused blog. The post "Googling Politics" describes using Google to do some informal quick-n-dirty text analysis.

Fully 80% of adult Internet users, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for at least one of 16 major health topics online. This makes the act of looking for health or medical information one of the most popular activities online, after email (93%) and researching a product or service before buying it (83%). | Our finding represents a substantial enlargement of the population we have called online "health seekers" in the past. Previously, we have reported that 62% of Internet users said "yes" when we asked if they look for health or medical information online. For the first time, we prompt respondents with questions about specific health topics, to give a fuller portrait of what Americans are looking for online. Not surprisingly, the number of health seekers increased when we asked Internet users more specific questions. --Half of American Adults Have Searched Online for Health Information (Pew)

The above is a summary of the full document, a PDF file.

"After a user selects ?print? from the browser, the page is formatted before it is sent to the printer. The width of the layout is reduced to about 650 pixels for 8.5" x 11" paper, or 630 pixels for A4, assuming normal margins.|If all the elements of a page can't wrap around to fit within this 630-650 pixel area, content on the right will simply be cropped off. This is often caused by absolute positioning of page elements, such as fixed table widths, or large images. A web page with a fixed size of 800x600 pixels may look great online, but will lose its right edge completely when printed.|Flexible layouts relying on relative positioning are better for printing, allowing the page to compress down to fit onto paper." James Kalbach --Printing the Web (Boxes and Arrows)

At my UWEC site I had a little PERL script that would re-format my pages for print -- very helpful to me since I often taught in classrooms with no computers, so I had to print my handouts and make overhead slides. The sidebar always got cut off.

Now I'm experimenting with a CSS layout that doesn't rely on table. The Boxes and Arrows article looks like a good starting point.

"I couldn’t help reflecting on the connection between hypertext and napalm, via Vannevar Bush..." Jonathan Delacour --As We May Incinerate (Jonathan Delacour)

A fascinating exercise in connecting the dots, and a glimpse into Vannevar Bush's "war guilt".

John Scalzi writes:

So basically, my job:

1. Demystify the journaling and blogging process for AOL members so they can jump in and start doing it.
2. Encourage the writing, reading, and linking of blogs and journals on AOL and in the blogoverse.
3. Write a kick-ass blog worth reading.

Why me? Well, why not?

--AOL Hires Blogger (Whatever)

I hadn't heard of this guy before. I'm mostly blogging this to I'll remember it.

Hard-core bloggers are bracing for another September that never ends.

Every September, a wave of newbies arriving at college and posting to Usenet for the first time used to upset the geektopian community carefully crafted by its participants. In September of 1993, hordes of AOL newbies with net access but no clue about netiquette lumbered into cyberspace.

I recently read a snarky troll commenting on a blog (can't remember where) that Usenet is better than it has been in a while, since the newbies are all blogging now.

My opinion of AOL is pretty much the same as my opinion of Barney the Dinosaur -- it's great for its intended audience, but that audience isn't me. (There are plenty of kids shows that I can watch without vomiting: Teletubbies, VeggieTales, The Wiggles. But Barney? No.)

Since AOL is staying away from the term "blog", it's likely that the culture of the AOL journal community will be a bit insular, like the LiveJournal communities; but overall I think the blogosphere will probably benefit.

"Textual history teaches us that authors have been taking back their words for a long, long time (in the form of variants and revisions and new editions), and that 'their' words, as we read them on the page, might or might not originate with the person named on the title sheet. In other words (so to speak), the textual critic knows that all writing is, of necessity, social." Matthew G. Kirschenbaum --Social Hardware (Matthew G. Kirschenbaum)

Kirschenbaum cites Adrian Johns's observation that (in K's words) "that the trustworthtiness and reliability of the printed word is a relatively recent development, born of a concerted effort by the modern publishing industry and not print’s 'natural' tendency toward stability and fixity."

I was thinking a little more about folk authorship as it appears on the Internet, where it seems most changes are additive -- comments tacked on at the bottom of the page, blog posts marching across pages of archives, blogrolls swelling in length.

But maybe the most significant way that the Internet changes is simply that pages disappear -- whether the author takes them down deliberately, or (as in my own case) the author moves, and takes on a new URL as a sign of a new affiliation.

As a compromise between chaos and fixity, I like the idea of saving old versions of texts. I like the idea, but I'm too lazy to bother saving versions of my own texts. Well, shortly before each major site-wide change I make a copy of the whole website... but the chance of anyone out there actually needing a particular version of one of my pages is probably insignificant.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to ping The Wayback Machine, to ask it to archive a particular page for posterity?

(Checks Google.)

Lo and behold... if you use the Alexa toolbar or you click on "Show Related Links" (MS Internet Explorer), the Wayback Machine will check the site within a few days and the archive will appear six months later.

I can't remember if I cried
When he cut me from his blogroll side
But something touched me deep inside
The day the blogging died
--The Day the Blogging Died (Radio Free Blogistan)

The thing about oral composition is that the oral performances aren't archived, so people who repeat the performances for new audiences tend to remember only the best stuff. Since there are really no space constraints on the web, this spoof has gotten too long, to where it's a just a list of rhyming in-jokes. Still, it's amusing.

"Academics are already seeking to study early games as the awakening of a potent new art form. Future developers will want to see how earlier designers approached play and mechanics -- and solved complex problems using limited technology." Suneel Ratan --Arcade Addicts Joust with Past (Wired)

There was a time not too long ago when cinema wasn't considered worthy of academic study. While there's a heap of difference between cinema as an art form and cookie-cutter Hollywood blockbusters, and while it's probably true that most students who want to study cinema are interested in contemporary works, few people in the movie industry thought seriously about preserving old reels, so much movie history is lost.

Software that emulates the old consoles will help somewhat, of course... but the hardware is important, too.

Update, 11 Aug: Matt Hoy send a link to his collection of restored arcade games and writes, "There is definetly a "purest" movement in the collecting community. They recognise the usefullness of emulation, but would rather have original hardware, even if it's buggy and prone to failure."

I had forgotten about the monster-looking guys on the "Space Invaders" console -- those figures had nothing to do with the images displayed on the screen (since we only saw the exterior of the ships).

--Merely OK -- Usability Testing: What is It? (EServer TC Library)

Of the 15 or so of my resources included in the EServer TC Library, my handout on Usability Testing is ranked the worst. Does anyone out there have any suggestions to make it better? Write a review, and post it on the page.

The rest of my resources are at least "Good", so I'm not at all unhappy. At any rate, I think this model of online review is desperately needed in academia.

"When small independent online publications and collaborative news sites with an amateur staff perform original reporting on community affairs, few would contest that they're engaged in journalism.|When citizens contribute photos, video and news updates to mainstream news outlets, many would argue they're doing journalism.|But when bloggers comment on and link to news stories, is that journalism?" J.D. Lasica --What is Participatory Journalism? (OJR)

"This is a very bad time for a new, young anchor to be starting out, because they'll be the first to go. The point and click selection process of INTERACTIVE communication will eliminate the need for a news jockey--and certainly for the tiring 'teams' of too friendly, overly made up glamor clones we get on 3 affiliate stations in every market in America." Greg Bryon --News of the Future: Will the Internet spell the death of local television news as we know it? (TV News)

From a collection of essays called "TV News: What Local Stations Don't Want You to Know!"

"Turns out Alex had been snooping in her Web cache, found the URL for the blog, and voilà, her secret was out." --Busted By a Blog: Online Journal Reveals Relationship Infidelity (ABC News)

Here's a good example of how a journalist can subtly editorialize.

Alex and Johanna have mended ways and learned a lesson: "We clear the Internet cache after we talk online."

It would be too obvious if the reporter had written, "These people are so shallow that the lesson they learned was not one of remorse and forgiveness, but a way to ensure that their future lies to each other are not so easily exposed. These people deserve each other."

As Sartre wrote in No Exit, "Hell is other people."

"Lord willing, AOL stock would rise high enough that Colburn would make enough to donate $1 million to the rabbis, with plenty to spare. The stock was a pretty sure bet. The way AOL's stock was ticking up, up and away, reaching beyond $90 a share that December, he didn't exactly need God's help.|Then again, why take chances?|One rabbi, however, wasn't completely sold on the deal. |Apparently sensing that Colburn was open to further negotiations, the rabbi offered a counterproposal. He said he would pray for AOL's stock to rise only if Colburn started showing up at synagogue." Alec Klein --Lord of the Flies (WashPost (registration))

Long excerpt of a book on AOL. Good reading, though I can't say I cared for the clunky passage that informs me that the above scene "was a stunning moment." I was already stunned -- there was no need to informe me what I was supposed to feel.

"[I]t should come as little surprise that a technology behind blogs--online chronicles of personal, creative and organizational life--has manifested the kind of bitter fight for control that is inevitable in any truly democratic institution....The dispute offers a glimpse into the byzantine and highly politicized world of industry standards, where individuals without legal authority over a protocol may nonetheless exercise control over it and where, consequently, personal attacks can become the norm. Despite the apparent pettiness of developers' sniping, their arguments over digital minutia may carry enormous consequences, and corporate interests remain poised to capitalize on the conflicts if they are not resolved." Paul Festa --Battle of the Blog (CNet News)

I've been following the Winer/RSS developlment fairly closely, but I've held off on blogging about the core of the dispute because I hadn't found a really good introduction to the subject. The above article does a good job introducing the major players and stepping back to provide the big picture.

It's always good to pause and look at the big picture. I was at a faculty meeting today where I mentioned in passing that I am a weblogger... several of the people in the room hadn't heard the term, though when somebody asked, "Do you mean 'blogger', then heads started nodding. I would never have imagined that a person would know what a blog is but not what a weblog is.

--New Google Operator: ~synonyms

Google has added a new operator -- type "~word" to search for what Google calls synonyms (though sometimes it just appears to be different forms of the same word).

An interesting detail... if you search Google for "~blog", one of the words added is "blogger", while if you search Google for "~weblog" you don't see "weblogger" added.

It wouldn't be because Google now owns blogger, would it?

"Video games offer worlds for players to explore. Parents and politicians aren't always happy with what goes on in digital realms, but now universities want to use gaming technology to build better teaching tools for schools." -- Wired's blurb for an article by Brad King --Educators Turn to Games for Help (Wired)

"How can you boost your web site's credibility?|We have compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people." --Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility (Web Credibility)

My former student Anne Wendt, who suggested the site, did a project for me on a related subject. Thanks for the link, Anne.

Unlike most online web-writing tip pages (ahem), this one offers links to supporting research. Very useful.

"Surveys show that about half of 20 to 29 year olds read the newspaper every day in 1972; by 1998, just 20 percent of twenty somethings read the paper every day.|'The younger audience is not subscribing to the newspapers. This is a major concern for us,' said Noe. 'But we also know where they are -- they?re on the Internet. We?re just trying to get them to look at our site.'"

But for
--Newspaper Web Sites Struggle to Attract Younger Readers (OJR)

Thanks for the link, Mike.

I'm writing this during a break in the Associated Collegiate Press/Advisers of College Media convention, which is full of bright young people who not only want to read the news, but want to write it.

At the convention, I was fortunate enough to run into a former student, Ben Charbonneau, who is an occasional contributor to this weblog.