Moveable Types of Information Literacy: Emerging Electronic Genres and the Deconstruction of Peer Review

Moveable Types of Information Literacy: Emerging Electronic Genres and the Deconstruction of Peer ReviewLiteracy Weblog) Vannevar Bush, writing in 1945, lamented that the volume of scientific knowledge being published each year forced researchers to spend unprecedented time and energy searching for relevant information (and choosing what to ignore). His solution, the Memex, was a photocopier…

The Most Lamentable and Excellent Text Adventure of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Update, July 2015 — the link to the original is dead. The IFDB entry from the Hamlet text game points to a link that also seems to be dead. Who really killed Hamlet’s dad? What does King Richard III want with a horse anyway? And where did the gravedigger get that gorgeous pink dress? Avenge…

Rationale for 'La Tour Eiffel'

In order to compose this piece, I had to depend on a circular way of thinking. Initially, my plot was linear, but that did not work well. Rather than use a traditional pyramid plot structure, I outlined plot points, and wrote something for each. Then, I added more pages under some plot points and linked…

Le règne des robots

Écrite en 1920 et jouée pour la première fois à Prague l’année suivante, cette pièce de théâtre, intitulée Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.), introduit le terme robot, qui remplacera dorénavant celui d’automate. La pièce de Capek fut acclamée dans le monde entier. — Dennis G. Jerz (via an anonymous translator) —Le règne des robots (L’Encyclopédie de L’Agora)…

An Excerpt from Mechanisms [2]: ‘Professor RAMAC’

Among the attractions at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium, visitors would have beheld “Professor RAMAC,” a four-ton IBM machine capable of offering up responses to users’ queries on a two thousand year historical span… [T]he Professor offered the general public its first encounter with the magnetic disk storage technology today called the hard…

Blurring the Borders of Rhetoric and Hypertextuality in Weblogs

Early, link-heavy blogs were, for the most part, a method of sharing links. They usually contained entries that consisted of one or two hyperlinks, the blogger’s commentary on the link’s content, and a place for other bloggers to make comments about the entry. These early blogs often focused on what <a href=”htttp://www.rebeccaspocket.net/essays/weblog_history.html”>Blood calls “the dissemination…

Open Access Journals in the Field of Education

Update, June 2015: New URL for the Directory of Open Access Journals in Education To the best of our ability to discern, we have included only links to electronic journals that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost. We have excluded professional magazines that are largely not refereed, and commercial journals that may…

Virginia Nabs Two Big Spammers

Two North Carolina men were indicted for violating the state’s junk e-mail law by sending thousands of e-mail pitches for investments, software and other products, in what prosecutors said was the nation’s first felony charges for unsolicited e-mail. —Virginia Nabs Two Big Spammers (Wired/AP) I’d like to think this will make a difference… maybe it will,…

What Not to Do When You Blog

Often, while sifting through the mountain of daily Gothamist correspondence, we come across emails asking for advice about starting a blog. Why anyone would consider Gothamist an authority on the sweet, intricate science of blogging is beyond us — but we are loathe to sidestep our obligation to respond. Here then, based on our blog-exploration…

I'll Link to Whoever He's Linking To

One only needs to have had a weblog for about five minutes to see the relevance to blogging of Cialdini‘s ideas about how we are persuaded and how we reach decisions — particularly concerning whom one links to or adds to one‘s blogroll. If you’re honest, you’ll recognize that at least some of Cialdini‘s principles…

Blogshares: Coming Back Soon

A solid agreement has been reached between BlogShares founder Seyed Razavi and technologist Jay Campbell — the site is coming back! —Blogshares: Coming Back Soon I figured that a good idea wouldn’t lay dormant for very long.

Reverse Dictionary

OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and hit the “Find words” button. (Keep it short to…

Humanity will survive information deluge

There are instances when, in the interests of the majority, some censorship may be used for a period of time. Indeed, there is material which virtually everyone would agree should be kept out. Sadistic pornography, incitement to violence against racial or ethnic minorities are just two examples. | But we cannot strive for an information…

Ten Blogs that Shook the World

I’m not sure I’m artciulating anything new here, but for me, reading some of the “high-profile” blogs feels a little bit like listening to talk radio: a charismatic figure stirs up people’s frustrations and fears by linking to a news article or bit of information. Then a feeding frenzy takes place, with dozens of other…

The Search for Isabella V

The story you are about to read is true. It involves a fugitive heiress, guns, money, and layers of Internet intimacy and deception. It is a mystery that takes place at the edge of technology. And it is unlike anything you’ve ever read before. —John H. Richardson —The Search for Isabella V (Esquire) A fascinating additional…

Where is Jorn Barger?

Jorn Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, is missing. He resides in Socorro, New Mexico, and was last seen there by his housemate in very early October. Most if not all of his possessions, including his ID card, are still at his residence. —Eric Wagoner Update: According to poster “cedar” on Metafilter: “I called the Sorocco…

The Golden Age of Gadgets

No matter how digital the electronics got, the companies that made the gadgets were still stovepiped; suites of devices worked in perfect harmony – as long as they all wore the same corporate logo. If you managed to force a Sony receiver to work with a Panasonic TV, you lived in a rat’s nest of…

Blogshares — Closed Down

It’s been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I’d like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those…

Web sites vanish so fast scientific papers just can't keep up…

Dellavalle’s concerns reflect those of a growing number of scientists and scholars who are nervous about their increasing reliance on a medium that is proving far more ephemeral than archival. In one recent study, one-fifth of the Internet addresses used in a Web-based high school science curriculum disappeared over 12 months. | Another study, published…