Once when I needed to entertain my daughter while we were driving somewhere, I said, “Let’s pretend that, rolling along outside the window, there was a little ball that would pick up trash and boxes and trash cans, and that as it collected items it got bigger and bigger, until it was picking up houses…
Chris Brogan just posted a horror story that made me make backups of everything I’ve ever uploaded to Google Docs. Note to self: use Google Apps as a redundant backup only. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn’t get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn’t get…
McSweeney’s: Horatio thinks he saw a ghost. Hamlet thinks it’s annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies. The king thinks Hamlet’s annoying. Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better. Hamlet’s father is now a zombie. Thanks for the suggestion, Mike. (Twitter would probably catch the back-and-forth spirit of a drama a…
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think the lack of respect for math and science is one of the largest unacknowledged problems in today’s society. And it starts in the academy — somehow, we have moved to a place where people can consider themselves educated while remaining ignorant of remarkably basic facts of…
From a 2007 report on liberal education, by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences,humanities, histories, languages, and the arts Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporaryand enduring Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including Inquiry and analysis…
The headline writer was having an off day, but the content — a thoughtful examination of the trolling subculture — is excellent. NYT Magazine. In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups.…
In today’s landscape, defining “the media” isn’t nearly as clear-cut as it used to be. Big-name newspapers and networks mingle with cable channels, all-purpose Web sites and blogs in the minds of the average news consumer, and for good reason: They are, in many cases, converging, with widely read blogs run by newspapers and online…
It was intersting to see online political discourse (with a case study on the Kerry-Edwards attempt to build a blog presence in 2004) and a history of the internet filtered through a folklorist’s lens. I’m saving this in case I need ever need to update some of the insights found in the older, classic, historical…
A good feature from the New York Times: Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the…
27 Aug 2019 — Updated with a fresh link. Similar:Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be publishedSome of my happiest memories of fatherho…AestheticsGIFs, memes and liveblogs: The controversial new language of book reviewingSalon has an interesting essay on multim…AestheticsA Quick and Comprehensive Guide to Type A Quick and Comprehensive Guide to T…Aesthetics‘A slow-motion disaster’: Journalism museum…
Interesting observations on the internet’s response to the death of Randy (“The Last Lecture”) Pausch. You interacted with Randy through a little box embedded in a webpage. Your headphones piped his voice clear and strong into the center of your brain, almost as if some deep part of your own mind was delivering his nuggets…
If you want to label me retrofuturistic so I can fit into your compartmentalized worldview, that’s fine. But look past my airplane goggles. This is my lifestyle. While many of my kind doubt there’ll be a complete societal collapse in the future, a near-cataclysm is likely. In this scenario, I will be able to repair…
Jimmy Maher offers a provocative editorial in the latest issue of the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games newsletter. Galatea excites admiration, interest, even a certain amount of awe, and all of it richly deserved. However, it seems to excite very little love. Nor does it seem to inspire its player to grapple with…
When you die, would you rather be remembered as a technology hack who annoyed millions and forced them to waste time by weeding through torrents of junk e-mail, or a brilliant teacher who inspired millions to treasure every moment of the time they have left? According to police, Edward Davidson, the “spam king” whose wife…
Blogging yet another story that reminds young fans of social networking sites that their profiles may be more public than they think. WashPo “I know for a fact that when a superintendent in Missouri was interviewing potential teachers last year, he would ask, ‘Do you have a Facebook or MySpace page?’ ” said Todd Fuller,…
Thanks, Becca, for forwarding this link about how the American newspaper has changed in the past three years. Last semester my journalism students did a unit on community journalism, and they wrote long features that were destined for our new summer-orientation and fall welcome-back issues. So I was aware of some of the changes observed…
Steampunk is one of my guilty pleasures… I think of it more of an asthetic than a literary movement, and I own neither a pair of aviator goggles nor a wind-up pocketwatch. Nevertheless, it happens that at this moment in another window I’m rendering a 3D view of an brass-and-glass spaceship ethership that features in…
As traditional news organizations face increasing pressure to cut back on investigative reporting and depend more heavily on celebrity and puff pieces (cheap to produce, attractive to advertisers, accessible to a mass audience), Dan Gillmor suggests that advocacy groups such as the ACLU have an opportunity to fill the gap. If only they were fairer…
Does anybody today say — without shame — that their hobby is watching TV? Or listening to the radio? These media are so deeply entrenched in our society that we barely think of them. According to Ian Bogost, a time will come when the concept of “the gamer” is obsolete. Not because games will be…
How did WarGames become the geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy? Related question: Shall we play a game? —Wired Similar:CNN's Chris Cillizza on Trump's definition of "Fake News"Here’s some excellent analysis of Trump’…CultureCrying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship EverI’ve felt…