Here is the complete text of a message in my inbox today, from someone who signed it “freak”: “help find information about the beleives of the pilgrims in 1620” How Not to Request Help OnlineE-Mail) Sorry. Please do your own homework. Similar:How Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson notes that Sili…BooksOffice Hours…
“When we view the computer as an interactive artifact the computer exists as our partner in the completion of important tasks. We ask the computer to do something and it, by proxy, does it for us. We should, instead, view the computer as a tool that we use to perform tasks: we use it so…
“Of course I wanted to be popular.|But in fact I didn’t, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design marvellous rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make…
“I HAVE just ploughed through the first five books devoted to an Internet art form that fascinates me and may well be unknown to you. Where to start?|Say for the moment that the weblog – a log of the World Wide Web, as it were -can be personal publishing at its most liberating, an online…
“Hypertext as mediated by the Web browser has not proved to embody the qualities of the ideal post-structural text longed for by literary theorists such as George Landow; neither has the World Wide Web fulfilled the document-association function of the memex, the hypothetical research tool Vannevar Bush described in his 1945 essay, As We May…
“Prompted by a complaint from the Liberty Legal Institute, a group of Christian lawyers, the [Justice] department is investigating whether Michael L. Dini, an associate professor of biology at Texas Tech University here, discriminated against students on the basis of religion when he posted a demand on his Web site that students wanting a letter…
“Andy Serkis’ computer-aided performance was one of the best things about ‘The Two Towers.’… Is Hollywood ready to acknowledge and honor digital performances, or even human-digital hybrids? This year, the answer seems to be a resounding no.” Ivan Askwith —Gollum: Dissed by the Oscars?Salon) Similar:Where is the comma in "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" supposed…
“[A]cademics are throwing themselves into the study of emotion with the rapturous intensity of a love affair. In a sense, emotion has always been at the core of the humanities: Without the passions, there would not be much history, and even less literature. Indeed the very word ‘philosophy’ begins with philos (love).” Scott McLemee —Getting…
“Unfortunately, most will just view the team projects, class presentations, software life cycles, and ambiguous problem statements as ‘hoops they have to jump through’ to graduate. I recall a meeting with a student who was having trouble working with her project team in a recent class. She actually asserted with some confidence that the problem…
Jesica Santillam, 17, suffers from a heart deformity…|After a three-year wait, she received a transplant on February 7 with organs flown from Boston to the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina….The organs were sent with paperwork correctly listing the donor’s blood type, says Sean Fitzpatrick of the New England Organ Bank.|But somehow, no one…
“The dot-com economy is long gone, but that hasn’t curbed the public’s appetite for shopping, banking and generally amusing themselves on the World Wide Web, according to a recent study.|Significantly more people are using the Web to send pictures and videos, shop, download music, play games and do their banking, according a study that compares…
—Google Blogging Right AlongWired) There’s nothing new in this Wired story that wasn’t already covered by blogs over the weekend. Similar:The joy of text – the fall and rise of interactive fictionAlthough the IF community first formed a…CybercultureInform 7 is now open sourceInform is a design system for interactiv…CultureJournalism In The Service of Democracy: A…
“Vatsim allows virtual pilots (but real people) and virtual air traffic controllers (also real people) to see each other and communicate. The result is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game patterned after the government’s dullest bureaucracy.” —Always a Dull Moment: The hottest game in the sky is simulating a holding pattern. Fasten your seat belt.Wired)…
“In the autumn of their careers, they are in a mood to dispense the wisdom that comes of decades of slugging it out with editors, critics, other writers and, roughest of all, their own restless egos….Let us summon in spirit some of these authors of literary guides and memoirs and hear what they have to…
“We use music as a vehicle to engage, inspire and reinforce the magic of literature and the power of reading. We have launched an awareness and outreach campaign for one of this country’s most critical problems: adults who cannot read or write.” From the Chapter One benefit CD for “Artists for Literacy”: Bruce Springsteen –…
Dan Gillmor’s column reports that Google has purchased Blogging Company Pyra, which means that Google is becoming the AOLTimeWarner of the Internet. So far, I’ve been happy with whatever Google has done… but think about it — I search the web with Google, I search Usenet with Google, I read the news with Google, and…
We all know that technology makes it easier for some students who are tempted by academic dishonesty. I just recently used a little-known feature of MS-Word to cast doubt on a fairly standard — and fairly lame — student excuse. Fifteen minutes before an assignment is due, I get an e-mail from a student who…
“‘The Internet allows us to do all kinds of things quickly and efficiently, and that includes hoaxing,’ Jerz says.|Jerz, an assistant professor of English at UW-Eau Claire, learned of the Olsen hoax when a skeptical student emailed him the fake CNN story….News hoaxes aren’t the only ones that spread by e-mail, says Jerz, who often…
“Once you’ve got her, the next step is keeping her. To do this, just remember that your geek girl has a few special things about her that distinguish her from other women. All women like gifts, but the geek girl’s tastes are different. The average woman likes flowers, but the geek girl is not average,…
“All the scenester dudes are either dating a series of interchangeable high-school riot grrrls in baby doll dresses and an overdose of manic panic, or permanently shacked up with some bitter old lady who pays all the bills. Which will it be, a wifely prison or a humiliating one night stand? Into this void of…