: I have no idea how useful this article really is — it’s a classic case of “I found it on the Internet.” (A few posters have evaluated this article on MetaFilter.) —“Real” Deal about Nuclear, Bio, and Chem Attacks Similar:Ominous Darkness Descending On Webpage Portends Grim Age Of Autoplaying Ad To ComeFortune’s fool, I…
What’s up with public high school students? “They’ve had careful self-esteem training since they were 2. They’re told exactly what to feel about everything and they have to be happy all the time,” says researcher Elinor Burkett. —School Daze in America (Wash Times) Similar:The Great Gatsby Character Map SomethingSoSam.AestheticsThat Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A…
The Disney Channel airs a cartoon that comments on file-swapping software. An insightful real-world teenage morality tale, or corporate brainwashing? —Disney’s Peer-to-Peer Pressure (Wired) Similar:Today’s adulting was brought to you by a failed motor vehicle inspection. #notacarguy #win…The car shop wanted to charge over $300….ModdingGambit Part 1 (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 4) Artifact…
“Who says we aren’t a nation of readers? Shucks. Before you can use a new electric skillet, you’re supposed to read its 12-page manual.” Marti Attoun —My On-and-off Struggle with Instruction Manuals (CS Monitor) Similar:Facebook’s push of “related articles” to users without checking credibility draws fireThe links under your friend’s post got y…CybercultureAnd so it…
“MS Word has no right to be a standard for document preparation, since it’s clearly less efficient (for most purposes) than readily available alternatives,” fumes Allin Cottrell. —Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient If the alternative involves typing commands like “c:\gs\gsview\epstool -b -c -o%1.tmp.eps %1.eps”, is it easier to sell your soul to Microsoft? (See: “Using…
Many of the links on this site are broken, but the message pretty much keeps me going. Comments? “Students need the wonder, awe, and delight which comes from the adventure of confronting the unknown, unfettered by knowledge and common sense. Then learning is wonderful, awesome, and, delightful.” —Nothing Matters Similar:Oedipus Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) — Brief IntroductionMy…
“It’s like these sci-fi nerds can’t handle the real world, so they hide in a fake one,” says sports fanatic Scott Moreland, whose online fantasy-football team, DaJerseyJintz, was 4-1 at press time. —Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Databasesatire from The Onion) Similar:Show, Don’t (Just) Tell (New Example)I wrote down this example on a student…
E-mail messages, voice-mail recordings and other electronic traces of people were routinely preserved by computer networks or telephone companies… These e-relics often captured a moment in time that is both beautiful and chilling to the people who discovered them. Ariana Eunjung Cha —Salvaging Electronic Last Words (WashPost) Similar:Facebook, Now You Remind Me of a Half-Drunk…
“New research reveals that 40 percent of Web surfers will visit a news or information site more often if its pages load faster.” Excuse me, but… duh! I guess you should ignore the August 2000 press release in which Jupiter advocated these “expensive enhancements.” —Fast And Efficient Web Sites Will Drive Greater Customer Retention Than…
Microsoft a monopoly? Pshaw. “Microsoft sees themselves as a small fish in a big pond. The pond is all information that could potentially be digitized in the universe. Just some insight into where they’re coming from.” Zimran Ahmed —Belly of the Beast Revisited (winterspeak.com) Similar:Jeff Bezos Plan for News: The Washington Post Becomes an Amazon…
The anthrax scare will likely encourage greater use of e-mail. “If you’re connected to the Internet—and, duh, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t—probably your e-mail-to-snail-mail ratio overwhelmingly favors the former.” Steven Levy —The End of Snail Mail? (MSNBC.com) Similar:'Little Mermaid' brings new music to the Andersen fairy tale – Pittsburgh Tribune-ReviewThe story line…
“Traditionally, each company has had to design and implement all of the services it wanted to offer its website users. This approach leads to incredible waste, unprofitable websites, and lowered usability…” [Jakob Nielsen is talking about e-commerce, not personal home pages.] —The End of Homemade Websites (UseIT.com) Similar:Don't call it "social distancing" or you just…
(satire from The Onion) “Have a long history of experience in the field you’re applying for and glowing recommendations. Either that, or print your résumé on really nice, heavyweight ivory paper.” —Job-Hunting Tips Similar:Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani: My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-TraderThis fascinating essay, by the grandchil…CultureIt’s been a while since something got me into a…
“The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.” —The Apostrophe Protection Society Similar:Shakespeare portrait said to be only one made in his lifetime…
There’s way too much information online. What really matters to readers is quality, not quantity. Gerry McGovern —The Need for Editors on the Web Similar:Empty InboxMy to-do do list and my “Follow Up” fold…CybercultureIn December 1999, I Was Blogging About Joseph Heller, E-Journalism, and Travel WritingIn December 1999, I was blogging about: …BusinessCurse you, conference…
Metadata “collects critical information such as heading, summary, author name, date of publication, classification, keywords, etc…. Without metadata a document is left floating in a cyberspace filled with 550 billion other documents. The chances of it being found by the right person at the right time are greatly diminished.” Gerry McGovern —Why Metadata is Important…
“Coming very near the bottom of an official list of religions put out by the [U.K.] Statistics Office, Jedi Knight is known by the code 896. Heathen comes in at 897. Followed by Atheist at 898 and lastly None with 899.” Kieren McCarthy —Jedi Knights Achieve [Sort of] Official Recognition as Religion (The Register) Similar:Nellie…
“[T]he Internet story has come to an end.” Reuters —Silicon Alley Reporter Magazine Closes (Wired) Similar:Life in Code and Software (Open Humanities Press)This book explores the relationship betw…AcademiaAn English professor tries to help ChatGPT write and revise a sonnetShortly after my online AmLit survey beg…AcademiaUnemployment rates for recent college grads: Overall, 5.8%; Computer science, 6.1%;…
“a cybernetic process whereby people in power deepen their dominance by using online communication to negotiate for the consent of the subjugated.” Mike Dorsher —Hegemony Online (UWEC) Similar:Bottled Authors: the predigital dream of the audiobookThere was no way to preserve sounds befo…AcademiaText, Speech, Machine: Metaphors for Computer Code in the Law : Computational CultureOn my…
“The Argument: A dying human being is like an automated spacecraft leaving the Solar System and entering interstellar space. Do we leave this world and arrive at another world?” Poetry by Jonathon Vos Post —Valedictory on Software Similar:The Printed Word in Peril: The age of Homo virtualis is upon usWho, I thought, besides a multidisciplin…BooksThe…