May 2013
2 posts
6 tags
Asking whether Yahoo is a media or technology...
I’m not sure if I buy Timothy Lee’s standards for dividing “media companies” from “tech companies” in this Washington Post piece about the Yahoo!-Tumblr merger:
Media companies build brands by associating themselves with hot cultural trends. Because these trends are fickle, media companies can’t do much more than observe which way the crowd is moving and race...
7 tags
“Because privacy is a fundamentally social phenomenon, conflict over how much...”
– - Christena Nippert-Eng, Islands of Privacy (2010)
With the semester over, I’ve been catching up on a lot of outside reading. The issues Nippert-Eng (a social psychologist) brings up, particularly in the Cell Phones and Email chapter of her book, are also useful for understanding the...
April 2013
1 post
4 tags
“This involves heavy use of what I have taken to calling the Wired ‘we’, a...”
– - Giovanni Tiso
Tiso’s point about the use of ‘we’ in tech writing is an important one. Even as Internet access improves, the casual ‘we’ universalizes something that is far from universal, not to mention it assumes everyone understands and uses media technology in the...
March 2013
2 posts
7 tags
Some thoughts on the impending death of Google...
Google Reader, the company’s free RSS feed aggregator will be shuttered on July 1. Many voices across the Internet have been vocal in their disapproval of this move - while not the most popular Google tool, it has a small, intense following, primarily bloggers.
Others, like my friend Andy (who makes web things for a living) are more approving of Reader’s demise:
Another free...
January 2013
4 posts
Holy Motors - Acting in the public sphere
Last week, I had a chance to see Holy Motors, a 2012 French film by Leos Carex, which can be read as a send-up to cinema itself, dovetailed interestingly with the concepts of public and private spaces brought up by Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Briefly, Habermas outlines human interactions as occurring in private, smaller or internal exchanges or in larger...
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Solutions for slow broadband Internet in the U.S.?...
Susan Crawford, former Obama Administration technology advisory, ICANN board member, and network neutrality advocate, has an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times offering steps she suggests are needed to increase broadband Internet access - specifically high-capacity fiber networks - for people living in the United States. She argues a relatively ineffective Federal Communications...
“Curiosity builds on itself — each new thing you learn about has all sorts...”
– Aaron Swartz to Ronaldo Lemos
8 tags
Some thoughts on Frank Herbert's "Dune"
Last night I finished reading Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction classic Dune. Below are some of my thoughts on the book:
In many ways, Dune is a book about resistance. Resistance against economic cartels, political coups, arranged relationships, cultural and religious traditions and planetary occupation - Paul-Muad’Dib, Lady Jessica, Stilgar and many others continually meet and...
December 2012
2 posts
6 tags
“This isn’t some standard polemic about “those stupid walled-garden...”
– Anil Dash from “The Web we Lost”
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“The three-legged chow that walks on my street every day doesn’t know the number...”
– John Homans, from What’s a Dog For? - as excerpted by Maria Popova
November 2012
1 post
4 tags
“The point of all this is that it is not the existence of knowledge but the...”
– Maria Popova
Via BBC: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20415707
October 2012
1 post
September 2012
1 post
4 tags
August 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Recommended Reading: "Living Outside History" by... →
This long essay from 2010 by preeminant William Faulkner Noel Polk reflecting on the past, his relationship with his home state of Mississippi and his father is stellar.
My war, finally, then, certainly: it of course always had been, it and all its afterglow, and I never feel that it is mine more bitterly, and bemusedly too, than when I travel and meet people who type me because I am a...
5 tags
Atlanta to Georgia: "It's time to break up."
Dear Georgia,
No one can deny we’ve had a long run. You were one of the original 13 colonies, and while I was started more than 50 years later at the intersection of some of your railroads, we’ve been inseparable ever since. Sure, I got burned when you tried to secede with the confederacy, but those things happen and I was happy to start over again while taking in many seeking...
July 2012
2 posts
5 tags
4 tags
June 2012
7 posts
9 tags
2 tags
“People will tell you that you can’t do things because they think they...”
– Somebody, but I forgot.
4 tags
15 Things Charles and Ray Eames Teach Us →
mostexerent:
Keep good company
Notice the ordinary
Preserve the ephemeral
Design not for the elite but for the masses
Explain it to a child
Get lost in the content
Get to the heart of the matter
Never tolerate “O.K. anything.”
Remember your responsibility as a storyteller
Zoom out
Switch
Prototype it
Pun
Make design your life… and life, your design.
Leave something behind.
Solid.
Newsweek: America's 25 Most Crime-Rattled Colleges... →
newsweek:
1. University of Alabama, Huntsville
2. Johnson & Wales University, Providence
3. University of San Francisco
4. Northern Illinois University
5. University of Central Arkansas
6. Morgan State University
7. Tennessee State University
8. University of…
Mississippi State is #12.
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May 2012
8 posts
5 tags
4 tags
2 tags
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Morning Music Recommendation: Let My Love Open The...
April 2012
5 posts
“A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his...”
– John James Audubon (b. April 26, 1785)
3 tags
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March 2012
4 posts
Science Terms That Could Be Indie Band Names
*(An incomplete list)*
The Covalent Bonds
Progeny
Golgi Apparatus
Moraines
Heritable Traits
Chronostratigraphy
Quantum Foam
Van Allen Belt
Mass Spectrometry
Mole
Hiatal Hernias
The Subduction Zones
13 tags
What Podcasts do you listen to?
I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I thought I’d make a list of some of my favorites and maybe a little bit about why I like each one. Jordan, Jesse, Go! -Hosted by Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris, this is one of the few free-form podcasts that is actually listenable. Full of obscure pop-culture references and running jokes, it’s a lot of fun.
Risk! -Created by Kevin Allison (comedian...
Opinion: Why Instagram photos cheat the viewer by... →
While interesting, I can’t help but see Stern’s argument that camera apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic as defensive and a little deceptive. He says:
“Any news photographer worth his or her salt will tell you that the best camera is one that lets you take the photo unencumbered by the technicalities of the process. A camera that lets you record the scene with the light and...
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February 2012
15 posts
2 tags
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How Carrots Became The New Junk Food by Douglas... →
This is a fascinating piece about how to market something relatively common
in uncommon ways:
Dunn’s team talked to more than 20 agencies. One firm pitched a commercial
with a vegetable army, baby carrots in the lead, storming a beach defended
by junk food. Another proposed pairing two unlikely celebrities together,
or maybe rival politicians, with the punch line “Look who’s...
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How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - The Atlantic →
This is a great read. Though it’s definitely unsettling to imagine cats are leading us to early deaths and possibly madness. I always knew there was somethings suspicious about them.
