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From Stephen Elliott
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer (award-winning author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) contemplates the implications of living in a society full of “iDistractions,” arguing that the increased daily use of new technology might be limiting our capacity for empathy and compassion.
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For months, I had worked to help students make connections between sports and society, to help them analyze and interrogate media representations of sport and of athletes….In the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings, I had no answers and very little context.
...moreWhat do you do with a loved one’s letters, photos, and journals when they pass away?
What about their emails, online accounts, and computer files?
In an essay at Locus Online, Cory Doctorow describes his efforts to preserve the digital effects of a friend who unexpectedly died—and how that process may become standardized in the future.
...moreOn October 5th, a collection of speakers presented their use of technology in modern day storytelling.
Featuring innovations beyond flourishy eBooks, the fifteen short films featured on The Future of Storytelling’s site are inspirational and provide a starting point for conversations around new/old media.
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Longtime Rumpus contributor Scott Hutchins discusses his debut novel, A Working Theory of Love, the Turing test, instant messaging chatbots, and whether technology is actually in danger of isolating and alienating people.
...moreTech crunch hypothesizes that yes, contrary to what you may have believed previously, there is in fact money to be made in the DIY sentry gun scene.
Rudolph Labs has released an open source tracking sentry gun system that uses household items such as your webcam, computer, and paintball gun or airsoft rifle.
...moreYou may have used your cell phone to have a heart-to-heart with someone else, but have you every opened up and talked it out with that very phone? A new collaborative video project from Eric Slatkin asks us to do just that and, like his “I check after” Twitter project, provides a chance for us to reflect on “the unintentional relationships we’ve gained to a piece of electronics.”
...moreA new Twitter project called I CHECK AFTER calls on us to list one thing we do before checking our phones and computers in the morning. If we can’t think of a single thing, it’s our chance to pledge something into existence and loosen our technological chains.
...moreThe Chimerist, a new website we’re loving, explores the app for Paul Madonna’s Everything Is Its Own Reward.
“The places in these images are suspended in time, and the animations work to slow you down until you’re able to absorb this quality.”
...moreThe Chimerist, a website created by Maud Newton and Salon’s Laura Miller, launched this week, uniting “two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology.”
...moreDennis Ritchie created the C programming language (“the basis of nearly every programming and scripting tool”) and co-developed the Unix operating system. His death on October 8th fell in the shadow of that of Steve Jobs, but his work is seen as the building blocks of the modern world.
...moreIn this Nation Conversations audio interview, reporter Laurie Penny takes a closer look at how digital resistance groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec have enabled protests from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street. She breaks down the relationship between online and offline dissent, and how the concept of security operates in both realms.
...more“We are watching 18 screens showing high-definition images captured by nine cameras. Each camera was set at a different angle, and many were set at different exposures. In some cases, the images were filmed a few seconds apart, so the viewer is looking, simultaneously, at two different points in time.
...moreTechnology and higher education have been enjoying a symbiotic relationship in recent years.
Apple’s creative visions have been coming to life and flourishing on academic platforms, but now that Steve Jobs is stepping down, should we be worried about how it’s going to affect higher education?
...moreBooktrack, a New York start-up, is weaving noises and music into e-books. According to their website, the idea behind synchronizing soundtracks to existing e-books, is to “dramatically boost the reader’s imagination and engagement.”
To hear a demo you can check out this piece, which wonders whether readers will find the format distracting, while pointing out that that the concept seems to be gaining ground in the wider e-book realm:
“E-books with added interactive features and soundtracks may be the format’s next step.
...moreCertain technological mediums seem to encourage lying, and—according to this article— “may make it easier for talking heads to lie.”
Researchers have found that—compared to in-person interactions—people lie more by phone, but less by email and IM. Factors that encourage lying include real-time interactions and being in separate rooms, while lying rates decline when the interactions can be easily recorded.
...moreNow body hacking exists! A new startup focused on “rewiring your brain” accounts for your caloric intake, exercise habits and sleep patterns, all to make you into a happier person.
“Much as an engineer will analyse data and tweak specifications in order to optimise a software program, people are collecting and correlating data on the “inputs and outputs” of their bodies to optimise physical and mental performance.”
(via @aldaily)
...moreWired has 5 reasons why E-books cannot replace print.
Besides the tech-related qualms (like books being divided by app, not allowing readers to see all their books in one place), problems like “an unfinished e-book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it,” make the list.
...moreJonathan Franzen dispensed some optimistic guidance in a NY Times Op-Ed essay, an adaptation of his recent commencement speech to Kenyon graduates.
He covers techno-consumerism, the environmentalist anger that once confined him to his room and his bird-watching revelation that assuaged his real life qualms.
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In July, 2010, I delivered a keynote address at Goddard College’s MFA Writing residency in Port Townsend, Washington, on the theme “Composing the Wilderness.” This essay is included in an anthology of addresses given by Goddard College MFA faculty, to be published in early 2011.
“I feel like an alcoholic pushed into a permanently stocked bar, and I can’t even taste the merlot because I’m trying to down a tequila and sip a martini at the same time. I’m dying to return to the mono-media of paper and glue.
...more“New online lockboxes allow you to specify beforehand who’ll get your passwords, which private Flickr photos should be purged, and what final status should be posted at Facebook, but these services are no substitute for a will. And writers and other artists should be especially careful about relying on them.”
Maud Newton ponders the potentially troublesome issue of digital remains, especially for writers.
...moreUpdate: Amazon caves to Macmillan’s demands! Read on to learn more about the dispute:
After Macmillan Publishers challenged Amazon‘s pricing of e-books for Kindle users, Amazon retaliated on Friday by pulling not only all e-books by Macmillan authors but also physical literature by the publisher as well.
...moreThe books blogs always like to talk about the future, but this week was like some sort of official book blog crystal ball week, what with this new decade they tell me we’re in now and everything.
We’ve already linked to Richard Nash’s take on the next ten years, but the NBCC’s Critical Mass has lots of different perspectives.
...more“We talk too much about television as an antecedent to the Web, and not enough about the telephone… In America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, the sociologist Claude S. Fischer argues that our customary mode of discussing new technologies leads us astray by casting the technology as the protagonist and the human user as a victim.
...moreScott Rosenberg, a co-founder of Salon who has written a fascinating history of blogging (in time, we’ll be interviewing him about his book), recently wrote up his thoughts on Twitter in two posts: how Twitter differs from blogging, how it has changed blogging, and where he sees the platform going from here.
...more“[Doug Engelbart], for those who haven’t heard of him, conceived of and then went on to invent much of what we value today in computing from the standpoint of the user.
Networks, graphical computing, hypertext, the mouse — Doug’s the guy behind all of those in one way or another.
...moreThe arrival of the Internet and the wide dissemination of information that ensued has inspired the belief that technology may be able to break down hierarchies and allow for the equal access to and expression of information.
In “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” a speech written for Personal Democracy Forum, Danah Boyd cautions against trusting in technology as an equalizer.
...more“In the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, ‘has so far failed to make any money for Google.’ … Why is that?
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