Improvising a Bone Graft
Very gradually, this frantic activity ceased to be simply an expression of emotional distress—what the grief experts call “searching behaviour”—and started evolving into a digital, extended elegiac project.
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Posts Tagged: the Internet
FUNNY WOMEN #97: The Whitest Album
It was a time in my life when I was frequently “tagged,” along with other Netizens who seemed to keep in touch and do good works. I did no good works, but I tried to keep in touch.
...moreCut and Paste with Intention
However crude, social media today allows us to cut and paste our world into a space (mostly) under our control.
Whether we’re posting on Pinterest (an action likened to tearing pages out of a magazine to share with friends), retweeting news updates, or liking songs on Facebook, the internet serves as a new scrapbook of sorts.
...more“Twitter For Authors”
The LA Times reports that Twitter has released a how-to-manual titled “Twitter for Authors.”
The guide details six tips particularly geared towards writers, some of which include the not-so-helpful “Be Authentic, Be Yourself,” and “Above All, Have Fun.” Nowadays many authors use the social networking site as a means of self-promotion, and entire transcontinental book clubs have sprung from its 140 character limit.
...moreNetwork Gender Balance
Should you seek a utopian, gender equal virtual space in which to social network, scribd, orkut, and foursquare are where it’s at.
However, the internet vortex of social networking sites sees the scales tip in favor of a female majority. In fact, there are 99 million more monthly female visitors to social networking sites as compared to those who identify as male.
...moreTPM Switches to Facebook Comments
In an interesting move, popular political site Talking Points Memo will begin using Facebook comments as their main commenting system. TPM Editor John Marshall explains the decision here.
“…To make an admittedly long story short, we’re switching to Facebook comments because building or maintaining our own system does not seem like a good use of our company resources and because we believe fixed identities will make the comment threads more civilized, engaging and less threatened by marauding trolls and bad (comment) actors.”
...more“Perimeter-less Perimeters”
Believer co-founder and co-editor Heidi Julavitz writes about how online journals (such as The Rumpus!) caused the Believer to rethink some of its original tenets, including a strong resistance to virtualization.
“Ultimately we risked losing readers, and we risked losing writers, too.
...moreDocumenting Sagas
An online, audiovisual storytelling network: Cowbird.
“Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.”
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Momus
Since the early 1980’s, the 51 year old Scottish musician/writer/provocateur Nicholas Currie, better known as Momus, has been releasing music (his latest album, Hypnoprism, was his 18th) to varying levels of critical and commercial success. Since the 1990’s, he has been blogging in various forms, most notably on his old LiveJournal called Click Opera, which Warren Ellis called “probably the best-written blog on the Anglophone web” and of which novelist Dennis Cooper said, “It doesn’t get any better than Click Opera.”
No Comment
At the Believer, Meghan Daum dissects the “commenting culture” of the Internet and the rampant “haterade” in our public discourse.
“A young person (any person) who published a piece as incendiary as “Safe-Sex Lies” today would be chewed up and spit out so many times over by bloggers and commenters and cable-news screamers that the idea of “understanding what I was trying to get across” would seem not just quaint but moot.”
...moreFinding Quiet
“So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
...moreOn Revelations
“When you write personally and intimately, difficult questions arise. Whose stories do we, as writers, have the right to tell? To what extent do we have the right to write about the people in our lives? What are the limits of good taste?
...moreThe Unblinking Eye
At The Awl, Blake Butler reflects on attachment to the Internet world (and the machines with which we enter) as well as the meaning of obsession.
“It seems too late for any of this to be stopped. Even making aimed attempts to avoid these machinations and the silent spread seems bent against a thing that continues with or without you to be growing in no glow.
...moreCivil Liberties Roundup
Here’s a video about the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill, which the President will not veto, includes a provision that allows the military to detain and imprison American citizens indefinitely without trial. WTF?
And now for SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act:
The Atlantic asks, “Should copyright be allowed to override speech rights?
...moreA SOPA Roundup
Here’s the bill text of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
An explanation of the three major ways that SOPA could impact journalists.
An NY Times op-ed argues “while American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet.”
Yesterday was declared American Censorship Day as hearings began in the House.
...moreInternet: Not Randomized?
Wikileaks released this TED Talks video yesterday, titled “Facebook and Google / Secret Revealed.” The video explains how our internet searches may be sorted by an algorithm based on our assumed preferences.
...moreSocial Media Art
The “Social Media” exhibit is at New York City’s Pace Gallery until October 15th. Walking us through the installations, this piece ponders the way social media art works when taken out of its natural habitat—the Internet.
“It seemed to me that the only thing lacking were the proper tools of translation—this art was the internet (past tense) in translation.
...moreDigital Abuse Surveyed
“Young people immersed in the online world are encountering racist and sexist slurs and other name-calling that probably would appall their parents and teachers. And most consider it no big deal, a new poll says.”
The survey suggests that people feel more comfortable using “hurtful language” in texts and posts to Facebook or Twitter than they would in face-to-face interactions.
...moreThe Google Effect
This might seem obvious to many, but apparently there is now research behind the idea that smart phones, computers and the Internet are weakening our memories.
According to this article, the phenomena is called the “Google effect” (which you can surely google for effect).
...moreWanna Write Right On Top Of The Internet?
Ever get so frustrated with the Internet that you wanna just take a pen and write right on top of the screen?
Well, that happened to me so many times that I decided to start a website where people do just that—or the closest possible thing to it—by taking a screenshot and writing right over the top of the web with the software that comes with almost every computer.
...moreMorning Coffee
I’ve just got this hunch that things might be ok.
Hey, so, what happened to that tsunami?
Related: The Chilean earthquake did however probably (possibly?) make the day shorter.
Why the internet will never catch on.
...moreMorning Coffee
What does the internet cost around the world?
Walt Whitman’s levi’s commercial.
Architects Journal looks at the top 5 comic book cities.
Also: Paris as star map.
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