Goblin Mercantile Exchange

“emasculating”

Sergey Brin, in a recent discussion of Google Glass, noted that smartphones are “emasculating.” Let’s look at a more or less standard definition of “emasculate”. (I generally hate arguments by pedantics who pull out dictionary definitions as a kind of proof text for an argument, but I think this is worth it). 1. Make (a [...]

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The First Apps

A great article on 18th century almanacs as ur-iPhones: By now, I hope you’ll forgive the ahistorical slip that led me to enlist the iPhone as a way of imagining just how resourceful an early almanac could be. It was so much more than a book. Comparing it to the iPhone helps expand our vision [...]

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The Literary Magazine, of the Future

Bruce Sterling’s essay on design, the potential of design, and the design of fiction, is something that anyone interested in those issues should read–moving away from the tired arguments of why science fiction is dying, why it’s not dying…anyway, I tend to get those two things confused. Of course the pulp era has left its [...]

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On Furries

ON FURRIES It is perhaps not surprising that the furry culture as we know it today sprung up in early virtual worlds (MOOs, Mucks, and Muds — these acronyms themselves hint at the wet dust of the first creations, paradise’s barnyard). Besides FurryMUCK, one of the most significant early furry spaces is the Swedish MUCK [...]

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open questions with answers of “Yeah, maybe”

I wonder if it’s time for a speculative (or otherwise) ezine inhabiting myspace and myspace only. I wonder if Hex is a better show than Buffy. I’m really beginning to wonder about both of those.

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Literature, Text, and Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality died in the House Commerce Committee. btw, these are the Democrats who voted to kill the Internet as we know it: Ed Towns of New York, Bobby Rush of Illinois, Al Wynn of Maryland, Gene Green of Texas and Charlie Gonzales of Texas. Thanks! You obviously know where your well-heeled bread is buttered. [...]

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myspace vs. friendster

This is a brilliant, brilliant essay by Danah Boyd about Friendster vs. MySpace, and about burgeoning “super publics”: Online communities are more like nation-states than technological tools. There is a master behind the architecture, a master who controls the walls of the system and can wage war on her/his people at any point. People know [...]

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Nobodies

I “love” the opening text for Blogads: “You need to woo the early adopters that traditional media can’t reach. You need to engage 500,000 opinion makers, not pester 100,000,000 nobodies.” translation: “Non-non-poor people SUCK!” Now that’s some good hipster talk there. Mirrorshades or death!

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Graveyard

I love the relics of useless search engines. Feel that tumbleweed.

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In the obsolete technology dept.–do you remember in the mid-90s when massive CD-changer stereo systems were all the rage? 100 CD changers! 300 CD changers! Holy shit how high could it go!?!? It was kind of like a Babbage Engine form of the iPod. I just checked on some prices and, although this probably isn’t [...]

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A brilliant gem on Moria about blogging by Ela Kotkowska: Since hardly any blogger relics survived to this day, little would have been known about the alphabet and therein encripted blogs, were it not for the discovery and the deciphering of the Robella Blog by Napoleon J. Franc-Chamois at the beginning of the 19th century. [...]

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I remember it was 1996-1997 there was a computer retail company, one of those online dot-com things, you remember those, and there was an ad they had on that new dot-commy MSNBC network (remember their bad, yet somehow endearing, early techie programming? Because it was new economy. Those were Soledad’s finest hours). I forget the [...]

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are in Heaven. But wait. I anything for me, but you don’t I am the perfect writer’s notebook. I am just peerless. You would pay have to as the perfect width, so pretty and am from Spain. You will beautifully retro. Open waste. It is the beginning of me. My spiral binding lets you me. [...]

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(hypergolem, once again modulated) Microsoft is a company in Redmond Washington:In 1975, you couldn’t buy a personal computer�unless you wanted to build it yourself. Collaborating with coworkers meant poring over photo or carbon copies of documents. And keeping in touch? We turned to Uncle Sam or Ma Bell. Yet, in 1975 Bill Gates and Microsoft [...]

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Technology hates me. I just wrote a 50 page treatise on “hot” new innovations in distancing technology; ways to propogate transhumanism at the expense of users. The Internet, through use of links and minerals, is good at technology, I’ve found. “Cyberpunk” is a good way to feel less alone. For it is easy to feel [...]

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