The eventual theoretical foundation of Internet Studies ™ combines the collapse of ontology with an integrated and consistent set of nudges and an active and self-sustaining community of spimes. Let’s call these the Three Pillars of the Internet Age. These pillars are bound together by what I will call a participatory framework. Internet studies differ [...]

Ran into this quote from Whitehead:
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilisation advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without [...]

Excellent article on the Internet up on The Atlantic (thanks, Lally!) that ties the internet into the long history of automated “choreography” characteristic of the industrialized world.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at [...]

From He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) (NYT)

While nothing announces that Mr. Parker’s books are computer generated, one reader, David Pascoe, seemed close to figuring it out himself, based on his comments to Amazon in 2004. Reviewing a guide to rosacea, a skin disorder, Mr. Pascoe, who is from Perth, [...]

thx Steve

Back to back stories in my reader this morning:
Poor People Use Yahoo, Those Better Off Use Google
Yahoo is strong in “struggling societies,” “blue collar backbone,” and “remote America,” where as Google obtains higher use in “small town contentment,” “affluent suburbia,” and “upscale America.
and
2008 Republican National Convention Names Official Innovation Provider
Embracing technology that will [...]

Google TechTalks July 26, 2006
Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel [...]

by Cory Doctorow
“Tell me about your hobbies. Are you into model rocketry?”
“What?”
“Model rocketry.”
“No,” Greg said, “No, I’m not.” He sensed where this was going.
The man made a note, did some clicking. “You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail.”
Greg [...]

Jon called me out to celebrate Google’s birthday a few days ago. It wasn’t really Google’s birthday, it was more like its christening; it has been 10 years since www.google.com was registered. I posted the following response, which might not be what he expected, but I thougt was worth posting here.
I should start by [...]

I boldly stepped outside of Greg Hall today to attend a talk offered by the Library and Information Sciences Department. I felt the talk, entitled “What’s an Author to Do? Google, Digitization, and the Future of Books”, by Vaidhyanathan, was somewhat scattered, but it was aimed at a Library Sciences audience so that might have [...]