Cyborgology

“On the whole, academia is quite anti-popular writing”

“Mainstream sociology & history have a bias towards thinking that nothing is new, ever, & thus ignored the internet”

“Use the emoticons & gift-wrap your message for data-miners or stick to plain English & limit yr audience to humans”

“I was hoping one of my cat vines was popular, not this tragedy”

“Think very carefully about whether tragedies belong on Vine, and about whether you should put them there”

“Goatse was the perfect totem for a burgeoning web culture that prized free speech and unpredictability”

“Jenna Marbles already embodies the future of celebrity”

“Digital dualism can blind us to the real and serious problems of online vigilantism”

“Facebook invites us to forget we even had a self before Timeline was there to organize it”

“the emoticon scheme makes us shoppers for new, bonus feelings à la carte”

Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. (more…)

I won’t link to this essay.

We did it! According to the Editors* of n+1, Sociology—in fact, the underdog coming from behind, Critical Sociology—has won the cultural debate. Critical thinking about power and how it constructs individuals is now universally applied. The bad news is that critical thinking about power hasn’t solved inequalities, and therefore we have “Too Much Sociology.” The Editors of n+1 fail to understand their topic, fail to cite accurately, and, fundamentally, have written a piece that is logically flawed from even its own position.

There are many good reasons to dismiss this essay, but let’s first skip over the most inaccurate parts to explain why the essay does not even make sense on its own terms. There is a good argument that Bourdieusian theorizing can be used for regressive ends. But: that is a Critical Sociology argument! Interrogating exactly how an episteme can be co-opted, even by that of which it is critical, is what critical sociology does. The article uses critical sociology as its method, as its logic, in order to conclude—against its own logic—against doing critical sociology. Hilariously, the essay is a work of critical sociology about critical sociology that is critical of critical sociology. (more…)

Data Based is a weekly Cyborgology feature producing original, insightful, and fun data visualizations.

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“the collective value of all bitcoins has passed a billion dollars”

“Pa was a simple man, a techno-anarchist by trade, and long after the Bitcoin bust, he stayed on with the mining. “Don’t know nothin’ else, Ma said”

“Irene Serra chose the name -isq for her band deliberately to make it hard to find online”

“the public quickly accepts all the miracles that science provides (1948)”

“From paywalls to jargon to a tacit moratorium on social media, academics build careers through public disengagement”

“watching videos on the Internet & maybe writing a few very short essays that the professor never sees isn’t college”

“it is often difficult to distinguish between organized trolling and media linkbait” (more…)

Data Based is a weekly Cyborgology feature producing original, insightful, and fun data visualizations.

(more…)

“There’s a strong, specifically technocratic conflation between efficiency and good in Silicon Valley”

“Drones date online, but drones don’t think about it the way that humans do”

“The Work of Art in the Age of the Internet”

“We have a billion folks using our services now, and we want to get to 3 or 5 billion one day”

“Throughout Zuckerberg’s talk, people and Facebook friends were used interchangeably“

“there is general, assumed agreement on what social media is even as there is significant doubt as to whether society exists”

“There’s a stereotypical Pinterest user and I can’t escape the feeling that it is what I have become”

“The Like button tears aside this veil to reveal the cloying, pathetic, Willy Lomanesque need of marketers to have their brands be well-liked”

Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. (more…)

“Twitter seems to be making aspects of academic practice more visible”

“as long as people want to be seen reading, things to read will be printed”

“photos are disposable records of moments, to be taken in bulk and largely forgotten and unshared”

““It made it more real to folks,” he said. “There’s nothing like a hundred YouTube videos to do that””

“This makes the drone the greatest champion of neoliberal practices”

“The False Distinction Between “Online” And “The Real”

“The great sin of Facebook is that it made “like” far too important and too obvious”

“he is siphoning off my very lifeblood in the service of charging his Apple-issued heart replacement”

“Cyborg writing is the first instant of picking up the tools”

“Shaw thought the videos looked “pre-viral” and saw an opportunity to exploit them”

““Boston Punk Zombie,” reads the crudely-scrawled avatar of a green-mohawked punk with the address bostonbeatgang@gmail.com”

“Sandberg assumes that the feminist question is simply, how can I be a more successful worker?”

Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. (more…)

This is the second installment of Data Based,  a weekly Cyborgology feature producing original, insightful, and fun data visualizations.

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“The old Netflix Friends used people to personalize; the new Netflix with Facebook uses people to homogenize”

“If autonomous vehicles obey traffic laws, income from traffic violations should go down”

“It shows how necessary it is to now deconstruct, in the sense of Derrida, the theories about the virtual”

“The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not”

“Tumblr encourages unbounded use. It allows you to experiment and play”

“characterizations of digital or physical, virtual or material, necessarily obscure how each constitutes the other”

“Drones as killer robots, drones as children sent off to war”

“if engineers could come up with an iPotty that fits in your purse, links up to Twitter and takes photos, toilet access might catch up with phones” (thanks jenny!)

Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. (more…)