society

JSTOR is a rent extraction mechanism that perpetuates fundamental inequalities

a ceremonial flyover of three combat drones

what is Elsevier going to do with Mendeley that warrants uninstalling it from you computer?

Nineteenth century viral culture is quite like today’s Internet culture

Seeing this as only a story about digital technologies & their risks is to overlook how cultural communication is

That was before Apple washed Siri’s mouth out with soap and curbed many of its talents

23 women have joined a class-action lawsuit against the “revenge porn” website

there is something disturbingly misogynistic about online bullyingmore...

now that we have a simple tool—and grammar—for looping a half second of video

The Internet makes this sort of writer-presence easier, more ubiquitous

“What’s the point of this app? To forge a connection, or to gamify the dating process

I’d like to type in “dentists liked by people who don’t like horror movies””

The defining feature of a “real” arcade, however, is that there aren’t really any left

digital technologies enable abundant production, watering-down the meaning of an object and/or interactionmore...

The morbid fascination with the Myspace saga is not unlike our persistent national obsession with Lindsay Lohan

I think Facebook and Twitter should be prohibited

isn’t it time to admit that MOOC providers don’t primarily care about “how learning works?”

talking about MOOCs in productive ways is getting harder for everyone

your book is somehow better for having successfully negotiated the transition from digital to physical

Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet

Did it occur to any of these terrified readers that perhaps this latest technological invasion wasn’t aimed at them?

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

the direct facial and self-valorizing imperatives of Facebook, the endless memetic re-postings of tumblr, fashion blogs, and so on

We’ve become better at choreographing ourselves and showing our best sides to the screen

75 percent of the world’s heads of state have a presence on Twitter

Forget about bowling alone: In Toffler’s future, we’d all be telecommuting together”

A quarter million comments land in HuffPost’s assorted in-boxes every day

On Snapchat, sexual identity isn’t cemented through a series of boxes & menus

using drugged milkshakes to knock out the parents of one of the girls so they could log on to the Internetmore...

as Google begins to mediate interactions w/ the built environment, the scope for “algorithmic nudging” also expands

I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D printable 33rpm records

IBM predicts that computers will soon have a sense of smell

Yes, Randi Zuckerberg, speak to us about human decency

the needed reforms, executives at Apple and Foxconn hope and believe, are falling into place

I think privacy controls prompt the comforting illusion that privacy isn’t a social relation but is instead something individuals can decree

Nathan is on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson more...

Behaving as if our digital data is fleeting can cause serious trouble

engineers should take up the case, fight fire with fire, and set their sights on designing anti-racist apps

Social Media” didn’t get anything wrong or right. Reporters got things wrong

There’s something beautifully noncommittal about Snapchat that flies in the face of what we’ve always known photography to represent

I’m tired of contributing to the commodification of my own existence

Silent presence sometimes the only possible response to tragedy, but it’s an affordance of embodied presence. Online presence must speak

There was no correlation between how much money users paid and how well they were treated

No, technology is not “rewiring” young people’s brains

Holiday cards were mostly maudlin crap as if that could make any real difference for stopping wars

A History of the Digitalization of Consumer Culture

Nathan is on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson more...

To the photographer, this was simply a beating, not this particular man suffering

This glitch is a correction to the “machine”, and, in turn, a positive departure

If we perfect online dating, we won’t need robot lovers because the dating platform will roboticize us

I don’t think Google News has ever taken enough responsibility for the cybernetics of the system it created

Inbox Zero is a coping mechanism for the anxiety created by a constant flux of e-mail

the cybertheorists, however, are a peculiarly corporatist species of the Leninist class

The internet is a real place. It’s where I live, my public space. I don’t like feeling that I can’t go there without fear of violence

the first episode of a late-night TV program to see an artist engaging the crowd with a participatory smart-phone app

I’m tired, technoutopianism. I’m tired of your sexy, shiny surface and your utter lack of substance

Nathan’s Twitter: @nathanjurgenson more...

Best GIF – Drama

tablets aren’t a new medium which will support a whole new class of publications

We live for the moment because the moment is what an image captures

Social media is a major development in the creation and delivery of propaganda

to lose a cell phone would be to induce a state of partial amnesia

Hyper-visibility and invisibility are not mutually exclusive

the image may be the most-shared item in the eight-year history of Facebook

unboxing videos are maybe the exact opposite of ASMR videos

I happen to love Instagram because I’m mildly creative and a terrible picture takermore...

my favorite twitters share a sense of wonder expressed as comedy of the bizarre

”microfame” is a structure of feeling for coping with mandatory requirements to construct identity online

Does Web 3.0 come after Web 2.0?

A sociological analysis must not conceive of algorithms as abstract, technical achievements

you open FB and on your timeline, there’s you, having some whole alternate life, tagged in photos you’re not in or don’t remember

We’re gonna introduce the mapping stuff so you can stalk people

I wondered whether we would all thrive in an atmosphere that so insistently merges productivity & sociability

all of my digital masks are equally me and that all of my digital ghosts mean me no harmmore...

the Cyborgology school of digital criticism

A simple piece of software got us through the dark ages of computing

The Decelerator Helmet is an experimental approach for dealing with our fast moving society…a perception of the world in slow motion

War existed before social media, but not like this. This is a new thing

he’s the one who was violated. But he knows that won’t stop anyone from clicking “play” over and over again

A book is basically thousands of tweets printed out and stapled together between pieces of cardboard

does it even make sense to distinguish between the natural and technological sublime?

ideally, real human users will leave social networking altogether

Build a world where Facebook is obviously the inferior mode of communication and fast food just seems gross

Do we buy iPads b/c they change & improve our lives? Or because we need something we can believe improves our lives?more...