“toward an understanding of being human that contains being online”
“Titstare got “very loud applause.” Bros are pack animals”
“a larger project to make Facebook’s public interactions not just public but visible”
“Siri might not want to be like you. Siri might want to be Siri”
Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com].
“A link that disappears after a certain number of people have seen it”
“as managing editor of CNN.com, I want our readers to know this: All you are to us are eyeballs”
“a place where CEOs, venture capitalists and startuppers can network”
“re: sonic/musical trolling, I would put forth Cage’s 4’33″ as the seminal example”
“PornHub has just released a big, ol’ sticky mess of data about the country’s porn habits“ more...
The easiest, laziest, most click-baitiest op-ed, trend video, or thing to scream at a bar right now is how, with today’s technologies, we are more connected but also more alone. Ooh. Zuckerberg has 500 million friends but it was never really a spoiler to say that Sorkin’s The Social Network ends with him sitting alone at a computer. Ooh. The Turkle-esque irony is just too good for it not to zeitgeist all over the place.
That argument should not be altogether dismissed but I am quite skeptical of where it’s so often coming from and how it’s articulated. This trend might be largely disingenuous, and by that I do not mean intentionally insincere but instead a sort of cultural positioning: we-are-connected-but-alone not only drips with that delicious ironic juxtaposition, it simultaneously props the person making the case as being somehow deeper, more human, more in touch with others and experience. more...
technology and society quotes from the past week.
“a religion based around getting Facebook Likes”
“Facebook has a ways to go before it catches up to coffee”
“I am now watching Twitter become morally depopulated”
“you provide such a neat explanation of technological determinism that I can’t wait to share it with my undergrads“ more...
technology and society quotes from the past week
“Facebook is useless without friends. My only friend is, like, my grandma”
“Social media seem like a new way to buy the bulk of us off with affect“
“The discourse of the comment section invites readers to round the essay up to scandalous”
“Aha, I am a Cultured person in a Cultured space and I am Experiencing Books”
“Cop Selfies are illegitimate selfies complicit in the fetishism of violence”
Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. more...
“There simply isn’t much of a market for tech-savvy haute couture”
“In this paper, we investigate if widely used influence scores are vulnerable and easy to manipulate”
“The TSA’s Instagram feed shows the artistic side of confiscated material”
““cyber” has, in a way, returned to its dark science-fiction roots”
“What the NSA needs to do, clearly, is start giving away Jay-Z albums”
“Power moves through drones; so we can write and talk and think through drones. So we have to“ more...
“we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately”
“from whistle-blowing outlet to a full-service travel agency”
“I need a new arsenal of swear words that punch up and tear down destructive stereotypes”
“The drone will go down in history as the crucial invention that made war a managerial decision”
“Radical self-exposure and classically manicured discretion can both be powerful, both be elegant”
Nathan is on Twitter [@nathanjurgenson] and Tumblr [nathanjurgenson.com]. more...
“The chilling disciplinary effect taking place in the digital age affects everyone”
“The term “cyberutopian” tends to be used only in the context of critique”
“#Standingman is good activism for the same reasons it makes for a good meme”
“drone fiction denies the presence of human operators; it renders drones autonomous”
“Uber meets AirBnB for Helicopter Transport”
“In the nineties, tapping the Web, if not impossible, was certainly a pain”
“we are open-source-extremists, the feminist virus infecting your thoughts“ more...
One problem with taking social problems and re-framing them as individual responsibility is that it ends up blaming victims instead of pressuring root causes. This mentality creates a temptation to, for example, respond to the NSA scandal involving the government tapping into Internet traffic with something like, “well stop posting your whole life on Facebook, then”. Or less glib is the point raised many times this month that the habit of constant self-documentation on social media has made possible a state of ubiquitous government surveillance. The brutality of spying is made both possible and normal by the reality of digital exhibitionism. How can the level of government spying be so shocking in a world where people live-tweet their dinner? Perhaps we should stop digitally funneling so much of our lives through Gmail now that the level of surveillance is becoming clearer. Sasha Weiss writes in The New Yorker that, more...
