technology

 

emoticons2

I have been thinking a lot about technology and emotion. Most likely, this is because the past month has been an emotional rollercoaster—in the best possible way—and I’ve found myself directing a lot of that emotion at my phone.

Although I officially graduated in December, my partner (also a sociologist) and I both decided to do the whole ceremonial graduation thing at the end of the Spring semester. At the beginning of May, members from both of our families came down to Texas to celebrate. They traveled from Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. This was wonderful. I love my family—immediate and in-laws alike. Like, gooey, gushy, here-take-half-my-sandwich, capital “L” Love these people!!  But I may or may not have thrown my phone angrily onto the bed and refused to look at it for a full 30 minutes after an onslaught of text messages and phone calls in which everyone was confused/upset/annoyed about logistical arrangements (okay, I did do this). I also laughed with my brother when we both rolled our eyes and tightened our shoulders upon the simultaneous beeping from both of our phones as family members, who again, we both love very much, contacted us to tell us about a change of plans. Over the course of the  weekend, I fake strangled my phone, threw it (see above), twitched my eyes in response to its beckon, and smiled sadly into it after everyone left and the text message beep brought news that we were missed, loved, and the source of pride. more...

no sense arguing with the digital humanities. They don’t really exist. This is the age of the managerial humanities

The animated GIF is a Brechtian medium

Microphones + Crooning + Nazis + Radio + Bing Crosby + $50,000 = Silicon Valley

MOOC’s only make sense if you don’t think about it too much

Jane Austen’s internet success isn’t so surprising

a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals

during this period, it was more common for digital animation to be emulated using hand-drawn techniques

Cars didn’t end up awarding us freedom, nor did they serve to better connect us to our friends and communitiesmore...

paying in Bitcoin could be more convenient than converting to local currency while traveling abroad

Paul Miller was never more aware of the internet than when he made himself live without it

Airbnb indulges the fantasy that we might temporarily inhabit another life

the MOOC threatens the liminal space currently held by colleges and universities within the life course

after about a year of usefulness, Yelp very quickly became a terrible source of information

Apparently no one has ever sent Nicholas Carr or Sherry Turkle a tastefully brief Snapchat

no one remembers what YOLO meantmore...

attorneys have taken to Yelp to complain about prison procedures that delay or prevent them from seeing clients

The nostalgia that attracts a fan to “Garden State” is of a particular Internet variety

Next, simply disassemble the computer, shove the fragments back into those clams, harvest the clams, and puree them into a thick slurry in your home blender

there’s a lot of “reality” in the virtual, and a lot of “virtual” in our reality

this is a new way of expression that does not have a direct correlate offline

The mockdate is a type of status update that uses humor to publicly condemn all forms of “improper” bodies

Teens are the ideal tweeters because they are never happy and always interesting

the cell phone’s ability to signify status has given three beeps and vanished like a dropped call

they buy up thousands of dollars in pizza currency & then trade it for Bitcoin currency

Of all the millions of dollars of purloined bitcoin that’s floating around out there, not one Satoshi of it has been spent

Just because he used the acronym LOL in a text message and on Twitter doesn’t make him evil; it makes him a young person who sends text messages and uses Twitter. He is evil because he allegedly helped bomb the Boston Marathonmore...

Cable news is dead, but something keeps animating the corpse

Human genes do not augment the body, they are the body

memes circulate us rather than vice versa

many of the declarations whizzing around Boston look like sympathy but smell like attention-seeking

social networking sites are not a separate realm of political activity

We need a multitude of what I call “Denial of Positivism (DoP)” attacks from various directions

the Google car was treated with deference no matter how recklessly we drove

iPad painting: just of the many similarities between George W. Bush and Churchillmore...

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

healthsmall more...

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...

genes

Are human genes patentable? At the beginning of this week, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) heard arguments to answer just that question. Specifically, the biotechnology company Myriad Genetics, Inc. wants to defend their patent on the isolation of BRAC1 and BRAC2—two genes related to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. Such a patent grants the company 20 years of monopoly control over the genes for research, diagnostic, and treatment purposes. A group of medical professionals, scientists, and patients are challenging the patent.

The criteria for a medical patent are such that while tools, medications, laboratory produced chemicals etc. can be patented, “Nature” cannot be patented. That which is patented must therefore be created, not merely discovered (regardless of how costly or effortful the discovery). Opponents of the BRAC patent often evoke Jonas Salk, who famously said in response to the potential patent of his Polio Vaccine: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” more...

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

onlinedatingsmall more...

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 linkbaitmore...