Author Profile

  • Arno de Natris
  • Url: http://www.steekdedraak.nl/
  • Posts: 16
  • About the user: Finished the Master in New Media in august 2009. See for mor details about me on http://www.steekdedraak.nl

Author Archive

Possibilities and threats for popstars in Web 2.0

Arno de Natris | 02 September 2009, 12:17 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Popstars have an economic function, like filmstars. They promise a performance. They are the profit makers of the entertainment industries. From an ideological point of view, popstars maintain a myth of meritocracy. The industries and the stars themselves want to show that stardom stands for freedom and wealth and present this as positive, something everyone must have and therefore, everyone…

The little Big Belgian Firewall?

Arno de Natris | 22 April 2009, 3:16 pm | 1 comment | tags:

For the first time in history, the Belgian federal government has blocked an internet site. It is not a website containing child porn, but a website that publishes the whereabouts of (possible) pedophiles. The blocked website is similar to the website I referred to in my last blog post and paper.

Why is it blocked? The blog, according to the Belgian government, is dangerous. Citizens…

CBS: 29.000 Predators on MySpace

Arno de Natris | 16 April 2009, 3:34 pm | 3 comments | tags: , , ,

The Internet gives the citizen possibilities for surveillance. Citizens use these possibilities when they think vertical surveillance fails. Especially children are put into discourses of surveillance as if they are members of a vulnerable group, not watched over by the state. They are (passive) preys who will be detected by pedophiles as practising predators in public and virtual spaces. Websites…

The digital Grim Reaper

Arno de Natris | 18 December 2008, 4:42 pm | 3 comments | tags: , ,

Isn’t it remarkable that a profile on a social network site is almost always linked to a person that exists in real life? Most profiles are related to someone, some group or something that is palpable. Of course, some people do have more than one profile, due to the wish of not linking private and work, or maybe due to…

Man and/or machine

Arno de Natris | 24 November 2008, 9:15 pm | tags: , , , ,

The BBC recently broadcasted ’James May’s Big Ideas’. In this sequence of documentaries May, probably best known as anti superhero in ‘Top Gear’, explores in the episode ‘Man-machine‘ some projects on cyborgs, avatars, artificial intelligence and robots. Unfortunately, the episode isn’t available online (yet), but there are some parts of it on Youtube.

When virtual life mixes with real life

Arno de Natris | 15 November 2008, 1:21 pm | tags: , ,

Sherry Turkle talks in ‘Video Games and Computer Holding Power’ (1984) about Jimmy, a fourteen year old. Jimmy isn’t gaming (with the game Space Invaders) and thinking of winning and losing. He wants to see how long he can be perfect. In real life, Jimmy isn’t perfect, he has some handicaps. The game is perfect in its consistent response. In…

Twitter: Faking a Train Delay

Arno de Natris | 15 October 2008, 3:40 pm | tags: ,

Last Sunday, I tried to put Twitter in some theoretical framework with surveillance theory. I went further in a more practical exploration of this microblogging application. Twitter is more than just a message board as compared to in my last blog entry. As promoted in the U.S. Airforce sponsored video, Twitter has enormous possibilities, although you can doubt if it’s al…

Twitter: a Member of the Big Brother Family?

Arno de Natris | 12 October 2008, 9:45 pm | 3 comments | tags: , ,

My first experience with Twitter was a kind of déjà-vu. I had seen something like this before, a few years ago. It was, I think, at a music festival. There was a big screen with a telephone number. You could send a text message to that number and a few seconds later it appeared on the screen. I noticed that people…

MoM discussion: Should we pay for events?

Arno de Natris | 07 October 2008, 4:25 pm | 9 comments | tags: , , ,

Trying to provoke a discussion here. Why do conferences and other events costs so much money? All access to PICNIC would have costed you more than €1200, getting involved in BlOG08 conference €195, with a discount still €95. ‘Ridiculous’, says MoM coordinator Geert Lovink, ‘these events shouldn’t cost more than €20.’ Edial Dekker, one of the organisers of BLOG08 admits that €195 is a…