Author Profile

  • Chris Castiglione
  • Url: http://www.ccastig.com
  • Posts: 24
  • About the user: Chris is currently a graduate student at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and a part of the New Media M.A. He graduated from James Madison University where he studied Music and Media Arts and Design. Chris is also a web developer who concentrates primarily on working with non-profit organizations.

Author Archive

Musicians and the Upside of Downloading

Chris Castiglione | 11 September 2009, 10:49 am | tags: , ,

The recording industry has indeed suffered from declining sales over the past ten years and it may be tempting to point the blame at file sharing, yet a mistake that is commonly made is to claim that the recording industry crisis is a music industry crisis. The rock band Wilco is one of the first bands to famously benefit from P2P file sharing…

What are the ‘Music Industries’?

Chris Castiglione | 06 August 2009, 3:05 am | 4 comments | tags: , , , ,

The term ‘music industry’ is a misnomer. In reality the ‘music industry’ is not one industry, it is several independent industries. This is an important distinction because if we say that there is a “crisis in the music industry” it suggests an equal amount of misfortune for everyone (musicians, the recording industry, the live-music industry, Internet radio, etc.) and in…

What is a ‘blogger’?

Chris Castiglione | 14 July 2009, 1:25 pm | 4 comments | tags: , ,

The definition of a blogger is commonly given as “someone who maintains a blog”. Yet on many sites, including Wikipedia and Dictionary.com, ‘blogger’ does not have its own page, ‘blogger’ forwards to the page for ‘blog’. This week I made an attempt to define ‘blogger’ on Wikipedia…

Anatomical Analytics: up-to-date information on the human condition

Chris Castiglione | 15 June 2009, 11:09 pm | tags: , , ,

Anatomical Analytics is a personal report detailing up-to-date information about an individual’s body condition. The project details a hypothetical design for an “innovative technology” that could exist in the year 2020. Anatomical Analytics was awarded 3rd prize in the UC Santa Barbara’s Bluesky Innovation Competition: Social Computing in 2020.

Creative Commons Case Studies

Chris Castiglione | 09 April 2009, 4:51 pm | 3 comments | tags:

Almost a year ago Creative Commons launched the Case Studies Project with the aim of qualitatively measuring the impact of CC licenses on the world. As of this writing, the project showcases around 500 Case Studies of people using a CC License for photography, music, film, literature and education. Has the project been effective?

Digital Music Becomes (more) Rhizomatic

Chris Castiglione | 26 February 2009, 2:58 am | tags: , , ,

As digital audio files continue to flow freely on the Internet, music itself mimics certain inherent characteristics of the web best understood through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (D&G) rhizome metaphor. Understanding digital music as rhizomatic is important because it interprets the transformations of the digital music culture as a natural progression towards rhizomatic qualities – and provides us with an insight into what might be the future of “the music industry”. Here are the top five reasons why music is becoming more rhizomatic.

Facebook Connect Vs. OpenID:
The Format War for Your Identity

Chris Castiglione | 06 December 2008, 5:17 pm | 5 comments | tags: , , ,

Facebook Connect vs. OpenIDIt seems now that it may be Facebook Connect, and not OpenID, that will lead the data portability movement. Do we trust our online identity to the Facebook corporation, with almost every page on the Internet serving as some extension of the Facebook platform?

Why is the University of Amsterdam still using IE6?

Chris Castiglione | 01 December 2008, 4:23 pm | 9 comments | tags: ,

IE6 is my grandmother on her deathbed and she just won’t die. Her skin is obviously wrinkled and dated, she doesn’t have any recollection of the past, and she is sucking the life (and money) out of everyone around her. God, can you please pull the plug!?

Long Distance and Intimacy (Response Is the Medium)

Chris Castiglione | 27 October 2008, 11:46 am | 3 comments | tags: ,

Over the past decade, distant lovers have been offered an array of new ways to connect: email, SMS, live video chat and even through ambient intimacy (the idea of staying attuned to someone else’s life through frequent status updating). Yet, among all these new communication tools there isn’t a popular system that can transmits touch.

As Simple As Possible, No Simpler!

Chris Castiglione | 23 October 2008, 11:56 am | 1 comment | tags: ,

I’ve also noticed the uncomfortable “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” phenomena in which Nicholas Carr explains how the web’s immediate access culture is causing many of us to loose our deep reading skills. I believe that simplicity can be magnificent, and that “as simple as possible” isn’t synonymous with “as short as possible”.