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Michael Stevenson

I am a lecturer and PhD candidate in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. I've been a contributor to Masters of Media since 2006, though I now only post occasionally. A short list of papers and projects can be found here

http://www.whateverbutton.com/blog
Deleuze vs. YouTube: Adrian Miles @ Video Vortex

Deleuze vs. YouTube: Adrian Miles @ Video Vortex

The subtitle of this conference is Responses to YouTube, and at least one alternative to the world’s largest supplier of piano-playing-cat videos comes in the form of ‘soft video’, via Australian media scholar Adrian Miles. Some of the questions...

The University of Amsterdam’s ‘Great Man Theory’ on Wikipedia

Together with Erik, I’m working on a Digital Methods project called ‘Repurposing the Wikiscanner‘, where we try to adopt the infamous tool for uses other than scandal hunting. We’re still working on it, but here’s a nice preview. So...

93 Wonderful Things: a short history of BoingBoing

BoingBoing: A Directory of Wonderful Things is a groupblog that provides a mix of Web humor, art, politics, gadgetry and unicorns (and plenty more). It is probably the only blog popular enough to receive its own backlash. I used...

Review: From Counterculture to Cyberculture

What follows is a summary and review of Fred Turner’s book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Nerd Politics? A recent Ask Slashdot piece appeared...

Interactivity is Affectivity

(cross posted on whateverbutton.com/blog) Over the summer I wrote an essay called ‘Interactivity is Affectivity’ for the tutorial ‘Current themes in new media’. You may like to read the following teaser, or even click pdf for the pdf.

Olia Lialina’s Vernacular Web 2

Olia Lialina has put her new network theory talk online. Her research catalogs 'vintage' Web aesthetics (including, ahem, the glitter folder).

New Network Theory – Katy Börner

Katy Börner, with her presentation Global Brain Pressures: Towards Scholarly Marketplaces, asks what the relationship is between knowledge and the individual, and knowledge and networks. Over a long enough timeline, one sees increasing specialization, and thus a changing perception...

New Network Theory – Parallel Sessions – ‘The Link’

The first round of parallel sessions is underway, and a crowd has gathered in a computer lab at the Media studies department to discuss ‘the link’.. A preview comes in the form of one participant’s notes, where I spotted...

New Network Theory – Noshir Contractor

Noshir Contractor is the first speaker today, here to present MTML meets Web 2.0: Theorizing social processes in multidimensional networks. Noshir begins with a story of the social life of (technologically-enhanced) pets. Your smart-tagged dog can meet other dogs...

New Network Theory – Florian Cramer

Today’s final speaker is Florian Cramer of the Piet Zwart Institute, who has a nicely low-key website. Florian’s work deals with text, code and aesthetics – one piece of his is the extended essay, Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture,...

New Network Theory – Rob Stuart

Rob Stuart is an activist based in Philadelphia. Here he gave an overview of some of his work, especially that which made use of new technologies. In this way he gave conference-goers some network practice to go along with...

New Network Theory – Alan Liu

Can Network knowledge improve? The second New Network Theory session starts with this question from Alan Liu in his presentation Network Knowledge: Policing Web 2.0. Alan’s aim today is to present a draft proposal for a non-reactionary policy for...

New Network Theory – Siva Vaidhyanathan

Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System and currently associate professor at NYU, is here to talk about the Googlization of...

New Network Theory – Opening

The Masters of Media are at the New Network Theory Conference – organized by Network Cultures, ASCA and the Media Studies department at the University of Amsterdam (that’s us!). Geert Lovink introduced the program as an ambitious attempt to...

Question time: which of your problems should Google solve?

Personalized advertisments are not enough. Google boss Eric Schmidt says, “Google is not at all done with your information problems. There are many, many examples of where it would be nice if Google had more of an ability to...
Interactivity, Government and Affect

Interactivity, Government and Affect

Partly in response to that stumper from a while back, ‘What’s a blog?’, this is another: What is interactivity? I’ll start with the top result from a “define: interactivity” google query: If your Web site is not interactive, it’s...
Visualizing Genealogies of Philosophy

Visualizing Genealogies of Philosophy

I remember feeling completely lost in my first-year philosophy course – the feeling never really goes away – and wanting some kind of map of the territory or overview . This tool maps philosophers’ influences, and while users can’t...
Streetview Aesthetics?

Streetview Aesthetics?

In 1965, Ed Ruscha photographed Every Building on the Sunset Strip, in a way that may sound familiar to those following the Google Streetview release: Ed Ruscha took the photographs contained in this leporello with a motorized Nikon camera...
The Whatever Button – Now for Firefox!

The Whatever Button – Now for Firefox!

No longer just a metaphor for how we consumers fall for anything, the Whatever Button is now available as a Firefox add-on (Great big thanks to Erik, who coded it). More about the button below.

Dutch slow to take to Firefox?

Firefox use in Europe is up to 24%, but use here in the Netherlands is at 14%. Anyone want to speculate why this is? Of the stereotypes I’m aware of, the one that best fits this figure is apparent...

Making connections at Slashdot

This is just a nice coincidence that deserves sharing. The top post at Slashdot right now explains that The Tamil Tigers Liberation Front has moved up from routine sea piracy to a space-based one They have been...

Assignment Zero – Investigating Crowdsourcing

Assignment Zero is a collaboratively authored journalism project set up in association with Wired magazine. In what may be the truest of Web fashions, the project will begin by examining itself – or actually, crowdsurfing crowdsourcing, the process it...

From Aestheticism to Protest – Joseph Delappe

Today Joseph DeLappe, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Nevada, Reno and the head of the Digital Media area and Chair of the Department of Art, gave us an overview of his work. One of his current...

Six seconds from 1969

Nate Harrison is a media theorist / artist, whose work deals with remix culture and the related issues of copyright and creativity: Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the...