I Want You To Want Me
I Want You to Want Me by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar made me think: it’s a huge, goddamn lonely digital universe out there. It feels like, as researchers (and people) we’ve just launched an exploration into a new...
Natalie Dixon
I’m a new media thinker, strategist and writer. My current research focus is on the ‘affective bandwidth’ of mobile-mediated communication. My research interests include affective computing, HCI, biomapping, emotion, the impact of mobile phones on social behaviour, analytical design and information visualization. I graduated from the new media track of the Media and Culture masters programme in 2011.
http://www.nataliedixon.info
Next Nature Book: Nature Changes Along With Us
Next Nature: Nature Changes Along With Us is positioned at the intersection of technology, design and nature. It is a 472-page compendium of the most thought-provoking observations from the awarded website nextnature.net, supplemented by lots of visuals, infographics, maps...
Dis Connecting Media
In the current literary landscape of mobile phones and mobile culture it’s rare to find a title that’s both playful and insightful. In fact, most titles concerning mobile-mediated communication are text tomes: although interesting, also dense. Occasionally...
Blackberry Break Ups
In a fresh testament to how deep our affective relationships are with mobile phones, last week’s Blackberry out(r)age revealed users “breaking up” with their beloved Blackberrys on Twitter. Amongst all the (by now stale) joke tweets about the Blackberry...
The Affective Turn of Mobile Phones
For anyone interested in affect, mobile phones or both, my masters thesis (completed this year) is available for download.
Biomapping
In my last blog post I explored the notion that information visualization is not merely a tool, or art, or an agent of clarity but also has the capacity to generate emotion in users and arguably, become a player...
The Fuzzy Edges
Emotion has long since been a fraught with subjectivity and complex interpretations for as long as scholars have sought to understand it. When scientists became interested in emotion in the late 19th century it suffered under labels like “feminine”,...
Intimacy: Version 4.0
Plenty has been written about our loss of social cohesion due to the Internet (see James Katz) and how mobile phone technology has contributed to blunting our social competencies (see Hans Geser). Like it or not we are...
Who In The Australian Department of Justice Edited Julian Assange’s Wikipedia Page?
According to Wikipedia's edit history, on 23 September 2010 shortly before midnight, the entry for Julian Assange was edited by a user whose IP address belongs to the Australian Government’s Justice Department. The user attempted to make a seemingly...
Iranian Censorship of Women’s Online Magazines
Although media censorship in Iran is a widely publicized fact, this research report seeks to establish a clearer picture of which women’s online consumer lifestyle titles Iranian web users are currently forbidden to view. This report was conducted...
Free For $8
The New Museum of Art in New York City is currently hosting an exhibition carrying work from 23 artists titled “Free”. The show explores: “how the internet has fundamentally changed our landscape of information and our notion of public...
Romancing The Book
We shuffle into the queue of people leaving the plane and I notice my neighbour’s Jonathan Franzen paperback peeking out of the seat back. “Hey, you left your book behind,” I say. She winks, “That’s the idea”. In...
Love in the Time of Twitter
Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker recently: “…This is what drives me crazy about the digerati. They refuse to accept the fact that there is a class of social problems for which there is no technological solution. Look....
Art: E-Waste
Renowned South African photographer Pieter Hugo's latest work Permanent Error features a haunting documentary of an e-waste(land) in Ghana.
Rage Against the Machine
Can you only make a Wikipedia entry if your subject has been covered in the mainstream press a gazillion times? How do underground, guerilla, new subcultures or artists get exposure on Wiki? Short answer: they don’t. I referenced the...
Living In AppLand
Chris Anderson headlined his latest feature in Wired magazine: The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet. He maintains that with the ubiquitous iPhone comes app addiction; so while most of us spend the whole day on the internet...
Book Review: El Proceso Como Paradigma (Process as Paradigm)
It’s a hollow exercise publishing a book about new media art. Giving the work the representation it deserves in one picture and a 500-word description leaves readers sampling only a small hint of the original experience and runs the...
Craigslist Follow Up
This week Craigslist officially shut down its adult service section of the site in the United States. This follows a short period of censorship. While some are celebrating the decision, blogger Dannah Boyd raises some interesting points on The...
Burning Questions
Is Google the always-on, silent recorder of global zeitgeist? There’s Google Trends, which lists most searched-for sites and topics in the last week, month or year around the globe. This has been a useful tool for digital publishers to...
The Craigslist Circus
Last month a friend was planning a trip to the U.S and while trawling Craigslist for a short-stay apartment in New York she commented on her growing wariness of...