New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

Semantic Search Servants: Facebook’s M and the new way of searching the web

“You think I’m weird?” “Kind of.” “Why?” “Well, you seem like a person but you’re just a voice in a computer.” – Theodore meets his new virtual assistant, whom he later falls in love with (Jonze, Her). Facebook M...

By Elias Gorter on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Google and the Principles of the Semantic Web

One of the first goals of the Internet was to expand the knowledge of the users by connecting different data. However, the contemporary web is by no means comparable to this initially academic network. The web expanded unprecedentedly and...

By Lauressa Ford on 09/10/12 Comments Off

Collective intelligence: an interview with Pierre Levy

In a previous post I discussed and, hopefully, debunked some common assumptions on the next phase of the World Wide Web, or web 3.0. The general assumption is that in the 2.0 era the user was at the centre, the...

By Eelke Hermens on 11/01/11 10

Michael Dale Explains the Benefits of Open Video Platforms

Michael Dale is an advocate for open standard and free video formats for the web. The past two years he has lead...

By Catalina Iorga on 11/13/10 Comments Off

Automated Ontology Structure In Folksonomy

My master thesis is finished! I’ve made it available for download for everyone interested in hybrid folksonomy/ontology Web organization. Download Automated Ontology Structure in Folksonomy (.pdf, 3100 kb) Abstract The purpose of this research is to evaluate automated folksonomy...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 09/05/10 1

From Metaphysics to Metadata
Jorge Luis Borges, tagging, and social networks

In his short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius the argentinian writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges imagined a place with a completely different perception of reality than ours. In Tlön "the prime unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic...

By Nicola Bozzi on 09/28/09 Comments Off