Tag Archives: ask the masters

Facebook and MySpace class distinctions

Anne Helmond | 26 June 2007, 10:47 pm | 5 comments | tags: , , ,

danah boyd recently wrote an interesting article on “viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.” She points out that class divisions have emerged and are being played out through aesthetics in Facebook and MySpace. I think this is one of the most interesting points in the article because I tend to “judge” the quality of…

Question time: which of your problems should Google solve?

Michael Stevenson | 21 June 2007, 9:38 pm | 4 comments | tags: ,

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 understand time and choices.”

So maybe we can make some recommendations before Google makes them for us. What problems would…

Wait – what’s a blog again?

Pepijn Uitterhoeve | 18 May 2007, 10:15 pm | 12 comments | tags: , , , , ,

In an ongoing discussion on a forum I got into a scuffle with a formidable opponent about what blogs exactly are. I tried parroting all that I had been taught in various classes during the BA and MA courses in New Media; basically that weblogs are a form (as argued by Albert Benschop in class at one point) and not…

Discussing Internet politics: Galloway’s Protocol.

Roman Tol | 22 November 2006, 5:14 pm | 2 comments | tags: ,

Galloway’s Protocol addresses how control exists after decentralization, that is, in specific places where decentralization is done and gone and distribution has set in as the dominant network diagram. Galloway suggests protocol is an answer for that.

In part I of the book Galloway states that the protocols that underlie the Internet are not politically neutral. They regulate physical media,…

Ask the Masters: Which Dutch party has the best agenda for New Media developments?

Roman Tol | 20 November 2006, 3:14 pm | 17 comments | tags:

Wednesday the 22nd of November is Election Day in The Netherlands. Which party has the most promising program for New Media scientists, New Media creators/designers, and New Media consumers? Which party will invest in New Media developers and theorists, in order to put The Netherlands on top of the technological and innovative map?

Ask the masters: Top down = control & bottom-up = action?

Anne Helmond | 01 November 2006, 11:11 pm | 1 comment | tags: ,

Anthony Townsend argues in his essay ‘Locative-Media Artists in the Contested-Aware City‘ that the technology of context-aware computing (of which locative media is a part):

will be characterized by an interplay between top-down systems for command and control and bottom-up systems for collective action.

Ask-the-Masters: Going Locative?

Michael Stevenson | 29 October 2006, 5:19 pm | 6 comments | tags: ,

Locative media is about as vague a term as web 2.0. Essentially, locative seems to be about connecting ‘third nature’ information to real world places and/or objects. But there are a number of ways this can happen.

Below I suggest some basic categories of locative projects, based on techniques (e.g. localizing web content, embedding data in specific places) rather than…

Meaning of Commonism

Tom Roes | 13 October 2006, 2:21 pm | 1 comment | tags: ,

Commonism is a word coined by Tom DeWeese. He is the president of an American rightwing think tank and wrote an article on the dangers of commonism in 2000.

Communism, we’re told, is dead. Welcome to the new era of Commonism.

When the walls around the Soviet Union fell a decade ago, once-proud nations that had been swallowed up by

…

Ask the masters: “Does the word “commonism” already exist? -Internet and Google search advice

Heleen van der Klink | 13 October 2006, 1:55 pm | tags: ,

-At the bottom of this post, you can find interesting links which explain the meaning of commonism-
We have received a question from Mieke Gerritsen, who has made a beautiful graphic design with the word “Commonism” on it. She has made this design and wondered if the word “Commonism” is already being used in one way or another.

Well to…

Ask-the-Masters: Can we use Wikipedia to map emergent issues?

Michael Stevenson | 05 October 2006, 12:42 pm | 15 comments | tags: ,

Watching the Mark Foley scandal make its way from a newspaper blog to political blogs to the front pages of major newspapers, I was intrigued with how various actors got involved (and by actors I mean places, things, terms as well as people). I started wondering if there was a…