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Nietzsche and internet democracy

No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he...

Is the databody the next step towards becoming an Übermensch?

Is the Databody the next step on the evolutional stairway towards becoming Nietzsche's Übermensch? The truth is spectacular and men will be more spectacular as a divine Übermensch. But first this present creation, and half-Übermensch, has to have the...
Repurposing the Wikiscanner: Comparing Dutch Universities’ edits on Wikipedia

Repurposing the Wikiscanner: Comparing Dutch Universities’ edits on Wikipedia

<update>This project got quite a few positive responses, and many universities were interested in their own ‘profiles’. But the best was an endorsement by Virgil, who created the WikiScanner. He’s now made the Wikiscanner mashable, making this kind of...

Analysing a New Media phenomenon through the eyes of Nietzsche

In this post I will try to show that Nietzsche’s thoughts and aphorisms are still relevant in a modern Web 2.0 world. I have chosen a quote which I think is surprisingly true in the age of internet and...

Wiki entry: Internet Phenomenon Little Fatty

Wikipedia compiles a list of Internet phenomenons, categorized under people, bands, games, videos, animation-based, images, films, web sites, and audio. Accordingly, only a “sample of Internet phenomena that have achieved recognition in contexts wider than that of the Internet,...

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...
Radiohead and the Ethics and Future of Downloading Music

Radiohead and the Ethics and Future of Downloading Music

As you might have heard Radiohead dropped its major label and put its new album online for download. This is not a new strategy but what is interesting is that they don’t sell their music through iTunes for $0.99...

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...
Book Review: Six Degrees: The science of a connected age

Book Review: Six Degrees: The science of a connected age

Six Degrees: The science of a connected age Duncan J. Watts, Norton, 2003 Duncan J. Watts (1971-) is a professor of sociology at Columbia University, head of the CDG Collective Dynamics Group and in 2003 he wrote the book...
review: “Emergence” by Steven Johnson

review: “Emergence” by Steven Johnson

“Emergence – the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software” Steven Johnson New York: Scribner, 2001 Are you familiar with the situation in which you’re having a talk over the hedge with that neighbor that emerges from behind...

Review: Albert-László Barabási’s ‘Linked’

In 2002 Albert-László Barabási wrote: ‘Linked - how everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science, and everyday life’. In numerous links (chapters) Barabási lists all sorts of networks, such as biology, physics,...

Review: Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture – David Kline and Dan Burstein

  David Kline and Dan Burstein points out that the blogosphere will transform many areas of politics, business, media and culture. In their book ‘Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture’ they have interviewed...

Review: Blogosphere The New Political Arena by Michael Keren

Blogosphere can be seen as a new and important element of the new public sphere. On a blog people are able to not only comment on public affairs or read about what they find interesting. On a blog they...

Review: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

This book is a bundle of theories and case studies which Surowiecki uses to convince the reader that a diverse crowd can come up with better answers and solutions than a single group of experts. The cases he brings...

We the Media – Dan Gilmor

In his book ‘We the Media: Grassroots journalism by the People’, Dan Gilmor describes the development in the so called grassroots journalism. Gilmors goal is: “to persuade you that the collision of journalism and technology is having major consequences...

Salam Pax’ The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi.

This summer I was part of the Digital Methods Initiative, a summer school program that aims to contribute to doing research into the “natively digital”. One of the projects I participated in was: Diagnosing the Condition of Iraq: The...
24/7 Time and Temporality in the Network Society

24/7 Time and Temporality in the Network Society

Real time, cyber time, machine time, clock time, chronos time, frankentime, mythic time, objective time, natural time, subjective time, present time, timeless time, being time, bullet time, internet time, chronoscopic time, global standard time, local time…are you still there?...

Review: Henry Jenkins’ Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

This is a review of Henry Jenkins’ book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory culture (2006). Henry Jenkins is the co-director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers is a compilation of several essays, including...

Television killed Howard Dean

Joe Trippi – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Trippi was the campaign manager of Howard Dean, a Democratic candidate for the American presidency from the beginning of 2003 untill january 2004. In his book he writes about the...

Review: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

In this book review the theory and ideas that come forward in the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, will be discussed. Tipping point: one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The...
Reflections on Uses of Blogs

Reflections on Uses of Blogs

Cross-posted at Politics of Many Minds From the perspective of Politics of Many Minds, and doing research into the ‘natively digital’ more general, the book Uses of Blogs provided me some interesting thoughts on investigating blogging and the blogosphere....
Review: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge

Review: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge

This review of Jean-Noël Jeanneney’s Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge will provide the reader with an overview of the questions raised regarding the online publishing of books. A View from Europe Branded with the tagline a View...

Smart Mobs: smart mob(ile)s or smart Men On Bits?

In this review, Howard Rheingold’s vision on the future of communication and interaction is explained, as layed out in his book ‘Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution’, 2002. Rheingold noted that SMS has been used for dating in teenage...

Review: Extreme Democracy

Politics is always changing as society incorporates new technology for disseminating information and connecting people’ (6) Extreme democracy is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a...