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Google Takes Command: Shaping the Web

Google Takes Command: Shaping the Web

Even though the web doesn’t have a central point, sometimes Google, or search engines in general, seem to form the center of this universe. Bringing together all these different websites into one database, ready to be searched. Google’s software,...

The Complexity of the Online Self

Cyberspace can both be considered a communication medium for “real” people and a place for people to take on different roles, for experimenting with different ways of behaviour, maybe even different identities. This possible online identity experimentation could change...

Dolphins, Spectograms, and Scorescapes: an interview with Yolande Harris

Did you know Herman Melville’s sperm whale was silent? That’s because he wrote Moby Dick in 1851, seventy years before bioacoustic devices revealed that whales, insects, and other seemingly dumb creatures create sounds beyond human hearing range. So what...

Diagrams of the false

Personas is a student’s project developed in the MIT Media Lab that shows people how Internet sees them. Using a language processing, computer creates a data profile of your online identity, when entering your name. The program attempts to...

Second Life meets FaceBook: Why do we like being part of a virtual community?

Even though Levy‘s writing style is not my favorite (and that is probably because I am getting used to the Dutch style, very to-the-point), I still can handle it (probably because, in the end, I’m Italian and his mother...

Baidu Tieba: A Reflection of Manuel Castell’s Theories

Manuel Castells is a sociologist, he was born in Spain and now is a professor in t the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and also a have taught in University of California, Berkeley. He especially researches into information society...

One Laptop Per Child; Is That Enough?

Isn’t it ironic that we’re trying to reduce the digital inequality and poverty with ICT, while it is the ICT that caused and augments this digital divide? We’re using technology to solve the problems it has caused…

Manuel Castells in my research of cyberactivism

For the past decade, cybersphere has played an important role for activism(as cyberactivism). The 30 November (N30) protesters against the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 denoted the significant use of the Web to organize, publicise and mobilize. As...

NOVA College Tour: Interview with Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft

Yesterday evening Steve Ballmer visited NOVA College Tour. Steve Ballmer is CEO of Microsoft and is well known of his flamboyant appearances at conferences. In this interview with 500 students of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam he talks about...

South Park and the Demise of the Big Other

Unsurprisingly, yet another South Park episode has made the news recently. And as usual, the comments have ranged from praise and approval to shock (and even subtly worded death wishes?). In pure South Park fashion, “Dead Celebrities” is a...

ElasticMapping: a locative media project

On Tuesday October 6th, in the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst in Amsterdam, there was an interesting and envisioning lecture and performance by Amsterdam visual artist Esther Polak (http://realtime.waag.org/). Her main interest in the field of locative media is to...
What can wii do for us?

What can wii do for us?

“(…) the informational dimension of communication is not just about the successful delivery of a coded signal but also about contact and tactility, about architecture and design implying a dynamic modulation of material and social energies. Information works with...
The Potential Power of Twitter’s Search Engine

The Potential Power of Twitter’s Search Engine

Last week, I wrote about Twitter from the perspective of psychologist Barry Schwartz and what he calls the Paradox of Choice. “With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all.”  From this perspective...

Commercial twitter: or how to get a lot from a little

Almost every new media form undergoes different levels of different uses. Some new media is invented with a certain goal, take for instance a heavily used tool for communication as internet. This medium was invented in order to establish...

Twitter: “Blurb 2.0”

The acceleration of communication is a product of our growing need or desire to handle larger amounts of information in shorter periods of time. As efficient as this may sound, there has been somewhat of a public outcry against...

Twitter and The Remediation of Short Texts

Aphorisms, Haiku’s, SMS, Twitter “What are you doing?” This basic question of Twitter can easily be answered in the limited 140 characters a ‘tweet offers. They key characteristic of the famous microblogging site, it’s short message length, actually isn’t...

Implications of Twitter: Crime 2.0

Sept. 30, 2008. White man about 20 years of age, wearing a blue shirt, yellow vest, safety goggle and a respirator mask. An ordinary road-worker going to work you might think. No you’re wrong, this is the story of...

The Mighty Morphing Short Shorts

Literature has been shrinking. No, I'm not referring to the decrease in readership demographics, but about “new” literary forms that sprang up in the 1990s. What will be referred to here collectively as short shorts are narrative works characterized...
“I’ve had the best breakfast ever” – say it using 14, 140 and 1400 symbols

“I’ve had the best breakfast ever” – say it using 14, 140 and 1400 symbols

Phatic communication is a term first used by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski to describe a communicative gesture that does not inform or exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to express sociability...

Why Digg.com Just ‘Works’ & Why Its Users Quickly Revolt.

So, I just finished reading the better part of Jonathan Zittrain’s lastest book: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. In it he deals with the question how generative media on the internet (like Wikipedia) may...

Twitter a New Direction for Social Media

 Twitter has grown exponentially the last two years and is most apparent in the use of the service by celebrities. No other internet application can count on the massive participation of public figures. Ashton Kutcher, Al Gore, Britney Spears,...

Twitter Poetry and the Re-use Era: the Creation of Meaning

As I wrote in the last post about my new media research on Twitter, this new social networking site offers a very specific new format for communication. It gives a constraint of 140 characters to write a status update....

Is Twitter Gonna Kill Us?

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” – Jean...

Twitter in the workplace – Communities of practice, phatic communication and knowledge sharing

Twitter is easy. When you want to start tweeting you only have to enter your e-mail address, think of a screen name and you immediately can start tweeting your every thought. You can make the choice of starting to...