MachineMachine /stream - tagged with database http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net How Google Dominates Us http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/aug/18/how-google-dominates-us/?pagination=false Most of the time Google does not actually have the answers. When people say, “I looked it up on Google,” they are committing a solecism. When they try to erase their embarrassing personal histories “on Google,” they are barking up the wrong tree. It is seldom right to say that anything is true “according to Google.” Google is the oracle of redirection. Go there for “hamadryad,” and it points you to Wikipedia. Or the Free Online Dictionary. Or the Official Hamadryad Web Site (it’s a rock band, too, wouldn’t you know). Google defines its mission as “to organize the world’s… ]]> Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:17:11 -0700 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/aug/18/how-google-dominates-us/?pagination=false Content-free prose: The latest threat to writing or the next big thing? http://blog.oup.com/2011/07/content-free-prose/ There’s a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs—present company included—don’t escape their wrath. But in fact the opposite is true: thanks to computers, writing is thriving. More people are writing more than ever, and this new wave of everyone’s-an-author bodes well for the future of writing, even if not all that makes its way online is interesting or high in quality.

But two new digital developments, ebook spam and content farms, now threaten the survival of writing as we know it. ]]> Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:46:50 -0700 http://blog.oup.com/2011/07/content-free-prose/ Credit in the Straight WWW: "DDDDoomed", Berger, and the Image Aggregator http://2thewalls.com/journal/2011/1/10/credit-in-the-straight-www-ddddoomed-berger-and-the-image-ag.html [ED: Nearly all of the text in this post is taken from R. Gerald Nelson's independently published, occasionally problematic but more often brilliantly concise treatise DDDDoomed. Anyone concerned with issues of and methods pertaining to digital image dissemination, authorship and context should make an effort to purchase and read this chapbook. I cannot recommend it enough.]

"With new blogs springing up every day, beautiful images & words are springing up with them. I try to credit everything I put on this blog. I know sometimes I fail. Many of the images I feature are scanned by me… ]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:01:21 -0700 http://2thewalls.com/journal/2011/1/10/credit-in-the-straight-www-ddddoomed-berger-and-the-image-ag.html R. Gerald Nelson’s DDDDoomed essay http://www.hyperjunk.net/?p=22 R. Gerald Nelson’s DDDDoomed essay has been making the rounds lately and it sparked a healthy amount of curiosity and note-taking on my part that I felt I wanted to share with some reactions. The essay is published as the first volume of eight in Nelson’s Making Known Img Ctrl series based out of Minneapolis. The image heavy text is “crafted as a speculative fiction that unfolds from the perspective of a future commentator reflecting back and theorizing about the factors that brought about the dysfunctional state of the contemporary image world.” The highlights and corresponding notes aren’t presented in… ]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 07:59:20 -0700 http://www.hyperjunk.net/?p=22 Errors in Things and “The Friendly Medium” http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium

What is it about a particular media that makes it successful? Drawing a mini history from printing-press smudges to digital compression artefacts this lecture considers the value of error, chance and adaptation in contemporary media. Biological evolution unfolds through error, noise and mistake. Perhaps if we want to maximise the potential of media, of digital text and compressed file formats, we first need to determine their inherent redundancy. Or, more profoundly, to… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:39:59 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium Building Rome on a Cloudless Day (ECCV 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cEQZreQ2zQ&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:38:41 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cEQZreQ2zQ&feature=youtube_gdata Geocities - The Torrent http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5923737/Geocities_-_The_Torrent This is a collection of Geocities data downloaded by a bunch of people who call themselves ARCHIVE TEAM, who began scraping the Yahoo! Geocities site during a six month period in 2009, before Yahoo! shut down geocities.com on October 26th, 2009. This collection is compressed in a UNIX filesystem with both 7zip archives and tape archives (gtar). If you're a bit of a data tourist and just want to waft in the scent of a web era gone by, please go to one of the Geocities mirrors that were put up in the wake of the end of Geocities. As… ]]> Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:05:00 -0700 http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5923737/Geocities_-_The_Torrent The Clock http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock

Language is not what it is because it has meaning… It is a fragmented nature, divided against itself and deprived of its original transparency by admixture; it is a secret that carries within itself, though near the surface, the decipherable signs of what it is trying to say. It is at the same time a buried revelation and a revelation that is gradually being restored to ever greater clarity.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Every Thing has to end, but not so its fragments. Energy flows amongst systems. It constitutes as it destroys, but never does energy… ]]> Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:11:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock 'Rosetta stone' offers digital storage for 1000 years http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8172568.stm Researchers working in Japan say they might have the breakthrough archivists are praying for - a sealed permanent memory bank that will be easily readable now and far into the next millennium. The team, led by Professor Tadahiro Kuroda of Tokyo's Keio University, has proposed storing data on semiconductor memory-chips made of what he describes as the most stable material on the Earth - silicon. Tightly sealed, powered and read wirelessly, such a device, he claims, would yield its digital secrets even after 1000 years, making any stored information as resilient as it were set in stone itself. ]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:04:00 -0700 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8172568.stm The Next Great Discontinuity: The Data Deluge http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/04/the-next-great-discontinuity-part-two.html

Speed is the elegance of thought, which mocks stupidity, heavy and slow. Intelligence thinks and says the unexpected; it moves with the fly, with its flight. A fool is defined by predictability…

But if life is brief, luckily, thought travels as fast as the speed of light. In earlier times philosophers used the metaphor of light to express the clarity of thought; I would like to use it to express not only brilliance and purity but also speed. In this sense we are inventing right now a new Age of Enlightenment…

A lot of… incomprehension… comes simply from this speed.… ]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 07:35:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/04/the-next-great-discontinuity-part-two.html