MachineMachine /stream - tagged with web20 http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Is Twitter writing, or is it speech? Why we need a new paradigm for our social media platforms http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/is-twitter-writing-or-is-it-speech-why-we-need-a-new-paradigm-for-our-social-media-platforms/ Which begs the question: What is Twitter, actually? (No, seriously!) And what type of communication is it, finally? If we’re wondering why heated debates about Twitter’s effect on information/politics/us tend to be at once so ubiquitous and so generally unsatisfying…the answer may be that, collectively, we have yet to come to consensus on a much more basic question: Is Twitter writing, or is it speech?

Twitter versus “Twitter”
The broader answer, sure, is that it shouldn’t matter. Twitter is…Twitter. It is what it is, and that should be enough. As a culture, though, we tend to… ]]> Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:19:30 -0700 http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/is-twitter-writing-or-is-it-speech-why-we-need-a-new-paradigm-for-our-social-media-platforms/ Infinite Glitch.com http://infiniteglitch.com/ Every day an incomprehensible number of new digital media files are uploaded to hosting sites across the internet. Far too many for any one person to consume. Infinite Glitch is a stream-of-conciousness representation of this overwhelming flood of media, its fractured and degraded sounds and images reflecting how little we as an audience are able to retain from this daily barrage.

Infinite Glitch is an automated system that generates an ever-changing audio/video stream from the constantly increasing mass of media files freely available on the web. Source audio and video files are ripped from a variety of… ]]> Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:50:45 -0700 http://infiniteglitch.com/ Gif and Take: dump.fm http://artcritical.com/2011/02/28/gif-and-take-dump-fm-where-registered-users-post-and-modify-animated-images/ Dump.fm is a digital version of the old Surrealist genre of the exquisite corpse, a “show and tell” for the polymorphously perverse. The art of dump.fm is genuinely interactive. Social relations are inherent to the entire art making process for these artists, rather than just getting tagged on when a conventional, art world artist begrudgingly begins the promotional stage for their work. The creators of dump.fm have allowed users to post images by pasting URLs into a box or uploading them from users’ computers. There is a convenient interface that allows users to post stills from webcams that dump.fm users… ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:05:08 -0700 http://artcritical.com/2011/02/28/gif-and-take-dump-fm-where-registered-users-post-and-modify-animated-images/ The Library in the New Age http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?

How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:03:34 -0700 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Essay: Technology changes how art is created and perceived http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-wiki-culture-20100606,0,7851757.story It used to be so simple. A book had an author; a film, a screenwriter and director; a piece of music, a composer and performer; a painting or sculpture, an artist; a play, a playwright. You could assume that the work actually erupted more or less full-blown from these folks. In addition, the book, film, musical composition, painting or play was a discrete object or event that existed in time and space. You could hold it in your hands or watch or listen to it in a theater or your living room. It didn't really change over time unless the… ]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 05:20:00 -0700 http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-wiki-culture-20100606,0,7851757.story Everything you need to know about the internet http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know * News
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The internet: Everything you ever need to know

In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown. Here are the nine key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age – and where it's taking us

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* John Naughton
*]]> Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:38:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1 The story of Google’s algorithm begins with PageRank, the system invented in 1997 by cofounder Larry Page while he was a grad student at Stanford. Page’s now legendary insight was to rate pages based on the number and importance of links that pointed to them — to use the collective intelligence of the Web itself to determine which sites were most relevant. It was a simple and powerful concept, and — as Google quickly became the most successful search engine on the Web — Page and cofounder Sergey Brin credited PageRank as their company’s fundamental innovation. But that wasn’t the… ]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:56:00 -0700 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1 Digital Technology is Not the End of Artistic Trends http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/12/21/digital-technology-is-not-the-end-of-artistic-trends The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout thinks future generations will consider itunes, youtube, and Kindle a more important cultural development than anything it distributes. He’s right to point out the huge change these technologies have brought, but hosting services and art aren’t comparable. Flickr would not exist without users, or to put it the analogue way, museums are not more important than the painting. After all, the building’s very existence relies on the production of work. Teachout cites Hip Hop as the last true artistic trend, a contentious statement for a number of reasons. I’d argue that while diverse, Internet… ]]> Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:49:00 -0700 http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/12/21/digital-technology-is-not-the-end-of-artistic-trends What happened to Second Life? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you'd be forgiven for asking if it's still going. Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn't plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines. Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their "second life" online. And everything about this world can be customised for a price - new… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:20:00 -0700 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm The Library in the New Age http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the ]]> Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:19:00 -0700 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 Wikipedia enters a new chapter http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclusionist Yet again, Wikipedia is about to break new ground. The website that has become one of the biggest open repositories of knowledge is due – within the next week or so – to hit the mark of 3m articles in English. It's all a very long way from January 2001, when Wikipedia launched. Its first million articles took five years to put together, but the second was achieved by 2007. It was not just the number of articles that grew, but also the number of people involved in creating them. During Wikipedia's first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007,… ]]> Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:10:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclusionist in Bb 2.0 http://inbflat.net/ In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users. The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders. ]]> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:37:00 -0700 http://inbflat.net/ How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604-1,00.html Earlier this year I attended a daylong conference in Manhattan devoted to education reform. Called Hacking Education, it was a small, private affair: 40-odd educators, entrepreneurs, scholars, philanthropists and venture capitalists, all engaged in a sprawling six-hour conversation about the future of schools. Twenty years ago, the ideas exchanged in that conversation would have been confined to the minds of the participants. Ten years ago, a transcript might have been published weeks or months later on the Web. Five years ago, a handful of participants might have blogged about their experiences after the fact. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter… ]]> Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:41:00 -0700 http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604-1,00.html Like Boiling a Frog: The Wonder of Wikipedia http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/runc01_.html When knowledge is generated by crowds, no single individual has much personal responsibility for what is produced, but nor does any one person have a realistic prospect of shaping the outcome. With Wikipedia, the opposite is true. The fact that there is no final version means that anyone can change anything, but it also means that every given change can be attributed to a particular individual. Though it is possible, and common, to make edits on Wikipedia anonymously (by hiding behind a nickname), it is still true that someone is always responsible for everything that happens, and that someone always… ]]> Sat, 23 May 2009 04:46:00 -0700 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/runc01_.html 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