danah boyd is one of my favorite writers on the intersection of media, culture, and youth. She recently posted a fascinating piece on how for teens, the same Facebook status update is meant to communicate very different things to different parts of the audience: Social steganography is one privacy tactic teens take when engaging in… Continue reading »
Sep
03
Apr
06
“The Myth of Mean Girls”
This mythical wave of girls’ violence and meanness is, in the end, contradicted by reams of evidence from almost every available and reliable source. Yet news media and myriad experts, seemingly eager to sensationalize every “crisis” among young people, have aroused unwarranted worry in the public and policy arenas. The unfortunate result is more punitive… Continue reading »
Jan
12
“Porn is pushing boundaries of robotic design w/ sophisticated sex androids”
“And you know what? He’s probably right. As Johnson [heh-heh] himself noted, “the adult entertainment industry has driven adoption of every significant new entertainment delivery system” for decades–most notably it’s charged with causing VHS to win the old VHS-vs.-Betamax video tape format wars in the 1980′s. It’s been key in the cable TV industry too,… Continue reading »
Dec
23
Kevin Kelly: “Better Than Free”
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several… Continue reading »
Nov
08
Fake Steve Jobs on why the mainstream media is dying #fb
“So: they walked into this shit-storm and somehow, by some miracle, managed not to notice the fecal matter flying all around them. It’s like covering a football game that took place in the middle of the blizzard and neglecting to mention the weather.“ http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/11/why-mainstream-media-is-dying.html
Nov
08
: danah boyd on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates
“The functional act of constructing a tweet or a status update is very similar. Produce text in roughly 140 characters or less inside a single line text box and click a button. Voila! Even the stream based ways in which the text gets consumed look awfully similar. Yet, the more I talk with people engaged… Continue reading »