Clay Shirky presented this at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week : I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural…
Category: people
Needs vs. Desires
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is considered one of the fathers of the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to…
Don’t Forget to be a FAN
Below is a fan-made video for a Modest Mouse song that is better than most videos the band has paid money to have made [this is just my opinion, of course]: Bands, companies, et al have more to look forward to as User Generated Content [UGC] continues to propagate for better or worse. They have…
Machinima
Some of you may remember this rather unorthodox, though, significant event in online history : Machinima (pronounced /məˈʃiËÂÂnÉ™mÉ™/ or /məˈʃɪnÉ™mÉ™/), a portmanteau of machine cinema, is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines…
Farewell to a Giant
His visions of space travel and computing sparked the imagination of an entire race. Without him, the world would be a very different place today. For example, he started the buzz about geostationary orbit in a paper entitled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays  Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?“, published in Wireless World in 1945. In…
The De-Evolution of Culture
Larry Lessig says what no one else has the cojones to in this clip. Larry gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative…
TED : Do Schools Kill Creativity?
This one speaks for itself : = c
why Frank Black is a god among men
“Where is My Mind” Oh – stop With your feet in the air and your head on the ground Try this trick and spin it, yeah Your head will collapse But there’s nothing in it And you’ll ask yourself Where is my mind [3x] Way out in the water See it swimmin’ I was swimmin’…
Unschooling the Next Generation
See more on CitizenShift = c
Lynch : Retrospective
If you’re in Vegas the next coupla days and are bored of drinking and gambling, you COULD check this out : = c
White Stripes’ first Spanish single
Word is the White Stripes are releasing their first Spanish-language single – a reworking of their song ‘Conquest’. ‘Conquista’ will be issued in the US on CD and seven-inch vinyl under the name Las Rayas Blancas on February 19. The new ‘Conquista’ release will feature a mariachi version of the song, Conquest as a B-side….
A Flag for the Internet
Countries all have flags. What would a flag for the Web look like? You can share ideas here. = c
Legos turn 50
It’s the fiftieth anniversary of LEGO Group founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s patenting of the now-iconic brick. This year is also the 30th anniversary of the minifig and 10th anniversary of LEGO MINDSTORMS. (The company has actually been putting out toys since the ’40s but only settled on the perfect brick architecture in 1958.) Who can…
Top 100 Science Fiction Stories of the 20th Century
1. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien 2. Forbidden Planet (1956) 3. The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov 4. Dune by Frank Herbert 5. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke 6. Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 7. Ringworld by Larry Niven 8. It’s A…