In The Young & The Digital (Beacon, 2009), Craig Watkins points out an overlooked irony in our switch from television screens to computer screens: We gather together around the former to watch passively, while we individually engage with the latter to actively connect with each other. This insight forms the core of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (Penguin, 2010). Shirky argues that the web has finally joined us in a prodigious version of McLuhan’s “global village” or Teilhard de Chardin’s “Noosphere,” …

Every once in a while our reliance on technology initiates a corrective or at least a thorough reassessment. In a sort of Moore’s Law of agentic worry, the intervals seem to be shortening as fast as the technology is advancing, and the latest wave is upon us.
Sometimes these assessments are stiflingly negative and sometimes they are uselessly celebratory. Jaron Lanier’s recent book flirts with the former, while other current thinkers lean toward the latter. For instance, where Clay Shirky sees the book as an inconvenience borne by an era characterized …

It’s that time again… For those who don’t know, every year around this time,  I ask a bunch of my friends and colleagues what they’re reading and then I compile it and post it here. This year, new participants Nancy Baym, Ian Bogost, Andy Jenkins, Kenyatta Cheese, and Michael Schandorf, and join regular contributors Steven Shaviro, DJ Spooky, David Silver, Dave Allen, Patrick Barber, Ashley Crawford, Howard Bloom, Alex Burns, Peter Lunenfeld, Cynthia Connolly, and Erik Davis. Thanks to everyone who contributed and to those who didn’t but considered …

Are computers and devices taking over our lives? Will our technology eventually out grow and enslave us? How would we know? Walk into a coffee shop in any major metropolitan area and you’re likely to see what looks like humans enslaves by machines. Hell, look at any crowded freeway and you’ll see the same thing. As Jaron Lanier puts it in You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), “The Rapture and the Singularity share one thing in common: they can never be verified by the living” (p. 26). …

Now that Spring semester is over, I can get back to the real work. One of my classes (Dr. Nick Lasorsa’s Theory Building in the Social Sciences class) inspired me to rediscover visual modeling (see Shoemaker, Tankard & Lasorsa, 2004 and Britt, 1997). I’ve always been a big fan of playing with ideas visually, but it had been a while since I’d tried to model any of the things I’ve been working through in my head. Below, I’d like to float three models in various stages of development.

I’ve been playing …

Since the telegraph’s advent separated the process of long distance communication from the means of transportation (Carey, 1988), communication technologies have covered the globe with an endless network of connectivity. Today, the web is host to nearly every type of information available via other forms of media (e.g., text, audio, video, etc.), the computer has become a staple technology in the homes of millions, and the average American is now a computer user (Nie & Erbring, 2000). You don’t need me to tell you all of this, but our capacity …

In his epic, futurist tome The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler (1980) wrote that we need to “move from a Second Wave culture that [has] emphasized the study of things in isolation from one another to a Third Wave culture that emphasizes contexts, relationships, and wholes” (p. 300-301), what Herman Witkin calls “field dependence.” Taking the long view, considering the context, and how one thing influences another — these are all things we would do well to do at all times. General system theory as conceived by Ludwig von Bertalanffy provides …

Under the banner of “’cause motherfuckers are bored,” Definitive Jux has been bringing its brand of boom bap to the masses for over a decade. Label co-founder and artist in his own right, El-P has been challenging preconceived notions of what it means to do Hip-hop since the early 90s when he was one-third of the germinal crew Company Flow. His ability to channel his frustrations with the world, the music, and himself into creative output is largely responsible for his abrasive sound, as well as that of his label’s …

From Kembrew McLeod:
Word up! I want to introduce my alter ego, RoboProfessor, who just finished a dance music video about digital sampling and copyright law, with an interactive component. Here’s the website: http://www.robotainment.net/musicvideo
Also, below is all the info you need about next week’s launch of Copyright Criminals. Please forward this to any interested parties, and feel free to post anywhere!
Best,
-KM
Can you own a sound?
Copyright Criminals, a documentary produced by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod, examines the commercial and creative value of musical sampling, including the ongoing debates about artistic expression, copyright …

Culture is technology-driven William Gibson once said, and, with the proliferation of digital media, the aphorism is less and less debatable (if it ever was). If technology is indeed the engine and infrastructure of our culture, then understanding it is tantamount to understanding ourselves.
The books written on the topic could fill a library, and two recent ones caught my eye. The first attempts a broad-reaching macro-view. Brian Arthur’s The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves (Free Press, 2009) promises not only to get to the bottom …