Language Is a Virus, and People Could Die
The COVID pandemic seemed to accelerate the spread of new viral media, but viruses mutate, pop culture replicates, and everything’s a cover song.
internet
The Russo-Ukraine War Is a Mediated War – Not Just a War on the Media
How the Russo-Ukraine War generated a media dimension of its own and how it linked the myths of the past century to the challenges of our own.
The Future Is Funked by Future Funk
The “future” in future funk is removed from any historical sense of time, existing in a digital future that can be forever extended – and always out of reach.
Punk Wouldn’t Have Spread So Far Without the Sh*t Media
Simultaneously inside and outside by either choice or circumstance, punk has always had paradoxical – sometimes hostile – relations with TV, radio, and the internet.
Bo Burnham’s Pandemic Comedy Special ‘Inside’ Is the Krapp’s Last Tape of Our Times
Like Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Bo Burnham’s Inside offers rich insights into how our psyches and sense of self get warped by ever-advancing technologies.
UbuWeb’s Kenneth Goldsmith Writes the Book on Internet Archiving
Kenneth Goldsmith's Duchamp Is My Lawyer, a tale of the creation and upkeep of the anti-internet internet, UbuWeb, is highly engaging and avoids the risk of ploughing down theoretical wormholes of limited interest.
‘Memento’ Is the Movie of the Attention Economy
We are afraid of time, and so like Leonard in Memento, we kill it, compulsively and indiscriminately.
Hashtags: Can’t Live with ’em, Can’t Live without ’em
How are humans regulating the internet through hashtags? What kind of algorithms are generating the content in your feeds? Best read Elizabeth Losh's Hashtag.
Is Social Media Facing Its Biggest Existential Threat?
Jaron Lanier says we should delete our social media accounts, yet it's not social media per se, but the way in which it presently exists, that Lanier is concerned about. But Lanier is overlooking a critical factor in our social media addiction.
#PopMatters20: Tech Is Evil and TechKnow Kinda Told You So
How deluded we were about our devices being labor-saving, productivity-increasing cure-alls! And other realizations of how the rise of technology has affected our lives.
Tribeca 2018: ‘Netizens’ and ‘Every Act of Life’
These important documentaries about online abuse and the works of Terrence McNally attempt to illuminate empathy and social awareness at a time when it is being woefully ignored.
Don’t Google It! How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
Algorithms of Oppression addresses the growing concern about the consequences of commercial control over information and the harm it does to communities.