INEFFECTIVE PICK-UP LINES FOR THE MODERN INTERNET PERSONA.

“Do you come here often? I do. I’m the Foursquare mayor, actually, which means I come here more than anyone else. That reminds me, I need to check-in. Can I have your Twitter handle? You’re so attractive, I want to Shout it from multiple applications. Simultaneously.”


http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ineffective-pick-up-lines-for-the-modern-internet-persona

How the Internet is destroying the middle class

Artist and theorist Jaron Lanier argues that high-tech "innovations" are making us poorer and less ambitious

BY MATT ZOLLER SEITZ

Jaron Lanier

In a wide-ranging interview for the online magazine Edge, theorist Jaron Lanier diagnosis many of the ills that ail the Internet-age economy.

Apropos of nothing except the subject's brilliance, I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. It's about, well, pretty much everything that affects you day-to-day -- the decline and death of the middle class, the awesome utility of the Internet as a means to spread hate, superstition and lies, the dicey relationship between humans and machines, the reduced expectations of the younger generations. 

[...]

On young people's diminished expectations in the Internet era:

I'm astonished at how readily a great many people I know, young people, have accepted a reduced economic prospect and limited freedoms in any substantial sense, and basically traded them for being able to screw around online. There are just a lot of people who feel that being able to get their video or their tweet seen by somebody once in a while gets them enough ego gratification that it's okay with them to still be living with their parents in their 30s.

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2011/08/31/lanier_internet_modern_life

After your final status update

What will happen to your online personality after you die? Some philosophical questions for you to chew over along with your breakfast.


'I am wondering if it is even possible to capture even one human personality using a computer? It seems there are far too many connections, memories and experiences, both old and new, along with the underlying psychology and brain structures, neuropeptides and hormones that contribute to and affect "personality" ... the essence of what an individual is. To successfully capture a human personality in a computer, it seems that we have to first understand the human brain andmind, and this insight doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime soon.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/aug/22/1

At war with World of Warcraft: an addict tells his story

Former video game addict Ryan van Cleave almost lost everything as his life became consumed by online gaming.


At the height of his addiction Ryan van Cleave had little time for his real life. World of Warcraft, a video game, had crowded out everything: his wife and children, his job as a university English professor.


Before classes, or late at night while his family slept, he would squeeze in time at the computer. He would often eat meals at the computer – microwave burritos, energy drinks, foods that required only one hand, leaving the other free to work the keyboard and mouse.


Living inside World of Warcraft (WoW) seemed preferable to the drudgery of everyday life. Especially when that life involved fighting with his wife about how much time he spent on the computer.


"Playing WoW makes me feel godlike," Van Cleave wrote. "I have ultimate control and can do what I want with few real repercussions. The real world makes me feel impotent … a computer malfunction, a sobbing child, a suddenly dead cellphone battery – the littlest hitch in daily living feels profoundly disempowering."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/29/world-of-warcraft-video-game-addict

Facebook: can broadcasters really make money from the web?

The social network is running a pretty basic Big Brother voting tool, but could a battle over ownership of data prevent more meaningful collaboration?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/aug/26/facebook-broadcasters-money-web

HARUKI MURAKAMI | IQ84

"By setting the story in 1984, before cell phones and e-mail and the Internet had become common, I made it impossible for my characters to use such tools. This in turn was frustrating for me. I felt their absence slowing down the speed of the novel. When I thought about it, though, not having such devices at the time—both in daily life and in the story—ceased to be an inconvenience. If you wanted to make a phone call, you just found a public telephone; if you had to look something up, you went to the library; if you wanted to contact somebody, you put a stamp on a letter and mailed it. Those were the normal ways to do those things. While writing the novel (and experiencing a kind of time slip), I had a strong feeling of what the intervening twenty-seven years had meant. Sorry to state the obvious, but maybe there’s not much connection between the convenience of people’s surroundings and the degree of happiness they feel."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/08/this-week-in-fiction-haruki-murakami-1.html#ixzz1WRH3RBuV

Is this the end for books?

Do you know what wilfing is? Have you heard of keitai shosetsus? Sam Leith on what to expect if the Kindle really does kill off the printed book...


"In 1996, the US computer entrepreneur Brewster Kahle set up the Internet Archive, its mission being to provide "universal access to all knowledge". This admirable project strives to store copies of every single web page ever posted: a ghostly archive of the virtual. [...] Kahle has set up a series of converted shipping containers in California where he hopes to create another archive – one that contains a copy of every book ever published."


[...]


"Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow has called the internet "an ecosystem of interruption technologies". TS Eliot's line "distracted from distraction by distraction" seems apt."


"Already, there's evidence of this. If it really were the case that our attention spans are shortening, you might expect to see a wholesale revival of interest in short stories, or even lyric poems, and a tendency for full-length books to shrink. But we're not seeing that. Instead we're seeing Wolf Hall, Fingersmith, The Crimson Petal and the White, The Corrections, Underworld, Infinite Jest, Tree of Smoke, and fat Stephen King after fat Stephen King."


MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/14/kindle-books

WISDOM

Note To Self: How to be a faster writer.

The infamously productive Trollope, who used customized paper! "He had a note pad that had been indexed to indicate intervals of 250 words," William F. Buckley told the Paris Review. "He would force himself to write 250 words per 15 minutes. Now, if at the end of 15 minutes he hadn't reached one of those little marks on his page, he would write faster."

http://www.slate.com/id/2301243/pagenum/all/#p2

Women! Wikipedia needs you

Jimmy Wales has suggested that more women need to get involved with editing the online encyclopedia, but what is putting them off in the first place?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/aug/08/women-wikipedia-jimmy-wales

"We middle-aged tweeters are the real addicts"

Much was made of the Ofcom research into the way we Brits use our smartphones. The main focus has been on the "shocking" use of BlackBerrys, iPhones and Android phones by naughty teenagers in places such as libraries, theatres, cinemas and even in the bathroom.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/sophie-radice-smartphones-adults-addicted