The Age of the Blog

Michael Bhaskar at theDigitalist.net has written an interesting two-part rumination on the place of blogs in the publisher milieu. In it, he neatly slices publishers away from the technological aspect of blogs — wisely dismissing publishers as possible creators of […]

Truthiness and Pablumonium

Image via Wikipedia Yesterday, I published a post containing a neologism — pablumonium — that caught people’s attention. I was pleasantly surprised by the emails and feedback since it was a long post and a wry insertion of a strangely […]

0 = Initiate Final Algorithm

You may have heard of this elsewhere, a site called “You’ve Been Left Behind” (www.youvebeenleftbehind.com). It’s been created in anticipation of the Rapture. The site will store many megabytes of documents and send these materials under certain conditions to up […]

Alex Wright on “The Web Time Forgot”

If you attended the keynote for the SSP’s 2008 Annual Meeting, you heard Alex Wright of the New York Times give a fascinating talk about Paul Otlet. Now, in an article in the Times, Alex drills down into some of […]

Printeractivity — A Forgotten Constant?

We’ve all been amazed at the interactivity of print. What?! Yes. The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Need I say more? Well, yes, I do. Or, more interestingly, I can. Take This Old House, a magazine derivative from the PBS […]

We’re Still Digitally Divided

The digital divide, a term coined by President Clinton and Vice President Gore, is alive and well, according to a recent survey. Some eye-opening results: 30% of American heads-of-households have never created a document on a computer 21% of American […]

Internet & Society Now a Legit Couple

We are gathered together today to honor a union that has been 10 years in the making. By taking this brave step, these two — the Internet and Society — have acknowledged their ongoing devotion to one another, the profound […]

Web 2.0 — The Vital Echo Chamber

Skeptics keep you honest, and should be celebrated. A skeptic about Web 2.0 is David Crotty, author of the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols blog “Benchmarks.” In a recent post, he pointed me to a review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes […]

The Rise of Blogs, the Death of Newspapers

In a superb article by Eric Alterman, the New Yorker has assessed the state of American newspapers, and the rise of the Huffington Post. The (r)evolution is viewed through the lenses of Walter Lippmann‘s debates with John Dewey in the […]

Web 2.0 Critiqued in “First Monday” Issue

The March 2008 issue of the online journal First Monday is entitled, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.” It’s worth a look. Some pieces are especially provocative, including “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation,” “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance,” […]

Mixed Media & Founding Fathers

This may not be entirely germane, but I like seeing history and scholarship moving into the mass market, especially when it’s well-executed. This might be one such case, given the source material. HBO and the US Postal Service are teaming […]