archive

Technology as we know it

From Human Technology, a special issue on Creativity and Rationale in Software Design. From Ctheory, Bradley Bryan (Victoria): Code and the Technical Provenance of Nihilism; and Christopher Parsons (Victoria): Moving Across the Internet: Code-Bodies, Code-Corpses, and Network Architecture. From LRB, a review essay on the Internet. Technology has one of the most unique life cycles of any organism on the planet, particularly its final step. Daniel Pinchbeck on why the Internet is ground zero in the Global Consciousness War. The Spam Book, with its forays into the anomalous "dark side" of digital networks, provides some nourishing food for thought. What Hath God Wrought: Daniel Walker Howe on how the telegraph was an even more dramatic innovation in its day than the Internet. A review of Artifice and Design: Art and Technology in Human Experience by Barry Allen. Gaming for Good: Can video games inspire altruism? Instant messaging was once tipped to replace e-mail, but recent figures suggest that it has lost ground sharply — why? A review of Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology As We Know It by Peter Nowak. Does the Internet make you smarter? Amid the silly videos and spam are the roots of a new reading and writing culture, says Clay Shirky. Are Google Maps and GPS bad for our brains? From Wired, Nicholas Carr on how the web shatters focus, rewires brains (and more). A review of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more). Gavin Brown laments the disappearance of the basic programming languages, all but absent in the modern PC. Technology changes how art is created and perceived — but where does art end and amateurism begin?