Cultural Criticism, New Media and 21st Century Youth Culture + about.
For all this talk about how isolating the internet is, how social media only fosters faux friendships and so on, the Tumblr Reads event at Housing Works in NYC is a testament to the power of new media to generate “real” community.
Although location has become less…
Lady Gaga on the cover of Advertising Age’s Digital Issue as the ultimate social (media) climber.
Here’s to hoping that our insight into things like Ponds Age Miracle Moisturizer and K-Mart will pay off!
Read Write Web has witnessed the birth of an Internet meme. It’s like seeing a unicorn.
As noted earlier, I do not find Christine Smallwood’s answer to her question “What Does the Internet Look Like?” satisfying. She claims,
[The Internet] looks like a warehouse of space junk, and it sounds like an industrial-strength air-conditioning system. Beyond the screen, the Internet looks like everything else. It looks like money.
Her vision has some truth, but it’s far too ugly and too easy to represent what is more like an endless digital labyrinth of information. She uses inert industrial imagery to represent the dynamic entity that has pushed traditional industry (which is not to say Capitalism) to the edge of obsolescence. Smallwood, in short, is not up to the challenge she has put herself to.
But then, how does one talk about infinity? This is what makes Borges great.
My favorite Borges piece (and, as some of you know, my favorite work of fiction in general) is Borges’ mystical The Library of Babel. I challenge you to find me a better description of the Internet than this:
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one’s fecal necessities. Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite … Light is provided by some spherical fruit which bear the name of lamps. There are two, transversally placed, in each hexagon. The light they emit is insufficient, incessant.
Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. I say that the Library is unending. The idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space. They reason that a triangular or pentagonal room is inconceivable. (The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice now for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.
It’s no surprise to find that one of the first comprehensive collections of New Media studies, The New Media Reader, begins with the full-text of Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths. (Download the PDF of Lev Manovitch’s introductory essay, “New Media from Borges to HTML” here).
It’s futile to depict what the Internet “looks like” —-it’s simply not something one sees. But if we insist that cyberspace be subject to some kind of literary representation, I am certain it would be a task that Borges’ genius (not to mention his blindness) would have uniquely equipped him to do.
The digital universe is not a clumsy industrial hodge-podge. It is as infinite, terrifying and gorgeous as Borges’ library. And in our Internet-enabled postmodern age, where information (or, if you prefer, knowledge, reason, science) is the closest thing we have to God, I find the conclusion to The Library of Babel (via Andrew Hurly’s superior translation) is especially poignant:
If an eternal traveler should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder—which, repeated, becomes order: the Order. My solitude is cheered by that elegant hope.
When musicians improvise, their brains turn inhibitions down and creativity up. Scientists set out to measure exactly what is going on in the heads of musicians, using jazz as the constant:
[T]hey go into what we call a “dissociated frontal activity state.” There’s this notion that someone like Coltrane is “in the zone,” he’s far away from the concerns of everyday life. And he is in some other place where all of these novel ideas are flowing out of him.How does he do it?
The brain really alters itself into this creative mindframe where its purpose at that moment is to generate novelty and to decrease inhibition.Consider that for a moment: improv decreases inhibition and increases novelty! As I mentioned recently, people are already improvising. With the emergence and adoption of a new set of tools and services, the line between creator and consumer has narrowed and, in many places, blurred completely. And this is the great opportunity for designers (or creators or any kind): to create room for this sort of free flow of ideas in our design process and in the products and services we create for people. Plan for improvisation. Make room for novelty. (These are not oxymorons.)
In the meantime, head over to hear a series on the field of “neuromusic,” research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and music.
As literary non-fiction, Smallwood’s Baffler piece on the Internet is strong. It would, however, not be so if it were written as reportage. The substance of her objections are too flimsy to stand as a serious argument. To equate the internet with solitude or addiction or “money” is obviously an oversimplification. In fact, if you were to write out a list of her quasi-objections to the Internet, you’d have a pretty easily dismissible (or at least objectionable) display before you.
That said, Smallwood can’t be blamed for what her article is not. She isn’t advancing a serious argument—she is merely provoking a mood. By virtue of the fact that I am struck (to varying degrees) by the imagery she patches together, indicates to me that she is on to something. But what, and how much? These are questions she leaves the reader to consider for herself.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
Google re-establishes its frightening omniscience.
