a thaumaturgical compendium

A brief article in Inside Higher Ed does a gloss on humanities bloggers:

None of these bloggers earn any money off their sites, and they pay for any technology they need (although that’s usually less than $100 a year). Their commitment is evident when they laugh at the question of finances with regard to their blogs. They view the blogs as just part of life.

Says Montfort: “When someone gets a new car, you don’t ask, ‘And are you going to make money on the car?’ It’s just something they need.”

How delightfully 2004! I really hope that this remains the common view in the next year, but anyone who studies the process of popularization of communication media knows better than that: the media attention on blogs during the next year (and thus—causation aside—much of the popular attention) will be on who just sold out.

Not me! I remain forever ineffably unmarketable!

The best use of the patented one-click technology ever (nearly making up for the bad karma of patenting it in the first place): Amazon is hosting an easy way to aid relief efforts around the Indian ocean, using the credit card you already have registered if you are an Amazon customer.

It is crushingly unfair that some of the poorest people in the world now face this horrendous natural disaster. Already, Amazon’s total Red Cross donation is edging toward $2 million, mostly from small donations by individuals just like you. Please donate whatever you can afford. The minimum is $5, and every bit will help to ease suffering.

I’ve got some good guest speakers lined up for next semester. Unfortunately, having tried and failed to line up a guest speaker from the adult industry, I am now calling on my augmented social network, via my blog. It seems that although there were some initial lines of “people who know people” among my personal networks, I seem to be further, in terms of social networks, from the adult industry than I might have expected so…

I am looking for:

• Adult web or video (or both) “talent,” at any level, niche, etc., and/or a producer/entrepreneur on the production side;
• who would be willing to do a video chat (via AIM video, video conference, etc.) , preferably live, but possibly via delayed video (e.g., I send questions);
• for my undergraduate class “Cyberporn & Society”’;
• for no money (no, not even an honorarium—blame Gov. Pataki!);
• would be willing to have the interview be webcast afterwards.

If you read my blog and fit into that description, or if you know someone who does, or if you have a readership on your blog and wouldn’t mind relaying the request, I would be very appreciative.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

Chris Lott posts this bit of useful information, relayed via a spam email:

It’s true, Chris that %thismonth% and %nextmonth% are among the best for securing free grant money for just about any purpose.

Indeed! Although, I generally seem to go after those offered %nextmonth%. Don’t they know the rule is “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today”?

New meme: your personality in 26 links. Go up to the address bar in your browser and put up each letter in the alphabet. Record the resulting URL.

Is this really a map of my unconscious self?

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P (Careful: big file!) – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

Knowledge Jolt with Jack: Your personality summarized in 26 links

You will be sucked dry by a leech. I’d stay away
from swimming holes, and stick to good old
cement. Even if it does hurt like hell when
your toe scrapes the bottom.


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla

(via Mel)

This has already been widely blogged, but I didn’t pick it up in my scan because I misread what it was. The tag is as follows:

In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline.
The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned.
What happened to the news?
And what is EPIC?

This is a lead in to a very cool history of the future of journalism. It took me a while to get to this because, figured it would be a promo for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, but it’s not.

Instead, it suggests that over the next decade, Google and Microsoft continue to acquire and interconnect various aggregation systems (Tivo, blogger, Google News, etc.), until they become the dominant sources of information in the world. It’s compelling and interesting, and will make for a great introduction if I teach Media in the Information Age next spring. It’s also a great way of showing how much impact audio/visuals can have over text.

That said, I think it gets some things wrong. First, will this really take 10 years. That seems like an awfully long time. Consider the changes since 1994. There will have to be some significant speed bumps for things to go that long.

Second, I don’t buy that the world is a worse place without the New York Times. They don’t give any compelling reason to believe that news constructed entirely from amateur reports will be significantly “shallower and narrower.” Indeed, I suspect that if it were, people would choose to read the Times—as they do today. I would be very surprised if more people didn’t read the New York Times today than did three years ago. They may not be paying for it, but that’s just another issue.

Perhaps what I find least likely is the one merger that does not appear in this ten year history, the Times company with Google or Microsoft. Indeed, if the Times were smart, they would already be using Google to generate advertising revenue for their newspaper. I imagine that it would make them a whole lot more money than drawing from their own ads department.

So an interesting framing for something a lot of people have been thinking about (I’ve held it under the label of Todo, both suggesting that it encapsulates all mediated communication and that it is something we should be working on), and puts it in a simple, easily understood form, but it also suggests that there is a simple conflict here that should be addressed. The change in how we think about news is not at all simple. At present, news media and microcontent (blogging, etc.), form a symbiotic relationship. If you want to suggest one is killing the other, you need to fill in some of the blanks.