The self is gone. What was once wrapped up in the confines of our skin has been scattered across a communication network that is so broad, and so tangled, that we don’t have any hope of getting it back. Our identities are not only continually mediated through the diverse technologies by which we communicate, but it seems quite plausible that they are no longer our own.

Thousands of databases across the world hold small pieces of our psyche. Separate, this data claim to represent some domain specific aspect of the self (a credit report here, an online profile there). Together, they create an endless and invisible representation of the self that Mark Poster aptly calls “the digital unconscious.” In an era comprised of social networking sites and online living, this can be unsettling. If our most essential pieces are in those databases, then we have inevitably relinquished control over our self-definition.

The policy debate over the Clipper Chip in the 1990s foreshadowed this modern dilemma of the self. (more…)

June 17th will be a great day for internet culture, and no, I am not talking about Firefox 3 (although, go pledge, vote, download, rejoice, etc, and do it today — we are trying to set a world record here!).

No, instead I am talking about animals of a less fiery nature: The 2008 World’s Ugliest Dog Competition.

When doing my research on LOLCats (see gnovis for the result), the topic of the “anti-LOLcat” came up often. These are images that mock the nature of LOLcats, and they are quite funny:

That said, can they compare with this?

Many people asked me why LOLDogs aren’t as popular as LOLCats, and I have never had a good answer. This competition, however, sheds a little light. As Steve said, maybe dogs just need their own thing, and that we should start a new trend: the PIMMDog (aka, Puking in My Mouth Dog). This said right after “How are they alive?”

I think my vote is leaning towards “Elwood.” He/She/It(?) is last year’s winner, but I think this might be a case of an oldie being a goody… or something like that.

Today is the last day to vote, so while you are waiting for your 4th copy of Firefox to download, take a walk over and give these puppies some love. Just don’t get too close.

So minutes after “publishing” my last post, I found this image. Maybe our first interdisciplinary project should be with some academics in a Marketing department.

(via Academic Productivity)

What makes an academic blog “academic”?

Tonight’s thoughts are brought to you via a post by Ashley over at gnovis on the topic of information overload and blogging. We can all relate to Ashley’s thoughts. You fire up your blog, you throw your thoughts out into the interwebs, and before you know it you are part of a “revolutionary cultural movement” that seems sometimes to be moving, well, nowhere. You are latest victim of that increasingly popular topic: information overload (See Robot Foot and the recent NYT article).

Ashley confessed that the internet had become “something that has stopped [her] own creativity.” But where Ashley has started a new blog project as an answer to information overload, Brad, gnovis’ editor, posted a comment stating that he felt like the standards we set for posts have turned blogging into something of a chore. I can certainly relate to that. A little blog deamon sits on my shoulder all of the time, reminding me that “someone else has probably covered it.” That is probably true in the world of tech, and certainly in politics. Put the two together… and, well, pack your bags and go home. (Today I wanted to write about the DC Twitter feud, only to find that the Huffington Post had already got it, and, err, that it was 2 months old).

But what about academia? Ashley’s post, and Brad’s comment stirred some thoughts that have been lurking in an unpublished format, somewhere in my brain for several months now. Simply asked, what makes a blog “academic”? Compared to the rest of the blog-o-sphere, is academia a different beast? Does it exist outside of the information stream that can overload us? After all, it isn’t as driven by the news.

And so, Ashley, Brad (anyone!) I have a question: How high is the “bar” for an “academic blog”? (more…)

This is something that I haven’t seen before. Apparently YouTube videos now support links and annotations. It makes them almost like a super low-fi version of Flash. I would encourage you the examples below right here, but the annotations don’t appear in the external version of the YouTube player yet, so be sure to click on the videos below to watch them at YouTube.

The most popular ones in the YouTube-o-sphere appears to be a series of magic tricks produced by werneroi. In terms of margic they are only so-so, but the way in which YouTube is letting you now “annotate” videos and provide inline links is interesting.

wereroi was even kind enough to post a video giving people step-by-step instructions on how to use these annotations.

Perhaps more magical is the “community effect.” It didn’t take long before someone posted a video explaining how this card trick works:

Now if only people would do the same for David Blaine. The closest thing I’ve got is this (but not too safe for work on the language side):

“What if I get pulled over?”

I always like it when new media hits old media — craigslist style! For you Missed Connection enthusiasts, today Ellen featured a couple for whom the impossible happened: the missed connection worked. Read more about it here.

(via the craigslist blog)

So everyone who is anyone is over at MacRumors following the minute-by-minute live blogging of the WWDC Keynote. Jobs just announced the 3G iPhone with the .2G price. I was running over to Twitter to give my stream-of-consciousness an outlet (something like “For $200, how can I not afford an iPhone?”), only to find the following:

UPDATE: Those Twitter peeps are quick ones. It seems that they found the image above as unsettling as I did. Whether preprogrammed, or inserted on the fly, there is something twitter-iffically cute about their new image:

Adorable, yes. But I am left wondering if I am the whale or the birds. Or perhaps the birds are my tweets and the whale is my unconscious? (Let’s be honest, there is something narcissistic about tweeting.)

Or perhaps it is a representation of the millions of tweeters burying the behemoth of iPhone 2.0 rumors. Either way, those are strong birds!