Periodicals>Journal Article: Smallwood, Christine (2010), What Does the Internet Look Like?, The Baffler Literary Magazine, Vol 2, No. 01, Chicago, IL, Retrieved on -0001-11-30
Memes
01 JAN 2010
How the Internet Serves as a Plot Device in Modern Story ...
In the tween movie Twilight, heroine Bella discovers that her boyfriend Edward is a vampire by consulting a website with a convenient link to supernatural occurrences in her very own tiny town. The Internet is here collectively written, but perfectly tailored to exactly her individual needs. It is not the wizened woman in the house down the road that holds the truth to Edward's identity, but an anonymous and multiply sourced repository of lore. A silent film would have cut to an intertitle t... 1 
notes
notesThe evolution of storytelling to use the Internet as a device to move the plot forward, where, in the past, other sources of information would have served the characters.
01 JAN 2010
We Delude Ourselves with Metaphors About the Internet
We are beholden to countless Internet fantasies: It's quicker than the speed fo ligth; it appears and dissolves at whim; it's guarded by big strapping men friendly to our own interests and hostile to the interests of others; it's magical, evanescent, as portable as our own bodies and imaginations; it looks like a swirling hypercoller tie-dyed video game. These are, of course, also common fantasies about capitalism. But the ultimate fantasy of being online, echoed in much writing about the Int... 1 notes
notesAn excellent essay on the numerous metaphors we use to describe the Internet, how commercials make it seem like a fun, happy place, full of friends, when in reality it isolates us. Movies portray it as an exciting, dynamic place, while in reality we spend hours sitting still, in non-ergonomically sound positions... the model of solitude and boredom.
