28 APR 2024 by ideonexus
Modern Absence of Monoculture
It is difficult to, either quantitatively (through sales, net worth, or awards) or qualitatively (through an objective hierarchisation of cultural products) provide an indisputable metric for ‘fame.’ First, there are contextually contingent variables like streaming or internet relevance preventing me from drawing transhistorical comparisons with say, The Beatles or Michael Jackson. And then there is the reality that in our postmodern, globalised world, culture has expanded, mutated, and i...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
When Isolation and Disconnection are Desirable
In his article on Scuttlebutt, Bogost asks, “What if isolation and disconnection could actually be desirable conditions for a computer network?” He says this in the context of describing how Dominic Tarr, the creator of Scuttlebutt, lives largely offline in a sailboat in New Zealand, but it makes me think of the not-yet-wireless phone in my house growing up. Before I got older and started carrying around a heavy black rectangle of potentiality and dread, it worked like this: You thought a...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
Withdrawing Attention is Civil Disobediance
Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. But doing that by loudly quitting Facebook and then tweeting about it is the same mistake as thinking that the imaginary Pera is a real island that we can reach by boat. A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once-and-for-all” type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge an...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
Nothing is Harder to do Than Nothing
Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily. We submit our free time to numerical evaluation, interact with algorithmic versions of each other, and build and maintain personal brands. For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience....Folksonomies: cyberpunk attention economy
Folksonomies: cyberpunk attention economy
18 APR 2023 by ideonexus
Avoiding Communication Vexes Online Surveillance
The idiot does not communicate,2 writes philosopher Byung-Chul Han in Psychopolitics. He may speak, sure, but not to convey a certain message. That makes the idiot instantly subversive in our time, where communication counts among the highest goods. Not so much because we value the exchange of information or because we can learn from each other. But rather, because the ever-accelerating, 24/7 communication cycle is what keeps surveillance capitalism going. It feeds the database and helps ...Folksonomies: resistance surveillance
Folksonomies: resistance surveillance
05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
Web Gardens and Streams Elaborated
Caufield makes clear digital gardening is not about specific tools it's not a Wordpress plugin, Gastby theme, or Jekyll template. It's a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space. Caufield's main argument was that we have become swept away by streams the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events. The conversational feed design of email inboxes, group chats, and Ins...Folksonomies: web topology digital distraction
Folksonomies: web topology digital distraction
05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
The Garden and the Stream as Metaphors for WWW
The Garden is an old metaphor associated with hypertext. Those familiar with the history will recognize this. The Garden of Forking Paths from the mid-20th century. The concept of the Wiki Gardener from the 1990s. Mark Bernsteins 1998 essay Hypertext Gardens. The Garden is the web as topology. The web as space. Its the integrative web, the iterative web, the web as an arrangement and rearrangement of things to one another. Things in the Garden dont collapse to a single set of relations o...Folksonomies: metaphors digital distraction
Folksonomies: metaphors digital distraction
The author will later call the memex the original garden.
05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
The Six Patterns of Digital Gardening
1. Topography over Timelines Gardens are organised around contextual relationships and associative links; the concepts and themes within each note determine how it's connected to others. [...] 2. Continuous Growth Gardens are never finished, they're constantly growing, evolving, and changing. Just like a real soil, carrot, and cabbage garden. [...] 3. Imperfection & Learning in Public Gardens are imperfect by design. They don't hide their rough edges or claim to be a permanent sour...Folksonomies: digital gardening
Folksonomies: digital gardening
Summarized, strongly recommend reading the reference for the full, fleshed-out explanation of each.
19 NOV 2022 by ideonexus
Critical Ignoring and Deliberate Ignorance
Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack peoples attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoringchoosing what to ignore and where to invest ones limited attentional capacities. We review...An important educational paradigm.