In On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (Random House, New York, 2006), Marshall Berman, in the chapter ‘The Street Splits and Twists’, which, among other things, describes the complicated relationship between women and Times Square, notes in his commentary on Ethel Merman: Gypsy is one of the most grueling of AmericanContinue reading “From ‘Filling the Sky’ to ‘Sharing the Earth’”
Category Archives: Technology
Nationalism and Climate Change
Many contemporary commentators–sages all of them–have noted that the single most important barrier to expeditious action being taken on climate change is nationalism, that the prioritization of national priorities, the elevation of ‘local’ concerns–possibly short-term and limited in impact–over global ones would ensure failures of co-ordination between precisely those entities–nations–whose joint action is required toContinue reading “Nationalism and Climate Change”
Sherry Turkle on the Documented Life
Sherry Turkle articulates, quite gently, a familiar complaint about–among other things–the smartphone-and-selfie obsession: A selfie, like any photograph, interrupts experience to mark the moment. In this, it shares something with all the other ways we break up our day, when we text during class, in meetings, at the theater, at dinners with friends. And yes,Continue reading “Sherry Turkle on the Documented Life”
Tim Kreider and the Problem of Too Many Writers
Tim Kreider has a very familiar sounding complaint in the New York Times. It is familiar because his article follows a well-worn template of talking about the Brave New Bad World of Free Content, and because the Times routinely publishes such Op-Eds. Like most screeds put out by what I have termed ‘the whining artist‘Continue reading “Tim Kreider and the Problem of Too Many Writers”
Nicholas Carr on Automation’s Perils
Nicholas Carr offers us some interesting and thoughtful worries about automation in The Atlantic (‘All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines,’ 23 October 2013). These worries center largely around de-skilling: as automation grows ever more sophisticated–and evidence suggests it is pushing into domains once thought to be inaccessible–humansContinue reading “Nicholas Carr on Automation’s Perils”
Online Conversational Spaces: The Vocal and the Previously Silenced
Comments on Internet discussion forums have been the subject of much analysis ever since electronic conversational spaces first made their appearance back in the 1970s. Pioneering scholars of ‘computerized conferencing systems’ like Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz–who conducted most of their empirical studies on the Electronic Information Exchange System–noted that several features of theseContinue reading “Online Conversational Spaces: The Vocal and the Previously Silenced”
Social Networks and Loneliness
As a graduate student in the late 1980s, I discovered, in quick succession, email, computerized conferencing, and Usenet newsgroups. My usage of the last two especially–and later, the Internet Relay Chat–would often prompt me to say, facetiously, that I would have finished my graduate studies quicker had I stayed off the ‘Net more. That lameContinue reading “Social Networks and Loneliness”
The Peculiar Allure of Blog Search Terms
Like most blogging platforms WordPress provides statistics on blog views: unique visitors, referring pages, and most interestingly search terms that bring viewers here. The following, for instance, are yesterday’s entries for this blog: a municipal report what is the narrator’s attitude toward the south failure of kindness www american horror story season 3 walking deadContinue reading “The Peculiar Allure of Blog Search Terms”
The ‘Trickery’ of Robots
Maggie Koerth-Baker reports on a case of supposed trickery–(‘How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them‘, The New York Times, 17 September 2013)–that has come to light as robots become more ubiquitous and enter an increasing number of social spaces: In the future, more robots will occupy that strange gray zone: doing not only jobsContinue reading “The ‘Trickery’ of Robots”
Ridley Scott’s Promethean Stinker
I often disagreed with Roger Ebert‘s rating of movies. Sometimes, our disagreement would be a simple matter of Ebert being a little too kind, a little too forgiving. The latest instance of this discord may be found in our differing assessments of Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus. Ebert gives it four stars. I don’t. I found Prometheus toContinue reading “Ridley Scott’s Promethean Stinker”
Samir Chopra 