Pinboard: bookmarks for adamcrowe tagged 'literaryculturevsoralculture'

RSS

adamcrowe + literaryculturevsoralculture 148

« earlier

[close]

select: none ‧ this page ‧ all pages no items selected

mark as read ‧ unread ‧ private ‧ public ‧ add stars ‧ remove stars ‧ delete

tag: add or remove tag

THIS IS BOILERPLATE confirm ‧ cancel

McLuhan Galaxy -- Marshall McLuhan, Lloyd Dennis & the Hall-Dennis Report (1968)

'“Your education system is dead meat,” he begins. Than he argues, convincingly, that the whole approach to organized learning belongs to another century. Children of today are in a new electronic age. They think differently, learn differently and respond differently because they are tactile people, aural people, like tribal man before the age of print. They learn by pattern recognition, but they go to school and are confronted by print-minded teachers. Everything is broken down in packages called subjects – “it’s like trying to study a flood by counting the trees going by, it doesn’t make sense to them. If you think you have a drop-out rate now, you should think of it in twenty years! This rate is nothing unless you are prepared to do something about it.'

McLuhan literaryculturevsoralculture education
6 weeks ago by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog -- Words in stone and on the wind

'The integrity of the page has been so intrinsic to the technology of the book (and the book's predecessors) that most of us assume it to be intrinsic to the very idea of a book. But, as we're now discovering, it's not. A printed book is a printed book is a printed book. An ebook is not an ebook is not an ebook. Because it lacks the necessity and the fixity of a print run, e-publishing once again can become an ongoing process rather than an event, which is likely to change the perceptions of writers and their collaborators. And when you change your perception of what you're creating, you will also change how you create it. I think it's fair to say that these kinds of shifts are subtle and play out over a long time, but in some ways the erosion of the sense of a written work's completeness and self-containment may ultimately change literature as much as the underlying technological changes.' -- An ear for an eye

literaryculturevsoralculture
february 2012 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Ribbonfarm -- Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater

'When you look at old writing technology, poetry suddenly makes sense. It is modular content that comes in fixed-length chunks, with redundancy and error-correcting codes built in. It is designed to be transmitted and copied across time and space through unreliable and noisy channels, one stone tablet, palm leaf or piece of handmade paper at a time. The technology was still unreliable enough that the oral tradition remained the primary channel. Writing began as a medium for backups. Scribes were the first data warehousing experts. They did more than merely transcribe the spoken word. They compressed, corrected and encrypted as well, and periodically updated texts to reflect the extant state of the oral tradition. That is why verses are so eminently quotable outside the context of poems. Poems are extensive oral containers of arbitrary length, in some cases delineated after the fact. Verses are standardized containers designed to carry intense, dense, archival-quality words around. Today we view traditional verse epics as single works. -- The prose book can stand apart from broader social processes in radically individual ways. It can travel from writer to readers largely unaltered, setting up a hub-spoke pattern of conversational circuits. The Web obscures the crucial and necessary distinction between oral and written cultures. Some bloggers perform and talk. Others are scribes.'

literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage retribalization
january 2012 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Quora -- Do book-lovers look down on non-readers? [Answer: Venkatesh Rao]

'You cannot learn to swim in ideas until you actually enter the meme pool. Then you realize you're not alone. You just see dead people. Your frame of social reference is the hidden river of dead authors communicating with each other across centuries of time, carrying on a conversation that is strangely detached from the regular world. Light readers cannot hear this conversation. You start to feel a bit like a medium once you can hear this conversation, because every individual book is situated in this conversation for you, where it basically stands alone for a light reader. It's like you can see the background where others can only see the foreground. You aspire to join the dead people while still alive. You start to write. You write a book. The circle is complete. You are now a civilizational ghost. Even if you don't write a book and remain forever a listener, you are still part of a group disconnected from the rest of humanity, but connected across time in ways the non-heavy-reading living will never be.'

reading writing readerlywriterly literaryculturevsoralculture language immateria rhizome
december 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909)

"Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no ideas."

themediumisthemassage literaryculturevsoralculture technology technouptopianism transhumanism temes tethered telepresence simulacra virtuality borg bravenewworld THX1138 thematrix malgorithms collapse
december 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Salon.com -- How Shakespeare got me through unemployment

'I’m not a Shakespeare scholar. Or an actor. I read them as part of a Nashville Shakespeare Festival program called “Shakespeare Allowed!” which invites a group of strangers to gather at a giant square table in the downtown library and read one speech or line at a time, round-robin-style, regardless of gender or acting ability. ...as we worked through the canon, I found myself discovering that the whole point of the project — to simply read the plays aloud — got me halfway to understanding the text. It was amazing how that text seeped into me without my even knowing it. While reading “King Lear,” Lear’s final death speech (“Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!”) fell to me, and I had no idea I was even understanding it until I got to those five “nevers. ” Shakespeare didn’t give me just one to say, he gave me five. Five. Five grieving nevers, spoken by a heartbroken, dying king. To my surprise, I was in such a state of tears I almost had to pass the rest of the speech to the person next to me. After that, I was known as “the guy who cried.”'

retribalization playasyougo theatre speech literaryculturevsoralculture
december 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Technosociology -- Why Twitter’s Oral Culture Irritates Bill Keller (and why this is an important issue)

'The oral world is ephemeral, exists only suspended in time, supported primarily through interpersonal connections, survives only on memory, and rather than building final, cumulative works, it is aimed at conversation and remembering knowledge by rendering it memorable, which can often mean snarky, witty, rhythmic and rhyming. (Think poet slams rather than essays). In oral psychodynamics, the conversational, formulaic styling dominates (which aides memory) as well as back-and-forth, redundancy, an emphasis on being less analytic and more aggregative, being more additive rather than developing complex and subordinate clauses (classic example is the Genesis which, like Homer’s Odyssey, is indeed an oral work which was later written down). Oral pschodynamics also tend to be more antogonistic, interpersonal and participatory.'

socialmedia literaryculturevsoralculture retribalization from delicious
june 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Ribbonfarm -- The Return of the Barbarian

'...settled civilization is a fundamentally Gollumizing force. It makes you comfortable, stupid and addicted to the security and accumulated fruits of your labor. ...a settled civilization grows old, stupid and tired, and a vigorous barbarian culture swoops in and takes over from the top, and gradually gets civilized and stupid in turn, until it too is ripe for destruction by pastoral nomads on its periphery. ...intelligence in design is fundamentally a predatory quality put in by barbarian-Masters. Refinement in design is a non-predatory quality put in by civilized-Slaves. We miss this dynamic because of a curious phenomenon: history is only written by the winners if the winners can actually write. At their apogee, when civilizations have the most surplus wealth, they indulge in the most refined forms of writing: writing histories with autocentric conceit, they focus on the visibly-refined glories of their own age, rather than the higher-barbarian sensibilities at the foundations.'

history civilization entropy retribalization literaryculturevsoralculture invention innovation * from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Bok Blog -- Alone Together: A Meditation on the Future of Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

'“A ‘place’ used to constitute a physical place and the people within it. What is a place if those present have their attention on the absent?” -- Turkle also points out that the language used in email and texts tends to be less carefully constructed because it is understood to be garbage bound – that is, it is intended to be read once and then deleted. Reading this, I see an even greater value to every academic essay and oral presentation we assign to our students. Very few arenas of digital communication demand careful thought, planning, and sustained argument. Giving students the opportunity to build these seemingly ‘old fashioned’ skills may be one of the most valuable things we have to offer them.'

technology psychology tethered liminality presence telepresence literaryculturevsoralculture media SherryTurkle from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Technium -- Proverbs of St. McLuhan

'Electric speeds create centers everywhere...This is the new world of the global village.' -- 'The "human interest" dimension is simply that of immediacy of participation in the experience of others that occurs with instant information.' -- 'Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.'

literaryculturevsoralculture retribalization globalvillage acoustic ambientimmediacy McLuhan from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Ribbonfarm -- A Big Little Idea Called Legibility

'The big mistake in this pattern of [authoritarian] failure is projecting your subjective lack of comprehension onto the object you are looking at, as “irrationality.” The deep failure in thinking lies is the mistaken assumption that thriving, successful and functional realities must necessarily be legible. Complex realities turn this logic on its head; it is easier to comprehend the whole by walking among the [parts], absorbing the gestalt ... than by hovering above it. This imposed simplification, in service of legibility to the state’s eye, makes the rich reality brittle, and failure follows. ...legibility quells the anxieties evoked by apparent chaos. There is more than mere stupidity at work. ...the process is driven by a naive “best for everybody” paternalism, that genuinely intends to improve the lives of the people it affects. Individuals lacking the capacity for rich introspection apply dumb 12-step formulas to their lives and fail.'

literaryculturevsoralculture linearity bureaucracy control statism utilitarianism paternalism realityprogramming technocracy centralization planning
april 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- John Berger: WAYS OF SEEING 1/4

"Eye, the machine... freed from the boundaries of time and space, Eye co-ordinate any and all points of the uni-verse wherever Eye want them to be." -- Ear, the mesh-aeon

art aesthetics aura gigantism propaganda repetition rhetoric culture hierarchy perspective literaryculturevsoralculture copy reproduction heterarchy from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Marshall McLuhan Speaks - Centennial 2011 [Videos]

"At electric speed, everything becomes x-ray." -- Electric Age: #1974 End of secrecy #1976 Instantaneous/simultaneous information world #1977 Post-literate generation #1977 Surveillance #1977 Loss of private identity

McLuhan media themediumisthemessage internet acoustic space leaky equiveillance literaryculturevsoralculture cognitivesurplus retribalization from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- Marshall McLuhan on the TODAY Show

"I teach books from morning to night." -- Literally.

McLuhan media literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage rhetoric from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Boston Globe -- Is our modern wired lifestyle damaging us and our relationships?

'...our uses of new technologies demean real friendships, lead us to treat others as objects, lower our expectations for real human connection, turn emotion into performance, make us confused about when we are alone and when we are together, and is creating a generation of narcissists so fragile that they need constant social reassurance. Turkle reads as diseased much that many of us see as signs of robust social health. So, for Turkle, those posting cellphone photos from the presidential inauguration were not sharing the moment with distant friends, but were pathologically escaping from the here and now. Turkle reads teens’ texting not as a sign that they’re more socially connected than ever, but as evidence of a need for constant reassurance. But, suppose human nature is more malleable than her psychological model allows. Suppose the Internet is devising a self that is social in new ways that include intimacy, but that also find real human value in thinly spread connections.'

psychology media themediumisthemassage literaryculturevsoralculture augmentationistsvsimmersionists SherryTurkle from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The New Republic -- Nicholas Carr Reviews Douglas Coupland's "Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing Of My Work!"

'He heralded the global village, and was genuinely excited by its imminence, but he also saw its arrival as the death knell for the literary culture that he revered. The electronically connected society would be the setting not for the further flourishing of civilization but for the return of tribalism. The intellectual detachment that characterizes the solitary thinker—and that was the hallmark of McLuhan’s own work—would be replaced by the communal excitements of what we have today come to call “interactivity.” -- In the fall of 1979, McLuhan suffered another major stroke, but this was one from which he would not recover. Though he regained consciousness, he remained unable to read, to write, or to speak until his death a little more than a year later. A lover of words—his favorite book was Finnegans Wake—he died in a state of wordlessness. He had fulfilled his own prophecy and become physically post-literary.'

McLuhan literaryculturevsoralculture retribalization from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

NYTimes.com -- Taking Web Humor Seriously, Sort Of

'“The biggest problem if you’re trying to figure out ‘What is this stuff? What are they trying to do?’ is that I think even they don’t completely have a grip on it,” Scott says. “This thing — the Internet, online culture — allows you to engage with interesting people who you otherwise might not be aware of or interesting people who are, themselves, unaware that they’re interesting.” ...BuzzFeed is organized by its readers’ shorthand response to what they view — sections include LOL and OMG. “The way people interact with media is more about someone’s reaction, an emotional or even intellectual reaction,” Peretti says. “That is a kind of cultural shift. It’s not ‘I love to read the Style section,’ it’s ‘I love all the LOL stuff.’ ” “You see the news break,” Peretti says, and “the next day or 12 hours later, people are hungry for the parody of it or the comic relief.” '

* internet web meta themediumisthemassage grooming gossip socialobjects literaryculturevsoralculture boredom cognitivesurplus memes #socialization #ubiquity #specialization culture popculture retribalization from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wired -- July 21, 1911: Media Messenger McLuhan Born

The Gutenberg Galaxy: 'The world has become a computer, an electronic brain... And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time... In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture.'

McLuhan literaryculturevsoralculture numbing themediumisthemassage retribalization from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- RSA Animate: The Secret Powers of Time

Past-negative, Past-positive; Present-hedonistic, Present-fatalistic; Future, Transcendental -- Thesis: All addictions are addictions of Present-hedonism. Example: Boys addiction to gaming/feedback/control that prevents them from planning their mid-/long-term futures -- http://www.thetimeparadox.com

psychology psychogeography time now media themediumisthemassage literaryculturevsoralculture hedonism addiction * presence culture rhetoric tense emotionalintelligence from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

SlideShare -- Tim Stock: The Psychology of Space (Design Research Methods)

'When McDonald's first opened in Hong Kong in 1975, customers crowded around the cash registers, shouting orders and waving money over the heads of people in front of them. McDonald's responded by introducing queue monitors—young women who channeled customers into orderly lines. Queuing subsequently became a hallmark of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan, middle-class culture.'

acoustic space literaryculturevsoralculture linearity queuing socialdesign design from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- Terence McKenna: "Reality is made of language"

"In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh. The world is a thing of words; the world is made of language. I can't say that enough." -- ;^)

literaryculturevsoralculture words language reality realityprogramming shamanism magick TerenceMcKenna
may 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- Did Philip K. Dick disclose the real 'Matrix' in 1977?

"A dark-haired girl shows up at the door of the protagonist and tells him that his [word] is delusional." -- We are living in a word-programmed reality and whenever one word is changed an alternative reality branches off.

PKD pseudoworlds literaryculturevsoralculture legalese words realityprogramming magick thematrix fake delusion reality philosophy
may 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

'Journalist Chris Hedges discusses his recent book Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. In it, he charts the dramatic rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy, and illusion. Hedges argues we now live in two societies: one, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world and can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth; the other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic where serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.' -- "Things become so grim that there's a retreat into self delusion." -- Excellent summary of progress already made along the road to serfdom, also an urgent warning of the rise of utopian christian fascism. It's a shame he calls for an equally utopian "militant" socialism to fight against it. Violence is violence is violence. Neither the left fist nor right fist can justify it.

america idiocracy delusion popculture culture emotionalism narcissism celebrity infantilism magick mindcontrol propaganda spectacle virtuality psychosis literaryculturevsoralculture fame irrationality
march 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

BBC -- The Virtual Revolution: Homo Interneticus?

'Aleks examines the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and asks how they are changing our relationships.' -- Sherry Turkle: "There's a new personality type: It moves from, 'I have a feeling, I want to make a call,' to, 'I want to have a feeling, I need to make a call.' There's a sense in which you almost need a sense of validation and the support of the community to feel the feeling in the first place. Bringing other people into the loop of feeling your feeling, this is very seductive."

internet web cybernetics socialnetworking statusupdates realtime feedback addiction reflexivity literaryculturevsoralculture SherryTurkle documentaries AlexKrotoski psychology narcissism
february 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

transmediale -- Keynote: Bruce Sterling on Atemporality

"It means the end of postmodernism." -- Out of the darkness and into the light: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4343266495/

meta metanarratives history literaryculturevsoralculture BruceSterling retribalization
february 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Edge -- 2010: How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think? -- Gloria Origgi

'THE POWER OF CONVERSATION -- Arguing is a basic ingredient of thinking: our way of structuring our thought would have been very different without the powerful tool of verbal exchange. So, let's acknowledge that the Internet allows us to think and write in a much more natural way than the one imposed by the written culture tradition: the dialogical dimension of our thinking is now enhanced by continuous, liquid exchanges with others. The way out of the guilty feeling of wasting our time is to commit ourselves to interesting and well articulated conversations... If it happens that what we will leave to the next generation are threads of useful and learned conversations, then [so] be it: I see this as an improvement in our way of externalizing our thinking, a much more natural way of being intelligent in a social world.'

internet literaryculturevsoralculture acoustic space #bandwidth dialogue discourse publics
january 2010 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

SFGate -- Attention loss feared as high-tech rewires brain

"It's just part of society that we're multitasking all the time. We can't stop to think, and if we have to stop and consider something, we get frustrated." -- "Look at language. People are writing the way that they text. Anything complex that takes several paragraphs to develop is information overload at this point." -- "I think of it as regressive. I don't think of it as progressive. It's becoming so normalized in our culture, it becomes hard to catch while it's happening."

technology feedback ADHD attention continuouspartialattention intermittentvariablerewards ambientimmediacy distraction addiction extensionsofman centralnervoussystem tethered cyberbrain literaryculturevsoralculture
november 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Times Online -- The internet is killing storytelling

'Stories introduce us to situations, people and dilemmas beyond our experience, in a way that is contemplative and gradual: it is the oldest and best form of virtual reality. The internet, while it communicates so much information so very effectively, does not really “do” narrative. Plot lies at the heart of great narrative: but today, we are in danger of losing the plot. Paradoxically, there has never been a greater hunger for narrative, for stories that give shape and meaning to experience. Our fascination with other people’s stories is as great, if not greater, than any time in history. What is needed is a machine that can combine the ease and speed of digital technology with the immersive pleasures of narrative. It may not be far off. Japan has recently seen an explosion in the popularity of thumb novels... Here is proof that the ancient need for narrative, hardwired into human nature, can sit comfortably with the wiring of the newest technology.'

storytelling narrative narrativearchitecture cognitivesurplus continuouspartialattention additivecomprehension literaryculturevsoralculture comics
november 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

New Scientist -- Innovation: The psychology of Google Wave

'... real-time, synchronous, nature of instant messaging (IM) encourages an informal tone... "It invokes face-to-face communication and encourages people to use conversational strategies,. -- Texting/typing is talking.

communication text talk literaryculturevsoralculture googlewave
october 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Gladwell -- Brain Candy

'Johnson: "When we watch these [reality] shows, the part of our brain that monitors the emotional lives of the people around us—the part that tracks subtle shifts in intonation and gesture and facial expression—scrutinizes the action on the screen, looking for clues. The phrase "Monday-morning quarterbacking" was coined to describe the engaged feeling spectators have in relation to games as opposed to stories. We absorb stories, but we second-guess games. Reality programming has brought that second-guessing to prime time, only the game in question revolves around social dexterity rather than the physical kind.' [Plus the game of decoding the producer's presentation of the action] -- On the "delayed gratification' of gaming: '"Playing a video game is, in fact, an exercise in “constructing the proper hierarchy of tasks and moving through the tasks in the correct sequence,” he writes. “It’s about finding order and meaning in the world, and making decisions that help create that order.”''

meta culture extradiegesis diegesis entertainment gaming tidying tv realitytv productnarratives storygraph literaryculturevsoralculture cognitivesurplus play via:diemkay television
september 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wired -- Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

Texting isn't writing: it's talking. -- '...young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. ..life writing, as Lunsford calls it. ...students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.' -- See? There's nothing letter-ly/linear going on here. These are sound-words that are meant to be overheard in an acoustic space conducive to overhearing: the internet. -- 'The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor...' -- Why write for one when you could talk to all?

communication literaryculturevsoralculture literacy acoustic space performance rhetoric extensionsofman voice conversationalbandwidth #socialization #complexity themediumisthemessage CliveThompson media
august 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Technovelgy -- Sentiment Analysis: Hypercorps Need Emotion Chips

Nice reality-check on sentiment -- 'I'm fascinated by the idea that an entirely new science of computer analysis is needed to find out how we consumers feel about companies that promise one thing and deliver another. Large corporations could easily find out specific facts about their services that consumers do not like. For example, AT&T can read a variety of factual criticisms about their iPhone service in a number of recent tech site blog posts. However, it is costly to track actual problems with services, and then fix them. Hypercorps like AT&T spend billions honing their brand images, which is just a phrase referring to how we feel about them. If they can track how we feel about them, and then fix how we feel, then the problem is solved. The service may still suck, but as long as customers don't feel like leaving, it's just as good as actually providing a good service, and much cheaper. AT&T execs could just try using it themselves and then they could feel what we feel directly.'

sentiment branding obsfucation literaryculturevsoralculture
august 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

BBC -- Will Self: Naturalism and Sanity: Is the Mind Really as it's Portrayed?

'Celebrated author and essayist Will Self launches the festival arguing that the way the mind is portrayed in most novels is preposterous. Why are we so resistant to attempts to represent the mind as we really experience it, in all its terror, exhilaration and confusion? Are many of our finest novels designed to reassure us that we are 'normal'?'

psychology writing prose poetry mind consciousness multitude semiosis language literaryculturevsoralculture words verisimilitude narrativefallacy reality realityprogramming WillSelf
august 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

ImageTexT -- The Tides of History: Alan Moore's Historiographic Vision by Sean Carney

'"History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction [...]. Still, it is a fiction that we must inhabit. [...] All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own." --- ... Moore understands that in order to change history one must become a part of history, and thus engage in a kind of human sacrifice, as much as he would like to imagine some other way. -- "There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future." Idea Space is the medium through which human consciousness draws connections across space and time, finds meaningfulness in the immediate through its mediation within larger contexts. -- Fiction is how reality is made...'

* meta storytelling liminality fiction reality dialectics time space simultaneity literaryculturevsoralculture history metanarratives postmodernism language culture ideaspace magic shamanism sacrifices semiosis realityprogramming consciousness philosophy mythology meaning AlanMoore comics
august 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

BBH Labs -- The Storyteller’s Story

'Mark Cridge talked about the need for a creative director to be comfortable with the idea of curation, rather than control. -- The new movie marketing model shows us that storytelling doesn’t need to be written off as antiquated, one way communication, quite the opposite. Sophisticated stories are spun around the core characters & concept behind a film, all with the aim of driving anticipation, buzz and deeper, more rewarding relationships with fans. -- ...the fundamental shift in storytelling is simply this: we are now in the business of starting stories, not attempting to nail them down from beginning to end. Letting stories take on a life of their own, to be played with, passed around, modified and enriched by the audiences they’re developed for. -- #4. Fans may want to be “hunter gatherers” (see Henry Jenkins on the subject of world-building), piecing together dispersed pieces of content in order to build a fictional world, but they only have so much time to do so.'

literaryculturevsoralculture transmedia storytelling entertainment marketing huntergatherer collectiveintelligence curation tidying additivecomprehension meaning retribalization
august 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

n+1 -- Lingering

"...this tendency toward distraction and desublimation is for real. It naturally begs to be deplored by literary people. A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for others; what has been written without effort is generally read without pleasure; and so on. But if jabbering semiotic promiscuity entails some familiar costs of social or sexual promiscuity—shallow and ephemeral relationships supplant deeper and more lasting ones—there can be no honest account of online and digitally interconnected life that denies the attractions of novelty, variety, excitement. -- The internet, as its proponents rightly remind us, makes for variety and convenience; it does not force anything on you. Only it turns out it doesn't feel like that at all. The experience of being online has at least as much to do with compulsiveness as with liberty ...it seems unlikely there is any more widespread compulsion among the professional middle-class and their children than lingering online."

internet web technology media literaryculturevsoralculture acoustic space attention distraction ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder addiction intermittentvariablerewards boredom behaviours via:charlesfrith psychology
june 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage 2.1

McLuhan on Twitter: "That one big gossip column that is unforgiveable, unforgettable, and for which there is no redemption, no erasure, no mistakes. Ours is a brand new world of all-at-onceness. Time has ceased. Space has vanished. We now live in a global village. The simultaneous happening; we're back in acoustic space. We've begun and again to structure the primordal feeling, the tribal emotions, from which a few centuries of literacy had divorced us. The tribalising process, the inner trip, the depth involvement in the experience of the unified human family, that is something of which we've had no experience for a many centuries. It is a process that is located so entirely in the present that it does not appear in the rearview mirror to which we habitually look for reassurance and nostalgic orientation. At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective." —McLuhan 1967

twitter literaryculturevsoralculture acoustic space globalvillage extensionsofman centralnervoussystem McLuhan quotes retribalization
june 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

(hm) -- school

"Subjects and textbooks are just fences arbitrary boundaries that corral learners and keep them from wandering off into other territory. A plot of land in exchange for a horizon. Outside of school science stumbles into art which tumbles into economics. which is one click away from Picasso

literaryculturevsoralculture education #specialization
june 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

OnFiction -- Psychogeography as Seeing with Metaphors

"As the commodification of values make things generalized and more substitutable for each other, the complex web of social relations that at one point measured meaning and value are substituted by a system that while complex in its own way, undeniably simplifies the meaning of many exchanges... In this context -- an important one for understanding the experience of modernity that's linked to efforts to promote literacy, analytic reasoning, and progressive eye exercises, I cannot help thinking about what is traded for the ability to generalize bears. What sorts of metaphors of understanding are embedded in our preconcieved senses of space? When we seek the ability to 'to look back and see patterns of space construction from a newly alienated vantage-point,' or to seek 'a deeper understanding of the subject space by clearing away mental debris, or to understand better how that debris is constructed in the first place,' what does this cost us?" -- An eye for an ear (McLuhan)

literaryculturevsoralculture acoustic space psychogeography metaphor language linearity perspective #bandwidth #specialization
may 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Marginal Utility -- Thinking man’s filter

'The fear that critics of internet-mediated consciousness have is that we’ll lose the ability to formulate these critiques because we will have regressed into the habit of searching for what has already been said and latching on to whatever superficial information ebbs up from that search. -- ...the deeper question has to do with whether the mountains of data now available to us inhibits thought or enables it, or has no particular effect on the quality of thought. It’s great to be able to look up specific information and get it quickly—to be able to pull up texts and search them for half-remembered phrases, for example. But chasing down information online tends to generate a centrifugal force that takes one out of the orbit of the original inquiry. The promise of more and different and enticing stimuli is always there, and our battle against distraction seems always to become more difficult.'

literaryculturevsoralculture information knowledge context synthesis #specialization #diversity distraction
may 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

City Journal -- The Postmodern Financial Crisis by André Glucksmann

'The speculative bubble was based on a bet that served as its own foundation. It was “performative,” in the terminology of the linguistic philosopher John Austin. “This session is now open,” proclaims the president in an assembly. It’s true because he says it: here reality is based on speech, while in ordinary cases speech is based on reality—that is, it is not performative but indicative. Similarly, the financial bubble, piling credit on top of credit, got rich on self-affirmation. It was contained in its self-relation, which is what made it a bubble. It gradually eliminated the principle of reality: nothing counted but the financial products invented by people’s investments.' -- Must re-read McLuhan on America being somewhat backward (in the electronic age) due to having been born of and stuck in a linear/literal/words -based culture. For older, oral-based cultures, this is a postmodern/systemic/accoustic crisis; for America, it's a modernist/determinist/linear one.

economics america literaryculturevsoralculture verbs words performance reflexivity reality
april 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Whimsley -- Not a Blogger

"I've learned that I am not a natural blogger, I simply don't have that much to say... There is a mismatch between blogging and other kinds of writing anyway. I wrote a book because it is a quiet occupation that suits me. It is a way of arguing without be ingdistracted by other people -- and other people, let's face it, usually just get in the way of a well-thought out argument. Plus, it is a way of avoiding the hurly-burly of actual debate where you have to think on your feet and assert positions you are uncertain of. While blogging is not exactly like real life, it is a bit closer to it than the book thing: if you aim to gain an audience you have to pick up on what other bloggers are writing about and respond within hours. So really, blogging just isn't my thing. The arguments go nowehere, no one changes their mind, and the signal/noise ratio is very low. The blogging world is a world built for quick-typing extroverts who don't go in too much for second thoughts."

writing blogging echo opinion conformity groupthink literaryculturevsoralculture argumentation
march 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Mike Davidson -- Last Rites

"I’ve noticed there are many non-obvious costs associated with us becoming a society of news snackers: #Our attention spans are shrinking below even the levels caused by the television explosion of the ’80s and ’90s #We value timeliness of information more than depth of coverage, or even truth in some cases #We’re uncovering more of the who’s, what’s, when’s, and where’s, but less of the how’s and why’s"

literaryculturevsoralculture news journalism criticism myopia individualism narcissism solipsism #specialization
march 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Atlantic -- The Future Is Cheese

"...it’s difficult for a media consumer to care enough about any one thing to stick with it—and for a network trying to build allegiance to a brand, convincing anyone that what you’re showing matters becomes almost impossible. The only thing network television can uniquely offer us non-digitally-optimized saps and dipshits is the promise of immediacy. Leno’s content—like that of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the breakout stars of the past few years—is news-driven, hypertimely, and ultimately disposable, insofar as it loses almost all its value within 24 hours. ...viewers will (I think, and hope) happily continue to pay for quality. Those who don’t will get what they don’t pay for." -- The book was better.

storytelling news gossip media distribution disintermediation entertainment tv businessmodels attention continuouspartialattention literaryculturevsoralculture #bandwidth #ubiquity television
february 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

BBC -- Wife murdered for Facebook status

'A man murdered his estranged wife after becoming "enraged" when she changed her marital status on Facebook to "single".' -- Words are deeds

psychology literaryculturevsoralculture reality leaky facebook
january 2009 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

What Reading Does For The Mind by Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E.Stanovich (PDF)

"What is immediately apparent is how lexically impoverished is most speech, as compared to written language. It is sometimes argued or implied that the type of words present in print but not represented in speech are unnecessary words—jargon, academic doublespeak, elitist terms of social advantage, or words used to maintain the status of the users but that serve no real functional purpose. [Such words] are not unnecessary appendages, concocted to exclude those who are unfamiliar with them. They are words that are necessary to make critical distinctions in the physical and social world in which we live."

reading literacy literaryculturevsoralculture cognition words vocabulary language context pdf
december 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Mssv -- The Long Decline of Reading

"In the first ten minutes of many new games, players receive such a blizzard of rewards that they’d be forgiven for thinking they’d won the lottery, cured cancer, and completed the game. It sounds ridiculous, and sometimes it is, but this constant encouragement keeps players with the game long enough for them to get into the story and gameplay. Books are not interactive. You can’t give readers rewards for reaching page 6 (although…). The principle is the same though - you need to give readers momentum. You need to help readers along those nervous first ten minutes when they haven’t quite gotten into the flow yet, and when they’re still being battered by distractions from their TV, radio, mobile phone and computer. After those ten minutes, if they’re hooked, they’re hooked."

reading language literacy literaryculturevsoralculture immersion rewards
december 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Alternet -- Forget Red vs. Blue: It's the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda

"Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge."

theadvertisedlife america propaganda herd ignorance literaryculturevsoralculture via:diemkay
november 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Paul Feldwick -- Exploding The Message Myth

"Successful and truly creative ads, I think work in quite a different way. If we pretend that advertising is predominantly digital, then we'll feel justified in thinking of any ad as being reducible to an intellectual, verbal construct, a message or a proposition or an idea. But if we understand that the important relationship building communication is taking place through the analogue mode, then we should really change our focus away from this abstract digital idea, back to the visual, visceral power of the entire advertisement; its colour, movement, music, timing and every detail."

marketing advertising planning communication theory mentalmodels literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage acoustic space ambient synaptics lowdefintion #bandwidth #socialization psychology emotionalintelligence via:diemkay media
august 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Edge -- THE PANCAKE PEOPLE, OR, "THE GODS ARE POUNDING MY HEAD"

Douglas Rushkoff: "We give up the illusion of our power as deriving from some notion of individual collecting data, and find out that having access to data through our network-enabled communities gives us an entirely more living flow of information that is appropriate to the ever changing circumstances surrounding us. Instead of growing high, we grow wide. We become pancake people." -- Read the whole thread.

* media technology tools renaissance perspective individualism centralization markets networks competition literaryculturevsoralculture collectivism collectiveintelligence navigation multitude cognitivesurplus distributed self context contextswitching #diversity #bandwidth #socialization #processing #complexity #storage #ubiquity DouglasRushkoff retribalization
august 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog -- The multi-tasking virus

Comment: Bertil: "... plan, remember, schedule... any night-out demands the managing capabilities of a wedding planner, simply because the cell-phones have transformed a drink into the most social occasional. Too much in their mind implies they optimize."

information acoustic space extensionsofman skin proprioception navigation mapping literaryculturevsoralculture contextswitching continuouspartialattention ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention multitasking productivity learning addiction psychology #processing #storage retribalization
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Infothought -- Nick Carr: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", and Man vs. Machine

"I've often wished there was what I call "technology-positive social criticism"... criticism of techo-hype often seems to end up couched in a certain type of fogeyism (which alienates tech types) because there's no power-center for that criticism."

criticism paradigms scale thinking doublethink technology media literacy ecology mediaecology literaryculturevsoralculture augmentationistsvsimmersionists hackersvsvectoralists
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Britannica Blog: Sven Birkerts -- A Know-Nothing's Defense of Serious Reading & Culture: A Reply to Clay Shirky

"[Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'] ought not be mocked quite so glibly. It is not just the work, it is the inheritance of the work, the vision of history, the understanding of the intersection of the singular with the societal, that is at issue."

reading internet literacy literaryculturevsoralculture culture history mapping metanarratives modernism postmodernism context content communication #processing #storage #bandwidth retribalization
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Britannica Blog: Larry Sanger -- A Defense of Tolstoy & the Individual Thinker: A Reply to Clay Shirky

"It is extremely difficult to understand other people, unless you take a long time to study what they say. If we do not understand each other in our full complexity ... we will be invisible to each other, and ultimately incapable of real human society."

internet literacy literaryculturevsoralculture writing reading speech ear linearity sociology mind hive hivemind civilization perspective vanishingpoint monotheism individualism language culture media ecology mediaecology
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Kevin Kelly -- Will We Let Google Make Us Smarter?

Comment: Keving Kelly in reply to Nick Carr: "I agree tools can affect our thinking. What I don’t assume is that a) we will be self-aware of what those affects are, or b) that we can acertain which tool does what."

information internet culture literacy literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage media technology tools toys synaptics paradigms learning education intelligence #bandwidth #processing #storage retribalization
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Reality Club -- Kevin Kelly ON "IS GOOGLE MAKING US STUPID" By Nicholas Carr

"Question is, do you get off Google or stay on all the time? I think that even if the penalty is that you lose 20 points of your natural IQ when you get off Google AI, most of us will choose to keep the 40 IQ points we gain by jacking in all the time."

google internet information culture literacy literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage reading cognition concentration digestion ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention continuouspartialattention networks informationoverload augmentedreality artificialintelligence cyberbrain symbiosis evolutionarypsychology extensionsofman brain centralnervoussystem #bandwidth #processing #storage retribalization media
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

The Reality Club -- W. Daniel Hillis ON "IS GOOGLE MAKING US STUPID" By Nicholas Carr

"We are now trying to comprehend the global village with minds that were designed to handle a patch of savanna and a close circle of friends. Forced to be broad, we sacrifice depth. We skim, we summarize... and, all too often, we miss the fine point."

evolutionarypsychology globalvillage internet information culture modernism postmodernism literacy literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage reading cognition concentration digestion ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention continuouspartialattention networks informationoverload gisting retribalization media
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Britannica Blog: Clay Shirky -- Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr

"... the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture... The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the *idea* of reading War and Peace."

internet information culture modernism postmodernism literacy literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage reading cognition concentration digestion ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention continuouspartialattention networks distributed brain informationoverload cognitivesurplus doublethink retribalization media
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Kevin Kelly -- Is the "First Movable Type" a Hoax?

Comment: Bruce A: 'If “movable type” means an object that can be used repeatedly to produce a durable symbol, wouldn’t that be the outlined-hand symbols found in cave paintings?' -- Talk to the hand.

technology writing printing literaryculturevsoralculture language
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

AdPulp -- Ball of Brand Confusion

"Marketers are obsessed with words. They believe that they are in the communication and persuasion business ―right message, right medium, right slogan, right tagline, et al" -- *nods* We don't live (thrive) in a linear/literal/causal world anymore.

branding marketing advertising words literaryculturevsoralculture via:chromacomms retribalization
june 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Nicholas Carr -- Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Regarding the cultural shock of clocks... "In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock."

information culture literaryculturevsoralculture acoustic space time technology behaviours psychology ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention continuouspartialattention neuroscience synaptics
june 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Zero influence -- Making selling funding talking

"... command line... syntax... Let’s break it down. #First, it’s a mix of English... mixed in with machine code, and using a currency which is timestamped. #Second, no license used. Attribution in username. #Third, the arguments and methods: ..."

twitter TwitterFund funding collectiveintelligence crowdsourcing commandline literaryculturevsoralculture
june 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube -- YouTube Video Annotations

#Add background information about the video. #Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene) #Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video #All of the above!

youtube video tools storytelling narrativeenvironments literaryculturevsoralculture
june 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wired -- Declassified NSA Document Reveals the Secret History of TEMPEST

"... the engineer had just discovered that all information processing machines send their secrets into the electromagnetic ether."

TEMPEST cryptography history war encryption espionage security radio hacks electromagnetism literaryculturevsoralculture leaky
may 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wired -- Meet Hiroyuki Nishimura, the Bad Boy of the Japanese Internet

"... for many, the site isn't just a viable alternative to TV — the added layer of commentary makes it better than TV ... Some users time their comments with the dialog or music, creating a call-and-response feel." -- (see embedded viddy)

japan video comments socialobjects literaryculturevsoralculture privacy reputation psychology griefing behaviours 2channel lulz
may 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Web 2.0 Expo -- Copy As Interface

"We aren't writing, we are speaking in text."

copy writing literaryculturevsoralculture text hypertext communication interface design presentations retribalization
may 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Times Online - WBLG: Can you blog away the blues?

"... bloggers tend to feel a greater sense of connectedness to a particular community, and feel that they have a larger social support system behind them compared with those who do not blog."

literaryculturevsoralculture readerlywriterly blogging psychology self selfservers
march 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Pandia - The “Google generation” and emerging web behavior

"... they exhibit a strong preference for natural language search rather than analyzing which key words might be more effective." -- Because they're talking WITH the machine not writing AT the machine. Oral culture. We need new ideas about 'literacy'.

literaryculturevsoralculture youth web learning literacy psychology research retribalization
march 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Maschmeyer - The Book of Probes

“Visual space is the space of detachment. Audile-tactile space is the space of involvement.”

* McLuhan literaryculturevsoralculture media synaptics retribalization
march 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Russuab Orthodox Church - No Life in Second Life. Orthodoxy's Problem with Virtual Reality

"The computer should be below man, not above. Virtual reality, though, involves walking into and subordinating oneself to what should have been only a tool." -- Haha. And the writing tool of causal linear thought? Not 'under' that tool, are you??!

virtuality psychology religion simulation literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage technology servomechanism virtualworlds media
march 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

From The Head Of Zeus Jones - The real digital divide is a human values one not a technological one.

This isn't so much a digital divide, more a literacy vs oralcy divide.

literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage media technology digital culture ZeusJones acc retribalization
february 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

YouTube - Finnegans Wakes McLuhans

"Spickspookspokesman of our specturesque silentiousness!"

McLuhan poetry literaryculturevsoralculture via:zeroinfluencer retribalization
february 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Julian Dibbell - A Rape in Cyberspace

"How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society."

* virtualworlds history psychology griefing governance communities civility law behaviours violence augmentationistsvsimmersionists emotionalintelligence storytelling roleplay simulation philosophy dualism reality virtuality identity self death literaryculturevsoralculture MUDs moo LambdaMOO
february 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

PBS - FRONTLINE: growing up online

Videos: Identity, Cyberbullying, Online Schooling, Relationships, Griefing, Predators... the usual stuff.

documentaries youth online behaviours learning socialnetworking communication psychology culture literaryculturevsoralculture literacy technology
january 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

This Blog Sits at the - Brand Multiplicity

"Brands are designed to be exemplars of responsiveness. This means we may not insist on what they "really" mean, or what they "must" say. The brand must be multiple because increasingly that's what the world is." So wrong. So analogue. Multiple? Integral.

branding thinking literaryculturevsoralculture
january 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Guardian - Who wants newspapers in a society that no longer bothers with news?

"British people - and, I'd guess, many people in the affluent western democracies - no longer feel it necessary to know what is happening in the worlds of politics, economics, international affairs. The news they feel they need to know is ambient"

literaryculturevsoralculture news information technology journalism web extensionsofman centralnervoussystem touch balance proprioception reality retribalization
january 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wired - The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool

"The real content of any medium is the user of the medium. We are the content of our media. Each medium delivers a new form of human being, whose qualities are suited to it."

* McLuhan themediumisthemessage literaryculturevsoralculture media technology
january 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Fast Company - Is the Tipping Point Toast?

"It just doesn't work." -- Right. So now that's cleared up, what's the next buzzmeme?

trends socialmedia designwank memes memetics influence herd wordofmouth marketing advertising literaryculturevsoralculture propagation
january 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Brand 2.0 - Are Social Applications Brands or Expendable Commodities?

"Yes, it’s hard to imagine, but people can feel emotional about functionality the same way that they get butterflies in their stomach when watching the latest iPhone ad." Yep. Same as the primative and his spear. It's about tools. Tribal. Oral culture.

literaryculturevsoralculture tools retribalization
december 2007 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

« earlier

Copy this bookmark: