Monthly Archives: March 2007

The Machine is Us/ing Us

By Michael Becker | Published: March 20, 2007
I don’t usu­ally do this, as reg­u­lar read­ers might know, but I’m going to link a YouTube video. It’s worth it. This video raises every issue that I care deeply about regard­ing the Web in four min­utes. Well worth the down­load time.
Posted in Miscellany | Comments closed

Wikipedia and Academic Credentials

By Michael Becker | Published: March 8, 2007
In the wake of a con­tro­versy over the cre­den­tials of a con­trib­u­tor to a site that does not require con­trib­u­tors to have cre­den­tials of any kind what­so­ever, Wikipedia may soon require con­trib­u­tors who rely on their cre­den­tials in writ­ing to cer­tify their author­ity. They will still be able to remain anonymous. I sup­pose this is [...]
Posted in Authority Issues, Digitalia | Tagged , | Comments closed

Data!

By Michael Becker | Published: March 6, 2007
A study con­ducted by research firm IDC deter­mined that in 2006 the world pro­duced 161 bil­lion giga­bytes (161 exabytes) of infor­ma­tion, a num­ber that is many times more than the 5 exabytes UC Berkeley esti­mated for 2003. But as one per­son in the AP story remarked, does it really mat­ter how many fac­tors big­ger it is [...]
Posted in Internet News | Comments closed

RIP: Jean Baudrillard

By Michael Becker | Published: March 6, 2007
Post-modernist thinker Jean Baudrillard has died after a long ill­ness. He was 77. He became noto­ri­ous for his crit­i­cism of the Gulf War and 9/11.
Posted in Miscellany | Tagged | Comments closed

Paris Blackout

By Michael Becker | Published: March 2, 2007
This is inter­est­ing. The AP is report­ing this morn­ing on the end of a news exper­i­ment. The Associated Press, as an orga­ni­za­tion, decided not to cover Paris Hilton for one week. No news of the celebrity was writ­ten by the globe-spanning news orga­ni­za­tion. The result? No news bureaus clam­ored for Hilton sto­ries. People noticed her [...]
Posted in Print Culture | Tagged | Comments closed