Aug 11, 2010 7
Comparing Brody and McCandless is Beautiful
Or decide for yourself, by watching the whole thing here.
Jul 15, 2010 2
Petition to stop all this Internet campaigning
Welcome to the social web, a wonderful world of pure democracy where you and I are in charge. ‘Bottom up’ organisations where it is us, the masses, that make decisions for those up top. Grassroots campaigns through which you can fight huge faceless corporations. The modern web empowers us like never before to air our grievances, fight for what we think is right, and to save chocolate bars from a bygone age. It’s so easy; All you need is a computer, a susceptible mind, and an easily jerked knee.
The problem is, internet activism is so much easier than ‘real’ activism. It takes barely any effort to tick a box and register your support to a campaign, or to ‘retweet’ someone else’s observation or damning statement. Yet we’re supposed to consider the huge amount of statistics these polls, lists and virtual signatures amass to as worthy as a traditional march or picketing would have been. In the olden times, people really had to make an effort to stand up for things. Would a modern day Emily Pankhurst have really won the vote for women from a Facebook Group? Would Martin Luther King have had as much success in his fight for civil rights with a particularly memorable hashtag for his Twitter campaign?
Jul 5, 2010 3
Won’t somebody think about the children?
I was talking to a teenager today. That’s right, an actual youth of Broken Britain. It wasn’t as terrifying an experience as you might have thought though. For starters, he didn’t speak in that bizarre faux-patois accent that Young White Middle Englanders seem to have adopted, and so I was able to understand him enough to use the usual line of questioning I follow with anybody under 25 that I meet these days. Questions about school, pop stars, films and, since the project I did with Max Gadney about ‘Young People and News’ some years ago, about the internet. It turned out this particular youngster wasn’t as enamored with Facebook and the social media revolution as case studies frequently suggest. It didn’t seem to bother him that much. In fact, neither did films or pop stars despite my suggesting all the really cool and violent ones he should perhaps ‘Google’. If he actually used the internet at all. Anyway, none of this is really helping my point. I wanted to talk about young people who are keen internet users and Facebook status updaters. The conversation with young Jake really served no purpose other than it got me thinking about what I’d be like now as a teenager, and how I’d get in all kinds of trouble based on stuff I write on the internet.
Apr 28, 2010 2
You can’t judge an e-book by its cover
I’m no troll, but just this once I don’t agree with Charlie Brooker. He says “the single biggest advantage to the ebook… no-one can see what you’re reading”. True, but that doesn’t stop them wondering, and thinking the worse.
It goes back to that old adage: If you’re not doing anything wrong, what have you got to worry about? We don’t assume some chap with a balaclava just has issues with his acne, and similarly I wouldn’t think that whatever you’re secretly reading on the bus is anything less than the written equivalent of an act of terrorism. Or Alex Reid’s autobiography.
Jan 25, 2010 0
It’s not what’s inside that counts
The worst-hidden nerd secret since ‘you can fix glasses using sellotape’ is about to be revealed. Apple will announce an exciting iTablet/iSlate/iPad in just a couple of days, which we’re lead to believe will shake up the home computing world, shaping the way we read e-books, music and video in the future. An excellent piece in The Guardian here speculates why, amongst other things, Apple’s keyboard-less wonder will be more significant than their nearest competitor’s attempts. Some are wary, pointing out Apple’s not-unblemished track record. The Apple Cube, and to a lesser extent the Apple TV were not the huge successes that they were intended. But even the now ubiquitous iPod and iPhones had their critics on release.
Jan 7, 2010 3
When the Wire Tap runs dry
Don’t worry, this isn’t another article triumphing The Wire. You don’t need another person pouring praise on the sprawling ‘dickensian’ crime drama and its dozens of intriguing characters ‘sharing a dark corner of the American experiment’. And no, this isn’t an opinion piece pointing out that the majority of folk enjoying this mostly-black gangster crime show are white middle class media workers. Well, it is, as that is true, but only just a bit. If you’ve not yet watched ‘The best thing on television since the invention of radio’ I’d recommend you read my friend Sameer’s 100% spoiler-free piece instead. What interests me is the method by which it became popularised in this country, and what it means for future groundbreaking programming.
Oct 21, 2009 0
Show offs
Obviously Spotify is fantastic. It’s the future of music, right? In five years time we’ll find the idea of a well maintained iTunes collection archaic, surely. Transferring ‘files’ so that we can all fill huge hard drives stacked full of exactly the same music. Plus you have to double up, so that you can carry a copy of some of that collection to listen to on a bus. That sounds just like a super-capacity Minidisc player, Grandad. Why bother? If you can access anything, from anywhere, why own anything? Well, maybe there’s more to well categorised music collections than just the listening. As vain as we are these days, are we ready to give up the ownership of the media we consume?
Oct 13, 2009 0
Why nerds need their space
I recently saw ‘Moon’, the debut film by Duncan ‘Zowie Bowie’ Jones; an impressive claustrophobic space drama even if it did remind me of a lot of other space films from the past thirty years. This might be an unfair judgment though as it got me thinking; there’s only so much stuff that can happen to people in space, and it’s these limitations that makes us more nerdy people love films like this.
May 28, 2009 4
Introduction
Videogames were rubbish when I was little. It didn’t matter though as I was a stupid child and blocky 2D was exciting enough. My dad had a BBC Micro, and me and my sisters would argue over who got to play it every day. Growing up in a village of limited social means I had new friends. Manic Miner. Repton. Chuckie Egg. Not that Jet Set Willy though, he was a dick.
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