Monday, July 13 2009
The Pogues and Irish Cultural Continuity
Shane MacGowan's awareness and adaptation of trends in the literary world, along with the narrative quality and structural experimentation of his work, should cement his status as both a musical and literary figure.
Friday, July 10 2009
Google and the End of Wisdom
What today’s students do not realize is that what Google provides is sometimes fact and oftentimes opinion – but never answers.
The Public Display of the Private Individual
As a professor of mine once opined, it is the shift from Rockwell's paranoid "I always feel like somebody's watching me" to the insistence that someone need be watching to validate private feelings.
We Are United in Our Digital Isolation
The paradox of the new media is that for each face-to-face interaction we sacrifice, we open up the possibility of connecting with thousands of like-minded people.
Wednesday, July 8 2009
Michael Jackson and the Death of Monoculture
With Jackson's death, we must also say goodbye to the era when an individual pop star had the power to saturate and unite.
Tuesday, June 16 2009
The Power of Story in the Digital Age
In an age where Twitter and Google seem to be taking over the world, how do people communicate information in a meaningful and memorable manner? They tell a story.
Screaming In Digital: The New Media Generation’s Inner War
Both Twitter and Facebook are attempts to inject organic humanity into the cold, artificial realm of networking technologies -- our humanity cannot survive the conversion process.
Friday, June 12 2009
Love Your Big Brother: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ Tells Us About 2009
George Orwell’s seminal book can equip its readers with the intellectual apparatus necessary to see through the routine mendacity and stupefying barrage of euphemism that plagues contemporary political life.
Monday, June 8 2009
YouTube’s Budget Travel Through Space & Time – Yours & Mine
I was momentarily freaked out that I was stuck in the afterglow of The Summer of Love for so long, but I trusted it, went with the synaptic flow, and discovered YouTube’s true power.
24 Tweets
Having to bop back & forth between Facebook & MySpace & Plaxo & Blogger & Skype & Twitter is just too fucking much & I’m wading thru all thi[0!]
Friday, May 29 2009
The Future is an Empty Room
As digital technology consolidates its conquest of the known universe, emptying our living spaces and assimilating our lives, all that will be left in our future is space. Lots and lots of empty space.
Monday, May 18 2009
The Death of the Second Folk Revival
If the Second Folk Revival put the power of recording into the hands of the artists, what’s been happening these past five years or so has put that power into the hands of everyone: cell phones that record video, ProTools and Cakewalk, Movie Maker and MySpace.
Wednesday, May 13 2009
How It Could Be Different: An Interview with Sarah Katherine Lewis
The sex worker turned memoir author and columnist discusses the egalitarian nature of the sex industry, the devaluation of the body, and why you should just go ahead and eat that bacon if you want it.
Monday, April 20 2009
Full Circle: Béla Fleck, Paul Simon & America’s Return to the World Community
Béla Fleck didn't ask to be the Avatar of the New American Culture (avatars never do). He happened to be in the right place at the right time with a banjo and a digital recorder. The remaining dots are ours to connect, and we've begun to connect them.
Friday, April 17 2009
On Evas and Angels: Postmodern Fantasy Devotion to Neon Genesis Evangelion
More than a decade after its debut, Neon Genesis Evangelion continues to reign as a cultural icon in Japan. Understanding how it made such a lasting impact gives us a window onto Japanese social history and fandom.
Monday, April 13 2009
India Shining?: America’s Indian Moment
Perhaps Slumdog Millionaire is an elaborate, cinematic version of Bobby Jindal. Perhaps Western audiences have so deeply appreciated Boyle's film because it subtly reiterates a symbolic order that is as familiar as colonial conquest.
Thursday, April 2 2009
Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Identity
As the Middle Eastern American community has been perceived to be less Christian and more Muslim since 9/11, so too is the assumption that they are unable to assimilate because of religious differences.
Wednesday, March 18 2009
Does Video Game Criticism Need a Pauline Kael?
Kael, much like video game critics today, was faced with a massive philosophical shift in her chosen artistic medium that large quantities of critics were against.
Tuesday, March 10 2009
The Devout and the Dirrty: Consumer Choices in Bewildered Times
Throughout the centuries philosophers and religious thinkers have encouraged women to feel grateful for their subordination. It’s only against the red light of ‘Dirrtiness’ that the chastity movement could ever have struck us as fresh.
Friday, February 27 2009
Beautiful Agony: The New Naked
Erotica website Beautiful Agony continues to revolutionize how both men and women approach sex and intimacy by revealing individual facial expressions of real, vulnerable human beings orgasming.
