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New book: Twitter – A Biography
I’m delighted to share the news that my next book is now in production with NYU Press. Co-authored with Nancy Baym, it has been in the works for a while and it is a real labor of love. We can’t wait to see it out in the world! Here is the draft blurb we have…
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Twitter’s Changing Device Ecology
I wanted to briefly pick up on Tama Leaver’s comments on Tim Highfield’s excellent bit of speculative forensics* on Twitter’s hashflags — namely that the the use of these hashtag emoji for major events might have the side effect of further degrading the experience of using alternative clients like Tweetdeck. Just for fun**, for a while now I…
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Twitter (probably) isn’t dying, but is it becoming less sociable?
[cross-posted at Medium] Twitter’s demise has been announced so many times over its lifetime that it’s hard to keep track of all the premature eulogies (and this one from a year ago is actually pretty insightful), but there seems to be a new intensity in the circulation of decline narratives at the moment. A couple…
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Do Communication Technologies Define a ‘Generation’?
I’m privileged to have been invited to speak in the opening plenary at this year’s International Communication Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The panelists were asked to speak to the question ‘Do Communication Technologies Define a ‘Generation’?’ – this is how I tackled it! Speakers’ notes and key images from the slides in-line…
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#creativecitizens keynote: slides and speaking notes
I’ve had a wonderful time in an unseasonably sunny London this week, which has included a keynote presentation at the Creative Citizens conference at the Royal College of Art. As promised, below are the slides and speaker notes from my presentation, which covers the relationship between everyday creativity, citizenship, and digital media platforms over the…
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awesome animations, the history of the world, science and religion and everything
Via YouTube’s new recommended for you feature and also via Twitter, I found this really excellent re-imagining of the Star Wars title sequence as if created by the great designer and filmmaker Saul Bass: Via the ‘related videos’ feature, I came across Bass’s wonderful short film Why Man Creates, which won an Academy Award in…
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Slides from my MIT5 paper ‘Vernacular Photography 2.0’
Jill posted slides of her presentation just now – which is such a good idea that I thought I’d steal it 😉 I worked from a script, but the full paper still has to be written into existence. When it’s done I’ll upload it to the MIT5 website. In the meantime, please enjoy the Flickr-ness…
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it’s new, it’s now.
Kodak-au-go-go!
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be still my retro heart
This steampunk keyboard does all kinds of unspeakably pleasurable things to me. Steampunk, by the way, is defined by the maker as the practice “wherein the craftsman demonstrates the construction of artifacts from an age of steam and brass”, and also refers to a genre of speculative fiction: The term denotes works set in an…
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new book: ham radio’s technical culture
Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, by Kristen Haring, is a new book out on MIT Press, found via Anne’s del.icio.us links. From the blurb/summary: Ham radio required solitary tinkering with sophisticated electronics equipment, often isolated from domestic activities in a “radio shack,” yet the hobby thrived on fraternal interaction. Conversations on the air grew into friendships,…