March 2010
0 posts
The History of Things
Have biographies of individuals—such a huge part of book production in the last century—given way to “biographies” of things? E.G. Salt, Cod, Spice, The Big Oyster, A Splintered History of Wood, etc.?
February 2010
3 posts
everyone's tumblr
Hi everyone!
The following is a list of the tumblelogs for everyone in the course.
Make sure to follow all of your classmates.
kwm2.tumblr.com tiffli.tumblr.com andrewhaney.tumblr.com ildoyang.tumblr.com giamundo.tumblr.com liuqian.tumblr.com sign-up-and-start-posting.tumblr.com khazpar.tumblr.com lafinch.tumblr.com aswartzell.tumblr.com
On Nostalgia
Over at Fimoculous, Internet meme-collector Rex Storgatz reflects on the differences between postmodern nostalgia and contemporary nostalgia. See the comments, where he makes it particularly clear:
the ’90s discovered a new form of nostalgia, one in which that past is evoked not for its fond remembrance, but for its empty representation.
Take for example, the work of fashion designer...
Larry Page on Google
In Googled, The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta quotes Google’s Larry Paige at a 2002 Stanford lecture:
“If we solve search, that means you can answer any question, which means you can do basically anything.” (94)
January 2010
2 posts
WatchOn Adam Curtis’s Century of the Self.
This is the first episode of Adam Curtis’s the Century of the Self, a BBC documentary on the rise of Freudian psychology, public relations, and conceptions of the individual over the last century. To what extent do psychology and public relations shape the self under network culture? This is crucial to understand. In part, I think the answer can...