Category: Technology

Some things that have caught my attention this month:

What the End of Net Neutrality Means for You:
Don’t kid yourself, the effects of upcoming US legislation changes will be felt throughout the ‘net. And as is often the case, legislators in other countries will continue to be pressured by the same powers moving American decision makers.

Kamasi Washington – Harmony of Difference:
If you are a jazz fan you know this man. His new EP continues where “The Epic” left off.

The Dark Side of New Media
Here is a good piece on some of the many worries about our new media, and what it is doing to us. I can hear Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman muttering “we told you so” from the great beyond. There’s no doubt that our technologies change us. I do doubt, however, whether we have sufficiently thought through the problems that our new media can and will cause.

“This is a deeply dark time, in which the structures we have built to sustain ourselves are being used against us—all of us—in systematic and automated ways. It is hard to keep faith with the network when it produces horrors such as these. While it is tempting to dismiss the wilder examples as trolling, of which a significant number certainly are, that fails to account for the sheer volume of content weighted in a particularly grotesque direction. It presents many and complexly entangled dangers, including that, just as with the increasing focus on alleged Russian interference in social media, such events will be used as justification for increased control over the internet, increasing censorship, and so on. This is not what many of us want.”  Read more…  Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle – Medium

Next is a tenuously related video discussing the effects of the same media from the perspective of a wildly successful pop artist:

A More Positive Side of New Media
This internet thing isn’t all bad. Or even mostly bad. It certainly has been destructive to old forms of media, in particular large (slow) companies relying on monopolistic power artificially enabled by barriers based on the old media forms. But it has also allowed artists that are interested to connect directly with their audience. Kickstarter is a well known site for facilitating this sort of thing, and their latest project, called Drip, is worth checking out. Currently in an invite only stage for artists, it allows them to manage subscription type relationships with their audience: read more.

Tori Amos – Cloud Riders (Audio) :
I often lose track of Tori for years at a time and then a new release comes out that reminds of how consistently good she is.

Slow – Against the Glass Remastered:
It still stands up as simply great music.