Archive for the ‘(re)thinking media’ Category
A book review. He said, ” I have so far abstained from sex. I have never had a girlfriend.”. “you’re saving yourself for the sexbots?”. He nodded slowly, shrewdly raising his eyebrow. You bet your ass he was saving himself for the sexbots. Chickens, so I was told by a paleontologist once, see chickens as […]
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Tags: Cyborg Manifesto, Cyborgs, Machine Learning, Mark O'Connell, Robots, To Be a Machine, Transhumanism
A book review. Memes form the cornerstone of what you might call a cultural evolution theory. Richard Dawkins proposed the idea in the 1970 in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’. Although Dawkins’ introduction to the idea was merely a chapter long and felt as an afterthought to his main thesis of genetics, the idea of […]
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Tags: Alphabet, Charles Darwin, Communication technology, Evolution, Imitation, Internet, Meme Machine, Memes, Memetheory, Memetics, Radio, Richard Dawkins, Selfish Gene, Susan Blackmore, Television, The Printing Press
Cyberwariors
Reading Kim Zetter’s “Countdown to Zero Day” You might not find it shocking news there is a digital weapons race going on between secret service agencies of nation-states like the US and other countries. Either you knew, or you expected it, or you wondered why you should care about this stuff at all. In all […]
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Tags: Book Review, Countdown to Zero Day, Cyberwar, Kim Zetter, Malware, nonproliferation, Online Security, Physical Digital Integration, PLC, Sabotage, Stuxnet
Information seems such a central word today, it is hard to imagine it has not always been subject of scientific inquiry. Still it was not until the 1950ies scientific information theory developed, although it would soon penetrate many other sciences including such fundamental ones as biology and particle physics. As Donna Haraway remarked, until the […]
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Network flatness
This is the last post in a short series examining the benefits and drawbacks of thinking about the world in terms of ‘networks’ . Earlier on, I gave an introduction to mathematical network theory, I discussed the network as a way of explaining the world and I discussed social media as model for social networks. […]
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Tags: Amazon, Brian Eno, Chris Anderson, Google, Hierarchy, long tail, Network Centrality, Network Theory, Networks, Self-Organisation, Wikipedia, Wisdom of Crowds
This post is part of a short series on the benefits and shortcomings of ‘networks’ as an explanation of many things in our world. In previous editions, I first gave a short introduction to mathematical network theory and secondly I discussed whether explanations in terms of networks have added value over more simple explanations. In […]
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Tags: Digital Networks, Network, Network Centrality, Network Theory, Real Networks, Social Media, Understanding Networks
Networks, the new flogiston?
This post is part in a short series on the benefits and shortcomings of ‘networks’ as an explanation of many things in our world. In my previous post I gave a short introduction to mathematical network theory. There, I argued network theory is about edges rather than nodes, so about connections, much more than content. […]
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Tags: Egalitarian values, Flogiston, Magic social benefits, Network Theory, Networks, Ocam's Razor, Social Circle
Thinking Internet & Thinking
I guess I spend too much time on the web – me too. For several years a cute little book called “Is the internet changing the way you think?” has been lingering in my closet, waiting to be picked and read. But I just never managed to grab and read it, until now. Each year […]
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