Category Archives: Net Culture

Mixed Up

Squat 3 Today I finally mailed out my compilation for Squat, a CD swap club of which I’m a charter member. Way back in the early days, like February 2002, the whole concept of a CD swap club — in which a small group of people each assemble their own compilation of rockin’ tunes, burn it to CD, and mail a copy to each of the other members — was rare and novel. I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure our club’s founder was one of the very first pioneers in the concept.

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Talk to Me

021002_ada1852.gifMy Behavior-compatriot Chris Fahey is responsible for Ada1852, a chat bot driven by a singular kind of artificial intelligence. The New York Times wrote: “Like a human museum guide, Ada1852 occasionally departs from the scripted commentary to make oddly personal remarks. During a recent chat session, the virtual character was asked about a site and replied, ‘Perhaps I am slipping into madness.’” It’s a fascinating piece of online art commissioned by Rhizome.org.

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Hot Squats

SquatSpeaking of media clubs, I can neither confirm nor deny that I’m lucky enough to be able to claim a charter membership in Todd Levin’s clever Squat CD-swapping club. If twenty or so members of this club each made nineteen copies of an eclectic mix CD full of show-offish, esoteric songs and distributed them to the other members, then I may or may not know anything about that. This CD design for Squat is unconfirmed.

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Computer Imaging

Computers: An Illustrated HistoryGerman art book publisher Taschen has released what I sheepishly admit is probably the perfect book for me: “Computers, An Illustrated History.” The book is a somewhat perfunctory historical account of the evolution of big iron mainframes and unexpectedly powerful ‘micro-computers’ and PCs, but probably no one should consider it authoritative. Rather, its true value is as a quietly lavish compendium of 50+ years of computer photographs, mostly marketing shots of hardware. Nostalgiac kitsch aside, this is a remarkable compilation of coolly alluring imagery, some of which is beautiful, and some of which is frightening — but most all of which seems to promise a kind of precision-controlled, modernistic utopia, if only humans would give themselves over to the digital world.

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Chill Factor

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics have joined forces to produce Chilling Effects, a Web site devoted to educating the public on their rights within the First Amendment and copyright laws. “[It] offers background material and explanations of the law for people whose websites deal with topics such as Fan Fiction, Copyright, Domain Names and Trademarks, Anonymous Speech, and Defamation.” Have a look at the database of cease and desist letters sent by megacorporations to perceived violators of their copyrights to get an idea why the site has that name.

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