Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Dean Schott media spin

John Schott offers a precise, powerful analysis of the media spin on Dean's Iowa roar. He pulls apart the old and new media approaches by successive framing levels. Read it.

Consumer choice for DRM: Scoble vs Doctorow

Cory Doctorow replies in thunder to Robert Scoble's take on buying DRM'd music files.

Microsoft set a good example that Apple has been too stupid to follow, and it's time for the company to do it again. When Microsoft shipped its first search-engine (which makes a copy of every page it searches), it violated the letter of copyright law. When Microsoft made its first proxy server (which makes a copy of every page it caches), it broke copyright law. When Microsoft shipped its first CD-ripping technology, it broke copyright law...

I'll tell you what you should do: you should get yourself tools to turn AACs into OGGs or MP3s right now, so that you can buy any car stereo you want and play your music on it. If you can't get those tools, you shouldn't buy AACs (Student: "What do I do if three thugs follow me down a dark deserted street in the middle of the night?" "Master: Don't walk down a dark deserted street in the middle of the night.")

Powerpoint anthology of literature

More Powerpoint satire: the literature anthology.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Infocult in San Diego

Infocult is in San Diego today, for the annual NLII conference. I'll be talking about m-learning.

Exorcism errors, continued

A new exorcism story this week.

German police have arrested a Croatian woman who was traveling with her two-year-old son shut up in a suitcase on the way to an exorcist, authorities said on Thursday.

Here's last week's, for reference.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Literature of information, continued

On the literature of information idea: more brooding, questions, notes.
Thanks to Glen and Jane for weighing in during the past two days. More comments and discussion, please!

What is a literature of information - on one level, this refers to literature about information. Obviously all writing is information, of course, and is about information in that writing reveals plot, description, ideology. But info lit refers to texts where information is foregrounded as unusually significant.
Consider science fiction and mystery genres. Mystery is clearly about the discovery of information, through detection and reason. Sf often (but not always) turns on the extrapolation of information in the form of a new idea. Some writers have been very much at home at the confluence of these two: Asimov, Fredric Brown, Poe.
Non-sf, non-mystery texts: Jane mentioned Umberto Eco's fiction, which is rather mystery-ish in many ways, but very much about the discovery of information. Let's go further: would religious texts focusing on communicating rules, cosmologies also be info lit? Deuteronomy, the Gita should count.
Information architecture, as per Jane: there are texts formally structured this way, like the Dictionary of the Khazars, or Ballard's "The Index." What's the relationship between this form and info lit more generally?

Infocult on the road to MIT

Infocult is at the Media Lab today, checking out creative technologies.

Exorcism gone awry in Atlanta

More for the "Gothic as guide to everyday life" folder, subdirectory "Southern Gothic": one child dead, and a family in various stages of trauma and incarceration, as what looks like an exorcism in Atlanta went wrong.

Based on what the adults told authorities, investigators believe "they were involved possibly in a ritual of some sort," police spokesman John Quigley said. "It may have had something to do with undemonizing the child in some manner."

Spam art: text to image

This week's version of alchemy, where spam turns to art:

(via white pebble)

New old Scots Gaelic dictionary

The Scotsman reports on the reprinting of an early twentieth-century dictionary of Scots Gaelic. To the author's credit, the author combines a clear love of language with a sensible call for an electronic version.
(Page down to read the Saxon version.)

(thanks to Becky Palmer!)