Category: internet
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What is the most exciting thing in publishing today?
This weekend I was thinking about the recent history of publishing content: What are the innovations and trends of the past? What is in the near future? Let me give you a few examples of the kinds of things I am thinking about: blogs microblogs vs tumblr vs twitter social interest-based blog networks like Medium…
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More people than bots?
In 1975, BusinessWeek magazine imagined the rise of the paperless office as computer use became more widespread. Of course, over the following two decades, consumption of paper doubled. A couple more decades on, we are finally seeing year-on-year decreases in office paper use, at least in North America and Europe. One recent tech fascination is…
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Computing in North Korea
There has been a wave of information about the computing environment and networking capabilities of North Korea coming out in the past week. Vice reported on the the release of a torrent of RedStar OS, a North Korean fork of Fedora. Combined with heightened interest over the purported Sony hack, there have been a lot…
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Foreign Affairs: Cash but no plan
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada announced $9 million dollars in funding in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs at U of T for something called the “Digital Public Square project.” The CBC dubbed the project an experiment in digital diplomacy. The Globe called it “direct diplomacy.” The coverage in the National Post,…
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“The means of information”
Cory Doctorow’s new book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free is ostensibly a guide for creators on how to approach the Internet, and does so in an extremely informative, yet conversational manner. Furthermore it is concise, making it very accessible. When people ask me why I care so much about copyright and DRM, I will…
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Mobile-induced disestablishmentarianism
Over 2014 I saw the rise of mobile in a new light. The web is diminishing as the window to the internet. Benedict Evans expressed it well in the most recent a16z podcast: New questions in mobile (I recommend the listen, but here is the article if you would read it instead.) Evans does some…
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Reset the Net
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qKk8MHFLNNE?rel=0 I added SSL to this site earlier this year. I have committed to adding HSTS and PFS. This stuff should all be default and would be great if hosting providers like Namecheap (my provider)offered this as a package out of the box. We shouldn’t have to pay to protect ourselves online, especially for such…
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Politics over politech
Evgeny Morozov’s intellectual assaults on “cyber utopianism” and “internet centrism” are well known — if often dismissed by the tech elite. I have been reading his new book To Save Everything, Click Here which so far is a pretty good exercise in skepticism and contrarianism. Yet it is in his most recent New Yorker essay…
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Cited — A review of Consent of the Networked
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom by Rebecca MacKinnon I have owned this book for more than a year, and now that I have finally read it I have to say it was pretty boring. Wait! I am not saying it is a bad book, not by any means! Overall it…