Random: The Internet is Funny

As in: Hypertext

I leave for PCA tomorrow, to present my flash project, which I'm calling internet art. Try it out and enjoy:

Random: the Internet is Funny

Now a working link!

Freud and Internet spirits

As in: Hypertext

I'm working on a random web generator that uses google and a bunch of filters to grab stuff. As part of the test phase, I'm using lots of different test phrases to see how it reacts to a variety of input, and one of the test phrases I put in was "subway muggings". After it filtered and shuffled around some pages, this was the fifth-rated response:

Next up in our Earthlink sponsored series on the "Future of Wireless" - Corante profiles Chaska, Minnesota. The small city rolled out its municipal Wi-Fi offering in November and has already seen more than 10% of its residents sign up for the service. It's also attracting a lot of attention from big cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco that are eager to hear its lessons learned. Read the article interview here.

This passage epitomizes the unheimlich of randomness and the web. Who knows why I was interested in subway muggings (I ate lunch at Subway yesterday), but the search and filters (which have no intentional bias toward Minnesota) yielded a passage about the town I grew up in. Weird. I emailed a few fellow Chaskans about this, and they suggested that:

• "I'll bet you experienced some Freudian coding into your java. That is too weird. "
• "...and maybe some input from the internet google spirits."

I love those ideas too. Freud and the Internet spirits. Rings of Ulmer's Internet oracles.

Not the Wild Wild West

As in: Hypertext

One of my students (thanks, Robert!) sent me this clip of someone--purportedly Harlan Ellison--talking about the Internet. I don't distrust my student, but you never know; the Internet is, after all, the Wild Wild West.

Download mp3 file (600kb)

I find this clip interesting, mostly because it reveals such a venom from someone ensconced within the gates kept by the print culture. Rather than suggesting ways to deal with the question, Ellison just rants that the Internet is pretty much worthless.

And Bukatman thinks science-fiction is conservative.

Dang kids!

As in: Blogistry , Hypertext , Reading

Quoted in Avatars of the Word by James O'Donnell:

They have chopped up the text into so many small parts, an brought forth so many concordant passages to suit their own purposes that to some degree they confuse both the mind and memory of the reader and distract it from understanding the literal meaning of the text.

That's Nicholas of Lyre, lamenting the proliferation of manuscripts in the fourteenth century. This passage struck me as hilariously apt (as it obviously did O'Donnel). More later.

More How to Lie with Maps

As in: Composition , Hypertext , Media , Reading

I just finished Mark Monmonier's book. It's great. There's one passage that strikes to the core of my being with a glowing, cartographic, nerdly joy. He writes:

...map publishers have been known to deliberately falsify their maps by adding "trap streets." As deterrents to the theft of copyright-protected information, trap streets are usually placed subtly, in out-of-way locations unlikely to confuse or antagonize map users.(51)

It seems to me that the "trap street" is a fantastic opportunity for hypertext writers. While people working for "transparency" and "clarity" certainly wouldn't want trap streets cluttering up their "site maps," I think hypertext authors interesting in the more playful aspects of the web could use "deliberately falsified" elements deliciously.

When trying to write using hypertext to be more socially active or aware, this passage seems particularly apt:

By omitting politically threatening or aesthetically unattractive aspects of geographic reality, and by focusing on the interests of civil engineers, geologists, public administrators, and land developers, our topographic "base maps" are hardly basic to the concerns of public health and safety officials, social workers, and citizens rightfully concerned about the well-being of themselves and others. In this sense, cartographic silences are indeed a form of geographic disinformation(122).

Perhaps an offshoot of adbusters could be mapbusters--people dedicated to the cartographic education and elucidation of social problems often ignored in maps.