Last night someone told me about this amazing archive of “ephemera”l videos made possible by the work of Rick Prelinger. I spent a lot of time last night wathching videos and while they cover a wide host of topics (and there is a tag cloud to help with the categorization), they are generally short educational, advertising, or corporate films that would never had survived if it were not for these types of archives/efforts.

Phrack is back..

If only I had this book My Beautiful Mommy when I was a youthful spring chicken, I may have grown with a less traumatized soul. It is a “book that helps kids cope with mommy’s plastic surgery” and without such an aid, I was lost, so lost.

It is not the case that “copyleft” is paired with issues such as sexual freedom and immigrant rights all that often. But there are times when they are bundled together as in this video, which is advertising a Pan-Europe set of May 1st events. And even if you don’t know Spanish, you will get something out of the video given its zany aesthetics (and note that “El Copyleft” is number 1 on their list )

So I am nearly done with teaching this year, which is a relief, not because I don’t like it but because after a full year of teaching, one naturally wants a break. But before it is even over, you have to start thinking about your fall courses, mostly so you can order books in time and because developing a syllabus also requires more than a few days or weeks of work. Next fall, I am re-teaching a first year course Introduction to Human Communication and Culture as well as a new course on computer hacking. While I have an old version of the syllabus, I am going to spend the next few weeks revising, reshuffling, and updating. If there is anything you think should be included in this type of course drop me a line.

Below is the new description of the course.

The Culture and Politics of Computer Hacking.

This course takes as its object computer hackers to interrogate not only the ethics and practices of hacking, but to examine more broadly how hackers and hacking have transformed the politics of computing and the Internet more generally. We will examine how hacker values are realized and constituted by different legal, technical, and ethical activities of computer hacking—for example, free software production, cyberactivism and hactivism, cryptography, and the pranksih games of hacker underground. We will pay close attention to how ethical principles are variably represented and thought of by hackers, journalists, and academics and will use the example of hacking to address various topics on law, order, and politics on the Internet such as: free speech and censorship, computer gaming, privacy and security, and intellectual property. This will allow us to critically 1) problematize thinking on computer hackers as a socio-cultural group guided by a singular ethic and set of practices 2) examine the multiple ways hackers draw on and reconfigure dominant ideas of property, freedom, and privacy through their diverse moral codes and technical activities 3) broaden our understanding of politics of the Internet by evaluating the various political effects and ramifications of hacking.

Wikipedia, though increasingly becoming an everyday fixture for many in the Wired World, means a lot of different things to different people. If you want to take a fascinating look into what one person, Joe Reagle has written about this unwieldy project, community and encyclopedia, take a look here. He recently defended his dissertation and I have read it through and through a couple of times. It has some great insights about the significance and culture of Wikipedia by laying bare its cultural dynamics as well as putting it in historical context with similar encyclopedic endeavors.

IP, as a field of law, sometimes strikes as one unbelievably large and profitable game of make believe and this case, concerning a digital adaptation of chess-like game, a dead (famous) Marxist, his estate, and widow, makes this “game” all the more absurd (but somewhat entertaining, as all games should be)

When you join an academic department, you are just one body and mind among many others doing what you do: teach, write, go to conferences, answer a lot of student emails, advise, etc. However, what you don’t get to do is really see your colleagues very often. While we come together far too frequently for faculty meetings, once you are done, you just want to scuttle out of the room (and as quickly as possible) to continue what seems to be an endless stream of work. But over the course of months and years, there are times and moments when you do come across your colleagues and their work: you may assign some of their work in your class class, go see them speak at an event, or learn about their work over coffee.

This weekend during a PhD prospective weekend, I finally got to learn about what is probably one of the coolest projects to come out of my department, The Dead Media Archive run by Ben Kafka and Alex Galloway for their Dead Media Archeology Class.

Loosely inspired by a mailing list by the same name started years ago by Bruce Sterling (which eventually suffered its own death), they are collecting information and analyzing the significance of all sorts of Dead Media, some of which were quite present and important for our economy and communication systems, others which flickered much more briefly as a bright idea but never really caught on. As part of their class assignments, students have to write in-depth descriptions, histories, and analysis’ of these objects and they are fantastic; so if you are into dead media, do check out the archive.

They say seeing is believing and well here is some cool Internet data to feast your eyes on:

New York Talk Exchange illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and cities around the world.

The Best of Google Videos (at least according to one person). They all seem pretty good and many are pretty geeky too.