Day: December 22, 2010

longcat is...

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longcatislong

Am counting the days before twitter switches to new twitter. The company has been running a dumb campaign where they make it look like you have a choice of whether to keep the old twitter interface or switch to a new and improved interface. If you say, in effect (by not clicking the upgrade button they dangle in front of you every day), "No, I really don't give a shit about your new look and prefer the old, simple dumb one you've always had, because, I mean, how much design do you need to post 140 character squibs?", it won't matter at all, because at some point they'll just change you over to new twitter.

Just migrate people to your new platform, jeez. Don't pretend like it's a tantalizing lifestyle option.

Dump Year-End Kudos

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"Dump.fm - IRL" at 319 Scholes is included in Paddy Johnson's 10 Best Exhibitions of 2010 list for the L Magazine.

The collective picture formed was that of a unique community of makers, each using a lexicon of stock images, internet slang and animated gifs. This is the new art we've been waiting to see for the last 30 years.

Congratulations to curator Lindsay Howard and all the other dumpers. It's important to note that although people were invited by the curator to be in the "IRL" show, anyone can sign up for dump.fm. That great work emerges without a single cult of personality (are Ryder, Scottbot and TimB the new Judy Chicago?) or institutional involvement of any kind is indeed something rather new. That it's an amorphous sort of electronic, sign-manipulating art requiring presence and participation--almost like a game but with a surfeit of hard-to-evaluate creative work product rather than a score* as a result--will make it very hard to co-opt.

*fav hustlers notwithstanding

neutrality info and disinfo

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Lauren Weinstein analyzes some disingenuous publicrelationsspeak about the FCC vote on net neutrality in a run-of-the-mill press release that he found from a maker of "packet inspection" apparatus for internet service providers.

Supposedly offering a straightforward, unbiased report on the vote allowing "tiered services," the release implies that broadband providers can't currently offer limited internet plans to low income customers (they can) and also that high-volume users "negatively impact other users" (they don't). The press release compares cable companies to power or water utilities, implying cable should be charged at a higher rate during times of peak use, even though fuel and drinkable water are limited commodities (unlike data), and someone using twice the data as another internet user isn't using twice the electricity, in any "meaningfully measurable" sense. Moreover, governments regulate power and water, while cable companies have been lobbying hard to limit regulation.

Also, power and water companies don't have the inherent conflict of interest of being a common carrier (like phone lines) while at the same time trying to steer you to higher-priced crappy content they are providing.

In a related topic, some back and forth discussion about "netflix neutrality."