Jan. 01 2012

A Decade into “Always-On” Internet

from christian sandvig discussing the current state of bandwidth in america.

In other words, Comcast has monopoly power in cable television in many markets. It has set its 250 GB/month cap so that it is impossible to buy television over its Internet service (take that, Netflix!) or to use free Internet video services in lieu of cable TV (take that, YouTube!), thus maintaining its monopoly in video. By the way, that is the definition of a violation of antitrust law. Hello, Justice Department?

related, i received this notice on 12/16.  then another about two days ago.  my phone sits on wi-fi the entire day except, usually, the two hours i’m commuting during a 5-day work week.

looking at my phone statistics (assuming since i’ve owned the iphone 4, not previous versions - but without logging into at&t’s web site, not sure), i’ve sent/received a total of 19.4 GB of data over their cellular network.  my girlfriend and i pay, on average, $150/month to have both of our iphone 4 devices supported by at&t’s network.  on top of that, another $100/month for verizon to grant us internet access and cable television over their fios network.

it costs me $3,000 a year to stay “always-on.”  so, yeah, of course i agree with this shit.

Aug. 03 2010

nevver:

Dante’s Internet

pretty accurate.

Jun. 04 2010

wearethedigitalkids:

Designing For Networks

this makes sense.

Mar. 04 2010

Human-flesh Search Engines in China

Human-flesh search engines - renrou sousuo yinqing - have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online with offline results.

Feb. 22 2010

I wonder what Proust would have made of our present-day locus of collective fantasy, the Internet. I’m guessing he would have seized on its wistful aspect, pointing out gently and with wry humor that much of what beguiles us is the act of reaching for what isn’t there.
Jennifer Egan

Feb. 18 2009

Macroanonymous Is The New Microfamous

One of the most interesting things about 4chan is that nothing gets archived. Threads disappear within an hour. It’s a contradiction — 4chan is known for creating memes, yet it’s designed for them to die so quickly.

The lack of retention lends itself to having fresh content. The joke is that 4chan post is a repost of a repost of a repost. There was a guy who was downloading every image from /b/. He calculated that 80 percent of what’s posted has been posted before. So it’s survival of the fittest. Ideas that are carried over to the next day are worth repeating. The things that are genuinely funny get carried over.

The reason we’re seen as a meme generation factory is because of the unique qualities of the image board and the lack of retention. On other bulletin boards, threads are archived indefinitely. All the big threads have been around for months or years. But with 4chan, something has to be really good to keep getting posted.