Gene Golovchinsky points to an interesting article on how dictators use the social media to break up political demonstrations. The article refutes the general assumption is that Twitter and similar sites are used by protestors to secretly organize, arguing that government is just as likely to use these sites to find and persecute dissenters. Golovchinsky comments, “all technology is neutral. Hammers can be used to drive nails or bash skulls.”
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Terrific new media, new and old, that we’re particularly enjoying.
Spectacular Twitter fiction from Jennifer Egan, impinging on the world of her novel,A Visit From The Goon Squad.
Simon Christiansen’s brilliantly clever interactive fiction.
Christine Wilks’s Out of Touch is an exploration into loneliness and the fetish (and artifice) of human connectedness inherent in social media, a theme to which many of us can relate.
Andrew Plotkin’s iOS implementation of Jason Smiga’s interactive comic.
by Mark Wernham. Machine #69 recalls Ryman’s 253, and especially Bob Arellano’s Sunshine ’69 both in its embrace of arbitrary connection and its fond nostalgia for the era when cheap booze, good drugs, fast cars and hot guns seemed to offer everything worth wanting and when nothing was worth wanting very much.
by Michael Joyce. The first great hypertext fiction, a landmark that repays close study.
A new hyperromance for the Web. Sparsely linked, La Farge’s new hypertext nods at Stephanie Strickland’s design and to Michael Joyce’s direct address to the reader. but brings a new voice and sensibility to Web fiction.
Multimedia notes from underground, where a traumatized girl furnishes a cozy space in an underground tunnel. Script by Lynda Williams, music and code by Andy Campbell and Matthew Wright. A web work that’s especially nice on the iPad. (The floor lamp is a nice allusion. Get it?)
Key readings about Reading Hypertext, edited by Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco. Just published by Eastgate; $39.95.
Some of the people we’re following lately. (This list changes arbitrarily from time to time; don’t read the tea leaves.)
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