21 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2019
    1. People still want to use technology for detecting and communicating with ghosts, though the preferred gadgets have evolved into electronic voice phenomena (EVP) recorders and geophones.

      Like the ghost-detecting apps for smart phones.

    2. communicating with spirits didn’t seem much more impossible than harnessing electricity
    3. the spirit phone’s unbelievable promise invoked technologies like the telegraph and air flight, which were both seen as impossible until proven otherwise

      Reminds me of Arthur C. Clark's "third law" that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    4. “spirit phone”
    5. In 1920, the inventor shocked the public when he told American Magazine: “I have been at work for some time, building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.” 
  2. Oct 2017
    1. Some of the most dangerous people out there are perfectly happy expressing hate and violence in their own names.

      Think of the alt-right and white supremacists

    1. values and seeks to facilitate the greatest amount of speech from the most diverse group of people

      An alternative definition of free speech

    1. when black people are the go-to choice for nonblack users to act out their most hyperbolic emotions, do reaction GIFs become “digital blackface”?

      Good question to ask the class.

    2. black reaction GIFs have become so widespread that they’ve practically become synonymous with just reaction GIFs.

      It does feel that way. Wonder if there's a way to quantify it in order to prove it empirically.

    1. Pick a meme, any meme, conceived or co-opted by Black social media — I’ll show you a meme that worms its way toward respectability political rhetoric, with misogynoir at its core.

      We should test this claim out in class

    2. “misogynoir” to succinctly describe the anti-Black misogynist intersection of racism and misogyny that uniquely impacts the lived experiences of Black women.

      Definition of misogynoir

    3. white and non-Black people making anonymous claims to a Black identity through contemporary technological mediums such as social media.

      Working definition of digital blackface

  3. Sep 2017
    1. offering virtual tours through photo galleries of the tech-nology, the people, and the places making up their data centers.1

      And you can see these "tours" via Google Map/Streetview

    1. “Why would I ever need a [insert name or function of new technology here]?”

      What emerging technologies fit this description now?

    2. Essentially, the kaleidoscope had been “domesticated.”

      NOTE: The phone has had the opposite trajectory, moving from private space to public space. The domestic phone has gone wild.

    3. Of the millions who have witnessed its effects, there is perhaps not one hundred who have any idea of the principles upon which it is constructed, and of the mode in which those effects are produced.”

      Ditto with the iPhone...

    4. He felt betrayed, “deceived into believing that what he saw was at least the shadow of something real and beautiful, when in truth it was only a delusion.”

      Sounds like what we might say if we took apart an iPhone!

    5. 462,880,899,576 years and 860 days

      Maybe connect this to Laura Marks idea of "lame infinity": "digital technology seems infinite but is used to produce a dispiriting kind of sameness" (source: https://thenewinquiry.com/the-conservatism-of-emoji/)

    6. immersed

      What do we typically mean by "immersion"?

    7. kaleidoscomanics

      Parse this word: what does it mean?