I have comments disabled on this site for the same reasons that many other writers have shut them down as well: they tend to become spammy soapboxes, they require time for moderation, they interrupt the textual flow of the site, blah, blah, blah. And yet this leads to something of an ironic contradiction: a common […]

The most effective delusion is the one which holds you captive to the illusion of your own freedom. For if your freedom depends on a certain belief, ideology, device or lifestyle — if you can’t truly be free without it — then are you not actually a prisoner to it? Today: Seek every opportunity to second […]

Somebody produced an image1 that went viral throughout corners of the Internet. The graphic is comprised of an enlargement of Facebook’s Like button, under which is cited this passage from George Orwell’s novel 1984: ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall […]

After you… photograph the present; record the present; video the present; check-in at the present; ’Like’ the present; tag the present; tweet the present; post the present; share the present; comment on the present; …is it still the present?

‘No’ is a positive word. Until you say ‘no’ to everything else, you cannot say ‘yes’ to something worth fully investing yourself in. In a world of unlimited choices, ‘no’ is the most powerful word you can employ. ‘No’ is not negative word: it is the absolutely necessary teammate of the word ‘yes’.

Is a “status update” made for the benefit of the sender or the receiver? For whom is a tweet intended? The question calls to mind Jacques Lucan’s interpretation of The Purloined Letter: …the sender, we tell you, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form. Thus it is that what the “purloined letter,” […]

When I opened my first MySpace account, I thought to myself, “This is going to turn my friends into hobbies!” It was so remarkably addictive to know what other people were thinking and doing all the time. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter — the Internet has nurtured exponential growth of this phenomenon of the digital incarnation of self. […]

As a communication method, broadcasting becomes inversely less effective the more it is used. A single billboard by the highway is far more effective than a billboard nestled between thirty others. Likewise, the more congested your flow of communicative traffic becomes, the more likely it is that your message will be dwarfed in the cacophony, lost […]

Imagine that you were one of 300 people with fax machines. Each one of you program your respective machines to carbon copy every fax to all 299 other machines. Then, together, you go about your day diligently reading the faxes that pour in. One or two particularly intriguing faxes generates multiple responses, which means that […]

On June 11, 2011 I presented a talked entitled Creative Impetus, Digital Canvas at PodCamp London 2011, held at the Research Park, at the University of Western Ontario.