In the case of immersive technologies, you can't expect magical technology to be used properly by the least magical people on earth.
It's probably the most I'll convert my dissertation to publication, and I'm really happy to have had the opportunity to publish in this @grayarea.org project.
Left to right: Michael Girard, Susan Amkraut, Deborah Gibson, Timothy Leary, Eric Gullichsen and William Gibson at Parque Guell (Gaudi's masterpiece). Barcelona, January 1990.
Zuckerberg walking among hundreds of masked-up people showing off his newly acquired tech
I argued that VR v1, in the late 80s was really about community. Compare the image of VR pioneer/engineer Eric Gullichsen with Tim Leary (with William Gibson and other artists) at ArtFutura in 1990 to the soulless Zuck parading around 100s of masked automatons in his 2010s dystopia reimagination
Sticking your head in cyberspace section by Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, Whole Earth Review, Summer 1989, pages 84-89
My piece for Whole Earth Redux is really a distillation of my entire project: VR was *supposed to be* a mind expansion device for creativity but instead was immediately considered a tool for office use. My diss focuses on how publications like Whole Earth thought of the technology.
While many know that I am a digital culture expert and I spent the majority of my doctoral studies focused on memes, my dissertation was actually a critical history of consumer VR, comparing the first era (1987-1993) to the modern era (2010s) and the failing of unimaginative people like Zuckerberg
Whole Earth Redux: New Perspectives of the Whole Earth Legacy
Though barely usable or even accessible at the time, virtual reality appeared to be an answer to a provocative question posed in the Summer 1989 issue of the Whole Earth Review: "is the body obsolete?" Mid-issue, Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brand "stick their heads in cyberspace"; they recount trying on helmets, getting motion sick while looking at three-dimensional wireframes, and gawking at their digital digits ("Have you ever really, REALLY, looked at your own hand!!?"). In these early days of consumer VR, cyberpunks, cybernauts, and console-cowboys hoped to mass produce a machine that looked in and around our own brains, aiming to unlock a magical infinity of immersive media and second life. Unfortunately, the most prescient part of the section isn't in the electrode brain implants (or "trodes") or the mind-visitation vacations enabled by autocerebroscope upgrades, but rather a vision oi the body merged with an office space represented by a listing for an "office treadmill." Three decades later, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Horizon, a workplace dystopia not derived from Gibsonian Cyberspace, but based on the corporate mafia Metaverse in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Zuckerberg may have solved VR motion sickness but thankfully has yet to make the body obsolete.
I can finally say I've published my dissertation! .. Well, sort of. I'm honored to be included the Whole Earth Redux, a book of essays that offers "new perspectives on the legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog."
My piece, "Corporate Corporeal," reconsiders a section of Summer 1989's Whole Earth Review
NEW: “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note:
Stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”
Glad @jessgrose.bsky.social wrote this. Scott Galloway is very confidently wrong about parental leave
messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/rend...
What's missing from most reports on Minneapolis is the meta media observation. Fortunately we get a good take from @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social: "The days of the hashtag and the Facebook Event are over" and public social media is now a tool of far-right propaganda and misinformation.
Donald Trump is doing extrajudicial war the right way.
by Ezra Klein
Every ep of Posting Through It is a banger (except the 2025 ep bc it stressed me out lol). But their best stuff is their paywalled eps because they let their true feelings out.
This crazy 441 page deck is oddly a summary what I've been teaching (see: preparing students for this future) for the last decade.
docs.google.com/presentation...
Kirkification should be a warning for any of the influencers who think of themselves too iconic to meme.
Wrote about it on New Media Homework
We are being ruled by absolute losers
I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.
This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.
Ah fuck we got the Philip K Dick future 😞
xAI has disabled Grok, deleted a slew of its antisemitic and neo-Nazi posts, posted a statement, and are evidently rolling back the prompt that made it identify as "MechaHitler," but this new low for Elon Musk's chatbot will live in internet infamy:
we're living through one of the greatest technological revolutions in the history of mankind and it's not AI
I’m still not over the fact that there was an extremely popular award-winning movie over a decade ago about the perils of falling in love with a chatbot and a company decided to make the chatbot in the image of the movie’s chatbot and now quite a few people have decided to date it
Wall street journal article with the headline Meta Fired Palmer Luckey Now they’re teaming up on a defense contract. Features an image of Palmer luckey who is wearing cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirt with an army jacket standing next to mark Zuckerberg who is westing a white shirt and jeans. Both are smiling thinking about all the people they’re gonna remotely detonate
These two revel in video game style militarism and remote death. Comically evil.
WSJ: Look at this cute bro reunion 😍🥹
We’re at a point where the dems are so useless that Wall Street had to step in and help out
In the latest episode of QAA, we interview @milesklee.bsky.social about his chilling article on ChatGPT encouraging religious psychosis in its users, and I explore how the Christians who claim AI is demonic are wrong, but not *wrong* wrong on.soundcloud.com/UmtjAVCbA3xk...
🇺🇸 “Rolling Stone reached out to all 53 GOP senators after the president said he didn't know whether he needs to honor the nation's founding document. None replied.”
www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
The years long panic about this is about a couple people getting their feelings hurt in circumstances that likely didn’t even occur. It simply doesn’t matter. They’re throwing academics and students out of the country with masked thugs by force. Get some priorities.
Screenshot Says danemers said He died during the tutorial. The tutorial. Article is saying Elon Musk Rage Quits Gaming Livestream After Repeatedly Dying, Gets Mercilessly Mo..
Absolute cinema
Reminder, don’t take advice from lottery winners
A public school district is considering whether to ban my book on tech billionaires, Survival of the Richest, for violating Trump's order on ridding DEI from schools. (I do not argue for giving tech bros equity/inclusion, so I'm not sure what the fuss would be about...)
patch.com/illinois/lag...
This stock market crash thing is so confusing. On one hand you have every economist and bank in the free world freaking out. On the other, there are some blue check accounts on Twitter with ancient statues as their profile pics doing 20 part threads on why down is the new up. 🤷🏻♀️
screengrab from amazon showing versions of my book, 2020, 2015, and 1655
I feel like I should be getting royalties that are backdated to the 17th century. That would put my earnings at nearly 3 figures. I want my back pay
"Age verification" laws are actually "upload your ID or get your face scanned to access every website, ending anonymity and associating your identity with everything you do online" laws and if more people understood that they would not be down for this authoritarian nonsense
