Old/New Media: Bring Out Your Dead!

Every week, I come across another blog comment where someone says they wish that old media would just hurry up and die already.
It’s not just that they know it should be dead.  It’s that often they seem to have limited vision of what would replace it.  It will be… social media!  New media! Unfiltered access [...]

FREE (from consequence) — or, Truth Box, My *!%?!

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. “  Oscar Wilde
That’s the idea behind the Truth Box on MySpace. With anonymity, comes truth:  members can post to your “Truth Box” anonymously.  In theory, they can say they have a crush [...]

Why Smart People Are Still Pondering This Old/New Media Thing

You already realize I’m a bit of a science geek.  But you may not know I’m also a history geek — not insufferably so, but I’m looking beyond what I thought I knew to find new insights.    On my bedside table, along with my fiction books and books on how to not be a [...]

January has been quarantined. Recover?

Attack of the Twitter virus.  (Ah yes, from a good friend, who might actually have put me in his blog.)
Attack of the Virtumonde worm.
Attack of the some other crazy worm that actually took out my .DLL files and tied up my .explorer.
(If you’re thinking I spent a lot of time with Windows Forum, you’re correct.)
And [...]

How to Save a Life: Humanizing Technology

The call comes at 5:40 a.m.  “We had to start CPR.  Your dad’s heart is having ‘funny’ rhythms.”  The voice is kind.
And unconvincing. Isn’t CPR used for when a heart … stops?
By the time I get to the hospital, I hear that they had to do the whole scene familiar to millions from ER:  nurses [...]

The Only Gifts of Cancer … or, don’t sweat the small stuff

Some of you may know I have been working — well, actually been putting off, thanks to a number of actual life happenings — on a book called “The Only Gifts of Cancer.”
How could cancer have gifts?
Truth is, it’s terrible and devastating, but there are a few gifts it can bring to your life.  I [...]

How to Save Newspapers; or, lessons of the Giant Water Bug

How do I feel about the newspaper business these days?
I’m reminded of a scene in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, where the author Annie Dillard describes watching a frog that seemed fine, placidly sitting on a creek bank.  As she watches, and within seconds, he is “shrinking before my eyes like a [...]

Diamonds, Tattoos and Bad Reviews Are Forever: or, When You’re Not Ready — Stay Home (Part I)

A few weeks back, I was perusing ReadWriteWebfor my daily dose of insight and Web 2.0 news.  And I came across this headline:

SocialU: One of the Most Obnoxious Apps We’ve Seen in Awhile
The piece is harsh.  I had to wonder, what was SocialU thinking in pushing for a review?
Oh yes, I’ve been there.  Not often, [...]

Why I haven’t been posting…

I had a project to work on, regarding Twitter — and an exchange student arriving from Germany, and a husband determined, at a level unimaginable to anyone who isn’t married to him, to complete a kitchen renovation and deck rebuilding… by himself, pretty much.
It’s not like I didn’t have ideas for posts in that time.
But [...]

Cancer, Social Media, and the Meaning of Small Things

On a crisp September day in 1995 — long before there was such a term as “Social Media” — I sat at my computer with my 28K modem, sobbing as quietly as I could, trying not to wake up my 3 month-old son. And I typed this question:
“I need to know how [...]