UMaine NMDNet

This seems quite similar to a senior capstone proposal from the 2010 New Media class at UMaine. http://www.wired.com/playbook/2010/09/vails-epicmix-app/

So in the 1950s you could buy real products (air rifles) advertised alongside imaginary entertainments (comic book stories). But now you can buy imaginary entertainments (Farmville credits) advertised alongside real products (at Target). My brain hurts!

Given his McCarthy-esqe methods, it’s easy to dismiss Wertham as a power-hungry quack. Some of his observations about air rifles and knives being advertised alongside violent comics, however, suggest layers of influence that go beyond even what we expect from videogames Wertham would have freaked to see Grand Theft Auto, but might have been consoled by the rarity of in-game advertisements.

“It’s not a focus on opening up restaurants… it’s re-purposing land, arable land.”  Not something you hear everyday from a restaurant proprietor.  

Facebook owns the “book”, media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns the “sky”. George Orwell was right that our language would shrink with time, except that it’s thanks to corporate trademarks rather than totalitarian government. Then again, we have the government to blame for the legally imposed monopoly that is copyright…

Get ready for a whole new wave of goth tattoo graffiti art, thanks to DeviantArt and HTML 5.

Blogs, wikis, videoconferencing? “No thanks,” say most professors; “PeopleSoft and PowerPoint will do.”

When the rich get richer in the digital sphere, there’s no real consequences… right?

Starting your own online business? It sounds like this open source software makes it easy.

Stop landfill odor with your own perfume-spraying truck. Kudos to New Jersey for thinking up this “innovation.”

Terry Gilliam is kicking himself for deleting this scene from the movie Brazil.