mastodon 4.7.3Learning about moral economies, researching media histories, imagining post-platform futures. Also, helping with moderation on aoir.social and professoring in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. (he/him)
In 1986, the BBC's Lesley Judd flew from London to Amsterdam with her portable PC and acoustic coupler to demonstrate the state of the art in electronic mail. The segment shows her dialing into a local packet network from an airport payphone, connecting to Telecom Gold, and filing a story electronically. (Invaluable clip for the classroom!)
📢 The DIGS Lab at UVA just announced a database tracking more than 700 policies related to data centers. An amazing resource for policymakers, researchers, and journalists:
🔗 https://www.datacenterpolicy.com/
> "Project lead Dr. Lauren E. Bridges writes that while the era of unchecked growth fueled by tax breaks is waning, the new regulatory regime is fragmented, reactive, and heavily contested."
📄 https://www.techpolicy.press/the-state-of-data-center-policy-in-the-united-states/
In 1989, an NYT reporter went to SIGCHI and the paper commissioned this adorable little illustration by Stuart Goldenberg for the write-up. Someone put this on a hat for me?
Lewis, Peter H. “PERSONAL COMPUTERS; New Ways To Interact Electronically.” Science. *The New York Times*, May 9, 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/science/personal-computers-new-ways-to-interact-electronically.html.
double-fisting university library logins and smashing through paywalls like a console cowboy breaking ice
My pet peeve is the use of "engagement" to describe a sum of likes and reposts. Those numbers are too easy to manipulate. "Engagement" suggests human attention but provides weak evidence of it. Why not a literal description like "platform activity"?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/01/federal-agency-x-accounts-are-getting-far-more-engagement-in-the-second-trump-term-than-under-biden/
Illustration by Michael Heath for a review of Joseph Weizenbaum's *Computer Power and Human Reason*.
🔗 Johnson-Laird, “Slaves to the Machine,” *Nature* 261 (5556), 1976, https://doi.org/10.1038/261171a0
Laptops are the skinny jeans of computing
James Hoffman did a mini doc about the Clover coffee maker that would be great for your history of technology syllabus https://youtube.com/watch?v=BfNoNTjcRbE&si=2TPS_Ve0o2KmickL
Damn. Johannes Kepler's wikipedia page has everything. Groundbreaking astronomy and geometry, sure, but also writing zines on sphere packing and defending his mom against accusations of witchcraft
Just walked by a dark spinning studio with one rider and one coach facing each other across two dozen empty bikes. They were grinding hard in an uphill gear, the coach steadily monologuing into a mic. No music. It was so intense. The soulcycle to oblivion 🚵♂️🕳️
Is anyone collecting power banks? It's the wild west of industrial design with these things 🔋
Got the barber shop lit up this AM talking about undersea cables
Chopping it up in Spain this week and people are really working that vosotros here. Haven't heard an "ustedes" in days
*"Allow them a Lucy" *
In a 1968 letter urging Charles Schulz to introduce Black children to the Peanuts gang, teacher Harriet Glickman urged him to write Black characters in the fullness of their humanity:
"*Let them be as adorable as the others…but please…allow them a Lucy!"*
Love this reflection on pre-platform online life by@alicetiara@mastodon.social. This line is a cold slap:
"If social media has a future—and, to be clear, I’m not convinced that it does—it will not be a few mega-platforms with billions of users. It will not be a series of independent sites that mimic the functionality of the big winners..."
Can we have social lives online without "social media"? Will we know it when it comes?
Reinventing 24 hour cable news (the most cursed media format) but without the news:
"The CNN model has to wait for something to happen IRL. But something is always happening on X." 📺 🤡
Shout out to these three teenage boys bumping a little bluetooth speaker and sharing a big plate of oysters in the park
Don't miss ➡️ new piece by @Lanalana@aoir.social ➡️ "Social Media in the Scam Age" ➡️ for the 10th anniversary of Social Media + Society 🎂📃 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051261437922
Let us remember that Saint Carlo Acutis wrote blessed Flash apps with his bare hands!! 🙏 ✨
bananas how many times i've rinsed this romy+HAAi set over the past few months #thisismyjam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp78RrjAauw
TINA TURNER - YOU BETTER BE GOOD TO ME
- Zebra print heels descending a staircase
- Glowing cats eyes and hot overhead lamps
- One giant mirror with a tiger mouth frame 🐯
- Cy Curnin from The Fixx coming out barefoot to boogie during the bridge ???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyU7BbQSm98
#thisismyjam
My dept at UVA is recruiting a professor of Media Studies for a 3-year, non-tenure-track position focused on undergrad teaching, esp. introductory courses in media studies, film and TV studies, streaming, media history, and global media studies
💾 🤗 Call for Participation for the Critical Code Studies Working Group (CCSWG 24) #critcode #dh
(Deadline extended to January 31!)
Topics for this year include:
☑ Queering Code
☑ CCS and AI
☑ The DHQ Special issues
☑ Teaching Code and Code Studies
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1TVYqLOIbYYs6qsMd5ah-DQEaQCEhe5GEQCk7ITdDvoI/mobilebasic
Wishing a long and happy retirement to my colleague, mentor, and friend, William Little. 🥳🙌 A rigorous scholar and creative educator, his work has defined the UVA Media Studies experience for nearly two decades. This tribute from the Cav Daily reflects the trust and enthusiasm he inspired in students: https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2026/05/whats-the-deal-reflecting-on-two-decades-of-william-littles-intertextual-film-courses
"I'd never known this before, but now I do, and so do you. Laughter comes in different colors. It's only the distant echo of an explosion inside you. It might come in holiday colors--red, blue, golden rockets. Or it might be the bits of a human body flying out" (Yevgeny Zamyatin, *We*, 1924)
"Der Computer weiß genau,
für jeden Mann die richtige Frau
und das Glück fällt im Augenblick
aus seiner Kartei"
❤️🔥
*The computer knows exactly, *
*the right woman for every man, *
*and happiness is currently being picked up *
*from its database*
❤️🔥
France Gall - "Der Computer Nr3" (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtNx1vlnWw
the world needs another watagatapitusberry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNxHt2soDBs
