Category Archives: Internet Culture

The Banality of Search

Internet Culture

Over the last few years, something has changed. I’ve lost my fear of losing things on the Internet. It feels like search got good enough, and the things that I care about searching for have become ‘reliably find-able’.

For me, ‘reliably find-able’ means that they are:

1) Find-able
– ‘easy to find’: It feels like Google has done the lion’s share of the work here, although having competitors probably helps more than you think
– ‘in multiple places’: For example, Skyrim has *two*[1] entire wikis devoted to it, to say nothing of all of the forums

2) Reliably so
– Things have been ‘easy to find’ and ‘in multiple places’ for a considerable amount of time. I was recently reading forum posts from 7 years ago[2] which were still as relevant as when they were written.
– To have really reduced the fear of loss[3] required these things to remain easily findable, for an extended period of time. For me this is years, perhaps 5?

This becomes normalized, even banal, because I find myself saying things like: “I found that information last time easily through Google, I don’t need to save it…”

I’m not even using bookmarks any more! The ‘awesome bar’ handles most of that automatically, and Google does the rest.

Contrast this with the early days of the internet, where secret urls were passed by word of mouth (or via CD, in the case of AOL). Bookmarks were carefully curated and organized, because it would be so difficult to find it again.

So, what is the next evolution? Anticipating searches? Remembering for you? Remembering selectively or in a context-associated way for you?

You search.
You search, and it’s at the top of the list
It suggests as you’re starting to search.
It suggests before you search.
It suggests before you think to search.
…
It acts before you know you have the desire.

[1]Even Star Wars only has one!

[2]Keeping this human ‘institutional knowledge’ going may be the most important thing our generation does.

[3]One of, if not the most powerful human fear. It leads to protectiveness, limited time sales, and nostalgia.

#hashtags and @tags

Internet Culture, Puns

Recently[1], the word ‘hashtag’ was added to the Oxford dictionary. For those who are unaware, #hashtags are used to ‘tag’ a post so that it can be more easily searched, or to perform a ‘promotion by crowd’, as the ‘top hashtags’ are shown in various prominent places, such as:

#pants
#pants

This brings the question: If #hashtags are meant to connect a post to a concept, and so that it can be connected to other posts connected to that concept, what are @tags?

In the Slack world (and other IM), @tags are used to notify or summon a person, or to broadcast a message to a group.

So, if #hashtags connect a post to a concept, and @tags are used to notify a person of something, what would $tags[2] be? Or %tags, ^tags, or *tags?

!tags would ideally be used for expressing extra strong feelings about something. I imagine they would start out as the ultimate downvote[3], but then they would be culturally re-appropriated by the new generation to mean the ultimate in positiveness, or coolness, or whatever else they will call it.

~tags will evolve from their original meaning as home directories or webpages on unix servers to mean homepages in general. ‘~nayrb’ would point to this site, for example.

$tags[4] would be appropriated by Amazon for their new ‘one tap purchasing’, where you could purchase any goods mentioned in a post, but even the post itself, perhaps as part of a multilevel marketing scheme. You would end up with post squatters, the scourge of the internet of tomorrow.

%tags are an interesting beast. Like the ‘%’ symbol, they are a link to a concept, but only for a brief period of *time*[5]. So, you could link your post to other posts posted nearby, but only for a while. Like a #hashtag crossed with Snapchat.

^tags go back to the beginning, to the root of things. ^tags are used to end an argument, where you would end a many posts long conversation by posting a final #hashtag on that topic, along with ‘^regulatorycapture’.[6] Can be used in situations similar to those immediately preceding a mic drop.

&tags (not to be confused with &amptags) are multipliers, or ‘amplifiers’. Often connected with ‘micdrop’ tags (-.), they ‘amplify the signal’ of any nearby tags, using an inverse square law to determine nearness and level of effect.

*tags can be substituted for any other tag, and they change depending on context. Under RFC 7168, the implementation of *tags is browser-dependent.

Stay tuned next time, for the riveting differences between (tags, }tags, and ][tags.

[1]2014.

[2]Not $cashtags, that would just be silly.

[3]in the boolean ‘not’ sense of ‘!’

[4]Still not cashtags!

[5]*time* as the Orz would measure it.

[6]Similar to Mornington Crescent, it is critical that the ^tag not be used too soon, or else it will not work as intended.

Multidimensional Word and Sentence Rotation

Analysis, Internet Culture, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

I was talking to G during a life coaching session, and the topic of ‘Opposites’ came up. Specifically, the use of ‘Opposites’ to swap out parts of a sentence to gain more understanding of the sentence, the topic, or perhaps something else.

There are a number of different ways one can swap out parts of a sentence. I’ll go in approximately the order I use them, but the fun ones are at the bottom. 😀

We will use a famous* sentence to illustrate:

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.”

First, we can start by swapping parts of the sentence:
– Spoonerisms swap the first characters or syllables of words, such as ‘linc and zead’ for ‘zinc and lead’, or ‘The quick frown box jumped over the dazy logs’, which is nonsensical, but highly creative, especially if you drew it.
– One can swap words, swapping the subject and object: (‘The quick brown dogs jumped over the lazy fox.’), or descriptive words with nouns: (‘The quick brown dogs jumped over the foxy laze.’) This second one could be nonsensical, but could also refer to lasers, which could trigger other thoughts or creativity in the listener.
– We can completely swap the object half of the sentence: (‘The lazy dogs jumped over the quick brown fox’)
– We can move words around and change their parts of speech: (‘The brown fox quickly jumped over the lazy dogs’), in this case changing the meaning from descriptive/innate (quick fox) to intent (fox quickly).

There are more ways to do this, but they are generally more complex combinations of the above.

Second, we can remove parts of the sentence:
– ‘The brown fox.’
– ‘The fox jumped over the dog.’
– ‘The quickly.’

Third, we can change the cultural referent of the sentence or parts of the sentence:
– ‘The swift vulpine soared over the meddlesome cur.’
– If I knew enough Japanese, I could give examples of different levels of formality here.

Fourthly, we can do what I can only describe as ‘Word Rotation’, where you chose a word in the sentence, and rotate about one of the axes that the word is on, similar to a gimbal or leather punch.
– You can rotate animal species, such as ‘the quick brown bear jumped over the lazy cat’
– You can rotate action words
– You can rotate tightly or loosely:
– Tight: Dog, cat, mouse, hamster
– Loose: Dog, horse, panda, bear**
– Absurd: Dog, mushroom, amphioxus, pool table
– You can rotate senses*** (my favourite, although ‘propriocept’ is not a very good verb.)
– You can take a sub-word and rotate it. This one is clbuttic.
– You can rotate more than once (although this is only very subtly different from rotating once more loosely).
– You can exchange words or word parts for the ‘more formal’ version: ‘Mark my words!’ becomes ‘Marcus my words!’
– Rotation also works with antonyms.

Basically, any way you could #hashtag a word in a sentence, and then replace that word with a different word that also qualified for that #hashtag.

Join us next time, when we explore the mysteries of %tags, and try to figure out whether a single open bracket or closed bracket is more annoying. As always, let me know what you think in the comments below!

*This sentence was commonly used to test typewriters, as it uses each of the letters in the alphabet and is reasonably short and easy to remember.

**Banda, pear.

***Space Quest IV had an icon which alternately allowed you to look, touch, or taste objects. It’s possible this is where my analogy of rotation comes from.

What is the Difference Between a Duck?: Mu Jokes and Mental Push Hands

Analysis, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Puns, Words!

UPDATE: While I was writing this, this blog passed 1000 page views since I started counting on Dec 29th! You people are awesome!

******************************************************

Yesterday, I briefly touched on the concept of ‘the space between meaning’.

One way to demonstrate this concept is with a Mu-joke (not really an anti-joke*):

Q: What is the difference between a duck**?

A: One of its legs are both the same!

The goal here is to say some words which sound not too much like nonsense, such that the listener really tries to understand.

Like a good pun, you want to draw the listener in by making things the correct level of ‘difficult to understand’. Too easy, the listener groans and moves on. Too difficult, the listener times out and moves on. (Note that this changes with each individual audience member. If ever there was an argument for (education) streaming, this is it. 😀 )

By analogy, you want your Mu-joke to make the listener feel like they would understand it if they ‘just tried a little harder’.

Also, a good Mu-joke will play with language and parts of speech, the goal being to make the listener more aware of the structure and inner meaning of what they are saying and what is being said around them. Normally, the word ‘between’ refers to two things, but we are using it to refer to one object, a duck. This gives the listener a mental ‘cache miss‘ or ‘branch misprediction‘ error, and it can throw them off balance as they try to reassemble their mental model of the conversation.

This trick can be used in a ‘Mental Push Hands***’ competition. I have fond memories of doing this with MC as we reshelved books at the library in high school. I suspect many of the best debaters use variants of this, and the best politicians have well-developed defenses against these kinds of tactics.

But back to ‘the space between meaning’. It is the space in your head where you are comfortable with ‘between’ referring to any number of things, where you are comfortable with ‘both’ referring to one thing.

It is a space I enjoy, and I hope you can help put me there. 😀

*Anti-jokes are not quite what I mean. They seem to be defined online as jokes with a standard leadup and an opposite-ish punchline. Many of the punchlines seem to take a ‘standard’ punching-down joke and subvert it. Funny, interesting, useful, but not what I’m taking about.

**I first saw this joke in one of those ‘choose-your-own-adventure-rpg’ books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grailquest. Probably my favourite series in the genre.

***I learned ‘Push Hands’ as a martial arts balance exercise. You plant your feet and touch palms with your opponent. The object is to make your opponent move one of their feet without moving yours. For me, it was all about being as flexible as possible while trying to find my opponent’s inflexibilities.

WEREDOMO

Fiction, Internet Culture

The changes were happening again.

He felt his mouth opening wider. Usually, it stopped here. Once or twice, he had felt his teeth changing texture to something…softer(?)…but this felt different.

In fact, ‘felt’, that was the best way to describe it. His teeth were getting thinner and softer, and he felt them getting more flexible, in contrast to his jaw, which he was having more and more trouble moving. He reached up and twiddled his teeth. It felt odd feeling them move like that. And yet he didn’t feel disturbed, just an overwhelming sense of calm with something underneath he couldn’t quite discern.

But more changes were happening. As he was reaching to test his teeth again, he felt his arm receding into his body, looking down at it, it was changing colour, growing some kind of brown cloth covering.

Now it was covering the lower half of his body, he felt himself shrinking, or was the world growing? The world became blurry, and seemed to change, becoming brighter and more colourful.

Suddenly, everything sharpened. The fog in his head cleared, and he could tell what was underneath. He felt happy, he felt the need to dance, to yell!

Words floated in front of his eyes:

“Who is ‘Mr Yusagi’?” he asked himself. And why was there a television in this grassy field? Best to go check it out. He walked over to the television.

It’s on! But there’s no power cord?

The announcer on the screen seemed to look directly at him:

“Domo, Konnichiwa!”

Japanese? Wait, was he in some kind of Japanese cartoon? That would certainly explain the brightly coloured backgrounds, but what had happened to him?

He spied a path at the edge of the field, and walked towards it, swinging his arms and yelling happy words. Maybe this ‘Mr. Yusagi’ would have some answers.

Facebook, Consent, and Pictures of your Kids

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Politics, Thoughts on Thoughts

Earlier today, I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine about the idea that parents oversharing about their children is ‘ruining their lives’, as mentioned in this article:

http://aplus.com/a/sharenting-parents-oversharing-facebook-social-media

My initial response was to say that this was a social change that people were going to need to ‘learn to get over’, and that they should focus on doing the things they want to do, and ignoring those who want to judge them over unimportant things.

After some discussion, I realized that my opinion was coming from a place of significant privilege, not just cis/white/male/etc, but because I’d never experienced that horribly invasive mocking and worse that so often happens to people on social media.

I think this really revolves around issues of consent, and I wonder how much the posting of pictures of children without their consent is similar to giving them a hug without their consent. It could be that in a few years, this will be seen as just as important.

We have very stringent laws about privacy of medical records. Why not for photos? I’m assuming this is mostly about the ability of photographers to do their jobs and the total unenforceability of such an idea.

But if you can be denied a job because of something you did in your spare time the same way you could be denied a job because of an existing condition, why would we not extend those protections?

The 0.6th world

Analysis, Economics, Internet Culture, Politics

One of my fondest memories from high school is learning about different types of infinities. The Cantor Diagonal proof is a as beautiful piece of argument as exists anywhere. Also present in that course was discussion of fractional dimensions, especially as to how they pertained to fractals.

Those who are familiar with the Gamma Function, or the Kardashev Scale will know of the technique of interpolating between the integer points of a numerical scale. (The Kardashev scale is cool enough to deserve its own post, and beyond the scope today.)

I was originally planning to talk about the First World/Second World/Third World model most often talked about in the media, but Mao’s Three Worlds Theory feels like it offers a slightly more linear progression between the three worlds.

The question is: What numbering would you give the world of the Internet? Of 4chan? Is this even a sensical question?

There are a number of different ways* you can try and quantify this. Using the West’s ‘Three-world Model’:

– “Alignment with ‘The West'”: This is where the ‘1st world’ is ‘The West’, the ‘2nd world’ is aligned opposite to ‘The West’, the ‘3rd world’ is not aligned with respect to the ‘West’. A ‘4th world’ or ‘0th world’ might be against the entire concept of ‘Alignment’ (Nations with multiple internal factions or with governments not exclusively beholden to one of the blocs might be part of the ‘1.3 world’. This becomes difficult with nations which are partially non-aligned, and partially aligned with the ‘1st world’, as the math doesn’t work out. You’d want a numerical Venn diagram** for this.)

– “Economic Development”: (This is problematic, as you have one of the groups deciding on its own the hierarchy of the groups, and for many other reasons.) In this case, though, you might be able to have worlds which have sprung up since the Three Worlds Theory was conceived be put on the chart. In this case, the Internet might indeed be the 0.6th world…

Using Mao’s ‘Three Worlds Theory’:

– You could classify Internet opinion and culture as a new lesser power, or perhaps even superpower. I think the Internet is not quite organized, and probably still too easily manipulated, to be a superpower. More like a regional power, with its region being spread around most of the world. Thinking about it like this, it might qualify as a 2.0 or 2.1 power.
– If you think about the division as ‘Imperial Superpowers’, ‘Lesser Powers’, and ‘Exploited nations’, the Internet is somewhat ‘Imperial’, in that its culture permeates and is conquering and eating entire industries. To qualify as a ‘Lesser Power’, it must be at least nominally be independent. Under this definition, the Internet might qualify as 1.6 power, higher or lower depending on how much ‘The Internet’ includes Internet companies

*I tried my best to 4-box this (in best business book fashion), but couldn’t come up with anything reasonable. The ‘unaligned’ nature of the ‘3rd world’ fills up two of the four boxes with most models. The closest I could get was to have Switzerland and maybe a few others in the 4th box, with the axes being GDP and alignment.

**Stay tuned for a later post…This is a fun concept!

The Six Answers to a ‘Yes or No’ Question

Analysis, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts

There exist the traditional five answers to a ‘Yes or No’ question:

– ‘Yes’, indicating complete agreement
– ‘No’, indicating complete disagreement
– ‘Maybe’, indicating something in between on that axis
– ‘I don’t know’, indicating a lack of relevant information
– ‘Mu*’, or ‘unask the question, it contains an incorrect assumption’

Recently, J EB (nee K) mentioned that ‘like’ is a new answer to a yes/no question. (On my post ‘No Spoilers Awaken’)

The Facebook ‘like’ seems to mean a number of different, sometimes overlapping things…
– ‘I like this post and I want you to know’
– ‘I agree with you’
– ‘I’m curious to hear the answer to this question’
– ‘I support you’
– ‘I understand your feelings’

It is very clear (to me) that ‘like’ is a valid answer to a ‘Yes or No’ question, and it is most delightfully ambiguous. It feels more discovered than invented, as we’ve always had ‘interesting question’, it was just rarely expressed by random people around the world, in response to a conversation they are not explicitly a part of.

*For those who wish a slightly more formal treatment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29 specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29#.22Unasking.22_the_question

You may also be interested in the somewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-valued_logic

But my favourite is probably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong (Thanks DJ!) This is one way to say ‘Mu’, but usually only if you’re trying to be insulting.

The Spoilers Become More Awake

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Reviews, Space!

Earlier, I talked a little about fear and redemption in The Force Awakens:

The Spoilers Awaken

This post is more a bunch of scattered thoughts…

The movie was all about Han Solo, and that was a good thing. Harrison Ford has really matured as an actor (I should see how he is in American Graffiti), where you see the gravitas, which smoothed out the ‘scruffy-haired nerf-herder*’

There’s probably something about having actors of varying ages and maturity levels, and how it smooths things out. (Even though the young actors in this movie are more skilled (or better directed), they still have the very young energy, attractiveness, and rushing intensity, all of which can do better with guidance…)

‘Droids’ is an excellent example of good ‘in universe’ lingo**.

Seeing the characters old and the death of Han Solo was not just the passing of the torch to the next generation of Star Wars, but also perhaps a passing of the torch to us, that it’s time for us to step up (similar to when Jack Layton died)…

Leia’s dress with a New Republic neck was a nice touch.

Some people have said that Leia was not the most convincing actor, but her acting worked fine for me. Her scenes with Han were very touching, along with the scene near the end with Rey. I also found her convincing as a general, who ‘went back to what she knew the best’, and seemed to fit well in that role.

In a galaxy with hyperdrive and even reasonable astronomy and astrogation, how could you not tell where a sector was, if there was a map of it that included 5-10% of the galaxy? Even with 300 billion stars in a galaxy, you wouldn’t need very many to be narrow down a sector, if the map had any reasonable level of accuracy…

So much regret for time past with problems remaining unresolved…Like Tron:Legacy…

Good use of X-wing quad lasers in ground combat against stormtroopers (apparently they added an under-blaster-cannon in the updated model for the movie), similar to R2-D2’s method for dealing with Joruus C’boath (even a jedi master cannot deflect startfighter-sized weapons, and/or they cannot predict what droids will do). Also, I liked the new X-wing colours. Apparently the shape is slightly different, but I didn’t notice that. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/T-65B_X-wing_starfighter#Behind_the_scenes

It was very fitting that the new death star reformed back into a sun…

The art department had many scenes of groups of aliens, just doing their thing, ‘world building’ as S says.

The establishing shots were really well done (you should do Comic Book Boot Camp http://comicbookbootcamp.com/).

The force continues to be weak in dealing with droids…The light side of the force more often appears with empathy, so they they can use that to interact with droids

A very tech-savvy force user…Anakin, perhaps Luke, for sure Rey…Either a force ability, or something about growing up on desert planets. If it’s a force ability, interesting that it allows much easier repairs and jury rigging, but not sensing or understanding the motivations of droids.

A small complaint about Cineplex showing spoilers in the opening ‘pre-movie games’

Also, the imperials just sound better with English accents.

Interesting the ‘order’ vs. ‘freedom’ contrast between ‘The First Order’ and ‘The Resistance’.

*Similar to how the last few vestiges of Garath the thief were the only differences between Belgarath the Sorceror and Aldur…

**The counterexample I always use is ‘Argonians’ and ‘Kajhit’ in Oblivion, where no matter how racist the character, they always used the official names, which I always found jarring and unrealistic.

‘Machigne’

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Languages!

Aside from being an excellently cromulent word, ‘machigne’ is what I often type when attempting to type ‘machine’. It seems to be because the ‘g’ allows for all of the transitions between letters to go from left hand to right hand and back:

machine: l,r,l,r,l,l,r*
machigne: l,r,l,r,l,r,l,r

*Note that this was really difficult to type, as it involved using one of the weakest fingers for two consecutive characters (‘l’, ‘,’).