At instant speeds all reaction and adjustment are inevitable but too late to be relevant. McLuhan ἔρρει τὰ κᾶλα. Μίνδαρος ἀπεσσύα. πεινῶντι τὤνδρες. ἀπορίομες τί χρὴ δρᾶν. Xenophon, Helenika Twenty years ago today the first SMS was sent. And with the SMS begins the age of short messages, of asynchronous real time communication, and the […]
[Original German Blog Post] Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) — PayPal Inc., the payment processor owned by EBay Inc., cut access today to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.org for violating its acceptable use policy. (www.businessweek.com) Earlier this year, I wanted to order a book at an Indian publisher. When trying to pay via the PayPal-link on the publisher’s […]
(three weeks without Google) [Original German Blog Post] “The building of new ELECTRONIC SUPERHIGHWAYS will be an even bigger enterprise [compared to building the Interstate Network]. Suppose we connect New York and Los Angeles with multi-layer of broadband communication networks, such as domestic satellites, wave guides, bunches of co-axial cables, and later the fiber-optics laser […]
[Original German Blog Post] “Ask any kid what Facebook is for and he’ll tell you it’s there to help him make friends. […] He has no idea the real purpose of the software, and the people coding it, is to monetize his relationships. He isn’t even aware of those people, the program, or their purpose. […]
[Original German Blog Post] Leave aside the fact that Google was happy to censor results for China until its servers were hacked. The fact is, Google still censors search results in other countries at the request of their governments. […] Censoring results for years, shifting course for entirely unrelated reasons, and then vilifying competitors who […]
[Original German Blog Post] Today again no search engines. My day today is a day of travel. Munich-Dusseldorf, then further to Berlin. To get oriented in Dusseldorf I use OpenStreetmap. Where is the difference to Google Maps? OpenStreetmap is a Wiki-project. It is open. I can participate. Of course, Google Maps also offers the option […]
Without Google: Day 1 [Original German Blog Post] Yesterday I made my mind to abandon all search engines for some time; I now don’t want to hesitate to tell you how my use of the Internet is changed by that. The most important means to get to valuable information are my networks, Twitter at first. […]
[Read this post in German] “The world is not a ball”. The night is made by the shadow, thrown by the mountain of the north. Changing the perspective like shown here, in the “Christian Topography” by Cosmas Indicopleustes. I would probably not have found that via Google. Figure from Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Ed. J. […]
[Original German Blog Post] “We know a lot about digital technology, and we are bored with it. Tell us something we’ve never heard before, in a way we’ve never seen before.” That is the vision of Louis Rosetto. And motivated by this vision, he founded Wired in 1993 – the very year, when the Mosaic-Browser […]
The real innovation blogging brought to our media landscape has never been real-time. No, the most important difference between “regular” websites or portals and blogs is their archive and the beautiful possibilities for fostering slowness (philosopher Odo Marquard coined the phrase “Langsamkeitspflege” for a very similar concept). When German blogger and journalist Don Dahlmann wrote […]