Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: web 2.0

  • Now you know: Blogging is ‘un-Christian’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Blathering on blogs is un-Christian, an Evangelical church has warned.

    “Blogging has become a socially accepted practice – just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving,” notes the monthly of the Reformed Church of God, Ambassador Youth.

    Blogging “often makes the blogger feel good or makes him feel as if his opinion counts – when it is mostly mindless blather!” notes Kevin D Denee.

    “People will now do and say things that should only be done … Read More

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    Are Google’s glory days behind it? – Colly Myers

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Colly’s prognosis was sound. In December 2008, Google announced its intention to make “social search” a significant factor in its search results – the end of the hegemony of the algorithm.
    “It’s a well known aspect of man and machine systems. Complex systems with no control fall over. Every example of it you can think of falls apart. With databases, data that isn’t pruned becomes overgrown. Entropy sets in when complexity gets out of control.

    “A lot of the search

    … Read More

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  • Neurosis as a lifestyle: remixing revisited

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    “We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible ? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed”
    – Fillippo Marinetti, 1909

    When a year ago I looked at some of the strange attitudes to copyright and creativity that abound on the internet, vilification followed swiftly. I wondered what was behind … Read More

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  • Junk science – the oil of the new web

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    There’s a case to made that James Surowecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds is the most influential book of the decade – The Selfish Gene for the noughties. Both have something else in common: the title of each book is profoundly misleading. Crowds aren’t wise, nor can genes be selfish – as one critic famously wrote, any more than atoms can be jealous.

    Just as the young polemicist Dawkins paved the way for the social darwinism of the Reagan and Thatcher … Read More

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  • BBC seeks ‘Digital Assassins’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    What if they held a digital media revolution – and nobody came?

    The BBC is having trouble finding citizens to attend a conference devoted to the exciting new world of Citizens Media.

    It’s a Beeb-sponsored day about the “democratization of the media”, but despite a 50 quid bribe to attend – that’s more than you get for appearing on Newsnight or Radio 4’s Today program, and the kind of practice we thought had been outlawed in the 1832 Reform Act … Read More

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  • People more drunk at weekends, researchers discover

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    A parody from 2000

    It’s open season on Wikipedia these days. The project’s culture of hatred for experts and expertise has become the subject of widespread ridicule. Nick Carr christened it “the cult of the amateur”.

    But what has professional academia done for us lately? Here’s a study from the University of Amsterdam to ponder.

    New Scientist reports that researchers for Professor Maarten de Rijke at the Informatics Institute have been recording words used by bloggers, in an attempt to find interesting or unusual … Read More

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