About raptnrent: I got the name from my keys - R Apt and R Ent for the back door to my apartment and the back door to the house. I liked that they were also words: Rapt, meaning enthralled, riveted, captivated, and Rent, meaning torn asunder, violently wrenched. I thought it made for an interesting juxtaposition, open to all kinds of interpretations.
Monthly Archives: June 2014
To boldly go where Neil Young has gone before
Another session of The Internet Course has wrapped up. We had to work this one a bit differently. We only had five weeks, a third of the time, and we only had one fourth of the people. So it was … Continue reading
Cloudy, with a chance of vectors
Early on in the Thought Vectors experience someone whose name I don’t remember wordled Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think. I do remember that I thought it was interesting to muse upon what you could pull out of the word … Continue reading
Vectoring through concept symbiotics
Vectors Once upon a time, way back in my undergrad days, Johnny D asked if I wanted to play some pool. “Dude, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve played pool.” “So what? … Continue reading
Your brain on the internet
The communicator badge, the enhanced vision visor that Geordie LaForge wears, and the attached and embedded technology of the Borg are all examples of wearable computing, in a sense, but they also represent a continuum of connection. The badge is … Continue reading
Cartography
I thought the map of the social impacts of the internet was a great project for The Internet Course. Here is the map: View Larger Map It serves as another awesome example of the benefits of putting the students in … Continue reading
Odd futures
The Internet Society has a page of possible futures for the internet, not all positive. Something I find interesting about them is that they put these scenarios together in 2009, projecting ten years ahead. So we’re halfway between their vantage point … Continue reading
Impact mapping
Jessi, of the illustrious Internet Course crew, suggested that we cover the impacts of the internet through a Google map. It seems counterintuitive to me – I think of the internet as the cloud, the ether, so geolocating its impacts would never have … Continue reading
Playing with HTML
We’re playing with HTML in The Internet Course this week as a part of looking at how the internet works. I like doing this because it gets our hands dirty with what goes on in the background. It also ties … Continue reading
Blogging the internet
I don’t blog enough. Somebody should do something about that. I might have to make that my blog’s slogan, since Jim puts me to shame. But he does that to everybody. Writing is a laborious process for me. I think … Continue reading
Inner Internet workings
This week in The Internet Course we’ll be looking at how the internet works. The readings the class summarized cover a lot of different parts: infrastructure, IP addresses, DNS, TCP/IP, other protocols, email, browsers, ISPs. We could look at it … Continue reading