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.
Tag Archives: tic104
End of the line
Today is the end of the line for The Internet Course. I am truly amazed at the work that the class has done, and I think we’ve all learned a lot through this experience. I feel like I could have … Continue reading
Ownership and utilities
You see in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns, and those who dig (Leone 1966). That line comes from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western. In the … Continue reading
Professionals and convicts
Yesterday’s research group in The Internet Course took a look at online dating. This is a fascinating topic because it has a historical aspect (computer matchmaking goes back to the 60s), an economic aspect (apparently it’s a bigger business online … Continue reading
A timeline from Twitter
The ever-observant Mariana Funes brought something to my attention: .@phb256 of any use for #tic? They welcome suggestions http://t.co/TR00NDx1RG — Mariana Funes (@mdvfunes) April 12, 2014 The link goes to A timeline of the history of the World Wide Web, and … Continue reading
Raw history
Jim’s been digging in to the history of the internet during the Internet Course, and one of the groups is looking specifically at ARPANET for their project. I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of official documents … Continue reading
Taking chances
We took some chances with the way we set up The Internet Course. The skeletal syllabus in particular was a big risk. It meant that the whole course hinged upon the students putting the effort into finding, analyzing, synthesizing and … Continue reading
Everything old is new again
We were talking about how everything old is new again in The Internet Course yesterday. E-commerce is a new thing, with a huge economic impact, but it’s also kinda like the 21st century version of the Sears & Roebuck catalog. … Continue reading
Impacts
I used to work in printing. The internet had some impact on the way we did things at my company, but nothing major. When we were being bought out by one of our competitors, I started working on an advanced … Continue reading
Eversion
I started writing this a few weeks ago and never got around to finishing it enough to be postable until now. I mentioned William Gibson’s work before. He said something about the “increasingly atemporal nature of music” (may or may … Continue reading
Ed on TED
Snowden gave a talk at TED about privacy and security and IP. I’m fascinated by his rolling robot presence – like Max Headroom 2.0. I wonder what that might mean for the future of the internet?