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Why the HST is a Labour Issue

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I don't usually post about taxation or provincial politics (do I?). But being one of a sizeable community of technology workers (and workers in many other industries) who are required by law to charge 12% tax instead of 5% tax to customers/clients as of today, I felt that it ...

Posted in creative industries, culture & society, policy, political economy, technology, work | No Comments »

Les Comps

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Ta-da. I've finally submitted the field definitions for my Comprehensive exams. Here they are. Comments welcome; it helps. I'm writing the Philosophy of Technology exam in October, and the Theorizing Participatory Media exams in December February 2010, during the Olympics. 1. A History of the Philosophy of Science and Technology Western philosophical ...

Posted in art, comprehensive exams, creative industries, critical constructivism, culture industries, PhD studies, political economy, SCOT, sociology of art, STS, technology, theory | No Comments »

A Tale of Two Articles: On Socialism, Libertarianism and Open Source

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

An interesting pair of complementary articles have today sprung to my attention from my unfiltered and rapidly growing twitstorms. First, Readwriteweb carries a story about the research of Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Mayer-Schönberger has synthesized research into open source communities, arguing that radical ideas suffer in networks where there is a greater abundance ...

Posted in culture & society, online communities, open source, political economy | 2 Comments »

Making Money in Music: a Poll and a Crowdstorm

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

I've created a twitter poll (something I should be doing more regularly) asking a question of central importance to this blog, to my life, my creative pursuits, and something that's been on everybody's mind since the dawn of music (when wazzat?): how should musicians get paid? If I haven't given ...

Posted in culture industries, indie, labels, marketing, music, political economy, technology, wikia | No Comments »

Open Web Vancouver

Friday, June 5th, 2009

I'm attending (and presenting at) Open Web Vancouver next week, celebrating (and problematizing) with many others the many affordances and limitations of open source and open formats in our digitally mediated world. My talk will likely be rather policy-wonkish, as a current concern of mine (and a crucial chapter in ...

Posted in conferences, drupal, events, internet, mobile, open source, policy, political economy, theory, wikia | No Comments »

Room Enough For Everyone :: Canada On the Web

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

The Tyee is carrying Michael Geist's succinct report about the upcoming hearings at the CRTC over the future of Internet regulation in Canada. Most of these proposals don't make any sense - imposing Canadian content requirements on commercial Canadian websites is dubious at best - how would web content hosts ...

Posted in creative industries, culture & society, culture industries, file sharing, freethenet.ca, internet, mobile, net neutrality, P2P, policy, political economy, technology, wi-fi | No Comments »

Commercial Whiplash: Nokia, carriers, and why Canada is still full of crap mobiles

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

On Nokia's shrinking North American market share: "(Samsung & others) were quick to meet carriers’ customization demands, an area in which Nokia proved reluctant." (http://bit.ly/zuSN). But this is precisely why Nokia ought to be lauded - for its efforts in putting out handsets that straddle grids/networks (3g/wi-fi) and balancing different interaction ...

Posted in creative industries, critical constructivism, indie, mobile, open source, political economy, technology | 3 Comments »

Twittering the Election, SIFTing Media Collections

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

If you haven't seen this already, then go check it out. Terse political opinions fly by with impunity. What to do, what to do...and how does media theory speak to this? I can anticipate hundreds of approaches, from critical political economy to social constructivism to what-have-you ... but then again, ...

Posted in content aggregation, critical constructivism, culture & society, drupal, mobile, Mobile Muse, open source, political economy, SCOT, STS, technology, work | No Comments »

Open Mobile

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

I'm presenting a keynote this Sunday for an event called Open Mobile, presented in part by Mobile Muse as part of New Forms Festival 2008. I'm co-presenting with Roland Tanglao and Jesse Scott (artist info here), who will be my visual accompanists. But hopefully their visuals will override and scramble ...

Posted in conferences, culture & society, events, Fearless City, mobile, Mobile Muse, open source, political economy, technology, theory, Whistler, wi-fi | 4 Comments »

Smartphones, Price Points, and Purchasing Power Parity

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

"Expensive phones are like an enormous test phase, but budget phones are the true launch pad for a mobile technology." Well said. Read the rest at All About Symbian. It's exciting to see the trickle of smart phone functionality into lower end handsets. Perhaps Nokia's actually been listening to its participatory ...

Posted in appropriation, critical constructivism, design, marketing, mobile, political economy | 1 Comment »