danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed

My name is danah boyd and I'm a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Visting Researcher at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. I received my PhD from the School of Information at UC-Berkeley. I spend 1/3 of my time in Cambridge, MA, 1/3 in New York, NY, and 1/3 in the air. Buzzwords in my world include: public/private, identity, context, youth culture, social network sites, social media. I use this blog to express random thoughts about whatever I'm thinking.

Relevant links:

digital mirrors

My favorite quote from the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium appeared in the backchannel on the last day:

Scott Golder: “We build digital mirrors. And when you see a digital mirror, what do you do? Fix your hair, and straighten your tie.”

2 comments to digital mirrors

Kevin Marks

May 11th, 2006 at 1:23 am

This reminds me of Wilde’s preface to Dorian Gray

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. [...]

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

More on this from me and Weinberger
Jeff Cooper

May 11th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

I thought that Ballmer’s quote that “There’s no innovation that we’ve seen come out of at least Linux,” was quite… uh… stirring.

danah boyd | apophenia

Archive

Quotables

digital mirrors

2 comments to digital mirrors

Leave a Reply