Old Is The New New

Old Is The New New

Rob MacDougall Dot Org

Entries from June 2008

Depends. Is Hayden Christensen In It?

June 24th, 2008 · Comments Off

“Would you rather go see the latest Star Wars movie, or a giant card catalog?” NYT on the Mundaneum, the cardboard internet noted here a few months ago.

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Tags: Asides · Early Internets

Lousy Cheapskates

June 19th, 2008 · Comments Off

Guess my so-called friends were outbid: that first telephone book sold for $170,500. I would have “settled” for the ENIGMA machine which went for $104,500.

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Tags: Asides · Telephony

City of Shadows

June 15th, 2008 · Comments Off

Long-exposure photographs of St. Petersburg turn the bustle of urban crowds into beautiful shoggoths of human smoke.

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Tags: Asides · Eye Candy · Russia is Neat · Visualization

My Name Is Charles Guiteau

June 12th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Garfield without words was inspired. Garfield without Garfield was, I thought, kinda gilding that lily. But Garfield plus Garfield is the winner.

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Tags: Asides · Comics

Shan Carter and Amanda Cox Have A Posse

June 11th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Another swell interactive graphic from the people who did the box office one, this time showing demographic margins for Clinton and Obama.

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Tags: Asides · Visualization

Good Luck Getting the DeLorean to 88 MPH

June 11th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Tyler Cowen and his readers discuss survival tips in case you are unexpectedly stranded in the year 1000 AD. Would it surprise you to learn that I think about this all the time?

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Tags: Asides

That Is All

June 10th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Is John Hodgman the last observer of Gilded Age telephone etiquette? I WOULD NOT PUT IT PAST HIM.

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Tags: Telephony

Oral History of the Internets

June 9th, 2008 · Comments Off

Because I get all my history of technology from Vanity Fair. (No, actually, it’s not half bad.)

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Tags: Asides · Technology

Captured Monsters

June 6th, 2008 · Comments Off

“Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee…” A blog of stills from old monster movies.

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Tags: Asides · Robots

All That Camp

June 4th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Write up and reflection on THATCamp 2008, an excellent “unconference” on digital technology and the humanities.

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Tags: Academia · Digital History · Favorites · History@Play · Teaching · Technology