101 Culture

This is a blog about the emergence of a digital culture. What might it look like? What can we see already?

And all my other details are kept at benmason.org.


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Culturally digital comedy from Baratunde Thurston

Here's a presentation from comedian Baratunde Thurston at Web2.0 conference.

He talks about a couple of comedy experiments that he started on Twitter and a multitude that he was involved with or watched.

It's well worth a watch. And watch it considering the topics I bang on about on this blog: That with digital media and the internet everything is becoming more collaborative and open. And also how successful ideas start small and public and then grow a evolve with participation.

The audience/producer line is very blurred in the examples Thurston gives. The two projects he founded are comedy collaborations that start with a single tweet. They then grow and evolve into other media, as I've discussed here before.

Nice work.

The web could replace the law

There's some interesting discussion over at the BBC's Digital Revolution blog this week. They're discussing the effect the web is having on our brains. Whilst none of us actually believe we're heading towards a matrix-like future with jellied bodies and our brains plugged into the hive mind, the future might be closer than we thought.

"@oxfordyorick offered some very interesting insight... that our increased networking may be leading to a not altogether beneficial hegemony:

'the odd result that extensive Facebook exposure seems to be contracting the list of first names used for newborns: it is as if linking to larger intimate groups, and seeing what names they use, is causing a higher degree of mutual name-copying and the proportion of first names occupied by the top ten, names, say is shrinking in the English speaking world. This effect, if transferred to the realm of ideas, could be one we might not like: peer pressure to conform might grow in a way that would not need to be enforced by any Government or law.' "

So the web could replace government? That's too scary for Monday. To be re-visited.