Posts tagged ‘texting’
Re-Thinking Presence in a Technocentric World
by Barry Chudakov on January 20th, 2014Cathy Cruz Marrero was texting while walking in the Berkshire Mall in Reading, Pennsylvania, when she tumbled headfirst into a water fountain, getting completely drenched. Her pratfall was caught by the mall’s surveillance video and then posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed almost 2 million times.
The New (Imaginary) Now
by Barry Chudakov on April 30th, 2012“The imaginary universe is a place of astonishing richness and diversity: here are worlds created to satisfy an urgent desire for perfection, immaculate utopias such as Christianopolis or Victoria that hardly breathe; others, like Narnia or Wonderland, brought to life to find a home for magic, where the impossible does not clash with its surroundings; yet others, like Dream Kingdom, built to satisfy travellers bored with reality ….”
– Alberto Manguel, The Dictionary of Imaginary PlacesNow was once an unconsidered state. It was undistinguished as air, valueless as belly lint. Now was whatever you were doing at the moment, whatever was happening around you or somewhere else at a given instant. It was an adverb, not a place like Cleveland.
Sexting, Texting and Metalife
by Barry Chudakov on August 19th, 2010Phillip Alpert, an 18-year-old from Orlando, took a sleeping pill late one night in 2008 after fighting with his former girlfriend. Perhaps it was the fog of the sedative, perhaps a stab of dark emotion coupled with anger over the way she had talked to him. But when he awoke a few hours later, Phillip thought of the nude photos his girlfriend had sent him when they were dating. He went to his computer and e-mailed those photos of the girl, who was then 16, to her ‘contact list,’ which included her parents, grandparents, and teachers.
Byte-Size MetaMoments
by Barry Chudakov on December 1st, 2009The following byte-sized MetaMoments were submitted by—and are told in the voices of—students at the University of Minnesota.
Texting Recursion
by Barry Chudakov on November 14th, 2009The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009:
A 17-year-old boy, caught sending text messages in class, was recently sent to the vice principal’s office at Millwood High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy he needed to focus on the teacher, not his cellphone. The boy listened politely and nodded, and that’s when Mr. Gallagher noticed the student’s fingers moving on his lap.
Official Announcement
by Barry Chudakov on November 5th, 2009Here is the new Metalife of a generation.