Fairey says OBEY Barack Obama!

It is no secret that Shepard Fairey (master of the OBEY giant) has given in to commercial pressure. I hesitate to say that he’s sold out, mostly because I don’t really know what "selling out" means anymore.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

The XM-Sirius Merger: Harmony, or Merger to Monopoly?

The proposed consolidation of XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Radio, is one media mashup that’s certainly gotten a lot of play.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

Does the power of the mob count for anything?

Over the course of the last six months or so, I have become an avid consumer of technology blogs, especially those dealing with social networking sites, and most especially with Facebook. While much of the blog postings are rather boring in nature and deal with the perpetual argument over the pros and cons of Facebook versus MySpace or how Facebook doomed itself with the Beacon debacle in November, every now and then I find a tidbit that shakes my very existence.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

An Invisible Network in the Developing World: The Argument Against the OLPC XO Laptop

There are certainly more controversial charities out there, but the level of debate surrounding the merits of the One Laptop Per Child initiative is amazing. People debate the design and technology, the motives behind the project, what real needs can technology serve, etc.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

Facebook Relationships and Information Architecture

It is an age-old story. Boy/girl/* meets boy/girl/*, they go on a few dates, and all seems well. Then one of the two (or three?) brings up a daunting topic: the Facebook Relationship status. This was the case for a man I met during a recent visit to NYC. He had just begun a serious relationship, and everything seemed great from the outside, but he confessed some worry. It seems that the Facebook-based DTR had been less than successful. Thier Facebook statuses defiantly remained "Single" as trouble brewed in paradise.

Why is the Facebook status so important? The DTRs of the past (those between the individuals actually involved) have been replaced with relationship statuses on social networking sites, a virtual equivalent of wearing your beau’s team jacket. But where the relationships of our youths could be discarded as easily as the physical emblems that ambiguously represented them, social networking sites eliminate any notion of ambiguity. Even Facebook’s status of "it’s complicated" seems to cover an ever narrowing range of experience.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

Caucuses, New Years: Hoping for the best but not expecting very much

Given my demonstrated interest in Media and Politics, which is my course of study and the basis for most of my gnovis articles, one might expect that I would have already written about the huge deal that is this year’s Iowa caucuses.

Category: The Gnovis Blog

Rise of the Amateur

This is a response to Brad’s post on the wisdom of crowds. Brad, I’m so glad you posted about this and your discussion is really

Category: The Gnovis Blog