Features:
january
26, 2005
The Telephone Repair Handbook
by
Mark Pesce with Angus Fraser
In a three-part feature, Mark Pesce and Angus Fraser
propose a complete rethinking of a technology that everyone depends
on: the telephone.
may
30 , 2005
Brooke
Burgess: The Mindjack Interview
by Melanie McBride
Mindjack's Melanie McBride recently caught up with Broken Saints creator
Brooke Burgess to talk about long form Flash and the way of this Broken
Saints warrior.
may
13, 2005
Piracy
is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV
by Mark Pesce
In two-part article, Mark Pesce looks at how a re-visioned 70s camp
classic changed television forever.
feature:
february 01 , 2005
The
Future of Money
by Paul Hartzog
Mindjack's Paul Hartzog examines the changing nature of money and what
might be in store for the currency of tomorrow.
feature:
november 05, 2004
Cities
Without Borders: Digital Culture and Decentralization
by Paul Hartzog
Paul Hartzog rethinks sociologist Saskia Sassen's idea of the Global
City and how it may or may not apply to digital culture.
august
31, 2004
Banner
Ads Invade Gamespace
by Tony Walsh
What do you get when you cross the world's most measurable medium with
the world's most immersive medium? Video games peppered with Internet-style
banner-ads. This new method of marketing allows measurable demographic
data to be collected from the elusive online gaming community, targeting
dynamically-downloaded advertisements at specific demographics. The
promise of a new revenue stream is obviously attractive to advertisers
and game publishers, but will the idea win over gamers?

july 20, 2004
Multiplayer
Gaming's Quiet Revolution
by Tony Walsh
Today's avatars in massively multiplayer environments like Second Life
are giving their users the gift of expression and infusing games with
something more, soul.
june 25,
2004
Supernova
2004
J.D. Lasica Reports
Blogging, collaborative work tools and the drawbacks of social software
took center stage at this year's Supernova. The third annual tech-in-the-workspace
conference "Where the decentralized future comes together!"
drew more than 150 technology thought leaders, software startup CEOs
and other heavy hitters (alas, fewer than 20 of them women) to the Westin
Hotel in Santa Clara, Calif., on June 24-25.
may
24, 2004
Will
Digital Radio Be Napsterized?
by J.D. Lasica
The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital
radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.
The horror. And so the RIAA, the music business's trade and lobbying
group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and
impose an "audio broadcast flag" on certain forms of digital radio.
may
17, 2004
Redefining
Television
by Mark Pesce
In the earliest days of television, writers like George Orwell in 1984
and Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 projected television as the
instrumentality of a totalitarian future - a monolithic entity dispensing
propaganda. And, if any of you occasionally watch Fox News, you can
see they weren't that far off the mark. But here's the thing: the monolithic
days of television are numbered. Actually, they've already passed -
though, as yet, very few people realize this.

april
19, 2004
Linked
Out: Blogging, Equality, and the Future
by
Melanie McBride
With
the mainstream media's interest in blogging at a fever pitch, Mindjack's
Melanie McBride takes a critical look at the future of blogging and
talks to some of the bloggers trying to shape it.
april
12, 2004
"The killing fields"
Copyright Law and its Challengers
by
J.D. Lasica
A profile of Jed Horovitz and his documentary Wilfull Infringement,
about his struggles with Disney over copyright laws, and other individuals
who have run into similar problems in their creative pursuits.
march
11, 2004
Is Nothing Sacred?
Digital Music for a Digital Age
by Ian Dawe
"Is
nothing sacred?" This was the rallying cry, some years back, concerning
sampling. Pioneered by the fledgling hip-hop artists, with its roots
in music concrete, sampling is the art of extracting snippets of music
from other recordings and re-assembling them into a new piece, usually
based around some kind of electronic beat. Theft, it was called. Another
phrase applied to it was "art".
december
12, 2003
Reunderstanding Movies
by Donald Melanson
Social software is the latest "next big thing"
to get technophiles excited and VCs interested. What exactly it
is, few can describe. In some respects, it is nothing new at all, but
rather a means of connecting and defining previously disparate elements.
Mindjack editor Donald Melanson takes a look at one group that has taken
this idea and run with it, before the idea ever had a name: film and
DVD enthusiasts.

september
18, 2003
The Myth of Fingerprints
by Ian Dawe
Mindjack's newest contributor, Ian Dawe, examines the history of identification
technology, from passwords to fingerprints to DNA.
august
11, 2003:
The Trouble with e-Voting
by Sarah Granger
e-Voting is one of those things I've been dreading for several years.
Since it first became a technological possibility, the thought of all
of the security risks involved has been swarming in my head like a hornet's
nest. On the surface, it sounds like a beautifully democratic thing
– each person anywhere in the world just needs to get him or herself
to a computer in order to vote. But when one puts together the current
legal ramifications and the technological flaws, it's actually rather
scary.
june
11, 2003:
Reloaded:
The SimMatrix
Bryan Alexander on The Matrix Reloaded
A sequel to The Matrix faces a series of challenges. It must satisfy,
then exceed its audiences appetite for imaginative fight scenes.
It needs to work with the science fiction concept of split-level reality,
going further without undoing the premise. Fidelity to an ambitiously
defined alternate world isnt crucial, yet unlike the situation
of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies. However, a sequel is
bound to plumb the first movies underworld of technological fear
and cultural theory riffing. The Matrix: Reloaded attempts all of these,
but diffuses, throwing itself into an open, unsettled finale
may 26, 2003
Taste Tribes
by Joshua Ellis
Josh examines the online, interconnected groups
of people that you turn to for advice on music, art, fashion, books,
etc., and the broader implications of these taste tribes.

may 05, 2003
Thinking Outside The MUD
Ludicorp CEO Stewart Butterfield on the Game Neverending
Mike Sugarbaker talks to Stewart Butterfield about his company's take
on massively-multiplayer gaming.
april
26, 2004
Lawrence Lessig's
Free Culture
reviewed by J.D. Lasica
When future generations look back at this unsettled era in which we're
transitioning from an analog to a digital society, the search bots may
be impressed most by the works of Lawrence Lessig.

march
21, 2003
The State of Digital Rights Management
Bryan Alexander reports from the Berkely DRM Conference.
In February the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology held a conference
to demonstrate and push the limits of DRM. For a sunny weekend in northern
California, representatives of computer science, entertainment, media
companies, Congress, the FTC, European copyright law, and the occasional
cypherpunk, offered their versions of DRM, while holding each other's
notions up to fierce scrutiny.
march
21, 2003
Two Degrees of Separation
by Sarah Granger
In an entirely unscientific study, Sarah examines the uncanny social
connections that sprout from the Silicon Valley populus.
march
10, 2003
More Machine Than Flesh
by J. Johnson
A review essay of Rodney Brooks' Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will
Change Us.
february
24, 2003
Just Not Evenly
Distributed
Cory Doctorow on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition
In Pattern Recognition, Gibson, for the first time in a novel, turns
his attention to the present day. Ono-Sendai decks are replaced with
iBooks and cell phones. Websites and MPEG movies take the place of the
consensual hallucination of cyberspace. Cory Doctorow has our review.
november 04, 2002
Inside The Internet
Archive
by Doug Roberts
Tucked away in one of the seediest neighborhoods of San Francisco
is a roomful of over two hundred computers with a terabyte of data stored
on every three.
october
28, 2002
The Transmetropolitan Condition
An Interview with Warren Ellis
by Melanie McBride
There has never been a better time to read the work of comic book legend
Warren Ellis. From the formulaic pornography of news coverage to the
on-going ineptitude of our world "leaders", Ellis delivers an intelligent
and savagely funny antidote to global idiocy. The creator of Transmetropolitan,
Planetary and Global Frequency talks to Mindjack about his work, our
times and the future.
november
04, 2002
Smart Mobs by
Howard Rheingold
reviewed by Cory Doctorow
" Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs is not the first book to be written
about the ad-hocratic times we find ourselves living in, and it won't
be the last, but page for page, you won't find a better summing-up of
all the disparate bitzenpieces that add up to a genuine social revolution."
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may
08, 2002
Sid
Meier
interviewed by David Brake
Mindjack's David Brake sat down with Civilization series creator Sid
Meier in London to discuss games, history, artificial intelligence,
and the future of the Civ series.
april
27, 2002
Reading McLuhan
by Melanie McBride
" If there's a message of the 'for dummies' age it's that nothing
is beyond our grasp. And our desire to believe this is reinforced by
trends like usability, which privilege economy over elucidation. No
one anticipated it all better than Marshall McLuhan, who whittled big
insights into sound bites in order to engage an audience beyond the
lecture halls of the University of Toronto. "
April
22, 2002
Building
Emotional Machines
by Ana Viseu
"What is an emotional machine? Usually this term is applied to
a machine-soft- or hardware-that is able to recognize, express and perhaps
even 'have' emotions."
April
08, 2002
Simon Singh
interviewed by Bryan Alexander
" I interviewed Simon Singh, author of The Code Book (1999), during
a campus visit to Centenary College. After he mesmerized one of my classes
and delivered a series of energizing lectures, we chatted about various
aspects of cryptography today."
march
29, 2002
Digifest 2002
Jim Lai Reports From Toronto
" I didn't have much in the way of expectations going in to Digifest
2002; pretty pictures, glitzy art/advertising pieces, and possibly some
cool tech. I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth and depth of the
presentations. "
march
18, 2002
SXSW Interactive
2002
by Jon Lebkowsky
"This year's South by Southwest Interactive conference was lean
and mean - attended mainly by the core group of edgy 'net whackadistas,
the conference had an interesting vibe, like 'Wow, glad the goddam dotcom
splurge is over, let's get back to what we were doin'."
march
11, 2002
Conforming
to the Machine
by Douglas Rushkoff
"The old man had never seen a computer up close before. As countless
other first-time computer users had done before him, he picked up the
mouse, pointed it at the monitor, and clicked. "
february
11, 2002
Nanoengineers
of the Altiplano
by Chris McKinstry
"My printed in China desk calendar tells me that tomorrow is Abraham
Lincoln's birthday. February 12th, is also the first anniversary of
the simultaneous release of the human genome sequence by the publicly
funded Human Genome initiative and by privately owned Celera Genomics
Corporation, and I think not coincidentally, Charles Darwin's birthday."

january
28, 2002
The Future
of Infantry?
by Jim Lai
"Recently there has been talk of networks and warfare. It may come
as a surprise to some that the US has been actively researching network-centric
warfare since the 1990s."
december
31, 2001
Twenty Twenty:
Astronomical Vision
by Chris McKinstry
"Very early on a cold February morning in 1979 I looked with one
of my highly astigmatic eyes through my first professional telescope
at a setting Jupiter."
november
12 , 2001
Marketing the
X
by Jane Pinckard
The aggressive marketing tactics for Windows XP and the Xbox demonstrate
that Microsoft wants to control not just your work time, but your playtime,
too.
november
05 , 2001
Richard
Linklater
interviewed by Jon Lebkowsky
An interview with the director of Slacker and Waking Life, conducted
while LInklater was editing Dazed and Confused.
october
29, 2001
The Digital Millenium
Copyright Act: Licensing The Commons
by Bryan Alexander
"Two high-profile stories in 2001 drew public attention to a recent,
subtle, and potentially dangerous United States federal law."
september
18, 2001
Mobile Phones:
Reporting From Death's Doorstep
by Justin Hall
" Last week, a series of well-organized terrorist attacks hit the
northeastern United States. From chaotic streets and airplane bathrooms,
across America and the Arabic world, nearly all parties involved in
the tragedy used mobile phones to distribute news and reach out from
extraordinary situations. "
july
31, 2001
A Closer Look
at Life in the Summer of '76
by Chris McKinstry
"I heard nothing again about the Viking life detection experiments
until last week - twenty-five years after the first Viking Lander landed."
july
23, 2001
Webzine NYC
2001
by Jonathan Swerdloff
"On Saturday July 21, 2001 New York City witnessed the birth of
a new geek festival. Webzine NYC 2001 was the first annual webzine convention
on the East Coast, after three years in San Francisco. "
july
09, 2001
A Few Words On E-commerce...And Buying A Car
by Paul Waterhouse
"One of the proud boasts of the e-commerce world is that you can
buy anything online. Paper clips. Cheese puffs. Even a car."
july
02, 2001
Raffi Krikorian's
Gear for the Road
One geek's essential gear for wandering the hills of San Francisco or
travelling across the country.
february
15, 2001
Wire Fraud
and other Childhood Pasttimes
by Shawn FitzGerald
"Mostly, I phreaked, and I was probably about half as good at it
as anyone could be. The crap I knew would never have gotten me into
MOD, though I'm pretty sure if I could have met Phiber or Scorp on the
street (maybe at one of those 2600 meetings...) I would have been able
to learn enough from them to be dangerous."
february
15, 2001
A Second Date
with the Gnomes of San Jose
by Cory Doctorow
The second meeting of the Intel Peer-to-Peer Working Group
january
01, 2001
IT/ECO: A Short-term
Vision for the New Century
by Cate Gable
"Despite the fact that those nine's turning over into zeros' got
us all a little crazy last year, purists know that this year is the
real beginning of the 21st Century. So without further ado, let's do
the requisite Janus thing (looking-back/looking-forward) and lay out
a short-term vision for our new century."
november
15, 2000
Election
Notes 2000
by Jon Lebkowsky
"Just before the turn of the millennium we hold an election and
all hell breaks loose. It was too friggin' close, and that's one of
the mysteries that pundits are trying to fathom, that hair's breadth
difference between the final tallies for the two major parties."
october
15, 2000
My Date with the
Gnomes of San Jose
by Cory Doctorow
A First Person Account of the First Meeting of the Peer-to-Peer Working
Group
september
15, 2000
Who Are You?
Who Owns You?
by Jon Lebkowsky
"Amazon.com recently updated its generally well-conceived privacy
policy, and as part of the update added a disturbing section on 'business
transfers.'"
september
15, 2000
Robots "R" Us
by Cate Gable
"When Sony's Aibo robotic pup, priced at $2,500, instantly sold
out last year other toy makers quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The
Hasbro iRobot doll is only one of several entrants into the high tech
toy category. Mattel's Toy Innovation has its own wired-babydoll in
trial called "Miracle Moves Baby." And MGA is set to launch its electronic-tyke
into the ring. "My Dream Baby" grows, its torso slowly extending like
a telescope, until it ultimately learns to walk. Yikes! Walking robo-dolls."
august 01, 2000
Apple's New
New Direction
by Michael Boyle
"The summer Macworld Expo has traditionally been one of two or
three major events at which Apple announces new products and its vision
for the coming year. This year's edition, held from July 18 to July
21 in New York, both continued and extended Apple's bold vision of mixing
form with function, power with beauty."
july
01, 2000
Good
Thing or Gattaca?
by Elizabeth Weaver Engel
Reflections on the recent completion of the mapping of the human genome.
june
15, 2000
The City of Gold
by Are We Really?
An insider's view of the Bay Area's dotcom culture's history. The development
and rise of the new gold rush.
june
01, 2000
You Are Here
by David Brake
Location technology is making advances at lightning speed. Companies
are vying to provide the next generation of services so accurate, that
in the next five years just about anything and anyone with a global
positioning receiver will be able to be located within just a few meters.

may
15, 2000
Nodal Politics
by Jon Lebkowsky
"Grassroots organizing is about networking to build political presence,
creating influence in the democratic sense, where sheer numbers are
assumed to have relevance. Virtual politics adds a new dimension to
this kind of networking. "
april
15, 2000
Living in the
Fray
by Elizabeth Weaver Engel
"Let me begin by pointing out that I'm as organic-coffee-drinking,
independent-bookstore-patronizing, sweatshop-product-boycotting as the
next bleeding heart liberal. And I'm in support of the goals of the
IMF/World Bank protesters. "
april
01, 2000
Cybergothic
by Bryan Alexander
"After years of patient development in a time of occasional wars,
an architecture created by the command of a military-industrial complex
alters its character. Spaces designed to resist assault become screens
for the imagination, haunted by projected fears and desires. The outside
world treats these places with a mixture of contempt and craving, peopling
them with its demons, rebels, tyrants, and alter egos."
february
15, 2000
Information
Technology Meets Global Ecology
by Cate Gable
"Is there an intersection between the worlds of information technology
and global ecology? "
february
01, 2000
Whither
Y2K?
by Jon Lebkowsky
"What surprised me about the Y2K riff was that analysts and code
warriors, who should've known better, were actually stocking up on staples,
cases of Campbell's vegetable soup, Top Ramen, Evian water, Jolt cola
and Vendange Merlot, as though some kind of catastrophe was truly imminent."
january
15, 2000
The
New Future
by Donald Melanson
"For a very long time, the 21st century, and the year 2000 specifically,
have been the future. It was then when we were supposed to vacation
on the moon, have personal robots, and fly to work in our personal hover
cars. But these seem as far off now as they did in the fifties. Even
technologies that were supposedly right around the corner, like real
virtual reality, are still far from our reach. What happened?"
january
15, 2000
The
AOL/Time Warner Merger
by Elizabeth Weaver Engel
"What's going to arrive tomorrow morning over crepes - an Apple/Sun
merger? Linus Torvalds buys IBM? A joint Steve Case-Bob Vila commercial
for Time-Life's home improvement series?"
December
01, 1999
Converge
This!
by Dan Richards
"Lately, it's all about convergence. At least the word. It sounds
cool. It sounds like something's happening. If you are working with
convergence, you're catching the next wave. "
November
01, 1999
Hazy
Cosmic Jive
by Donald Melanson
"In a very short period of time, the SETI@Home program has grown
from a small project based at the University of California at Berkeley
to a bona fide phenomenon, with well over one million registered users
at last count."
September
15, 1999
What I've Learned
In Sixteen Years Online
by Elizabeth Lewis
"Sometime back around the dawn of the renaissance -- the summer
of 1983 to be precise -- I first read about how computers could connect
via modems in ways that let people talk to each other people via their
keyboards. "
september
01, 1999
The Mind of Howard Rheingold
(part 1)
september 15, 1999
The Mind of Howard Rheingold
(part 2)
Dan Richards talks with cyberspace guru Howard Rheingold about life,
the Internet and desserts.
June
24, 1999
Organic
Theater
by Dan Richards
"In the beginning, way way back in the early nineties, a few people
began keeping online journals on the internet. The World Wide Web had
opened gates for new audiences and a new mode of expression. In 1996,
film director Doug Block set out to make a documentary on these denizens
of cyberspace. "
May
07, 1999
SAY
WHAT?: Noise Levels...
by Dan Richards
"It's all around us. We swim in a sea of noise. In this new millennium
society we're bathed in walkmans, construction sites, roaring traffic,
power tools and a myriad of other sources of deafening sound that assault
our systems on physical and psychological levels. "
April
03, 1999
Straight
No Chaser
by Dan Richards
"New sound technologies are always around long before they reach
the attention of consumers. The importance now in looking around the
next corner is that it's coming faster than you realize and it's bigger
than you think."
November,
1998 to October, 1999
The Last Page
by Rachel Singer Gordon
The
Last Page is a monthly column addressing issues surrounding books, reading,
and modern technology. It includes book reviews and discussions of book
and reading related web sites and technology, as well as more general
ruminations on how our relationship with technology is transforming
the way we read -- and vice versa.
November
1998-
David
1, Goliath 0
by Elizabeth Weaver Engel
"Amazingly enough, it seems that some federal judges somewhere
actually have a minimal understanding of technology issues. Yes, dear
readers, Microsoft just received a holiday lump of coal courtesy of
US District Judge Whyte."
September
5, 1998
The
Stuggle Goes On. Class and the Information Age
by David Howell
"From the Industrial Revolution of the last century, to our post-modern
age, class forms the bedrock on which society gives structure to its
means of production and distribution. This hasn't changed with the metamorphosis
that is taking place, as we move into an informationally dominated society.
"
August
20, 1998
The
21st Century Breathing Down My Neck
by Shawn FitzGerald
"Harlen Ellison wrote that people only have a right to an informed
opinion, which I agree with. That doesn't stop everyone from having
instantaneous opinions on topics from abortion to Olean. More polite
people choose to keep these opinions to themselves. Others choose to
voyeuristically flaunt them in front of the world."
August
20, 1998
The
Frankenstein Complex
by David Howell
"Think of all the people outside of the information industry you
know, and ask yourself if any of them have a PC. If some have, great!
But of those that don't, ask yourself why?"
June
12, 1998
Technorealism
by Craig Saila
"It's been said revolutions move in stages, at first there are
the visionaries — those that show the exciting possibilities laying
in wait — and then there are the realists."
July
11, 1998
The
Razor's Edge: They're Wrong About Us
by p.l. frank
"To hear all the "experts" tell it, the Web is a virtual hotbed
of hackers, spammers, perverts, cross-gendered posers, pornographers
and socially-retarded geeks void of any concept of appropriate social
discourse. Hopping the Web-Bashing Bandwagon are a host of psychologists
and sociologists touting a doom and gloom message about the TechnoHeads
Culture. "
June
12, 1998
Tempest
In A Teapot
by Elizabeth Weaver Engel
"In the current brouhaha between Microsoft and the Justice Department,
one finds something for everyone: threats, drama, hysterics, pronouncements
of doom from both sides, more threats, angry retorts...about the only
thing missing is a love story. My favorite part however, is the humor."
May
11, 1998
The
Razor's Edge: Why The Digital Culture Is Good For You
by p.l. frank
"The news media, along with social and behavioral scientists have
recently sent out a multitude of warnings about the many dangers that
await us out there in cyberspace. The truth of the matter is that the
Web is no more inherently insidious than anything else in the world.
"
May
11, 1998
The
Transparent Medium
by Brian Igo
"There haven't been many movies I've rushed to see in the theaters
since I got a VCR. Hollywood's greatest fear when it debuted almost
20 years ago has, at least in my case, come to pass. The nearest cineplex
is a 45-minute drive and it's not worth the hassle when every gas station
and bait shop has a video department. "
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