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In our reading this week, there is an emphasis on how the Electronic Literature Organization is working to preserve online narratives that somehow become out of date. Here is a huge reason why that is so important. As we move toward a dependence on mobile technology, Flash is officially out.

Artist uses webcam feed and gps focused on Fifth Avenue NYC to create corresponding cars in Frogger game. So where does the real car end and the Frogger smashing begin...?

Finally (and what will appear first), all this talk about digital technology and web design pulls up an equal impulse in me to talk about other skill sets that get undervalued in an information economy. I read this a bit ago and enjoyed it. There also seems to be a trend currently that is leading us toward a sort of steam punk utopia where we will have a mixture of high and low technology. For more on the philosophical argument being put forward in this article, I highly recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Mind at Work. To see some indications of the trend I'm talking about watch How It's Made (which tends to skew toward human components of the production process and is based in a tactile fetish of understanding modes of production since you do not learn how to make things ... or really how things are made) and check out all the books on craft skills, cooking, and carpentry that are exploding all over Amazon with noticeably nostalgic titles. Speaking of which, did the knitting craze end or am I just not around 50 people that have recently taken up knitting anymore?

Oh! Also add to the "evidence" list farming/gardening and the back to earth books ... and psychologically the zombie and (to a lesser extent) virus craze in movies, books, games, etc.

Johanna Blakely discusses gender and social media in relation to demographics and women's popular use of social media.

This article addresses whether or not learning new programming languages is worth the time and energy. According to the article, learning new languages (1) expands your ability to use several different approaches to solve problems, (2) might teach you techniques that carry over to old languages, (3) exposes you to new communities, (4) provides additional marketable skills, and (5) stimulates your mind. At the end, one user stipulates that he only learns a language when it "has enough maturity, has a good developer base, and offers significantly different outcomes from the others I know."