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Weiye Loh

Scientists find secret to writing a best-selling novel - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ting-a-best-selling-novel.html

Writing Literature Big Data Algorithm Popular Culture

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • They found several trends that were often found in successful books, including heavy use of conjunctions such as “and” and “but” and large numbers of nouns and adjectives. Less successful work tended to include more verbs and adverbs and relied on words that explicitly describe actions and emotions such as “wanted”, “took” or “promised”, while more successful books favoured verbs that describe thought processes such as “recognised” or “remembered”.
  • Weiye Loh on 12 Jan 14
     
    "Scientists find secret to writing a best-selling novel Computer scientists have developed an algorithm which can predict with 84 per cent accuracy whether a book will be a commercial success - and the secret is to avoid cliches and excessive use of verbs"
jardinejn

Stuart Moulthrop - You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media - Pos... - 0 views

muse.jhu.edu.erl.lib.byu.edu/...1.3moulthrop.html

digital revolution cyber evolution media control

shared by jardinejn on 29 May 10 - No Cached
  • . But
  • But
  • But
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  • Stoll excoriates "cyberpunks," virtual vandals who abuse the openness of scientific computing environments. Their unsportsmanlike conduct spoils the information game, necessitating cumbersome restrictions on the free flow of data.
  • Orthodox McLuhanite doctrine holds that "every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics" (Laws of Media viii).
  • Who decides what information "belongs" to whom? Stoll's "popular elite" is restricted to academic scientists, a version of "the people" as nomenklatura, those whose need to know is defined by their professional affiliation.
  • The telos of the electronic society-of-text is anarchy in its true sense: local autonomy based on consensus, limited by a relentless disintegration of global authority. Since information is now virtually an equivalent of capital, and since textuality is our most powerful way of shaping information, it follows that Xanadu might indeed change the world.
  • Electronic information, as Stoll sees it, lies in strict analogy with material and private property.
  •   "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system" (Gibson 51).
  • The vision of Xanadu as cyberspatial New Jerusalem is conceivable and perhaps eligible, but by no stretch of the imagination is it inevitable.
  • But it seems equally possible that our engagement with interactive media will follow the path of reaction, not revolution
  • jardinejn on 29 May 10
     
    Pros and Cons of the newly evolving concept of networking information back in the early 90s
  • jardinejn on 29 May 10
     
    Some interesting questions and speculations about potential controls on media from an early 90s perspective
Amanda Giles

I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive Thompson - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...07awareness-t.html

identity reality social networking parasocial relationships ambient awareness

shared by Amanda Giles on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • Facebook and Twitter may have pushed things into overdrive, but the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.
  • capable
  • A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of.”
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • ambient awareness
  • very much like being physically near someone
  • paradox of ambient awareness
  • insignificant on its own
  • he little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives
  • Facebook and Twitter may have pushed things into overdrive, but the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.
  • the growing popularity of online awareness as a reaction to social isolation
  • human groupings naturally tail off at around 150 people: the “Dunbar number,” as it is known. Are people who use Facebook and Twitter increasing their Dunbar number, because they can so easily keep track of so many more people?
  • Constant online contact had made those ties immeasurably richer, but it hadn’t actually increased the number of them; deep relationships are still predicated on face time, and there are only so many hours in the day for that.
  • If you’re reading daily updates from hundreds of people about whom they’re dating and whether they’re happy, it might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships.
  • Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.
  • hey can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you.”
  • people in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared and have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are.
  • if only to ensure the virtual version of you is accurate, or at least the one you want to present to the world.
  • he dynamics of small-town life,
  • If anything, it’s identity-constraining now
  • result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves
  • t’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness.
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