Web
How a pioneering Globe reporter helped introduce Marshall McLuhan to the world
Kay Kritzwiser, a feature writer assigned to the Globe and Mail’s weekend supplement, The Globe Magazine, had never heard of Marshall McLuhan when, on a mid-November morning in 1963, her edior, Colin McCullough, asked her to write a profile of him. She visited the Globe’s library and took away a Who’s Who entry and a… More »
Interview: Nieman fellow David Skok on Canadian journalism’s digital future
David Skok, the managing editor of GlobalNews.ca, checked into Harvard University in September to begin a one-year Nieman Fellowship. The 33-year-old is the first Canadian digital journalist to receive the prestigious award. He’ll be studying “how to sustain Canadian journalism’s distinct presence in a world of stateless news organizations.” He spoke with This two weeks… More »
This45: Christina Palassio on book futurist Hugh McGuire
Imagine Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness read by a woman with a girlish, high-pitched voice. How would it affect your interpretation of the text? What elements of the story would be heightened, and which ones muted? What effect can a reader have on a text? These are a few of the questions that arise when… More »
This45: Mel Watkins on Straight Goods founder Ish Thielheimer
Once upon a time, there was born in Brooklyn a boy named Fred Theilheimer. When he started high school, asked his name by some young women in the schoolyard—and fearing that “Fred” would not sufficiently impress—in an act of spontaneous imagination, and with Moby Dick in his American DNA, he said, “Call me Ish.” And… More »
This45: Navneet Alang on blogger-of-the-future Tim Maly
Tim Maly seems like he might be from the future. Since 2007, Maly has, like so many others, written a blog on subjects he cares about. His is called Quiet Babylon, where he writes about technology, architecture and urban spaces. But in 2010, Maly made the brave and unusual decision to quit his regular job,… More »
This45: Mason Wright on Susanna Haas Lyons
They’re called social media for a reason, but for activists like Susanna Haas Lyons, tools such as Facebook and Twitter have much more to offer than funny cat videos and photos of your baby niece. “People spend an average of 14 minutes a day on Facebook,” says Vancouver-based Haas Lyons, a 33-year-old public engagement consultant… More »
On the internet, you’re not a citizen—you’re a consumer
The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan soon after 9/11 was misguided for many reasons, but one was purely practical: Al Qaeda is a stateless, decentralized network scattered across the globe. The spectral, international scope of the problem was no secret—so why wage a conventional war on one country? It was as if an outmoded… More »
On a borderless internet, how will we nurture Canadian content?
In 1999, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission took a hard look at the then-burgeoning internet. They then did what many Canadians would consider a very un-CRTC-like thing: they decided not to regulate it. That may come as something of a surprise, as we tend to think that if the CRTC has a thing, it’s… More »
How the web blurs the line between truth and falsehood
Though you might reasonably condemn the modern internet for a variety of reasons—ruining attention spans, turning all public discourse into a shouting match, or insulting your sexual prowess with badly punctuated mass emails—one thing the medium could always reasonably claim was its potential for spreading truth. Decentralized and egalitarian, the web seemed to herald the… More »
Technology, ethics, and the real meaning of the "Rapture of the Nerds"
Aging sucks, says Michael Roy Ames. At 45, he sees signs of his own mortality every time he looks in a mirror—the greying and thinning hair, the creases in his face. Ames doesn’t despair, though. He expects to see the day when scientific advances will reverse his aging process, replace his body parts as they… More »
