Hey everyone, here’s a short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why, despite all the warnings about privacy online, we just can’t bring ourselves to care nearly as much as we should. 

A taste: “Oh but haven’t recent polls demonstrated that we are more concerned than ever about our privacy online? Sure they have. But they have also shown that our concern doesn’t actually translate into action. We may tell pollsters we are concerned about our privacy, but we don’t actually do much about it. Surprisingly few of us can actually be bothered to adjust the privacy settings available to us. (A Pew Research Study put the number of us who change Facebook privacy settings in the 25 percent to 44 percent range, which is to say that not even half of us are motivated to protect our most intimate details by taking five minutes to click a few buttons.)”

Read in full:

The summer issue of Broken Pencil is now circulating around the planet. Here are a few samples of what you will find behind its extremely pink and cybernetic cover. Come back on Monday for a few more samples. Then keep coming back each Monday for a few more.

Let’s start you off with a history lesson from our editor, followed by some very flat adventures with Nicolas Cage.

Now you should be warmed-up enough to handle this feature on Robert Thomas Payne, homeless zinester. If you need cheering-up after that, there’s fun new stuff in the comics section.

Zine reviews: D90, A.M., Dungeons and Dragqueens, and Donairs, Donairs, Donair.

Book reviews: Chimerascope, Darwin’s Bastards and Bitter Medicine.

The Peep Diaries is described as a “bracingly informal book” in a 5 book essay/review that appeared in the recent issue of the London Review of Books. Check out the whole piece here. The other books discussed are

The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich
The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future by Craig Watkins
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin
The Tyranny of Email: The Four Thousand Year Journey to your Inbox by John Freeman

Last week I was on a long panel discussion about the impact of Reality TV on culture and society. A lot of interesting points were made. You can watch the whole thing here.

…is now available. Apparently it is doing well and has been reviewed by 4 newspapers. If you read Turkish, you can read a review of the book in the newspaper Radikal here.

What follows are the first couple of sentences:

Gündelik hayatta yaşananların mutlaka kavramsal karşılığı vardır. Bu karşılık ya hazırdır yada olayların olgu derecesine yükselmesiyle oluşur. Dil zorlanır. Dil kımıldar. Tam da Deniz Baykal örneğinden hareket edildiğinde, nesnenin özne karşısındaki zaferinden söz edilebilir.

Enjoy!

Actually the headline should read: My reaction to the Reaction Videos article in the Washington Post that quotes my reaction to Reaction Videos. Got that?

Well, it doesn’t really matter. Check out the article, the piece does a nice job with the whole reaction video phenomenon. My take on it gets mocked (see the end of the piece), but I probably deserve it.

LasVegasNow.com recently did a special segment on Living in the Surveillance Society. I comment throughout. You can read the article and watch the two 4 minute videos here. It’s well done  and their conclusion is important, if slightly vague – “Users sacrifice privacy, getting the power of the Internet in return.” What I wonder is if “users” even see giving up privacy as a “sacrifice”? And what, exactly, do they (we) get in return?

is here! More pics, more comics, more searchability going back 10 plus years! It’s really awesome so go visit.

http://www.brokenpencil.com