Browsing the blog archives for February, 2008

Cognitive Science and Irony

23 Feb, 2008 in cogntive science, irony, postirony by Lee

I usually hate these sorts of thing, but the Stanford Humanities Center had a great conference on Friday on cognitive science and literature. I unfortunately could only attend the morning session on irony, which featured Herb Clark (Psychology, Stanford), Joshua Landy (French, Stanford), and Elaine Scarry (English, Harvard) and was chaired by Lanier Anderson [...]

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ALA William Gibson Panel

19 Feb, 2008 in ALA, Pattern Recognition, William Gibson, brand, cognitive mapping by Lee

Some dissertation-related news. I’m going to be on a panel dedicated to William Gibson at this year’s ALA conference. My paper, based on the trendspotter chapter of my dissertation, is on Pattern Recognition.
Title: The Brand as Cognitive Map in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition
This paper analyzes the figure of the coolhunter in William [...]

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Granta v. McSweeney’s

7 Feb, 2008 in McSweeney's, postirony by Lee

I received a link to this Times article today. A few interesting quotes:
The McSweeney’s author is not above playing language games or creating work that is aware of its artificiality, although he is also careful not to let this playfulness detract from the work’s emotional impact. There is by no means a house [...]

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Fuck you, you goddamned slant-eyed cocksuckers

7 Feb, 2008 in Uncategorized by Lee

Forget Obama as a postironic candidate. What we have here is a prospective presidency that only a flat-out ironist could love.

But Mr McCain has serious handicaps, too. One is his temper. “It is startling to contemplate how violent John McCain was well into his 20s,” notes Matt Welch, a critical biographer. Drunk on shore [...]

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Social Networks and Power

2 Feb, 2008 in Duncan Watts, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison by Lee

Here’s an interesting article about the social-network modeling of Duncan Watts, a researcher for Yahoo! who contests the popular marketing idea that influencing so-called Influentials is the key to making your idea or product go viral.
I first heard about him at a CSN conference last year; he had just published research suggesting that the success [...]

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