Articles By: Ben Valentine
Alyx Baldwin is the kind of technologist we love. While we are impressed which much of Baldwin’s work, the project Tidepools is a brilliant blend of technology, community organizing, and local creativity. Tidepools was created as Baldwin’s thesis project for Parsons School of Design, and works as a localized mapping platform… »
Nikahang Kowsar loves to make people laugh at the world’s problems, and he is deeply committed to doing so. As an Iranian-born and Canadian-based cartoonist now based in DC, Kowsar is the Editor in Chief at the citizen journalism platform Khodnevis, and founder of Toonistan, a social network for making… »
The second day of SXSW I spoke on the panel, The LOLs of Nations: Understanding Global Memes, looking at the role of memes in civic life around the world, focusing specifically on Azerbaijan, Mexico, Romania, Uganda, and Kenya. I joined Andres Monroy-Hernandez, who discussed Mexican memes and Elena Agapie, who… »
Spending a week in Austin, TX for my first SXSW conference was exciting, but the opportunity to be a panelist discussing social change memes around the world alongside accomplished scholars and researchers was thrilling. Our panel, The LOLs of Nations: Understanding Global Memes, was a great success, and a recap… »
In the final section of a three-part interview with Patrick Sharbaugh of Vietmeme,we look at the culture of the internet and how the internet is shifting citizens’ world views. See Part One and Part Two. Tell us a bit about your research into the culture of Vietnam’s internet. Vietnam’s Internet culture differs from… »
Shortly before the end of 2013, we published the first of a three-part interview with Patrick Sharbaugh of Vietmeme, focusing on civic life in Vietnam as seen through and influenced by the web. We continue that discussion with the second in our series, looking at censorship and surveillance within the country. Some… »
Editor’s Note: You might remember Ben Valentine’s take on the “protest selfie”, a look at how the selfie has been used as a form of political expression around the world. We thought it would be great to look more closely at the selfie in context, and why 2013 really has become… »
A new publication we’ve been reading, Vietmeme, focuses on civic life in Vietnam as seen through and influenced by the web. After interviewing Anh-Minh Do from the Tech in Asia about the Vietnamese internet, I found that Vietmeme founder Patrick Sharbaugh’s work, expertise, and unique position of having a deep… »
A couple weeks ago, Ben Valentine and I had a chance to speak at the Yerba Buena Center’s Dissident Futures Art and Ideas Festival alongside arts/tech writer and researcher Dorothy Santos. Our topic was, simply, “The Honeymoon’s Over—Arts and Culture Criticism in the Age of Networked Power”, a look at utopian… »
I’m really proud of #bisexualfacts today. Good day for laughing instead of being angry. — ASSHOLE WIZARD GIRL™ (@verylemonade) December 2, 2013 Point of clarification: #bisexualfacts the HT itself was not my invention, it got used a couple years back — ASSHOLE WIZARD GIRL™ (@verylemonade) December 2, 2013 but I… »
November 16, 2014 
