Column Archive

 

 

 

Read:

The Best of Cyberspace

My top ten favorite columns.

 

 

2000

Oct

One-Click Democracy!

Oct

Napster and the law of diminishing returns

Sep

IMunity for netizens

Sep

Whassup?

Aug

IPOut!

Aug

Who let the data out?

Jul

Micronations making a big splash

Jul

Tap into the geek gestalt

Jun

Sic transit gloria Microsoft

Jun

MS Breakup

May

Leah's picks

May

MP3 for the Devil

Apr

A broad solution

Apr

Modem primitives

Mar

Oh Canada

Mar

M-commerce is M-marvelous

Feb

DOS is Back!

Feb

Profit? It's the software, stupid!

Jan

Y2K not Y2Chaos... sigh

Jan

One Thousand Years of Computer History Part II

Jan

One Thousand Years of Computer History Part I

1999

Dec

Yourcompanysucks.com

Dec

Mahirmania is bigger than hampsterdance!

Nov

English rulez!

Nov

SETI

Oct

New Y2K Angst

Oct

Registering with search engines

Sep

Everything

Sep

Blair bitchin'

Aug

Classical sites

Aug

Clearing the idea pipe

Jul

iThoughts

Jul

Poetry really does mean something!

Jul

Jar Jar Binks must die, naturally

Jun

MAME-ing classic video games

Jun

Net hoaxes

May

International Lyrics Server is up

May

"@#$% Hotmail!"

Apr

Domain name not always in the same vein

Apr

Michelangelo, Melissa, and the Great Worm

Mar

Secrets of Disney exposed on the web

Mar

Cool computer design

Feb

Star Wars fans

Feb

Looking for love in all the web places

Jan

Linux is up

Jan

International Lyrics Server is down

1998

Dec

Throbbers

Dec

Jargon

Nov

The inner soul of the geek

Nov

Space news

Oct

Sound advice

Oct

Y2K

Sep

Java nightmare

Sep

Java dream

Aug

Toronto International Film Festival crap online

Aug

The caring and feeding of your company sysadmin

Jul

Polling the proles

Jun

Winning friends and influencing people online

Jun

Good times virus

May

Y2K

Apr

Face on Mars

Apr

Culture jamming

Mar

Heaven's Gate: One year later

Mar

Open source and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Feb

Constructed languages

Feb

IRC

Jan

Online yucks

Jan

Those ever growing search engines

1997

Dec

A year in Cyberspace: Hits and misses of '97

Dec

Ware-ing away

Dec

Juno a beachhead against spam

Nov

Favorite info-rich sites

Nov

If I had a lever big enough to destroy the world...

Oct

The web: your virtual mother

Oct

The Virtual Pet: From mainframe to keychain

Oct

Throwing a bucket of cold logic on lottery fever

Sep

Banner ads

Sep

PGP

Aug

Stupid net tricks

Aug

Following Moses out of the promised land

Aug

Never ending stories

Jul

Push it real good

Jul

Slack off with the faith fool

Jul

Kevin Smith online

Jun

Keep little brother from watching you

Jun

The fall of TSR

May

ELIZA do little

Apr

EZINEs

Mar

On the trail of David Rhodes

Mar

Internet so blatantly anti-Canadian it makes me wanna puke

Feb

Cool cool sites of the day

Feb

The end is near, nearly

Jan

UCE Part II

Jan

UCE Part I

1996

Dec

Another Year In Cyberspace '96

Nov

Ezines

Aug

Newsgroups a cry for help

Jul

Hunting Easter Eggs in Jul

Jun

The name is the message

Jun

Search Me

May

Random Rumblings

May

Talking About My Generation

Apr

First Barsoom now the Moon

Mar

Legends of the online call

Feb

Hot Sites for Cold Nights

Jan

Infochill just hot air

Jan

TROLLIN' keeps those Newbies Rollin'

1995

Dec

Review of 1996 Canadian Internet Handbook

Dec

The World Wide Web of Deceit

Nov

The Great Net.Conspiracies

Nov

I Am Cyberman. Hear Me Roar

Oct

Art of the Kill

Oct

Welcome to My Killfile - Part I

 

 

 

 

Welcome to CyberSpace

Canada's first regular column in a major domestic newspaper to tackle the emerging world of net.culture.

CyberSpace appeared in the Toronto Sun every other Sunday between 1994 and 2000.

 

Cyberspace Quote-O-Tron

 

 


I started writing a bi-weekly column (bi-weekly means every other week) for the Toronto Sunday Sun's Comment section in the summer of '94. Cyberspace was the first regular column in a Canadian daily newspaper to tackle the emerging world of net.culture.

A big influence on my column was K.K. Campbell's Eye.Net column. Like Campbell -- my friend 'n' long time hero -- my aim with Cyberspace was to get people into the net, as opposed to getting people on to the net. In the mid-'90s, most computer writing was generally focused on hardware and software. There were a lot of people writing about what modems to buy or how to troubleshoot your modem but no one was really dealing with what you'd actually find online, who you'd find online, and how to have fun with the places and people you found. Concepts like netiquette were entirely alien to the vast majority of people who were, at this time, taking their fledgling steps into the online world. CyberSpace wanted to answer not the "what" but the "why".

In pursuit of this, Cyberspace looked at the history of computers, the culture that created the hardware and software that wired the world, and ways readers could have some interesting but responsible fun with these shared resources.

Oddly enough, my column ran for several years in the Toronto Sun before I actually started putting my column online. I can get busy. When I'm not working full time as a technical writer, endlessly tinkering with a play I wrote called The Man 2 Dialogs, or folding laundry, I'm sleeping or melting cheese on hotdogs.

I like Korea. It's the happiest place on earth! I'm not Korean, though I'm learning to be. Check out these pics of my column hanging in the window of a Korean restaurant. The advantage of having your column run right under Sara Waxman's restaurant review column was occasionally people didn't hack out your article when they'd hang her article in a restaurant window.

The Story so far...

This by no means is an exhaustive list of my columns. Just what I could piece together. Three jobs, five computers, one Mac ... things get pretty helter skelter.

These are not the columns as they appeared in the Sun. They're my drafts. They may be somewhat different from the printed versions. You will find embarrassing typos.

Oh yeah, they're also in the crappy text format in which I supplied them to my editors via email. I'll get them converted over to HTML Real Soon Now.

Send me mail or learn more about me.

See Also by Me

La Petite Lesson en Franglais

Learn to talk like a real Montreal native.

The PennySaviour

The start of it all.

The Globe and Mail and Windsor Star

Another April Fools parody issue. NEW!

The Border City Lance A Windsor Centennial Commemorative Issue

Another April Fools parody issue.

The Spirit Lance

Yet another April Fools parody.

The Joys of Using Instant Messaging

Parody, man.

The CAT Scan Diaries

A Canadian Adventure with the American Medical System.

Diary of a Scared North American in Seoul

A Canadian Adventure with the Canadians of Asia.

Conversations with a Nigerian Bank Scammer

Developing a Taste for Ibex.

The Consipracy Primer

Everything you ever wanted to know about The Conspiracy but did not know what to ask about!

The White Label Humour Digital Archive Project

White Label Humour was a radio show my friend Terry and I wrote/hosted on the University of Windsor's CJAM (91.5 fm) from June 1987 to July 1990. NEW SHOW TRANSCRIPTS ADDED

A History of Sir Arthur Meighan University

Not quite my alma matter.

Everything2 Writings

Geek History and More.

Letters from a Canadian Nut

Like Letters from a Nut but Canadian.

The Man Two Dialogs

Everything you ever wanted to know about dating explained in three acts.

How to get a Discover Card

Yes you can get a Discover Card by providing zero correct information!

Other Writing

Various Essays. All highly amusing of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Copyright (c) 1994-2002 Karl Mamer

Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft shareholder.

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