Wow, this is odd — Forbes has named me one of the top 25 “Web Celebrities” for 2007. Between this, my bad-ass review in this week’s Entertainment Weekly (“Doctorow is rapidly emerging as the William Gibson of his generation”) (!), and the whole Davos Young Global Leader thing, I am getting a swollen head. Lots of people I like and respect made the list, like my friend and co-editor Xeni Jardin.

I’m speaking on Friday at UCLA’s OPEN conference — free with registration. My talk’s first thing in the morning, at 10:35. Also on the bill is Nicholas Negroponte, who’ll give the opening keynote.

The UC Digital Arts Research Network (UC DARnet) is a transdisciplinary Multicampus Research Group of University of California faculty who utilize digital media for cultural and theoretical research and in their creative production. UC faculty established DARnet in 1997 to lay the foundation for a UC-wide program to facilitate collaborative research and teaching within a distributed digital arts and humanities community.

Culture is in the midst of an increasingly rapid shift to computer-mediated forms of creative production, distribution and communication. The role of digital media is fundamental to this shift.

Media Artists create a natural bridge across the traditional disciplinary divide between the humanities and the sciences. UC DARnet, provides an opportunity for critical engagement and conceptual dialogue between humanists, scientists, and those in the media arts.

Link

Minifig sez, “It’s been a while, but Xeni very kindly linked to me making Dick Cheney in Lego. In return, it would have been nice to make her out of Lego, but however hard I try, I can’t get it right. Instead, I’ve made Cory, with a heap of his CC books next to him. Enjoy. There are a few other famous people recreated in Lego in my flickr photostream if you take a look around.”

Link

(Thanks, Minifig!)

I’m launching my short story collection Overclocked at Duke University’s Levine Science Research Center in Durham, NC on Feb 22 at 5PM. I’ll be giving a lecture on privacy and technology, followed by a signing and general schmooze. Hope to see you there! Here’s more detail on the event, and here’s a map. Admission is free and open.

Where: Love Auditorium, Levine Science Research Center
When: Feb 22, 5PM

A reminder: I’m also having launches in Toronto (Feb 1), San Francisco (Feb 8, with Rudy Rucker), and Vancouver, San Diego and Los Angeles (details TBD).

I’ve just uploaded a DIY mini-comic of my story “Printcrime,” which appears in my new short story collection, Overclocked. The mini was designed and illustrated by the talented illustrator Martin Cendreda, a former South Park animator whose new works include Dang! from Top Shelf Comix — a bitter and fantastic comic. The mini is published by Secret Headquarters, the best comic shop in LA.

To assemble the mini, download and print the PDF, then follow the directions included to fold it into a no-staple origami 8-page mini-comic — it’s all under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license — share it, tweak it, remix it, just don’t sell it.

4MB PDF

Dave Younce has created a great machine-generated remix of Printcrime, the lead story in my new collection Overclocked. Every time you reload the page, it reorders the sentences. Says Dave, “Some sentences inevitably repeat, which makes it
sound like poetry or drug-addled memories. Sometimes the story’s
outcome is the same, sometime’s it’s completely different, often its
nonsensical. It’s fun to refresh.”

The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way. God knew what he went through in prison. “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone.”

“There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for.” “Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup.”

Link

I’ve been named one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2007 — part of a group of “250 leading executives, public figures and intellectuals – all 40 or younger – chosen from around the world.”

I think that this is basically the Davos Junior Woodchucks. I didn’t apply — I’m guessing that someone put me up for it. I don’t really know what this means, except that I’m invited to a weekend event in China in September with the other Woodchucks (who include Jimmy Wales and Nick Denton, so it can’t be all bad!).