Watershed

Watershed Header_2021_large-02.jpg

Emojis as 💻🔨: 💵🚔, 🎉🎨, or 💊💉?

Jonathan S Carter

Aug 30, 2016

Emojis as 💻🔨: 💵🚔, 🎉🎨, or 💊💉?

Alternative Title: Emoji’s as Digital Technics: Capitalist Control, Freeing Art, or Pharmakon. As someone interested in the varied ways that digital technologies change human communication practices, the recent spread of the emoji has fascinated me. These simple pictures have emerged as a dominant mode of digital communication. Their proliferation has been so impactful that last year not only was 😂 oxford dictionary’s word of the year, but Hillary Clinton used emojis to spur

Resource Management Games and the Desire for Finite Systems of Knowledge (or, Where did all my time

Apr 12, 2016

Resource Management Games and the Desire for Finite Systems of Knowledge (or, Where did all my time

I’ve got a confession to make: I spent an embarrassing amount of time last week playing the recently-released PC game Stardew Valley. I now find myself humming snippets of the game’s delightful soundtrack while I wash the dishes. Yesterday, I became deeply confused about what season it was in the real world, since I had just finished harvesting my pumpkins amid the wondrous snow globe effect created by thousands of falling digital leaves . . . Stardew Valley is an RPG (Role P

Textual Possession: Some Thoughts on Materiality, Ownership, and the
Power of Books

Dec 1, 2015

Textual Possession: Some Thoughts on Materiality, Ownership, and the Power of Books

I am writing this post on my 11 inch MacBook air, which is significantly lighter than my previous MacBook, a chubby, white, rounded model that never seemed quite as officious as my newer device. My current laptop feels much different in my hands; the weight, size, and shape all contribute to decisions regarding my reading habits (laptop if reclining in bed, iPad when sitting up, etc.). The computer smells a bit like pizza because of my growing tendency to eat directly off of

To Reconsider, Review, Reexamine, Reassess, Reevaluate, Reappraise, Rethink: Some Short Drafts on Wo

Oct 6, 2015

To Reconsider, Review, Reexamine, Reassess, Reevaluate, Reappraise, Rethink: Some Short Drafts on Wo

Draft #1: Technology Was Scary, and Then I Became a Diabetic One may as well begin with the diagnosis: Five years ago a doctor at an urgent care center in Mississippi told me I was diabetic. I had all the classic symptoms: rapid weight loss, dark urine, fatigue. My blood glucose level was so high the meter couldn’t read it, simply blinked “High” and made this odd keening noise like my blood—so sugary it was, I imagined, the consistency of maple syrup—had offended it. “Oh, boy