The FJP

Is Yahoo Trying to Acquire Tumblr? All Things D reports that...

notable — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:14:00 -0400

Is Yahoo Trying to Acquire Tumblr?

All Things D reports that Yahoo is trying to get its cool on with a potential Tumblr acquisition:

Earlier this week, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JP Morgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo needed to be “cool again.” …According to sources close to the situation, that could mean a strategic alliance and investment in or outright buy of perhaps the coolest Internet company of late: Tumblr.

Adweek follows up saying a deal could be done by this weekend, adding:

Such an acquisition could be just what CEO [Marissa] Mayer has been looking for to turn around Yahoo’s momentum; Tumblr has the potential to excite the engineering/Silicon Valley community (even though it’s based in New York) while recapturing the imagination of advertisers, who have grown to view Yahoo as big but stale.

While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd—not currently a Yahoo sweet spot.

From Tumblr’s point of view, the deal also would seem to make a lot of sense. The company has been looking to make a big exit to justify its huge valuation.

Over at GigaOm, Om Malik suggests Facebook might try to swoop in on a deal.:

We have heard that Yahoo is worried that Facebook could swoop in at the last minute and beat it to the buzzer. If the Instagram acquisition was any indication, then we shouldn’t doubt [Mark] Zuckerberg’s salesmanship. [Tumblr’s David] Karp is said to have a close relationship with Facebook and was recently spotted at the Facebook Home launch. Facebook could use the much needed younger 18-to-24 year old demographic, something it (successfully) tried to acquire with Instagram. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.

Word of warning via 37signals: What happens after Yahoo acquires you:

Whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, MyBlogLog, or Upcoming, the post-purchase story is a similar one. Both sides talk about all the wonderful things they will do together. Then reality sets in. They get bogged down trying to overcome integration obstacles, endless meetings, and stifling bureaucracy. The products slow down or stop moving forward entirely. Once they hit the two-year mark and are free to leave, the founders take off. The sites are left to flounder or ride into the sunset. And customers are left holding the bag.

Sweet.

"At Bloomberg, reporters could sit at their desks and use a keyboard function to see the last time an..."

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:18:38 -0400

“At Bloomberg, reporters could sit at their desks and use a keyboard function to see the last time an official of the Federal Reserve logged on. And the Justice Department obtained the records of The Associated Press from phone companies with no advance notice, giving it no chance to challenge the action. The absence of friction has led to a culture of transgression. Clearly, if it can be known, it will be known.”

- David Carr, Snooping and the news media: it’s a two way street (via soupsoup)

cnet: Apple passes 50 billion App Store downloads FJP: via...

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:11:50 -0400

cnet:

Apple passes 50 billion App Store downloads

FJP: via CNET, “The person who downloaded the 50 billionth app will get a $10,000 App Store gift card from Apple, and the 50 people who downloaded apps right after that each will receive a $500 gift card.”

Yes, You Can Win This Cinetics miniSkates Tripod And now for...

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:58 -0400

Yes, You Can Win This Cinetics miniSkates Tripod

And now for something new: The first ever FJP Photo Contest.

Back in March Peter went to SXSW and met Justin Jensen, founder of Cinetics, a company he started from the MIT Media Lab to create portable cinematic systems. Peter loved what they’re doing and Justin and Co were kind enough to donate the miniSkates tripod as the prize for our first photo contest. (You can see the tripod in action in Justin’s original 2011 Kickstarter video.)

The Contest

The theme for this contest is “Daily Commute”.

You are welcome to interpret the theme however you like but here are some ideas to help get you started:

the essence of your commute;
something you notice that you think others pass by;
motion;
the places you commute to, from or through;
the idea of what a commute is;
something not mentioned above cause we didn’t think of it.

How to Enter

Take a great photo based on our “Daily Commute” theme;
Submit your photo on our Facebook contest page;
Win the coolest tripod on wheels!

Deadline: May 31, 2013

Other things you can do: Share this with your friends.

If this contest is successful we think we can get other companies to come together and offer contest prizes for The FJP community.

Many thanks. Start taking your photos and submit them to us over on Facebook. We look forward to seeing them!

"In mid-April, we went live with a half dozen articles which we call “stubs.” The idea here is to..."

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:11:00 -0400

“In mid-April, we went live with a half dozen articles which we call “stubs.” The idea here is to plant a flag in a story right away with a short post—a “stub”—and then build the article as the story develops over time, rather than just cranking out short, discrete posts every time something new breaks. One of our writers refers to this aptly as a “slow live blog.””

- This Is What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code community

The results of Fast Company’s experiment with “stubs” — which allowed them to gradually create long-form journalism — pleasantly surprised the team when it brought a lot of traffic. Learn more about their strategy and check out snapshots of their site analytics from Chris Dannen. (via onaissues)

FJP: SBNation, the network of sports blog, rolled out a feature similar to this when Vox Media redesigned the entire ecosystem. This is how Jeff Clark of SBNation’s CelticsBlog described “Storystreams” when the redesign launched:

This is a kind of post that has several updates within that post. It is a smarter way of handling big stories that have many updates (like trade deadline day and media day) rather than editing a single post or breaking it into several smaller posts.

And yes, I’m a Celtics junkie. — Michael

The Ultimate Nerd Assignment Slate’s Matthew Yglesias...

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:28 -0400

The Ultimate Nerd Assignment

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias watches every movie and every episode of every Star Trek and reports back on what it all means.

Bing Now Translates Klingon Language Bing has just...

krissyeliot — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:28 -0400

Bing Now Translates Klingon Language

Bing has just added Klingon, the language spoken by the Klingon warrior race of the Star Trek universe, to its language translator.

Via Mashable:

Bing worked with the linguistics Ph. D. Marc Okrand who developed the language for the series. It also turned to 10 people who are fluent in the language to train the systems, as well as the Klingon Language Institute who assisted in the process.

Bing users can now even translate entire websites into Klingon.

FJP: I think I speak for everyone when I say: HIja’ tlhuchtlh! — Krissy

Image: Today I Found Out

The New Yorker Launches Strongbox

johnjohnston100 — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:59:09 -0400

newyorker:

Today, The New Yorker launches Strongbox, an online tool for sources to anonymously send confidential information to our writers and editors. Read more about the platform here: http://nyr.kr/12b4Byx

What does everyone make of this tool then?

"As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does..."

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:30:28 -0400

“As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm. The scariest [fear] of all is not being silenced or sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next… It’s as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded.”

- Hao Qun, as quoted in The Guardian. China Tries to Rein in Microbloggers.

The News, via The Guardian:

China has launched a new drive to tame its boisterous microblogging culture by closing influential accounts belonging to writers and intellectuals who have used them to highlight social injustice.

The strict censorship of mainstream media in China has made social media an essential forum for public debate, but authorities have shown increasing determination to control it. Previous campaigns have warned the public against spreading rumours – a theme that has recurred in this crackdown – and ordered users to register with their real names.

Now attention has turned to the country’s opinion formers. A recent commentary in the state-run Global Times newspaper warned that “Big Vs” – meaning verified accounts with millions of followers – had become “relay stations for online rumours” and accused them of “harming the dignity of the law”.

Somewhat Related: The South China Morning Post reports that the central government has ordered universities to stop teaching seven subjects, among them civil rights, press freedom and the communist party’s past mistakes.

The History of Cuss Words Salon’s featured excerpt of...

krissyeliot — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:24:00 -0400

The History of Cuss Words

Salon’s featured excerpt of Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, provides an in depth look at commonly used swear words of the 18th and 19th centuries.

According to Mohr, a cuss word is defined by its impact:

Along with grammatical flexibility, this figurativeness is the hallmark of a fully obscene word, a word used not as a literal descriptor but to shock, offend, or otherwise carry emotion — a swearword.

Some of the popular curse words and phrases from Mohr’s excerpt include the following:

“Arse-opener,” “arse-wedge,” “beard-splitter,” ”chinkstopper,” and ”plugtail” were used to describe the act of ”splitting the woman’s anatomy” or “plugging a hole.”
“Bloody” was one of the most popular swear words of the time, but it’s hard to pinpoint its exact origins. It’s assumed that it’s derived from “the adjective bloody as in ‘covered in blood’ or, as the OED proposes, it referred to the habits of aristocratic rabble-rousers at the end of the 17th century, who styled themselves ‘bloods.’”
“Breasts,” “bubbies,” and ”diddeys,” were common words for boobs; ”bushelbubby” specifically referred to a woman with large breasts. “Tit” didn’t catch on until the early 20th century as a variation of ”teat” which was used in the Middle Ages.
“Bugger” referred to a person giving anal penetration.
“Burning shame” was a term that meant “a lighted candle stuck into the parts of a woman, certainly not intended by nature for a candlestick.”
“Burnt-Arsed whore” was used during the Renaissance and literally meant “infected with venereal disease.”
“Fartleberry” is the early version of the modern “dingleberry,” which refers to the fecal matter that hangs from hairs around the butt-hole.
“Gamahuche” meant “mouth on genitals” for both cunnilingus and fellatio.
“Godemiche” was a word imported from France meaning “dildo.”
“Larking” could have meant blow job or the act of “having sex with the man’s penis between the woman’s breasts.”
“Lobcock” referred to a large, “dull, inanimate” penis and “pego” was a popular word for dick.
“Monosyllable,” “quim,” “pussy,” “madge,” and “a woman’s commodity” were all names for vagina.
“Nackle-ass” was an adjective that meant “poor, mean, inferior, paltry: applied as a term of contempt to both persons and things indifferently.”
“Rantallion” referred to a scrotum that sags lower than the shaft of a man’s penis.
Slang for sexual intercourse included: “roger,” “screw,” and “have your greens.”
“Tip the velvet” originally meant “french kiss,” but after a hundred years passed, it also referred to the act of preforming cunnilingus.
“To bagpipe” meant to give a blow job.

FJP: More bloody fun: Nine Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Swear Words. You should also check out, FUCK — the documentary about “fuck’s” origins and uses. If you don’t — it will surely be a “burning shame.” Figuratively, of course. (Let’s hope.) — Krissy

Image: Screenshot from The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Leaks, The Justice Department and the Associated Press Attorney...

notable — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:09:48 -0400

Leaks, The Justice Department and the Associated Press

Attorney General Eric Holder responded yesterday to the news that the Justice Department seized two months of Associated Press phone records. Security!

This was a very serious leak and a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, it is within the top two or three most serious leaks I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk. That’s not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk.

Leaks! The government doesn’t like them. And Holder’s Justice Department has prosecuted more alleged leakers under the World War 1-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined.

In this case, the alleged leak lead to the AP reporting on a Yemeni-based plot to blow up an airplane.

Here’s some of what we’re reading on the story.

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian: Justice Department’s pursuit of AP’s phone records is both extreme and dangerous.

The legality of the DOJ’s actions is impossible to assess because it is not even known what legal authority it claims nor the legal process it invoked to obtain these records. Particularly in the post-9/11 era, the DOJ’s power to obtain phone records is, as I’ve detailed many times, dangerously broad. It often has the power to obtain those records without the person’s knowledge (as happened here) and for a wildly broad scope of time (as also happened here). There are numerous instruments that have been vested in the DOJ to obtain phone records, many of which do not require court approval, including administrative subpoenas and “national security letters” (issued without judicial review); indeed, the Obama DOJ has previously claimed it has the power to obtain journalists’ phone records without subpoeans using NSLs, and in its relentless pursuit to learn the identity of the source for one of New York Times’ James Risen’s stories, the Obama DOJ has actually claimed that journalists have no shield protections whatsoever in the national security context. It’s also quite possible that they obtained the records through a Grand Jury subpoena, as part of yet another criminal investigation to uncover and punish leakers.

None of those processes for obtaining these invasive records requires a demonstration of probable cause or anything close to it. Instead, the DOJ must simply assert that the records “relate to” a pending investigation: a standard so broad that virtually every DOJ desire will fulfill it.

Emily Bazelon, Slate: Obama’s War on Journalists:

Whether a leak threatens national security is clearly not the standard Holder and his department are using. And the problem is that the standard is up to them. The 1917 Espionage Act, the basis for most of these cases, was written to go after people who compromised military operations. Back in 1973, the major law review article on that statute concluded that Congress never intended to go after journalists with it, or even their sources. Since then, legal scholars have proposed various ways of narrowing the Espionage Act—University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone wants to limit the law’s reach to cases in which there’s proof that a reporter knows publication will wreck national security without contributing to the public debate. But Congress has done nothing of the sort. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Republicans who are indignant over the AP investigation got serious about reform? Somehow, I doubt it. Instead, with a Democratic White House leading the charge, it’s hard to see who will stop this train.

Timothy Lee, Washington Post: In AP surveillance case, the real scandal is what’s legal

But here’s what’s really scary: The Justice Department’s actions are likely perfectly legal.

U.S. law allows the government to engage in this type of surveillance—on media organizations or anyone else—without meaningful judicial oversight.

The key here is a legal principle known as the “third party doctrine,” which says that users don’t have Fourth Amendment rights protecting information they voluntarily turn over to someone else. Courts have said that when you dial a phone number, you are voluntarily providing information to your phone company, which is then free to share it with the government.

Brian Fung, National Journal: What the AP Subpoena Scandal Means for Your Electronic Privacy.

It’s not just journalists and their sources who stand to suffer from an erosion of the legal barriers between government and businesses. Here’s a short list of your personal information companies can hand over to the feds without repercussion, and on little more than a subpoena: geolocation data, the PCs you’ve accessed, emails you’ve sent and text messages and content you’ve placed on cloud services like Dropbox.

Image: Boiling Water, by Tom Tomorrow, March 2011. Since this cartoon, the government has prosecuted a sixth alleged leaker under the Espionage Act. Select to embiggen.

Spongebob Learns a Lesson in Journalism Ethics Well this might...

navigatingmedia — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:24:00 -0400

Spongebob Learns a Lesson in Journalism Ethics

Well this might be the best episode of Spongebob Squarepants ever. You can watch the whole thing here.

If you don’t, here’s the spoiler version:

Mr. Krabs starts his own newspaper, The Krabby Kronicle, and makes Spongebob a reporter. But Mr. Krabs wants some embellishment in the stories. He says:

SpongeBob, what’s the meaning of this? ‘LOCAL RESIDENT WATCHES POLE’? No one’s going to pay to read this malarky. When you write these stories, you’ve got to use a little imagination, boy. Maybe instead of “Man Watches Pole,” you could say something like, “Man Marries Pole.” Then you could alter the photo a little to fit the headline…

After which Spongebob’s readers get angry at his yellow journalism and he ends up teaching his publisher a lesson.

Image: Screenshot from the episode.

H/T: Romenesko for the find.

Selling Data, Taking Things in Your Hands Edition A common...

notable — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:37 -0400

Selling Data, Taking Things in Your Hands Edition

A common truism says that if it’s free and on the Web, you’re not the customer but the product being sold. Also common is the following reaction: what can I do about that. The less common reaction: How can I get in on that?

Try this one on as a thought experiment.

Via Slate:

In a world of privacy-invading smartphone apps and government-grade spyware, keeping personal data personal online can seem like a difficult task. But could you make money by choosing to give away logs of your most intimate data?

Federico Zannier is trying to find out. Emails, chat logs, location data, browser history, screenshots—you name it, the New York-based software developer is selling it all.With a Kickstarter campaign launched earlier this month, Zannier, a 28-year-old Italian-born master’s student at NYU, is offering to hand over a day’s digital footprint for a measly $2. He says he “violated his own privacy” starting back in February for about 50 days straight, recording screenshots and webcam snaps of himself every 30 seconds and tracking his every footstep using GPS technology. He logged the address of each Web page he visited—storing some 3 million lines of text—and accumulated a massive trove of 21,124 webcam photos and 19,920 screen shots.

Zannier’s aim, somewhat paradoxically, is to take ownership of his own data by selling it. He points out that we often hand over our private data unwittingly, given that few people take the time to read the terms and conditions of apps and online services. Companies rake in millions of dollars selling our information to marketing firms while we receive little in return. But Zannier’s Kickstarter is not just out to make a statement about online privacy—he plans to use the funds to create a browser extension and a smartphone app that he says will help others sell their own data. “If more people do the same, I’m thinking marketers could just pay us directly for our data,” he writes on his Kickstarter page. “It might sound crazy, but so is giving all our data away for free.”

So, just as the Web often disrupts, let’s cut out the middle man.

Image: It’s Free, But They Sell Your Information, via Telco 2.0.

Now The Internet Will Write My Essay For Me Via...

notable — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:20 -0400

Now The Internet Will Write My Essay For Me

Via Reddit/quickmeme.

White Men, Everyone Else: Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable...

notable — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:00:32 -0400

White Men, Everyone Else: Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable News

Media Matters spent the month of April reviewing evening guests on cable news. The results, unfortunately, don’t surprise: CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC “overwhelmingly host male and white guests.”

Read through for the details as the watchdog group breaks down the numbers for each network. We learn, for instance, that “Out of 1,677 total guests, CNN had the largest proportion of men — 76 percent — during the month of April;” and “Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent.”

Hat tip to Chris Hayes, whose show is the most diverse in cable evening news. And getting there isn’t very difficult. “We just would look at the board and say, ‘We already have too many white men. We can’t have more,’” Hayes told Ann Friedman at the Columbia Journalism Review back in March. “Really, that was it.”

Images: Diversity On Evening Cable News, via Media Matters. Select to embiggen.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone..."

notable — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:16:00 -0400

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

- Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of the Associated Press, in a letter (PDF) to US Attorney General Eric Holder.

The News, via the AP:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

As Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET, points out, 28 CFR 50.10 (the Code of Federal Regulations) includes the following:

No subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media or for the telephone toll records of any member of the news media without the express authorization of the Attorney General… Failure to obtain the prior approval of the Attorney General may constitute grounds for an administrative reprimand or other appropriate disciplinary action.

So, evidently, Eric Holder gave his express authorization for monitoring of the Associated Press’ phone records. Besides the initial WTF, we wait to hear how this is spun to justify the intrusion.

"Since won’t blink in Blink, Firefox would be the only remaining browser that allows..."

navigatingmedia — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:19:00 -0400

“Since won’t blink in Blink, Firefox would be the only remaining browser that allows text to actually flash using the element.”

- Vijit Assar, The Evolution of the Web, In a Blink, The New Yorker.

FJP: It must have been really fun to write that sentence. The whole piece is worth a read if you want an easy enough 101 on the history of internet browsers and what’s coming next. Which, if you use a web browser, you should. And it’s in The New Yorker, so you can show this to your grandma and maybe she’ll read it too.

"Rolling Disaster" at The Times-Picayune

notable — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:28:00 -0400

Almost a year ago, New Orleans’ Times-Picayune cut staff, announced that it would stop publishing a daily newspaper in favor of three days a week and tired to pivot to digital first at NOLA.com.

A year into the process The Columbia Journalism Review calls strategic decisions made over the last 12 months a “rolling disaster” while the New York Times’ David Carr calls pretty much everything to do with the Picayune “a jaw-dropping blunder”.

But the Picayune isn’t done. Advance Publications, the paper’s owner, has announced the paper will be a paper. Again. Sort of. But in a different format. Probably because The Advocate, the Baton Rouge daily that’s just set up shop in New Orleans, is looking to eat the Picayune’s lunch.

David Carr tries to explain the Picayune’s return to print:

The new distribution plan is hard to explain, but I will do my best.

On Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, a broadsheet called The Times-Picayune will be available for home delivery and on the newsstands for 75 cents. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, a tabloid called TPStreet will be available only on newsstands for 75 cents.

In addition, a special electronic edition of TPStreet will be available to the three-day subscribers of the home-delivered newspaper. On Saturdays, there will be early print editions of the Sunday Times-Picayune with some breaking news and some Sunday content.

There’s more, but you get the idea — or not. It’s an array of products, frequencies and approaches that is difficult to explain, much less market.

The move was clearly defensive, unveiled the day before John Georges, the new owner of The Advocate, announced that it would expand its incursion into New Orleans.

If that leaves you shaking your head, try this take by Kevin Allman at The Gambit:

The digitally-focused NOLA Media Group, which cut back print publication of The Times-Picayune to three days a week last year, continued to innovate today by announcing a new plan to print on the days it doesn’t produce a print product, bringing the company up to 7-day-a-week publication, according to an announcement by NOLA Media Group Vice President of Content Jim Amoss.

The report, which is not from The Onion, says the new product, to be called “TPStreet,” will launch this summer in newsboxes around the city and cost 75 cents, just like the daily paper, which it will not be, because it is more innovative than that…

…The innovative publication is in response to “a repeated request” from home-delivery subscribers to get a delivered daily paper, but it will not be home delivered, [President and Publisher Ricky] Mathews said.

So, The Advocate’s is trying to invade and the Picayune is playing oddball defense.

“Our hope is that we will be treated to an invigorating old-time press war between The Advocate and The Times-Picayune,” Jed Horne, a former editor at The Times-Picayune tells Carr, “but of course, it could end up being two dinosaurs fighting over the last mud hole on an overheated planet.”

Let’s hope not.

Word Association: Mapping the World Via Martin Elmer: This map...

notable — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:00:46 -0400

Word Association: Mapping the World

Via Martin Elmer:

This map was produced by running all the various countries’ “History of _____” Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country’s boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words.

Image: Laconic History of The World (2012), via Map Hugger. Select to embiggen.

The Little People Working in our Machines Via Wired: Mark...

notable — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:30:24 -0400

The Little People Working in our Machines

Via Wired:

Mark Crummett thinks modern technology is beautiful. To him the devices we’ve built, such as computers, are not only functional, they’re aesthetically appealing. Especially on the inside.

“I like the idea that [technology] looks the way it does because it has to look that way,” he says. “A hard drive is made out of round and shiny material because of what it has to do and how it has to do it.”

Crummett says he’s tried to highlight that beauty in a series of photographs he calls Ghosts in the Machine. He’s placed model railroad figurines inside the guts of old computers and other contraptions, making the processors and transistors form a kind of otherworldly cityscape. Computer fan vents become postmodern architecture. Motherboards become strange new ecosystems.

For more images, and how Crummett shoots, visit Wired.

Images: Selected photographs from Ghosts in the Machine by Mark Crummett, via Wired. Select to embiggen.