Culture

Traditional media mavens don't like the messy, loosely-joined conversation that is the Web and the dynamics of the new public sphere. Trouble is, they're also the dynamics of the old public sphere.

The New World Order is a harsh, cold vacuum. Video after the jump.

This making-of reel from effects producer Digital Domain shows how richly we've blurred the difference between reality and image-making.

Another advertisement from the Land of People Who Want to Be Toys. Video after the jump.

A laboratory in Montana that limns the bases of avian flight; a tumblr that collects evidence of our airborne technological fantasies.

The strenuous outsider scholarship of underground intellectual Steve Duncan charts the history of New York public transit, surreptitiously. Video after the jump.

Depicting skiers as gadgets of a kind, a resort's promotion reminds us of the clockwork appeal of toys, models, and virtual worlds.

Newsweek gives Julian Assange's "mansion arrest" the Martha Stewart treatment.

Gaming culture meets graffiti meets vernacular video insanity. Video after the jump.

In place of the brave new world of design fiction, artists like Olafur Eliasson invite us to enter the instant Utopia of our own imaginations.