Boing Boing
Encyclopedia
Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine
, later becoming a group blog
.
in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder
and Carla Sinclair, his wife. Issues were subtitled "The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn
, Jon Lebkowsky
, and Paco Nathan
. Along with Mondo 2000
, Boing Boing was an influence in the development of the cyberpunk
subculture
. It reached a maximum circulation of 17,500 copies. Common themes include technology
, futurism
, science fiction
, gadgets, intellectual property
, Disney
and left-wing politics
. The last issue of the zine was #15.
Boing Boing became a Web site
in 1995 and one year later was a web-only publication. While researching for an article about blogs in 1999, Frauenfelder became acquainted with the Blogger
software, which led to the relaunch of Boing Boing as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow
, David Pescovitz
, and Xeni Jardin
. All four Boing Boing contributors are, or have been, contributing writers for Wired magazine.
In September 2003, Boing Boing removed their Quicktopics user-comment feature without warning or explanation. Bloggers commenting on the change at the time speculated that it stemmed from "identity impersonators and idiot flamers" pretending to be co-editors. Xeni Jardin was also a guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the Washington Posts decision to remove their comments section, and spoke from her experience at Boing Boing. In August 2007, a redesigned site was launched, which included a restored comment facility, moderated by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
.
In 2004, the project incorporated as Happy Mutants LLC, and John Battelle
became the blog's business manager. Boing Boing has twice won the Bloggies
for 'Weblog of the Year', in 2004 and 2005, at a time where it "had become one of the most-read and linked-to blogs in the world" according to Fast Company
.
The site added advertising over the course of late 2004, placed above and to the left and right of material, and, in 2005, in the site's RSS
feed as well. Editor Cory Doctorow noted that "John [Battelle] said it's going to be harder to make a little money to pay your bandwidth bills than it will be to make a lot of money and have a real source of income from this." The advertising income during the first quarter was already $27,000, and as of 2010, Boing Boing still "makes a nice living for its founders and a handful of contract employees" (Fast Company) and remains a prominent member of Battelle's blog network Federated Media Publishing Inc.
Boing Boing featured a "guest blogger" sidebar, then stopped the series in summer of 2004. In 2008, the "guest blogger" series resumed, with guests posting in the main blog for two-week periods. Guests have included Charles Platt, John Shirley
, Karen Marcelo of Survival Research Laboratories
, Johannes Grenzfurthner
of monochrom
, Rudy Rucker
, Gareth Branwyn
, Wiley Wiggins
, Jason Scott of textfiles.com
, Jessamyn West
of librarian.net, journalists Danny O'Brien
and Quinn Norton
and comedian John Hodgman
.
In September 2006, Boing Boing introduced a weekly podcast
, Boing Boing Boing, intended to cover the week's posts and upcoming projects. The show's cast consists of the Boing Boing editors accompanied by a weekly guest. In the same month, Boing Boing introduced a second podcast called Get Illuminated, which features interviews with writers, artists, and other creatives.
The site's own original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license
, as of August 2008.
In September 2009, Boing Boing refused to comply with a demand from Polo Ralph Lauren
's lawyers to remove a post concerning a heavily manipulated image of model Filippa Hamilton, originally published by the Photoshop Disasters blog, which was itself forced to comply by its hosting provider.
Ralph Lauren issued DMCA takedown notices to BoingBoing's ISP and Blogspot, which hosts Photoshop Disasters, claiming their use of the image infringed copyright. Blogspot complied, but BoingBoing's ISP consulted with BoingBoing and agreed that the image was fair use. As a result, BoingBoing issued a mocking rebuttal,
using the same image again and posting the takedown notice. The rebuttal was widely reported, including on frequently viewed websites such as The Huffington Post
and ABC News
.
On the evening of 27 October 2010, somebody hacked the BOINGBOING.net website. About one hour later, it was down, but then returned.
to blog postings linking to sites containing disgusting or shocking images
. The antidote contains a picture of a unicorn
and was launched first in August 2003 as a reply to a picture of a rash that editor Mark Frauenfelder posted in an attempt to get readers to diagnose it for him. The text posted with the image came with the title: "And now, we pause for a Unicorn Moment." It was used as an antidote for pictures of a brain tumor
, a man who pumped up the skin of his face with saline solution, many different ways to clean one's earwax
, and a lengthy discussion of the Internet video "2 Girls 1 Cup".
On May 18, 2007, Boing Boing announced that Virgin America
, as part of its "Name Our Planes!" campaign, would be naming one of its new aircraft "Unicorn Chaser," after having asked Boing Boing to suggest a name.
editor Joel Johnson. Johnson left in July 2009, to be replaced by Rob Beschizza, formerly of Wired News. Other writers include Steven Leckart and Lisa Katayama. Offworld, a blog covering video games edited by Brandon Boyer
, was added in November 2008.
" was popularized by the site - literally stripping out the vowels of any comment a moderator had taken exception to. More recently it has been accused of dropping comments completely, for example dropping the first 8 or 9 comments in a software piracy related article. .
has been mentioned, interviewed and once contributed at Boing Boing. On the June 23, 2008, Blue posted on her blog, Tiny Nibbles, that all posts related to her had been deleted from Boing Boing, without explanation. The LA Times featured an interview with Blue that cast the silence on the part of Boing Boing on the matter as 'inexplicable', causing a controversy as Boing Boing "has often presented itself as a stalwart of cultural openness". A heated debate ensued after a brief statement on the Boing Boing site regarding this action stated: "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day". In commentary attached to that blog entry, "many commenters surmised that they had something to do with Blue's suing to stop a porn star from also using the name Violet Blue," and many commenters found the removal troubling, but Xeni Jardin
said that she hoped she would not have to make the reasons public.
Audio/Video media
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, later becoming a group blog
Collaborative blog
A collaborative blog is a type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high profile collaborative blogs are based around a single uniting theme, such as politics or technology....
.
History
Boing Boing started as a zineZine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder
Mark Frauenfelder
Mark Frauenfelder is a blogger, illustrator, and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing. Along with his wife, Carla Sinclair, he founded the bOING bOING print zine in 1988, where he acted as editor until the print version folded in...
and Carla Sinclair, his wife. Issues were subtitled "The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn is a writer, editor, and media critic.He has covered technology, DIY media, and cyberculture for Wired, Esquire, the Baltimore Sun and other publications. He has also been an editor at Mondo 2000, and at Boing Boing when it was a print zine...
, Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Lebkowsky is an web consultant/developer, author and activist who was cofounder of FringeWare, Inc. . FringeWare, an early attempt at ecommerce and online community, published a popular "magalog" called FringeWare Review, and a literary zine edited by Lebkowsky called Unshaved Truths...
, and Paco Nathan
Paco Nathan
Paco Nathan is a computer scientist, author, and performance art show producer from San Luis Obispo, California, who established much of his career in Austin, Texas....
. Along with Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It covered cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine....
, Boing Boing was an influence in the development of the cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
. It reached a maximum circulation of 17,500 copies. Common themes include technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, gadgets, intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
, Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
and left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. The last issue of the zine was #15.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
in 1995 and one year later was a web-only publication. While researching for an article about blogs in 1999, Frauenfelder became acquainted with the Blogger
Blogger (service)
Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...
software, which led to the relaunch of Boing Boing as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
, David Pescovitz
David Pescovitz
David Pescovitz is a writer and journalist best known for his work on science, technology and Internet culture. He is also a co-editor of Boing Boing and a director of research with the Institute for the Future...
, and Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin is an American weblogger, digital media commentator, and tech culture journalist. She is known for her position as co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing, as a contributor to Wired magazine and Wired News, and as a correspondent for the National Public Radio show Day to Day...
. All four Boing Boing contributors are, or have been, contributing writers for Wired magazine.
In September 2003, Boing Boing removed their Quicktopics user-comment feature without warning or explanation. Bloggers commenting on the change at the time speculated that it stemmed from "identity impersonators and idiot flamers" pretending to be co-editors. Xeni Jardin was also a guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the Washington Posts decision to remove their comments section, and spoke from her experience at Boing Boing. In August 2007, a redesigned site was launched, which included a restored comment facility, moderated by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Teresa Nielsen Hayden is an American science fiction editor, fanzine writer, essayist, and teacher. She is a consulting editor for Tor Books. She has also worked for Federated Media Publishing, where in 2007 she revived the comment section for the blog Boing Boing...
.
In 2004, the project incorporated as Happy Mutants LLC, and John Battelle
John Battelle
John Linwood Battelle is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media.Battelle is one of the original...
became the blog's business manager. Boing Boing has twice won the Bloggies
Blog award
A Blog award is an award for the best blog in a given category. Some blog awards are based on a public vote and others are based on a fixed set of criteria applied by a panel of judges....
for 'Weblog of the Year', in 2004 and 2005, at a time where it "had become one of the most-read and linked-to blogs in the world" according to Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
.
The site added advertising over the course of late 2004, placed above and to the left and right of material, and, in 2005, in the site's RSS
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
feed as well. Editor Cory Doctorow noted that "John [Battelle] said it's going to be harder to make a little money to pay your bandwidth bills than it will be to make a lot of money and have a real source of income from this." The advertising income during the first quarter was already $27,000, and as of 2010, Boing Boing still "makes a nice living for its founders and a handful of contract employees" (Fast Company) and remains a prominent member of Battelle's blog network Federated Media Publishing Inc.
Boing Boing featured a "guest blogger" sidebar, then stopped the series in summer of 2004. In 2008, the "guest blogger" series resumed, with guests posting in the main blog for two-week periods. Guests have included Charles Platt, John Shirley
John Shirley
John Shirley is an American fantasist, author of noir fiction, and science-fiction writer. Shirley is a prolific writer of novels and short stories, TV scripts and screenplays who has published over 30 books and 10 collections...
, Karen Marcelo of Survival Research Laboratories
Survival Research Laboratories
Survival Research Laboratories is a machine performance art group credited for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine performance. After about 30 years in San Francisco, California, SRL spent most of 2008 moving to Petaluma, California....
, Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner is an Austrian artist, writer, curator, director.He has published numerous books, essays and articles on contemporary art, science and philosophy....
of monochrom
Monochrom
monochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, founded in 1993. Its offices are located at Museumsquartier/Vienna ....
, Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of...
, Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn is a writer, editor, and media critic.He has covered technology, DIY media, and cyberculture for Wired, Esquire, the Baltimore Sun and other publications. He has also been an editor at Mondo 2000, and at Boing Boing when it was a print zine...
, Wiley Wiggins
Wiley Wiggins
Wiley Ramsey Wiggins is an American film actor and blogger. A native of Austin, Texas, he is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, who was a member of Janis Joplin's early band, The Waller Creek Boys....
, Jason Scott of textfiles.com
Textfiles.com
textfiles.com is a web site run by Jason Scott dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the BBS world and various subcultures. The site categorises and stores thousands of ASCII files. It focuses on text files from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and...
, Jessamyn West
Jessamyn West (librarian)
Jessamyn Charity West is an American librarian and blogger, best known as the creator of librarian.net and for her unconventional views of her profession...
of librarian.net, journalists Danny O'Brien
Danny O'Brien
Danny O'Brien is an English technology journalist and civil liberties activist. He wrote weekly columns for the Sunday Times and the Irish Times; and before that for The Guardian, and acted as a consultant in helping The Guardian formulate its online strategy. He worked for the UK edition of...
and Quinn Norton
Quinn Norton
Quinn Norton is a Washington DC-based journalist, photographer and blogger covering hacker culture, intellectual property and copyright issues, and the Internet. Up until early 2009, she lived and worked in San Francisco, where she was married to journalist Danny O'Brien...
and comedian John Hodgman
John Hodgman
John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in...
.
In September 2006, Boing Boing introduced a weekly podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
, Boing Boing Boing, intended to cover the week's posts and upcoming projects. The show's cast consists of the Boing Boing editors accompanied by a weekly guest. In the same month, Boing Boing introduced a second podcast called Get Illuminated, which features interviews with writers, artists, and other creatives.
The site's own original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
, as of August 2008.
In September 2009, Boing Boing refused to comply with a demand from Polo Ralph Lauren
Polo Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren Corporation is a luxury clothing and goods company of the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren specializes in high-end casual/semi-formal wear for men and women, as well as accessories, fragrances, home and housewares...
's lawyers to remove a post concerning a heavily manipulated image of model Filippa Hamilton, originally published by the Photoshop Disasters blog, which was itself forced to comply by its hosting provider.
Ralph Lauren issued DMCA takedown notices to BoingBoing's ISP and Blogspot, which hosts Photoshop Disasters, claiming their use of the image infringed copyright. Blogspot complied, but BoingBoing's ISP consulted with BoingBoing and agreed that the image was fair use. As a result, BoingBoing issued a mocking rebuttal,
using the same image again and posting the takedown notice. The rebuttal was widely reported, including on frequently viewed websites such as The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
and ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
.
Unicorn chaser
A "unicorn chaser" is a concept created by Boing Boing editors as an antidoteAntidote
An antidote is a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning. The term ultimately derives from the Greek αντιδιδοναι antididonai, "given against"....
to blog postings linking to sites containing disgusting or shocking images
Shock site
A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive, disgusting and/or disturbing to its viewers, containing materials of high shock value which is also considered distasteful and crude, and is generally of a pornographic, scatological, extremely violent, insulting, painful, profane, or...
. The antidote contains a picture of a unicorn
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...
and was launched first in August 2003 as a reply to a picture of a rash that editor Mark Frauenfelder posted in an attempt to get readers to diagnose it for him. The text posted with the image came with the title: "And now, we pause for a Unicorn Moment." It was used as an antidote for pictures of a brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...
, a man who pumped up the skin of his face with saline solution, many different ways to clean one's earwax
Earwax
Earwax, also known by the medical term cerumen, is a yellowish waxy substance secreted in the ear canal of humans and other mammals. It protects the skin of the human ear canal, assists in cleaning and lubrication, and also provides some protection from bacteria, fungi, insects and water...
, and a lengthy discussion of the Internet video "2 Girls 1 Cup".
On May 18, 2007, Boing Boing announced that Virgin America
Virgin America
Virgin America, Inc. is a United States-based low-cost airline that began service on August 8, 2007. The airline's stated aim is to provide low-fare, high-quality service for "long-haul point-to-point service between major metropolitan cities on the Eastern and West Coast seaboards." San Francisco...
, as part of its "Name Our Planes!" campaign, would be naming one of its new aircraft "Unicorn Chaser," after having asked Boing Boing to suggest a name.
Boing Boing Gadgets and Offworld
In August 2007, Boing Boing introduced a gadgets-focused companion site headed by fomer GizmodoGizmodo
Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....
editor Joel Johnson. Johnson left in July 2009, to be replaced by Rob Beschizza, formerly of Wired News. Other writers include Steven Leckart and Lisa Katayama. Offworld, a blog covering video games edited by Brandon Boyer
Brandon Boyer
Brandon Boyer is a contributing editor to collaborative weblog Boing Boing. He was born in 1977 in Sioux City, Iowa.From 1993-1996, Boyer wrote and performed songs on a Casio keyboard under the name Boy Genius. Tracks were featured on various CDs, including Bottlecap Records' "Green Light Go!"...
, was added in November 2008.
Boing Boing TV
In October 2007, Boing Boing started a new component, Boing Boing TV, that consists of video segments, produced by its co-editors in conjunction with DECA, the Digital Entertainment Corporation of America. The episodes appear online, as well as on Virgin America flights.Censorship
Boing Boing has been described as an "unspoken critic of censorship elsewhere" yet has been accused of practising forms of censorship itself. For example the act of "disemvowelingDisemvoweling
Disemvoweling, disemvowelling , or disemvowelment of a piece of alphabetic text is rewriting it with all the vowel letters removed...
" was popularized by the site - literally stripping out the vowels of any comment a moderator had taken exception to. More recently it has been accused of dropping comments completely, for example dropping the first 8 or 9 comments in a software piracy related article. .
Violet Blue controversy
Sex blogger Violet BlueViolet Blue (author)
Violet Blue is an American writer and sex educator.Blue wrote a weekly sex column for the San Francisco Chronicle. In her podcast, Open Source Sex, she reads erotica and discusses topics such as fetishes and oral sex. She also has a video blog. Blue wrote a feature about porn for women which was...
has been mentioned, interviewed and once contributed at Boing Boing. On the June 23, 2008, Blue posted on her blog, Tiny Nibbles, that all posts related to her had been deleted from Boing Boing, without explanation. The LA Times featured an interview with Blue that cast the silence on the part of Boing Boing on the matter as 'inexplicable', causing a controversy as Boing Boing "has often presented itself as a stalwart of cultural openness". A heated debate ensued after a brief statement on the Boing Boing site regarding this action stated: "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day". In commentary attached to that blog entry, "many commenters surmised that they had something to do with Blue's suing to stop a porn star from also using the name Violet Blue," and many commenters found the removal troubling, but Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin
Xeni Jardin is an American weblogger, digital media commentator, and tech culture journalist. She is known for her position as co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing, as a contributor to Wired magazine and Wired News, and as a correspondent for the National Public Radio show Day to Day...
said that she hoped she would not have to make the reasons public.
External links
- Boing Boing website
- Boing Boing Gadgets
- Boing Boing TV
- A collection of deleted posts mentioning Violet Blue
Audio/Video media
- Boing Boing: The Making of a Media Empire on BNETvideo, official YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
channel of BNETBNETBNET was an online magazine dedicated to issues of business management.It was owned by CBS Interactive and was a part of its business portfolio alongside ZDNet, TechRepublic, SmartPlanet before it was folded into CBS MoneyWatch, a sister personal finance site that was launched on April 6, 2009.BNET...
. (December 19, 2007)