To Feel Like a Woman, by Carole Ferrari.

I recieved an email from a guy at X.com who read my micropayments article, and mentionned that PayPal's US-only limitation will soon be overcome.

Further indicating the recent revival of the micropayment meme, the Industry Standard has an article about some (IMHO) mediocre technologies.

Neil Postman in NY Times' article on McLuhan: "McLuhan's questions were generally more interesting than his answers."

"For a discipline like media studies, he makes for a weak founding father because he was wrong so much of the time," said Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at NYU

The article concludes with a really weak argument against technological determinism:

said Ms. Jackaway, a member of the defeated anti- McLuhan group. "I am a firm believer that human beings invent machines, that from the beginning there is intention, that the way we use them is mostly the result of human and political decisions.

The implication here is that everyone who uses machines fully understands the implications of their limitations and extensions, and furthermore, that the users of technology have explicit control over the structure that technology imposes by its very use. McLuhan argued - rightly, to a certain extent - that the only people who can make their intentions expressed through media are those who have explicit knowledge of their medium: artists, writers, and those who really know the ins and outs of a given medium.

I registered at Classmates.com today, and was suprised to see a few members of my graduating class listed there. The site could stand to offer a lot more basic features, though. For instance, adding URL's to profiles, and noting how many discussion group messages there are before you click on the link.