Email Author Julian Dibbell

2006 Stories by Julian Dibbell

• Trading Up

  published July 11, 2006

  On July 12, 2005, Kyle MacDonald posted an ambitious request on Craigslist: He wanted to trade a single red paperclip ( More >>

• Play War

  published July 4, 2006

  Oh, sure, no harm in spending your Fourth of July rooting for one former Axis power or another in the world semifinals of un-American football,... More >>

• All Hail

  published June 20, 2006

  Is there anyone within shouting distance of a Wi-Fi connection who doesn't already know that Google is taking over the universe? Maybe not. Even... More >>

• Talk Therapy

  published June 13, 2006

  Narcissists of the world, check it out: The folks at Ether (ether.com) seem to think you have something extra... More >>

• Comic Relief

  published June 6, 2006

  The year is 2011: John McCain is president, the war on terror slogs on, and the mainstream media officially refer to suicide bombings as "homicide... More >>

• Edit Me!

  published May 30, 2006

  Whip-smart media theorist McKenzie Wark is no yippie anarchist (too much Marx, McLuhan, and tenure in him for that), but his provocative new book... More >>

• Web Zen

  published May 23, 2006

  If you've caught the ads for this summer's inevitable Adam Sandler vehicle Click ("What if you had a universal remote . . . that controlled... More >>

• Surfin' Safari

  published May 16, 2006

  "Search when you know just what you're looking for, stumble when you don't," advises a press release for fresh-out-of-beta "Web discovery service"... More >>

• Crafts Bizarre

  published May 9, 2006

  The chance that future archaeologists will identify the 21st century as the Duct Tape Age is looking good right now, and you can blame it on a... More >>

• Web Love

  published May 2, 2006

  "Fantasizing aside?" says vlogger genius Ze Frank in a recent installment of his daily three-minute webcast The Show ( More >>

• Turf Wars

  published April 25, 2006

  Ah, Wikipedia: No true believer in the democratic promise of the Web can fail to gladden at the very mention of this grand experiment—the... More >>

• Kill This Site

  published April 18, 2006

  Look, there's nothing wrong with the editorial voice of Thrillist that a lunch hour's sensitivity training or... More >>

• Vapor Travails

  published April 11, 2006

  Five days' nonstop fare-chasing in a San Francisco taxicab doesn't sound very uplifting, I know, but look at it through the eyes of a... More >>

• Reel Homage

  published April 4, 2006

  The collected works of cinematic genius Brandon Hardesty don't add up to more than 20 minutes running time, but give the man a break: Of his eight... More >>

• Heart of Desire

  published March 28, 2006

  There's no accounting for tastes, it's true, but mapping them apparently is another story. The experimental "self-adapting" search engine Gnod.net... More >>

• Zen And The Art

  published March 21, 2006

  As pestilent as the crusaders against violence in video games may be, just be thankful they haven't set their sights yet on the far greater... More >>

• eBay Atheist

  published March 14, 2006

  In the future, no marketing textbook will be complete without a chapter on Hemant Mehta, the 22-year-old who last month sold his soul on More >>

• DIY.org

  published March 7, 2006

  "Where are my turnips?" the anarchist author Hakim Bey famously demanded of the Internet in 1991, unimpressed with purely digital abundance and... More >>

• Mediocre TV

  published February 28, 2006

  "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire," said Edward R. Murrow, patron saint of television, in one of his... More >>

• Too Damn Skype

  published February 21, 2006

  The wheels of legislative oversight turn slowly, and by the time Congress gets around to reining in Bush's warrantless phone-tap program, we could... More >>

• Scarlet Letters

  published February 14, 2006

  As third-party applications of the Google Maps interface go, the Family Watchdog National Sex Offender Registry isn't exactly a browser's delight.... More >>

• Game From Hell

  published February 7, 2006

  Folks, I've seen some sick and twisted video games in my day, but I hereby award the cake to a dark little perversion of the human imagination... More >>

• Burning Bush

  published January 31, 2006

  One word, my friends: ImpeachBush.org. Oh sorry, two words. Right? Or no, three, because what about org?... More >>

• Pope's No Dope

  published January 24, 2006

  Infallibility has a price, and apparently it's $18,209. That's what the Vatican just billed an Italian publisher for bootlegging an excerpt or two... More >>

• Dry Space

  published January 17, 2006

  When Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, professed vampire and practicing Satanist, announced he was running for Minnesota governor on a platform of... More >>