We drive cars to the gym to run miles on a treadmill. Inclement weather notwithstanding, why don’t we just run down the street? The activities are disconnected. We sit in close physical proximity with each other and text others far away. The activities are disconnected. Technological mediation creates a disconnection between physical goals and technology’s "help" in easing our workload. There are at least two types of disconnection enveloping our days: one between ourselves and our environment (e.g., pumping water vs. pumping iron) and one between ourselves and each other (e.g., individual distraction vs. global connection) with technology wedged in between in both cases. If our culture is essentially technology-driven, then what kind of culture emerges from such disconnections between our physical goals and our technologically enabled activities?
I marshal the middle between Mathers and McLuhan.
My main interests are figurative language use (hence the Hip-hop) and the evolution of technology (hence the media theory). My main goal in writing is entertainment and in science is novelty. I’m more of the former than the latter and more of a fan than a critic.
I’m an aging BMX/skateboard zine kid. That’s where I learned to turn events and interviews into pages with staples. The pages and staples have long since given way to text-links and scrollbars, but the rest is basically the same. I still ride bikes, and I still skateboard. I do still commit quite a bit to actual pages, too.
My main project from 1997 to 2007 was frontwheeldrive.com. With that site, I established myself as what Disinformation called, "One of the Internet’s leading interviewers of subculture and new-science icons." I was most recently assistant editor of Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky’s edited collection 'Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Culture and Music' (MIT Press, 2008). My first book is an anthology interviews entitled 'Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes' (Well-Red Bear, 2007), which Disinformation named one of the most important books published in 2007, and which Erik Davis called, "a crisp and substantial remix of the major memes of the last decade or so." I hold a master’s degree in Communication Theory from San Diego State University and am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
Prior to graduate work, I earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Science, and spent over twenty years working as a writer, editor, and designer both on- and off-line. I have written about technology, science, music, and culture for everything from glossy national magazines and regional weeklies to hometown newspapers and homegrown ‘zines, and I have written, edited, designed, and consulted for such diverse organizations as Microsoft, Nike, The MIT Press, MSN Music, ESPN, the United States Army, Xbox, and Zero Skateboards. Though my work has been featured on numerous websites, in many magazines, and in a few books, roychristopher.com is now home to most of my writing.
