Jesse Hicks

Thanks, fixed.

I was literally fixing that while you were posting.

Check out the book, or some of the scholarship on that evolution. There’s a lot of discussion out there about the evolution of Akihabara from an extended private space for otaku to its current, “stage”-like incarnation. Some writers have also noted the influence of Tokyo Disney.

Part of the point of the book, Galbraith’s research, and this article is that the term “otaku,” like much organically evolving language, can take a number of different connotations. Your point about the multiple types of otaku (several of which show up in Galbraith’s book) illustrates that.

Within the context of that paragraph, this is more about the relationship between “comics culture” and the “mainstream” in the respective countries. While indie comics in the U.S. certainly exist, they haven’t been the dominant genre, nor are they what the “mainstream” typically imagines when one says “comic book.” Superheroes have long been the dominant genre, both culturally and economically, for decades, despite a parallel and growing thread of “graphic novels” (a relatively new term) and so on.

In other words, this isn’t an aesthetic evaluation so much as a social one. Comic books in the U.S., largely because they are a medium dominate by superhero stories, are much less of a cultural and economic force than they are in other countries. This is not to say that the lack artistic breadth or artistic cachet taken in isolation, but that compared to other countries, the U.S. comic scene is largely viewed by the mainstream as consisting solely of superheroes, a genre not typically viewed as having a surfeit of artistic ambition. That may be unfair (see Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, etc., etc.), but it’s hard to argue that, again, compared to Japan and other countries, the U.S. comic scene doesn’t seem a little one-note.

I’m fine with it.

Well, you’re writing and thinking. And this is about technology (sort of). What more does your fantasy require?

No, you’re in the majority there.

I’ll take that challenge.

No — unlike the telephone or the telegraph, email wasn’t considered a big technological advance when it appeared. Tomlinson says the first working email was likely a test message, something like “QWERTYUIOP.” After he got it working, he sent a mass email to explain the new application.

There’s even a section in the interview (above) where he talks about spam.

When asked for autographs, he signs his name with an @.

But also he’s still alive. (As far as we know.)

I support this gif.

— Wellington Hotdog

I think history has shown that even robust cryptography doesn’t guarantee absolute security.

I have a weekly Sunday Movie Night by myself.