Welcome to the DMZ, Scott Rosenberg's home on the Web.

Here you'll find various links to my stuff.

Salon is where I'm writing and editing these days. I edit the magazine's technology & culture section, Salon 21st.

I write a weekly column about media coverage of the digital world called Let's Get This Straight. You can always find the most current column at http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/rose/.

Here's what I've been writing in Salon:

• No boom, no bust: The year in review, 1997 (12/24/97)
• Take away my browser and I'll crash your system!: Let's Get This Straight column on Microsoft's tantrum in court. (12/19/97)
• Silicon Valley's cults of personality: Reviews of three new books on Intel, Oracle and Apple. (12/18/97)
• Esther Dyson interview. (12/9/97)
• Interface this!: A review of Steven Johnson's "Interface Culture" (12/3/97)
• The Suck stops here: A look at Suck, the Web 'zine, and Suck, the book. (11/13/97)
• Starship Troopers: movie review. (11/7/97)
• Release 2.0: Review of Esther Dyson's book. (11/4/97)
• Reality Check: Is the new-model digital economy all it's cracked up to be? (10/30/97)
• Salon Money Week: introduction to our special issue. (10/27/97)
• Gattaca: movie review. (10/24/97)
• Elegance and entropy: An interview with author Ellen Ullman ("Close to the Machine") abo the Machine") about the nature of programming. (10/9/97)
• Clicking for Godot: An essay on the state and prospects of interactive art, including a report on a chat-room performance of "Waiting for Godot," a look at the world of "serious hypertexts" such as Mark Amerika's "Grammatron," a discussion of the "digital populism" of the annual Digital Storytelling Festival and a review of Janet Murray's "Hamlet on the Holodeck." (10/2/97)
• Event Horizon: movie review. (8/15/97)
• In drugs we trust: Why do Americans make war on some drugs and build fortunes on others? An introduction to Salon's special week of features on legal drugs. (7/14/97)
• A brief review of Brad Meltzer's "The Tenth Justice." (7/4/97)
• A Newsreal report on the Supreme Court's decision on the Communications Decency Act. (6/27/97)
• The paper chase: Why print magazines about the Web can't keep up with the medium. Along with a guide to Web magazines. (05/22/97)
• The Fifth Element: Movie review of Luc Besson's film about a supermodel Supreme Being (5/9/97)
• Microsoft vs. Ticketmaster: The lawsuit is all about link lunacy. (Media Circus) (5/7/97)
• Body Bits: Digital anatomies offer high-tech medical education, intimations of mortality -- and a whiff of the crypt. (4/17/97)
• Data Deluge: New guides to the info-glut, like David Shenk's "Data Smog," aren't able to do for the new media what classic studies of TV like George Trow's "Within the Context of No Context" have done for media we grew up with. (4/10/97)
• Why Microsoft gobbled WebTV: It works (4/8/97)
• This note's for you: The explosion of interactive music software, from Peter Gabriel's "Eve" to "S "Eve" to "Sound Toys," "SimTunes," and more. (4/3/97)
• Channels on the Web: Why do big companies want to make the Web more like TV? Where does Microsoft want you to go today? (3/26/97)
• "2001: A Space Odyssey": An appreciation, part of Salon's "Personal Best" movies feature (3/21/97)
• Dry run for CDA hearings: a report from the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference on the eve of the Supreme Court arguments on Net censorship. (3/17/97)
• Freedy Johnston's "Never Home": a review. (3/12/97)
• The Data Artist: Chart-master Edward Tufte finds meaning in numbers; then he shows how good graphs can save lives. (03/10/97)
• Code Boys: Po Bronson's new book and the rise of the Silicon Valley Novel. (2/13/97)
• "Suburbia": Review of Richard Linklater's film based on Eric Bogosian's play. (2/7/97)
• Rating the Digital Pundits Digital Pundits: Three easy ways to tell the good technology books from the bad.
  Plus reviews of John Seabrook's "Deeper" and Michael Dertouzos's "What Will Be"
• "Fierce Creatures": John Cleese becomes an animal sacker.
• Branagh's "Hamlet": Showmanship turns cheesy in the full-length film.
• Not Dead Yet: Macworld postmortem -- still life in the old Mac. (Newsreal)
• Amelio's Fan Dance: How Apple's CEO blew his big speech at Macworld. (Newsreal)
• New News in Old Bottles: Wired News tries to mix digital savvy with old-fashioned wire-service gusto. (Media Circus)
• Our Favorite Martians: "Mars Attacks" review.
• Tommy, Live: Review of "The Who: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970." (Sharps and Flats)
• Mediasaurus Wrecks: Michael Crichton, of all people, attacks the media for blurring fact and fiction. (Media Circus)
• To Borgly Go...: How "Star Trek: First Contact's" villains mix New Age psychobabble with cyberpunk regalia -- and still can't get a date. (Media Circus)
• Geek Yuks: While Dave Barry fiddles with jokes about RAM, Scott Adams burns.
• Blame it on the Net: When the mainstream media got suckered by Pierre Salinger's "bogus news" about TWA Flight 800, they said it was the Internet's fault (Media Circus)
• After the Gold Rush: A look behind the manic-depressive headlines to assess the real state of the Web
• Wired Unplugged: Do loose emails sink IPOs? (Media Circus)
• Review of "Pyst," the CD-ROM parody of "Myst" by the Firesign Theatre's Peter Bergman (Media Circus)
• Review of "Born to Rebel," Frank Sulloway's book about birth order and destiny
• The Salon Interview with William Gibson
• Wired Unbound -- Paulina Borsook's book and other troubles inside the Wired camp (Media Circus)
• Personal Best essay on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"
• Salon Interview with Stephen Jay Gould
• Review of "Our Secret Century" -- incredibly strange history on ephemeral films
• Search Voyeur: where the hunt for information becomes a spectator sport. (Media Circus)
• "Where Wizards Stay Up Late": A review of the Internet history by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon.
• Natural Born Brawler: an interview with Oliver Stone.
• Ashes to Ashes, Bits to Bits: In the Web's graveyards, even the dead can be flamed. Part of Salon's "Death" issue.
• Clement Mok Takes on the Web: An interview with the"Designing Business" author on the eve of the release of NetObjects.
• You Have the Power: The bogus plague of Web polling. (Media Circus)
• Apocalypse? Wow! Review of "Independence Day."
• Essay on John Horgan's "The End of Science" and other proclamations of finitude.
• Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model" (Personal Best)
• The Net's Good Day in Court: coverage of the court decision striking down the Communications Decency Act. (Newsreal)
• Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, and Spike Lee riff on creativity. (Media Circus)
• The Hero of a Thousand Work Spaces: Essay on the "Dilbert" pEssay on the "Dilbert" phenomenon.
  Along with an Interview with "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams.
• Hotwired Takes on Wired (Media Circus)
• Java: Hype vs. Reality
• Essay on liberals and "Family Values Lite" -- Michael Lerner's "Politics of Meaning" and Mary Pipher
• Better Slate Than Never: MicroKinsley Takes on the Web (Media Circus)
• Interview with Graham Swift
• The Web's review-of-review syndrome (Media Circus)
• Interview with John Mortimer
• Interview with Richard Thompson
• Review of Pedro Almodovar's film, "The Flower of My Secret"
• Editorial on the Communications Decency Act
• "You Don't Know Jack" CD-ROM review
• "12 Monkeys" movie review
• Essay on three new books on the Kevin Mitnick manhunt, including the Tsutomu Shimomura/John Markoff "Takedown."
• "ScruTiny in the Great Round" CD-ROM review
• An inside look at the nightmare of CD-ROM retailing.
• Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead": A review
• "Total Distortion" CD-ROM review

The Digital Culture Archive
Here's where to find much of my pre-Salon writing on technology from 1991-1995.

The California Governor's Conference on Art and Technology Web Site
You can find my daily essays from this event here.[postscript 2001: site seems to be gone now]

In my freelance work I did some writing for Wired magazine a couple of years ago. Since their archives are online, you can read these pieces:

• An Interview with Pedro Meyer, December '95
• An essay on why Hollywood makes lousy "cyber"-movies, July '95 (this one got hacked up somehow in the production process)
• The Latest Action Heroes: A piece on turning videogames into movies, January '95

Scott Rosenberg's Home Page is where you can find out more about me. For instance, I am not the Scott Rosenberg who wrote "Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead," "Beautiful Girls," and "Con Air" -- so please don't ask me to read your screenplay. Send it to the other guy!

The Digital Storytelling Festival has been a great event and a wonderful community reconstituted annually in Crested Butte, Colorado. Each year I've written essays for the festival's Web site. In 1997 I wrote an introduction and a collection of "verbal snapshots." I wrote two dispatches from the festival in 1996: the first is a kind of overview, and the second is a rant about "digital branding." I wrote stuff at the first festival in 1995, too.

Kludge is the prototype of a Web-based digital-media criticism 'zine I put together early in 1995.

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This page maintained by Scott Rosenberg (scottros@well.com).
All contents © copyright 1995-7 by Digital Media Zone.

Last updated: 12/27/97