Hello! I’m Navneet Alang and I’m only half as crazy and creepy as I look in that photo over there. But you, internet friend, can call me Nav. Send angry rants, embarrassing compliments and fawning love letters (preferably in inverse order) to: navalang [at] gmail [dot] com
- You can find me on Twitter at @navalang.
- Ask me anything on Formspring.
About Me
Writing
I am a freelancer writer who specializes in the intersection of the web, technology and contemporary culture. I also write about food and drink, race and diaspora, and urban issues. Um… what can I say? It’s the 2010s. Things are all jumbled up.
As for where I’m pontificating these days:
- I am the technology critic for the Toronto Standard, an online magazine that focuses on “Toronto from a global perspective” and is the winner of three medals at the Online Publishing Awards. For the site, I try to bring a fresh perspective to tech, the web and popular culture. You can browse my work here.
- I contribute to Canadian Business (“Canada’s most widely read business magazine”). Here’s something on Sony’s TV biz, and another column on Microsoft actually becoming cool.
- I’m the web columnist at Canada’s This Magazine, – which is rather lucky, since I loved the magazine long before I wrote for it. There, I’ve written about stuff like how the democratic hope of the web can be stifled by its corporate underpinnings; how Google’s actions in China evoke the ghosts of colonialism; ; or how the internet helps immigrants connect with their home cultures.
- I co-founded the Ethnic Aisle, a blog that takes a sometimes-serious, sometimes-irreverent look at issues of race, ethnicity and culture in Toronto and the GTA. We had our first event in September 2011.
Other Writing
- For just over a year, I wrote for technology blog TECHi. Here are some of my most successful posts. 1) The music and movie industries failing to understand a cultural shift ; 2) Five things about the web ‘old media’ still continues to struggle with; 3) How the web is changing how we think; 4) Why Apple’s success lies in their understanding of culture, not technology. Obvious in all this should be that I’m a giant, raging nerd.
- I have contributed articles to The Wire Report, the broadcast, telecom and new media newsletter put out by The Hill Times. Here’s one on how Bell may be stifling competition in IPTV, and another on an accessibility proposal in early 2011.
- I’ve also contributed to popular local blog Torontoist, such as this post on Foodprint Toronto, the arrival of Netflix, or the the dangers of copyright bill C-32.
- I also write a Toronto-centric (if rarely updated) food blog called What’s Next For Snacks.
Academic
- I am a PhD student at York University in Toronto in the English program. My dissertation is on the impact of virtual technologies like the web and video games on how individuals are represented and conceptualised in contemporary British immigrant and coming of age novels. Needless to say, my life is a veritable rollercoaster of chills, thrills and spills. I expect to be done somewhere between early 2012 and late 2042.
About This Blog
Loosely speaking, a discussion of the modern: the web, ebooks, pop culture, gaming and other bits and bobs that strike my fancy. My general aim here, beyond having a place to shoot my mouth off, is to examine how technology and the internet form part of the ebb and flow of contemporary culture.
As for the name, no, it’s not a ripoff of Waxy. “Reflections Scrawled in Wax” was the name of a journal/book of poetry I kept in high school, the contents of which are even more cringe-inducing than you’d guess. I originally gave this blog the same name because of the often meandering nature of my thoughts; however, the more I began to blog about technology and popular culture, the more I started to see the overlap and the complex, shifting relationship between contemporary culture and the world of tech. So the name stuck and, in my mind at least, sorta’ makes sense.
