Warren Ellis's Blog, page 105
August 16, 2011
Charles Stross On Network Security Circa 2061-2561 AD
Here in San Francisco it probably sometimes seems like the United States of America is the centre of the world. In a very real way it was, within living memory: in 1945…
Charlie gave a keynote at USENIX 2011 with the title Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061-2561 AD, and it's great fun. He does warm you up a bit with nuggets like
Mature nanotechnology is going to resemble organic life forms the way a Boeing 737 resembles thirty tons of seagull biomass. Both the Boeing and the flock of seagulls can fly, and both of them need a supply of organic fuel to oxidize in order to do so. But a flock of thirty tons of seagulls can't carry a hundred passengers across the Atlantic, and Boeings don't lay eggs.
before he gets to the hardcore:
…our metagenomic context (including not just our own genome and proteome, but the genome of our gut flora and fauna and the organisms we coexist with) and our sensory inputs actually define who we are, at least from the outside. And that's not a lot of data to capture, if you look at it in the context of two terabits per second of bandwidth per person. Assume a human life expectancy of a century, and a terabit per second of data to log everything about that person, and you can capture a human existence in roughly 3.15 x 1021 bits … or about 65 milligrams of memory diamond…
And at the point he drops that, he's not done yet.
i
Probably my favourite thing on Flickr is the feed from Portuguese newspaper i, which shows the cover from each day's new edition. The designs aren't always successful, but they are always more dazzling, more energetic and more inventive than pretty much any other newspaper I've ever seen. Can't read a word of it, but I've been checking out the covers for years, and was delighted when this feed appeared.
Station Ident
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August 15, 2011
Amazing FELL-related tattoo worn by Xochitl Gonzalez.
N...
Amazing FELL-related tattoo worn by Xochitl Gonzalez.
New DEATH BAR wordcount on the novel:
And I believe I will close out the night with the haunted techno of Cova. Good night.
BBC, 15 Aug 2011:
"You've got to send a message to Washin...
BBC, 15 Aug 2011:
"You've got to send a message to Washington that it's time for the games to stop, it's time to put country first," Mr Obama told voters.
2008:
WTF?
I do love me an American Presidential election. Bring me some popcorn and a tall glass of ethanol.
Post-Civilisation
I find this interesting:
Subsect Press was created by a group of individuals for the purposes of publishing their book on Post-Civilization theory. The theory is formed around the "realization that civilization is and will always be unsustainable, that a primitive state of existence is not desirable, and that it is therefore logical to explore and establish a post-civilized culture.
They seem to be going for a sort of rectified anarchism, attempting to summarise and unify the diverse thought in the field to this point and looking for new ways to move forward. I'm not certain how anything involving foraging isn't primitive, but they don't give the immediate impression of being timid thinkers… and I like the cultural branding of the term "post-civilisation."
Related articles
The New Aesthetic (warrenellis.com)
The Skyzoid Machine (warrenellis.com)
Quote Of The Day
Conventional futurists are the Michael Bays of the intellectual world: what they produce can be spectacular and amusing, but is ultimately hollow and depressing.
– Jamais Cascio, from his "minor rant," ABOUT FORESIGHT
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