Warren Ellis's Blog, page 62

Station Ident

 

(Harper Jaten)

CLOSEDOWN: Giant Claw

I do like a bit of cosmic, and Giant Claw’s brilliantly named CLASH OF MOONS fires a huge information-rich pink laser of it.  Or, perhaps, a radiophonic burst from beyond space.  Either way, it’s a perfectly nice way to close out the night.  G’night.

Clash of Moons by Giant Claw

Bookmarks for 2012-05-16

B.E.D. on Vimeo
B.E.D. B.E.D.Building Emotion Detector is an initiative to help people understand their impacts to the surrounding space.By analyzing,recording,translating people s presents and volume of voice, the installation itself is able to give feedback to the occupants. It overthrows the general knowledge that buildings are cold,passive,incapable of having emotions and establishes a novel type of communication between people and architecture. qi su
(tags:ifttt vimeo video )
S3 Storage for WordPress Blogs

(tags:web )
BBC News – Watch deposit flight, not the eurocrats
@paulmasonnews: Blog: Watch deposits, not the Eurocrats: http://t.co/7FOIc6hP http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/stat...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
The power of cool: Whatever became of Starlite? – tech – 16 May 2012 – New Scientist
@sumit: Why did the inventor of Starlite, a fireproof wonder material, never reveal its secret? > http://t.co/BxgVwbPi < a riveting @rifish yarn http://twitter.com/sumit/status/20270...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )

PREVIEW – CASANOVA: Avaritia #4

CASANOVA, one of my very favourite comics, reaches the end of its third volume on June 20.  After the cut, please enjoy a preview of CASANOVA: AVARITIA #4 by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba.  And then go and buy all the books if you haven’t already and then squat by your comics store or iPad like a stoned gibbon with a sore bum until this wonderful comic is released.  Begin.

 

 

 

GUEST INFORMANT: Justin Pickard

I asked designer, writer and researcher Justin Pickard to write to you about whatever was interesting him currently… a few months ago.  Today, he came back to me with an entire document, entitled A GONZO FUTURIST MANIFESTO.  You will find the link to that document, a free PDF, at the end of what follows.  But he called out the following section as being a nice central piece to run, and I agree.  So Justin Pickard presents to you:

ACTION AND DECISION-MAKING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL WEIRDO

 

In 1991, Bruce Sterling gave a speech in San Jose. Extolling the strengths and virtues of the power weirdo, he urged the audience to avoid the spring-loaded bear-trap of mediocrity:

You don’t get there by acculturating. Don’t become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a puffer fish.

(Sterling, 1991)

With an idiosyncratic outlook and skill set, the power weirdo — and its subset, the gonzo futurist — is particularly well-placed to deal with a turbulent decade. With an eye on the road ahead, she can meet or dodge situations as they arise, charting a clear course through the VUCA battlefields of a turboparalytic world. One thing we can say: in 5-10 years time, ours will be a world of ubiquitous computing (in some form). When sensors are everyone, and the ‘big data’ of the post-normal threatens to bury us all in a torrent of noise, finely tuned sense-making capabilities may prove to be your greatest asset. For futurist Scott Smith, ‘warehousing massive amounts of data is simply an exercise in hoarding if we can’t see, contextualize, and use the patterns in the noise.’ (Smith, 2011) The pattern analyst is less likely to find her job outsourced or automated, but, to effectively lever the patterns in the noise, we have to be able distinguish between real patterns and the faces in the clouds.

We need pattern recognition. Pattern Recognition. The protagonist of William Gibson’s 2003 novel of the same name, Cayce Pollard, though something of a ‘self-facilitating media node’, provides a model for the gonzo futurist. For Cayce, the lived experience of 9/11 flipped a switch somewhere, hyper-sensitising her to the aesthetics of corporate branding. By the time the story begins, she’s found a niche as a coolhunter and creative consultant, exploiting her body’s physical, pre-cognitive reaction to logos (the bad ones induce nausea and panic).

Dorotea removes an eleven-inch square of art board from the envelope. Holding it at the upper corners, between the tips of perfectly manicured forefingers, she displays it to Cayce. (…) There is a drawing there, a sort of scribble in thick black Japanese brush, a medium she knows to be the in-house hallmark of Herr Heinzi himself. To Cayce, it most resembles a syncopated sperm, as rendered by the American underground cartoonist Rick Griffin, circa 1967. She knows almost immediately that it does not, by the opaque standards of her inner radar, work. She has no way of knowing how she knows.

(Gibson, 2003)

Though Cayce’s ‘base’ of domain-specific knowledge is both wide and deep — note the reference to Rick Griffin — she has no way of knowing how she knows. She’s aware of an ‘inner radar,’ but, as something separate from her conscious mind, has no idea how it works. Though Cayce leverages her capacities as a source of income, her role of sensitive-slash-coolhunter is more bodily disposition than career. Unpicking the details and implications of Gibson’s novel, literary theorist Lauren Berlant describes how Cayce’s disposition allows her ‘to ride the wave of the moment, to make her situation what it is, a thing to live through, be embedded in, and feel out’. Sounds a bit gonzo, doesn’t it?

Lacking Cayce’s near-supernatural capabilities, our gonzo futurist needs a prosthetic substitute; some kind of cognitive aikido. This would be a general framework that would allow her to easily grok the dynamics of the post-normal world, and identify the key sites and tipping points for action. To my knowledge, the closest currently existing equivalent is the OODA loop. Originally devised by US military strategist John Boyd, the OODA loop is a rolling heuristic cycle, a structure for those who need to make quick decisions under pressure. OODA. Observe, orient, decide, act.

The gonzo futurist is a super-empowered hopeful individual. She may have been a ‘graduate with no future’ (Mason, 2011), or the victim of public sector cuts, but has since grieved and moved on. She plays, tests, and play tests; making the best of the tools and technologies at her disposal. Comfortable calling on (and being called on by) her friends, peers, and tribe, her sense-making skills are social and connected. Her thinking may, occasionally, ‘be located inside the brains of other people.’ (Wheeler, 2011)

The gonzo futurist is a ‘deep generalist’ (Cascio, 2011) and ‘analytical polyglot’ (Smith, 2011). She has an ‘almost supernatural awareness of impacts and implications … [is] ready to adapt when necessary, building long-lasting systems when possible.’ (Cascio, 2011) Like Cayce Pollard, she is a ‘woman of affect, not of feeling (…) [an] empress of the amygdala.’ (Berlant)

The gonzo futurist is resilient. She works smart, not hard. She has one eye on the ‘adjacent possible’, switches codes, and contributes to the commons. She may be privileged, but has no time for competition, alpha male dick-waving, or beggar-thy-neighbour. Her success does not come at your expense.

Bombarded by stimuli, the gonzo futurist is an OODA cyborg. Observe, orient, decide, act.

 

Justin Pickard is a self-described ‘gonzo futurist’, freelance researcher, and associate at London-based design practice Superflux .  You can find him on Twitter @justinpickard.

And this is the direct link to A GONZO FUTURIST MANIFESTO.

INTERVIEW: Me at DisinfoCast

Matt Staggs interviewed me for The Disinfo Podcast, and now it’s online. 

(Using, I have to note, a photo of me that must be 12 years old, complete with now-shaven head-hair.) 

I haven’t been interviewed over the phone for, frankly, years, and I’m terrible at it.  I can’t even bring myself to listen to this.  But you know, feel free to listen in and cringe for me.

Melyssa Anishnabie

(link) (Melyssa) [this is warren ellis dot com] [good morning sinners]

CLOSEDOWN: Disemballerina

What is the sound of being locked in a box, being transported to a bleak riverside, being gently slid into the river, sinking to the bottom and then being slowly enfolded by cold black waters, closing your eyes, opening them again some endless time later, realising you are conscious but not breathing, finding yourself in a stark, denuded landscape, alone, blasted by ice-razor winds, crawling into a solitary dark stone hovel on the moorland for shelter, being grabbed from behind, thrown into a box, being locked in the box, being transported to a bleak riverside, being gently slid into the river, sinking to the bottom and then being slowly enfolded by cold black waters and then closing your eyes?

It is the sound of Disemballerina’s “Sundowning.”  Good night.

Sundowning (2-piece demo) by Disemballerina

Bookmarks for 2012-05-15

SpaceX, Bigelow announce private space station alliance | Ars Technica
"SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace have announced a new marketing alliance for SpaceX transportation to Bigelow private space stations. SpaceX will take customers, both private and governmental, to orbit using its Dragon reusable space capsule; Bigelow will host them using its BA330 inflatable space habitats, which will presumably be launched on a larger rocket.  No announcement was made concerning who would carry the stations themselves to orbit."
(tags:space )
FAA Makes Progress with UAS Integration | sUAS News
"Already, the agency has achieved the first unmanned aircraft systems milestone included in the 2012 FAA reauthorization – streamlining the process for public agencies to safely fly UAS in the nation’s airspace."
(tags:drones )
OUTWORLD MUSIC I | RITUALZ
"OUTWORLD MUSIC I IS THE FIRST ENTRY IN A NEW SERIES OF SHORT INSTRUMENTAL EPs BY RITUALZ."
(tags:music )
Rebekah Brooks First Person To Be Charged In News Corp Scandal – Deadline.com
Rebekah Brooks First Person To Be Charged In News Corp Scandal, from Deadline.com http://www.deadline.com
(tags:ifttt googlereader Deadline.com )

Conan! What Is Best In Life?

“Those hook things they used to ride the sandworms in DUNE.  You know the ones.  The hooks go in, and, um…y’know, that’s some really nice thin wire you got there…”

 

Conan! What Is Best In Life is a long-standing warrenellis dot com tradition.  You should not view Conan! posts if you or your workplace are squeamish, as some of them are… probably not what is best in life.  You can see lots of Conan! posts here.