Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 637

Salvador Dali, furniture designer

*It's slightly embarrassing to admit this, but some of this surreal Dali material from 60 years ago looks quite digital, blobjecty, peppy and up-to-date. In fact it's low-key enough that it would pass in a hotel lobby without a second glance.

http://www.bdbarcelona.com/en/designers/salvador_dali.php

*Maybe it's time for a lobster cellphone.

Augmented Reality: Augmented London Reality

*Especially admiring the London AR apps about garbage and hobos. Not only does London have garbage and hobos a-plenty, but just about the last possible thing expected from "Augmented Reality" would be that people would walk around London augmenting the garbage and hobos.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from garbage and hobos."

*This is an encouraging sign of creative health in AR. AR is spreading from top-end, classy museum apps to the literal filth in the...

Arphid Watch: scrapping the British ID card

*Looks like "elections have consequences."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/27/theresa-may-scrapping-id-cards

"The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced today.

"The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book. (((Maybe you can sell those 15,000 cards to tech collectors for thirty pounds...

Augmented Reality: Metaio demo reel 2010

*The demo reels are much better made now, and those webcam renderings are really getting crazily elaborate. It looks like you could stick the entirety of Google Earth onto a bubble-gum card.

*I've got to learn to stop calling these artifacts "demo reels." There is no reel. What else to call them, though? "Clip?" There is no clip. "Film?" There is no film. And in YouTube, guess what, in flatscreen land there is no "tube."

Showtime: Maker Faire 2010 Highlights

*Hey, it's cute. And even kind of classy. For garage homemade vernacular-video, that is.

Web Semantics: Social-Network Fabbing Jargon

http://blog.thingiverse.com/

"A lot of entries to Thingiverse are missing things like descriptions, working previews, or separated STL files. ((("Look, I'm a big geek, and I made this cool weird plastic thing with a robot… do I really have to talk about that?" Yes, you do. Otherwise, it's socially useless.))) This is more of a checklist than a tutorial, but it seems a fitting topic for the last day of printability week.

"First, the model files themselves. Make sure you have done your...

The winner of the Google 'Model Your Town' Competition

*It's an arts district in Lima, Peru.

http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-model-your-town.html

http://barranco3dproject.blogspot.com/

"As a result, thousands of people from all over the world visited Barranco in 3D, and now know that somewhere in the southern hemisphere near the sea, there is what was once a village of fishermen that still preserves its culture, traditions and monumental architecture, and inspires artists, musicians and writers." (((And Barranco also...

Memories of the Space Age

*The Soviet Ozymandias…

http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3259344.html

Showtime: Balloons and Dyson Fans

*Man, this is geek virality at its geek virality-est.

*You know what I like best about this clip? The silent, engineer-style narrative logic that methodically pushes the novum ("a balloon in a fan") farther and farther into long-tail extremes of cognitive estrangement.

*It's great that nobody ever says anything… that they never look happy… that there's no romantic element, no redeeming social message…. No money involved, no political implications. Just… click it and shove it on. And...

The Disney Diegetic Prototype

*Look at the way ol' Walt here is deftly mixing Jules Verne, his own movies, ads for his urban amusement parks, model-making, rocketships, American military power, diegetic prototypes, multimedia publishing, art installations, nuclear physicists, atomic boosterism, and pure fairy tales.

*Man, no wonder the public domain froze solid with the birth of a cartoon mouse on a tabletop in Kansas City. The guy's ambitions knew no bounds.