Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 658

Ashtag

*It's the fifth day of jetset travel mayhem in Europe, and the laments on my Twitter feed are ceaseless. As you can see here, they are arriving in entire massed clumps.

*The Brits are limbering up to deploy the Royal Navy to rescue 200,000 British exiles. Given that this is a mass disaster in which no one has died or even been injured, this scene could turn out to be epic. It's on the scale of Dunkirk, and there is no end in sight.

*Some Tweeple are arriving home, panting and grateful, but o...

This Is a Very Different Future Than The One We Have Been Living In Up Till Now

Tim O'Reilly and the future of the Internet of Things. He rambles on for half an hour. It looks like he's just telling disconnected alpha-geek anecdotes, in his customary, avuncular, visionary fashion. What Tim's really doing is throwing lit matches into his network. And boy is he the guru when it comes to doing that. He can't outguess the future and deliver a single coherent narrative, that's not even possible. So, he's launching a flotilla of paper boats into the ol' geek pond...

The new edition of Tosh Talks

*I really admire this Berman guy. In some alternate reality, I, too, get to be a grainy, erudite West Coast literary hipster who haunts bookstores leafing through obscure tomes on ultra-with-it European counterculture.

http://tamtambooks-tosh.blogspot.com/

Luxo, meet Lixo

*Gothic High-Tech, meet Favela Chic. In Brazil, of course.

http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13228

*Look at those designers freaking out in the comments section.

*They don't seem to think this guy knows what he's doing.

I rather imagine otherwise.

http://www.marciokogan.com.br/

The Ping social networking garment

*Okay, it's fashion design-fiction. But you know what's great about this? This electronic clothes designer has enough common sense to hire an actual model. And a real fashion photographer. That's what makes it good design fiction — as opposed to say, a FlickR snapshot of an Art Center grad grinning over her hotwired Arduino board.

http://www.electricfoxy.com/ping/

(…)

"Communicate to your friends

"Technology is integrated into the mechanics of the garment. For example, a sensor is...

Spime Watch: Tabs, Pads and Boards

*Yeah, Weiser was the maestro. If Weiser hadn't been claimed by an early death, he would have been only 58 now. He'd be tweeting off his iPad right now about his cancelled flight to some urban informatics junket.

http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/real-life-weiser-ftw/

*Every future day is a gift.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser

Print Glass

*Okay, it's a press release. But it's also about printing glass.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SHAPEWAYS.COM IS FIRST GLOBALLY TO OFFER

ANYONE THE ABILITY TO 3D PRINT OBJECTS IN GLASS

Shapeways Online Marketplace Allows 3D Modelers to Turn Designs Into Glass, Empowering Consumers to Customize and Purchase Unique Glass Items

Eindhoven, The Netherlands – April 14, 2010 — Shapeways (www.Shapeways.com), the online marketplace that offers affordable access to the latest 3D printing technologies, today...

Empty sky over Britain

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8626000/8626927.stm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/plugimi/4528828192/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/warrenellis/4528045045/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fanabulous/4528728660/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebb/4528718900/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunneandraby/4528556672/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandra666/4528280668/

Europeans launching satellites to watch the poles melt.

http://www.esa.int/esaLP/LPcryosat.html

*It's especially good when you can see them hanging out being all high-tech in the launch control room, and they somehow look especially European.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/

Kalki Koechlin, Cellphone Guru

*Hey, geek out, Kalki.