Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 674
March 14, 2010
Science fiction around the world
http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2010/03/overview-of-international-science.html
*Wish I could read every one of these.
The Wisdom of SXSW Crowds
*Poll from the festival guidebook.
What technology company will dominate the industry five years from now?
Amazon 3%
Apple 22%
Facebook 5%
Google 56%
IBM 0%
Microsoft 2%
Twitter 1%
Other 11%
What do you see as the breakout technology of 2010?
Android 10%
Apple Tablet 20%
Augmented Reality 11%
Google Wave 4%
Location-based technology 32%
Real time internet 10%
Social media 7%
Wearable computers 1%
Other 5%
Enrico Dini and his architectural sand fab
*I really hope this guy can make it happen, because ultra-cheap and ultra-elegant fabbed Italian buildings made of sand and resin ought to cover the earth.
Russia and its state-controlled media have long portrayed Saakashvili as a dangerous tie-chewing maniac.
*Small wonder, when the guy's political allies are running their own TV "Yes-Men" style tactical media hoaxes. And a hoax about armed Russian invasion? What were they thinking? "Hey, let's panic the population even though we're responsible for maintaining public order."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/14/russia-georgia-fake-invasion-report
Switching on their TV sets at 8pm on Saturday, Georgians were greeted with incredible news – Russia had invaded. The pro-government Imedi TV...
March 13, 2010
The British contingent at South by SouthWest Interactive
*Hmmm. One didn't use to see phenomena of this sort.
*I always figured that true "globalization" wasn't about Parisians talking to New Yorkers but about Latvia showing up in Utah.
*It's not great news for Californians, but the visible decline and suffering in the California tech scene seems to be a tonic for the regional competitors.
The successful companies were chosen from over 120...
March 12, 2010
All glory to the EyeWriter
(((Interesting device. I hope I don't end up making a lot of use of this.)))
The EyeWriter has won the first FutureEverything Award.
The EyeWriter has been chosen as the winner of the inaugural FutureEverything Award following an online vote by a world-wide community of FutureEverything artists and participants from the past 15 years.
http://futureeverything.org/awards
The EyeWriter is a pair of low-cost eye-tracking glasses that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using...
Why does the Air Force exist?
*And also, why are there astronauts in manned space-flight?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754_pf.html
*Also, why do we have human bloggers when there are highly capable search engines?
*And why are you reading this? Couldn't you be replaced by some kind of text-mining system?
*Also: and this is really good — why on earth do we pay bankers zillions of dollars to pretend to pilot the economy? Couldn't we junk the lot of 'em and replace them with...
March 11, 2010
Connectivity for the illiterate
*This sounds like yet another of those hopeless "appropriate technology" schemes, where technicians try to invent stuff for impossibly remote poor people, without realizing that those people are poor for reasons other than their lack of cool gizmos.
*On the other hand, it might well work. Look at the muscle behind this effort. German, Japan, India, IBM, design schools…
*Cellphones for the illiterate has some disturbing implications. It would mean that cellphone connectivity is more valued...
People want zombies
*I dare to hope this is a passing fad. As opposed to, say, a permanent weltanschaaung for a society that will be top-heavy with the elderly from now on.
"Would you join the zombies?
"George Romero once said, if faced with a zombie apocalypse, he'd run out and join them. This article traces the secret appeal of collaborating with world-conquering zombies, and suggests zombie-mania is becoming a real social force. "For many readers and viewers of zombie stuff, the zombies are what you practice o...
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