Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 683

Dead Media Beat: Consequences of the Death of Google

*"Too big to fail."

http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2010/02/the-day-that-google-died/

(…)

Currently the vast majority of "humanity's data" lies in the hands of individual corporations.

Companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft have staked their future on the value of the information being collected and archived in their datacenters. They have created the systems for collecting it, and have invested heavily in vast server farms for storing it.

However, if one of these...

Can't win for losing, through self-inflicted injuries

*"Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave"

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/22/laptop-surveillance.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/

Can't win for losing, by self-inflicting injuries

*"Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave"

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/22/laptop-surveillance.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/

Long Now events

*Bombs, global deviance, civilizational collapse, human extinction, you know, the usual issues for the current decade…

Three Long Now events in 8 days:

Wednesday, February 24 Alan Weisman Seminar at the Herbst Theater

Friday, February 26 Global Lives Opening Party at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Thursday, March 4 Beth Noveck Seminar at the Herbst Theater

Alan Weisman's The World Without Us became one of those sleeper best-sellers because its nifty premise (what happens if humanity suddenly d...

Music Break: Izia Higelin

*Izia is French.

*See, no kidding. Really very French. I'm a little vague on how that's possible.

Block clubs

*I wonder what happens when the heavily-armed prepper wing of the block club meets the Linux install group.

*Also, what happens when the block is attacked by post-apocalyptic former Microsoft executives while they are trying to paint street murals for the latchkey kids.

http://pages.e-democracy.org/Block_club_activities

Block activities

(Redirected from Block club activities)
Back to Neighborly, Inclusive Social Media (((as opposed to actually knowing your neighbors because you used to marry the ...

Science Confessions

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LabSpaces I once burned my corneas while cutting a gel. Not my proudest moment crying like a baby in bed at 3am #scienceconfessions

12 minutes ago by Brian Krueger, Molecular Biology Grad Student, University of Iowa, Biology

drisis I told lab peeps I had a very important meeting. I was really going to get a hair cut and massage #scienceconfessions

12 minutes ago by Isis the Scientist, Physiologist and ScienceBlogs.com Blogger, Biology

drisis RT @RT @palmd : #scienceconfessions I always ate ...

Augmented Reality: Flashlight Project Map Concept

*It's cute. I like the public, sociable forms of projected AR that get away from the squinty little handhelds.

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2010/02/21/flashlight-projector-map-concept/

*Now let's see if anybody can build one in real life.

"Honey, why don't we just walk over here and ask somebody for directions?"

*Big day for augmented GPS apps today. Here's a head-mounted one.

"Augmented Reality ski-goggles: display GPS speed in your screen"

http://www.zealoptics.com/transcend/

*I'd link to this...

RIAM 7 — LOW TECH

*New media art —> dead media art

RIAM 07 - LOW TECH

7th International Multimedia Art Meetings

25 february to 06 march 2010

Marseille

_

Back to technological future.

Nowadays, artistic events devoted to connections between art and technology are facing a paradox : how to stand back from technological glorifications, in a consumerist world constantly saturated by new gadgets?

RIAM (International Multimedia Art Meetings) have always focused on analyzing and criticizing the technology's role and...

Julian Bleecker and Tosa-San of Maywa Denki

http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2010/02/22/the-week-ending-021910/

*It is impossible to realize how brain-crinklingly cool this picture is, without a full-bore, complex explanation of (a) who Julian Bleecker is, and (b) WHAT "Maywa Denki" is. But holy cow, folks, that's Julian "Near Future Lab" Bleecker standing there with Nobumichi "Maywa Denki" Tosa.

http://www.maywadenki.com/

*In terms of design-fiction stars, this is kinda like Charles Bronson meeting Toshiro Mifune. I'm a little...