Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 699

Web Semantics: Twitter Massive-Disaster Microsyntax

*Perhaps some day soon we will ALL learn to speak in micro-syntax

mega-disaster.

http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2010/01/project-epic-and-disaster-microsyntax.html

(…)

"Here's what is proposed:
"Our team and collaborators are proposing a Tweet-friendly hashtag-based syntax to help direct Twitter communications for more efficient data extraction for those communicating about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Use only requires modifications of Tweet messages to make information pieces that refer to #...

Swell Brian Eno interview

*Actually it's mostly Paul Morley describing Brian Eno and his career, but that part's pretty good, too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/17/brian-eno-interview-paul-morley

On Frank Zappa

"Zappa was important to me because I realised I didn't have to make music like he did. I might have made a lot of music like he did if he had not done it first and made me realise that I did not want to go there. I did not like his music but I am grateful that he did it. Sometimes you learn as much...

Urban Sleepsuit

Designers really enjoy messing with conceptual favela-chic stuff like this. If any fraction of the population really started sleeping in the streets in their high-tech fluffy overalls, the cops would Taser and pepper-gas them pronto.

http://www.impactlab.com/2010/01/15/the-sleepsuit-sleep-anywhere-anytime/

Common Artifacts of the Future

*How 'bout some world peace, love and understanding? Also missing starships and time machines.

http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2010/01/16/common-artifacts-from-the-future/

WMD Chinese Cybarmageddon

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-13/chinas-secret-cyber-terrorism/

*I haven't seen a good-old-fashioned subversive almighty reds-under-the-bed pitch like this in quite a while.

*China's in somebody's doghouse. It's not just Google and their misty spook contretemps there — there are anti-China drumbeats coming out of the woodwork all over the political spectrum. Not just the US, either.

*I wonder what the Chinese did so wrong. They haven't shut off the Eastern Seaboard o...

Where Books Come Alive

*Can't remember who Twittered this at me. My Twitter stream is taking on avalanche proportions, especially when I dare to knock it off for a couple days.

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2010/01/where_books_come_alive.html

Filmi Girl's Bollywood 2009

*One hates to think of Rani and Preity "on the way out." Is that even possible?

http://filmigirl.blogspot.com/2010/01/2000s-decade-in-review-2009.html

Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson

*I had to wonder if the two had ever met. Yup.

"Robert Louis Stevenson and I, sitting in Union Square and Washington Square a great many years ago, tried to find a name for, the submerged fame, that fame that permeates the great crowd of people you never see and never mingle with; people with whom you have no speech, but who read your books and become admirers of your work and have an affection for you. You may never find it out in the world, but there it is, and it is the faithfulness of...

The biggest-grossing Bollywood film ever made is about engineering geeks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots

Farhan Qureshi (R. Madhavan), Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi), and Rancchoddas "Rancho" Shyamaldas Chanchad (Aamir Khan) are three engineering students who share a room in a hostel at the fictional Imperial College of Engineering, one of the best colleges in India.

While Farhan and Raju are mediocre students from modest backgrounds who want to lift their families out of poverty, Rancho is a wealthy genius who studies for the sheer joy of it. However...

The Material Culture of William Burroughs

*Especially liking the chain-whip and the blowdarts.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/william_burroughss_stuff/

via @GreatDismal