Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 702
January 5, 2010
What is, or rather was, 'Industrial Design' in 1943?
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/tucker-viemeister/whats-cookin/what-industrial-design
*Tucker Viemeister. Heckuva guy. First industrial designer I ever personally met. I sat down for a chat with a stranger and it transformed my way of life.
*It took a while… 21 years now… but if anything, the effects of that encounter seem to be accelerating.
When the Underground shriveled into micro-genres with an ethos of participation
*With network culture trampling all before it, we're gonna see more and more of these counting-the-cost articles. Not that the old way was so much better, but that the no-longer-new Web way has so many gaping gothic-high-tech holes in it. "I thought sure there was a — bangbangbang — rock'n'roll club in here. This scene's emptier than a Dubai highrise!"
*Simon Reynolds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/21/changing-sound-underground
(…)
In the noughties, the idea of "the...
Pierre Sarkozy, Brazilian mudslides, and plastic surgeons
*First Sarkozy post of the New Year. I reckon there will be plenty more, considering this stellar start.
*That's some family, folks.
*I leave it to you to imagine the media mayhem if a mudslide on the Isle of Pigs had actually buried young rappin' Pierre.
Graffiti Markup Language
*These hacker kids aren't workin' hard enough. Stop scrawlin' your names in those public places and go clean the back yard, ya hooligans.
GML = Graffiti Markup Language from Evan Roth on Vimeo.
*via MAKEZINE
More 'Media Carbon' from DOORS OF PERCEPTION
Doors of Perception Report
January 2010 - Line Loss
by John Thackara
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THIS MONTH'S HIGHLIGHTS
Why Are We Here? - - - Greener on paper? - - - Telepresence With No...
Tough Break for Maxwell's Demon
*Actually, it looks like this is a tough break for God Himself, if the Deity is the kind of guy who gets stymied by computational physics.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=limits-on-human-comprehension
(…)
"David H. Wolpert, a physics-trained computer scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, has chimed in with his version of a knowledge limit. Because of it, he concludes, the universe lies beyond the grasp of any intellect, no matter how powerful, that could exist within the u...
"Back to the Future" by Wang Meng
*Chinese 8-bit music video, 2009. Note atemporality, steampunk elements, "filmstrip" effects of fake analog "decay."
Chinese Gothic High Tech
*Oh yeah, I forgot these guys. "Ordos." State-ordered development, spanking new, nobody moves in. Las Vegas a la Beijing.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/11/2009111061722672521.html
The Burj opens. The joint's not looking too perky
*This piece isn't about a building, but about the sensibility of Gothic High Tech. In buildings, in photos, in movies… in Los Angeles, Dubai, Las Vegas and of course the poster-child, Detroit.
*I bet you're not seeing a lot of empty skyscrapers in Shanghai right now, even though they overbuilt in Pudong like crazy. There's a big Gothic High Tech in China all right, but it's all crumbling stuff built by Communists… haunted buildings where the busy consumers sidle by and shudder.
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