Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 726

Total Sonic Annihilation

*The woods are just full of gadgety electronic dropout craftsmen like the

design-dude here.

*Imagine what he could do with health insurance and a guaranteed

annual income.

http://www.avclub.com/newyork/articles/death-by-audio,26928/

(…)

"While playing with Skywave and hacking pedals on the side, Ackermann also worked as a toy designer, a job he describes as "too sweet and too easy." He quit in 2001, a decision that would prove auspicious for his pedal-making ambitions. "I really wanted to go to E...

Augmented Reality: seeing through walls

*The dirt-simple magic tricks are the good ones, sometimes.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18036-augmented-reality-system-lets-you-see-through-walls.html

Ashok Banker, Indian Science Fiction Writer

*This guy's quite a character.

http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/exclusive-interview-with-ashok-banker/

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What made you decide to write in English? Are there any nuances with that particular language that you're not quite able to accomplish in Hindi?

Not-Lol. I've met this particular cultural bogey before and it remains as unfunny as ever! My mother tongue was English, not Hindi, and in fact, there are more English-speaking people in India than in the US – it's one of our two official...

Arphid Watch: VeriChip implants on YouTube

*Has the tone and production values of some dystopian early 70s sci-fi flick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDhDrF...

*Enjoy moronically paranoid commentary as only YouTube can provide. I see

that this video is closely linked to vaccination phobia, which looks like an interesting

twist to the usual RFID Beast 666 riff.

London's 'Silicon Roundabout'

*Well, if it wasn't an establishment before, it sure is now.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-10/22/help-us-map-london%27s-silicon-roundabout.aspx

"We have an ambitious project we're working on for Wired magazine for which we'd welcome your input. We're trying to map out the creative/tech quarter that's sprung up around Old Street and Shoreditch in north-east London – and we want to know which businesses we've missed. So let's crowdsource this together. The final product will be a...

The Digital Revolution Is Very Literary

*I guess it would take some odd-ball Beat-style wandering Spanish-language Chilean blogger to say that.

http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/5504

(…)

"You have said that "every day the new writers are becoming more similar to each other (just like the old guard)" and that many do it so that "their photo ends up on the newspaper society pages" or to pick up a woman. For you, what is the best reason to write non-fiction, or any type of story?

"The need for recognition is something...

Bus-Tops

*I wonder how long these interventions will last. It would be really

interesting to see a period Web 2.0 style urban intervention that

was a hundred years old.

*Let me know if you build something for these guys.

http://bus-tops.com/?p=123

London from Arts Council England on Vimeo.

Augmented Reality: head-mounted displays

*No stellar news about spexy eyeware from ISMAR09, I see.

*I didn't expect any surprises. Head-mounted display is an old, wicked problem, and hand-waving's not gonna solve it.

"And for the history buffs, the first patent for an HMD was by Albert B. Pratt in 1916. "

*I never knew that. Handy thing to learn.

http://thomaskcarpenter.com/2009/10/21/ismar09-hmd-review/

Urban algae

*Next Nature. They crack me up. Every single thing they post deserves a designer t-Shirt.

*Check that out: microbial, gelatinous Favela Chic. Derelict buildings? You just

fill-em-up with flammable bathtub gin.

http://www.nextnature.net/?p=4102

World's deepest trash can.

*Check out Volkswagen getting all vernacular-video viral here.

Maybe they should rename themselves "Volksvideo."