Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 735

Computers, Freedom and Privacy 20

*Twenty years on, and you have to wonder how much freedom and privacy is left to anybody anywhere.

http://www.cfp2010.org/

"Smart phones, social networking, and the "internet of things" let us
integrate the online world and computers more deeply into our lives.
Should we have to give up our freedom and privacy in to reap the
benefits of a constant connection to friends and information? How are
attitudes towards freedom and privacy changing for those who have grown
up so accustomed to an...

Oregon State Wireless Active Learning Device (OSWALD)

*Got a Favela Chic netbook here, if you're into that sort of thing. Perfect for your Parasite Pre-Fab pad.

*Imagine your joy in old age when every formerly-commercial object in your life is

open-sourced, and they all look like this.

http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu/projects/cspfl

"… the OSWALD is powerful, flexible, and incorporates some of the latest technology available, while keeping the cost to a minimum. Come join us in making this the best Open Source hardware platform effort ever by...

Augmented Reality: Tish Shute Interviews Bruno Uzzan of Total Immersion

http://www.ugotrade.com/2009/09/26/total-immersion-and-the-transfigured-city-shared-augmented-realities-the-web-squared-era-and-google-wave/comment-page-1/#comment-120231

categories: Ambient Devices, Ambient Displays, Android, Augmented Reality, Instrumenting the World, Mixed Reality, Mobile Reality, Web Meets World, digital public space, internet of things, iphone, mirror worlds, mobile augmented reality, mobile meets social, new urbanism, sustainable living, sustainable mobility, ubiquitous ...

Intellectual Property on the International Space Station

*There probably wasn't any other sane way to negotiate this, but this really strikes me as being particularly bonkers. I guess we're lucky that nobody writes songs on the International Space Station.

*Imagine being born in the International Space Station.

http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESAH7O0VMOC_...

Who owns the intellectual property derived from Space Station utilisation?

As a rule, the industrial and academic users who will have access to the Space Station through the European...

The Social Arab Web

*"If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space."

http://www.slideshare.net/moeedahmad/social-arab-web

Augmented Reality: Restaurant Air Menu

*"Oh waiter! WAITER! Over here! Yeah, the lady will have the udon noodles, and I'll have the skewered chicken with gingko nuts… Oh what the hell! This waiter's translucent! He's been virtualized!"

Vernacular Video, oozing in like black water

*There's something very strange about framing this huge transition as "TV." That flatscreen might look a bit like an old-school TV screen, but it's certainly not "TV" any more, because the political, economic and social structures that surrounded TV have been demolished in this scenario.

*A "TV" becomes one humbled part of a landscape of video-capable screens that include handhelds, palmtops, laptops, desktops, "a screen on the wall that's facing the couch and used to be a television," and ...

Blogging about a book about blogs

*This is one of those awesome, old-fashioned, hyperlink-to-all-the-coolest guys blog posts that could easily consume three months of your life, even if you left THIS blog entirely alone, and you did nothing but click on the links in THAT blog.

*I'm familiar with maybe ten percent of the blogs in that blog post. Every one of them that is known to me is terrific.

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/2009/09/books-about-blogs.htm

I just got anti-spambot spambot spam

*Uh, thanks but no thanks, boys.

*Good luck destroying Georgia and Estonia.

all best, bruces@well.com

Dear user bruces@well.com,

Your e-mail account has been used to send a huge amount of unsolicited commercial email messages during this week.

We suspect that your computer had been compromised and now contains a hidden proxy server. (((You don't say.)))

Please follow the instruction in order to keep your computer safe.

Sincerely yours,

The well.com team.

This part of message has been infected or...

Fabbing with glass

Via @fabbaloo

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uow-uld092409.php

(…)

Artist Meghan Trainor, (((hi Meghatron!))) a graduate student in the UW's Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media working at the Solheim Lab, was the first to use the new method to produce objects other than test shapes.

"Creating kiln-fired glass objects from digital models gives my ideas an immediate material permanence, which is a key factor in my explorations of digital art forms," Trainor said. "Moving ...