Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 761

Web Semantics: Gamer critical jargon

http://thefragmatica.com/2009/08/02/gaming-without-language-the-vocabulary-of-a-new-media/

"First off, we need to recognize that there is a semi-universal vocabulary related to gaming which allows for a relatively high level of inter-player communication. Furthermore, within the greater gaming language, there a series of dialects spoken by certain subsets. You need only drop a console gamer into a pre-raid WoW meeting to understand this. Gamer culture is, in fact, steeped in acronyms and slang

Microsoft Office Labs Vision for Retail 2019

*Beautifully shot piece of design-fiction. Look at the quality of that lighting, staging and soundtrack. It's gorgeous. This must be Katherine Albrecht's worst grocery-shopping nightmare.

*I found this originally on "MSN Video Soapbox," which politely warned me to remove any videos I myself might have placed there, because MSN Video Soapbox is collapsing with all hands on August 31, 2009, and obliterating everything placed there.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-102...

Gothic augmented reality

The cities are there for you to use

*What the city looks like when the Singaporean locals got a little over-enthusiastic and

augmented the living daylights out of it:

Miami Squelette

*They finished the building, it's beautiful, but it's full of echoing absences, so unlike most

squelettes, it's not Favela Chic, it's Gothic High Tech.

*Once the squatters figure out how to take it over, THEN it's Favela Chic.

http://www.thestar.com/article/675303

(…)

"The future was going to be southwest Florida," said Victor Vangelakos, 45, who paid $430,000 for the unit, took out a $336,000 mortgage and planned to retire to the condo.

Most buyers in the 200-unit building didn't close and others mo

Clean Energy 2030

*Okay, check out this glistening, rainbow scenario: I don't starve to death in a mass planetary famine in my old age, and by weather-turbulent home state of Texas is not reduced to climate-crisis nightmare of scary droughts broken by massive hurricanes, because the unleashed brilliant intellects at Google have come up with a workable, reasonable and even profitable energy-transition scenario that they've put on their big fake Wiki.

*And everybody reads this complex but quite thorough technocrat

Dead Media Beat: Microsoft Word

*Boy, that would be one big, fat, feature-cluttered dead carcass.

*But this guy's argument looks pretty strong.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-word-1983—2009-rest-in-peace.ars

(…)

"Word—and I know I'll be attacked for saying this—is the new typewriter.

"Maybe I'm wrong. Software is, after all, infinitely adjustable, something that typewriters aren't. Microsoft has put some effort into making Word part of the new web-based world, such as adding support to post an article direc

The Project Grey Goose cyberwar report

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13442963/Project-Grey-Goose-Phase-II-Report

*This report is keenly interesting for two reasons. First, it's got some fine detail on a lot of transnational cyberwar attacks I've scarcely heard of, and second, it appears from this report that all of these attacks are invented, organized and carried out by teenagers. Teenagers, or state-supported "youth groups" like Nashi in Russia.

*Reading this leads me to two surmises. Either these investigators (who look pretty much

The Processing monster index

*These little Processing "monster" web-toys seem much more sophisticated than they were just a few months ago.

http://www.rmx.cz/monsters/

Improvised Arson Devices

*Anarchists in Berlin have figured out how to make time-delayed roadside weapons,

which they use to burn the irritating luxury cars of rich people.

*They've been at it since the New Depression started, and the pace is picking up.

Looks like the "War on Cars" may be a trend with legs.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/german-radicals-turn-to-arson-20090731-e4hf.html