Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 770

Urban microfarming that might actually work

*Mostly because you just leave it in some graffiti-scarred parking lot, and nobody has to do any actual dirty, time-consuming "farming." It runs on graywater out of people's toilets. Hello, Favela Chic.

*Of course, you don't actually eat these crops yourself, because the neighborhood kids would steal them, but that's okay; you're not paying any attention anyway. They're a kind of vegetable freeware. It would be awesome to see them mounted vertically on walls.

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/CITY_FAR

Can mass advertisers use mass media to reach the masses?

"Advertisers, agencies, and media companies are in this together." Yeah, they sure are. And that's not good news for any of these organizations. They're like three boat anchors.

http://www.bcg.com/impact_expertise/publications/publication_list.jsp?pubid=2958

"Newspapers, magazines, radio, and broadcast television are under tremendous pressure. The shrinking of these traditional media outlets has painful implications not only for employees and investors but also for the chief marketing officers

Solar Art in Public Places

*Boy, only in Austin. (For now, that is.)

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/07/solar_sunflowers_at_austins_mueller.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

*In other American solar news, newly freelanced everything-to-everybody Sarah Palin is doing her best to help God boost the economy and warm the planet:

Palin calls Obama energy plan a threat to economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who says she'll leave office at the end of the month, is already taking on one national issue, calling the Obam

Web Semantics: Asemic writing

*Writing that doesn't have any actual writing in it whatsoever. You would think that this must be some kind of ultimate literary frontier, a frozen Antarctica of writing entirely devoid of literary content, but I wonder.

*What is "beyond asemic writing"? Maybe a neural brain-scan of an author *thinking about* asemic writing. Maybe *generative asemic writing.* Maybe "asemic biomimicry." Maybe nanoasemic writing inscribed with atomic force microscopes by Artificial Intelligences.

http://thene

Breakfast in the ruins

*When you're a political wife, nobody tells you upfront: "how'd you like to hang out with a bunch of disaster victims, and get to know them personally, woman to woman"? But you do. The difference nowadays is that you can blog about it.

http://sarahbrowng8.wordpress.com/

"Arriving back on the G8 Summit compound I find Gordon back in our accommodation in a final meeting with Australian PM Kevin Rudd. Both have been very committed to the climate change agenda here and are talking about next step

Unique crowdsourcing experiment, and/or self-defeating lynch mob

*Okay: here are net-centric British geeks complaining that a Member of Parliament *answers his cellphone too much* and has *too many video cameras.* What kind of people do they want to see in Parliament? Guys who grow their own quill pens off geese, maybe?

*Hey Britons: you wanna save some public money on video cameras? Tear them out of your streets. If you try to train your politicians to shy away from communications hardware, they're gonna get even stupider than they already are.

http://www.

Renew Newcastle

*Australian favela chic. Step one, creepy, long-abandoned buildings; step two, free wifi:

"Renew Newcastle has partnered with local ISP Ipera to introduce a free wireless internet service in and around the Hunter Street Mall. This enables our temporary projects to access internet without having to establish broadband or telephone contracts and it enables visitors to the city the convenience of free internet access."

http://www.renewnewcastle.org/faqs

What is Renew Newcastle?

Renew Newcastle is a not

CAN-SPAM with teeth

*They sent a *spam software hacker* to jail with that law. I know I used

to scoff at CAN-SPAM, but that development is serious.

–Author of Spamming Tools Pleads Guilty

(July 7 & 8, 2009)

David S. Patton pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting violation of the
CAN-SPAM Act for developing a tool used by a prolific spammer, Alan
Ralsky.  Patton could face up to six years in prison and has agreed to
forfeit more than US $50,000 he made from selling his Nexus and Proxy
Scanner tools.  Nexus can be used to c

Sarah Palin's New Normal

*This is an interesting process. When will it stop? Sarah Palin seems to imagine that when she returns to private life, nobody is going to legally and extralegally harass her. On the contrary: I'm rather imagining that the persecution of Sarah Palin intensifies radically once she leaves office. Nobody is harassing her *because she is Governor of Alaska.* She's catching hell for the stark fact that she is Sarah Palin, a polarizing hate figure.

*Let me use a sports metaphor here, for the Palin

No Longer Empty — art in abandoned storefronts

*New York artists putting some of the chic into Favela Chic.

http://nolongerempty.com/new/introduction.html

Curated by Manon Slome and Asher Remy-Toledo

with Tara de la Garza and Julian Navarro

Revitalizing spaces : unlocking creativity

NO LONGER EMPTY is an innovative project involving a group of artists and curators who are interested in exploring a new paradigm for making and presenting art.

A series of exhibitions and events is planned that will utilize multiple vacated storefr