Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 772

Special Innovation Zones

*For obvious reasons I'm keen to visit areas like this, should they actually come to exist.

Let me know if you have one in your local squat, squelette, digital-favela or local high-tech gothic privatized campus.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010012.html

(…)

* Cutting edge green builders often encounter all sorts of local building code barriers that prevent bold designs (sometimes even when those designs are well-proven elsewhere);

* District energy plans are often stymied by national, provin

Murdoch press, cellphone hacking, private investigators, celebrities, hoo boy

*Oh my goodness me… what fleet of wiretap centipedes exposed to light do we have here? David Cameron's director of communications is a Murdoch guy? And besides major British politicians there are — wait for it — supermodels and footballers as voicemail victims? Wow, this is gonna have some legs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking

Rupert Murdoch's News Group News papers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of h

Re-Burbia

*Why just contemplate American "Favela Chic" when you can enter a design contest

and pretend that you're actually re-making squelettes?

http://www.re-burbia.com/

"Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com are pleased to announce the first ever Reburbia competition: a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs.

"With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Suburban communities in central California, Arizona and

AlQuran Secret For Muslims Only: How I made $60K in June 2009

(((Life is never too short for chain mail fraud, o ye believers.)))

How I made $60K in June2009
 
 Assalamualaikum my Dear Brothers and Sisters in Islam.
 
Thank you for reading my email. My name is Abu Amir Jamalullail from Malaysia.
 
If you have some financial problems, I strongly advise you to practice reciting 4 short soorah from AlQuran. My mentor, a very pious and wealthy person calls these short soorah – Ayaatul Rizq Like Heavy Rain (ARLHR). He learned this practice from a great pious scholar i

French solar blimp

*French kids in engineering school. Man, that gobboon is just the solarpunk awesomest.

I know it's a Mech.E school toy, but it's making my day.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/solar-blimp

/

*Imagine a sky densely populated with solarized, blimpcore flying vehicles, moving

with agonizing slowness, networked on flying Arduinos and never descending.

And they're French. Know what that would look like?

Chalkbot Vs. GraffitiWriter

http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2009/07/07/chalkbot-versus-graffitiwriter/

*The street finds its own uses for things, but things find their own uses for the street.

Sharon Mesmer should certainly be Poet Laureate of Brooklyn

*I didn't even know Brooklyn had a poet laureate, but hey, if it counts, she's got my vote.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/25/32_25_gk_new_poet_laureate.html?comm=1

(…)

Ever the supporter of poetry in the borough, however, Hershon immediately suggested two more names for the short list: Indian-born poet Vijay Seshadri and Park Slope writer Sharon Mesmer.

Mesmer will get the vote of anyone who likes a randy dame who's not afraid to write poems with titles like "Annoying Diabetic Bitch" and "

Peripetics, or the installation of an irreversible axis on a dynamic timeline.

*I was gonna explain where I found this, and what it was "about," and what it "meant," and who made it and who the client was, and some of the rest of all that… And then I thought: why?

Significant Objects

*Yeah, I'm gonna write something for this project. How could I refuse?

http://significantobjects.com/2009/07/07/miniature-bottle/

ART & CODE symposium, Ben Fry and Casey Reas

*If you're into software as a medium, you should hearken to the guys who do the heavy lifting.

http://vimeo.com/5481063

ART && CODE SYMPOSIUM: Processing, Ben Fry and Casey Reas from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.