Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 774

Processing. With Gears.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davebollinger/

*I wonder *how many* simulated gears could run under Processing, if you

had the heavy iron to handle the calculations. Maybe a trillion gears,

in a gigantic Rube Goldberg mass? What would that look like?

Dead Media Beat: CompuServe

*Oh my gosh! Compuserve! We hardly knew you….

http://www.basexblog.com/2009/07/03/compuserve-requiem/

CompuServe Requiem

The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down by its current owner, AOL this past week. The service, which provided its users addresses such as 73402,3893, was the first major online service although the number of users has dwindled in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many

Jean Tinguely show coming up

*I gotta get around to doing a study of "device art" and its relationship

to speculative practice in devices and machines.

Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely

Tate Liverpool

Albert Dock

Liverpool

L3 4BB

UK

Phone: +44 (0) 151 702 7400

Fax: +44 (0) 151 702 7401

Contact:

visiting.liverpool@tate.org.uk

www.tate.org.uk/liverpool

2 October 2009 – 10 January 2010

Admission: £5.90 (concessions £4.40)

With the support of Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council
JOYOUS MACHINES: MICHAEL LANDY AND JEAN TI

Sweden now presiding over European Union (yawn)

*I am icily determined to watch this, no matter how stunningly boring it is.

I've known for a long time that stunning boredom is the secret weapon of

European integration. Europe succeeds precisely by being so entirely and

utterly boring that the world's most fractious and warlike peoples are, like…

huh? What were you saying? Cucumbers? We freakin' firebombed Dresden

and you're talking about cucumbers now?

*That's right, Hans, Francois, Giuseppe. You did firebomb Dresden and, that's why
you'

Video from Reboot 11: Gothic High-Tech and Favela Chic

*Kids these day, whaddya gonna do…

London urban informatics

*I'm guessing this iphone app comes pretty cheap, but how much do you

think they spent on this viral youtube promotion? One pound and ninety-nine pence,

maybe?

Imaginary Gadgets 0005: The fantastic machines of Leonardo

Imaginary Gadgets 0005: The fantastic machines of Leonardo

Who: Leonardo da Vinci

What: plans and sketches of imaginary objects from Da Vinci's surviving codices.

When: circa 1480 – 1519

Where: Florence, Milan, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Amboise

How: schemes of cosmopolitan polymathic artist-engineer.

Why: glory, intellectual mastery, royal commissions.

Leonardo da Vinci is the world's most famous inventor of imaginary objects. At his death, he left some 18,000 pages of plans, schemes, drawings and

I Taught At Harvard Business School And Ruined Everything

*Nice to see a chest-beating mea culpa out on the table here, though I find

it a little hard to believe that Harvard Business School professors could

have wrecked capitalism all by their thoughtful little selves.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jul2009/ca2009072_489734.htm

Shoshanna Zuboff:

The idea of devising new rules for managers isn't just a casual thought or theoretical exercise for me. It's personal. That's because I spent a quarter-century as a professor at the Harvard Business

Spime Watch: SILENCE OF THE CHIPS, I want the T-shirt

*And here it is, straight from the lazyweb! In all its CafePress glory!

Kieran O'Neill:

"Inspired by your post on the EU communication, I made it.

"It's available on Cafe Press here:"

http://www.cafepress.com/silencechips

"And I've put the bitmap files up on Flickr under a CC-BY license, for people to play with:"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneillkz...

Kieran

*Good job Kieran! Hope they sell as fast as Arduinos!

*More on the "silence of the chips" in the "Internet of European Things" here:

h

Critical Run

*Engage in postmodern group critique while jogging in urban traffic,

bespectacled and dressed mostly in black:

http://www.emergencyrooms.org/criticalrun.html

CRITICAL RUN

Critical Run is a format for criticism;

it is a stimulating, debating, and sweating format.

In Emergency Room we extract outrage,

we extract sweat,

we extract efforts,

Critical Run is a run where we debate while we run.
Critical Run is an embodied metaphor.
An absorbation of what we feel we should do in a world at the edge of an
abyss