Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 775

Belgrade June 2009, the continuing climate crisis

*A great lesson on why kids and foolhardy teens should stay the hell out of "only shin-deep"

racing floodwaters.

Nabaztag and Favela Chic, together all along

*Ya gotta be kidding me, Olivier.

*Only, I don't think he is:

"Re: Nabaztag is living @ Favela Chic

"The Home of Nabaztag is in the Paris building of The Favela Chic : 1st Floor Favela Chic, Third Floor : Philippe Starck, Fourth Floor : Nabaztag :-)))"

Olivier Mével

*I guess the operant question now is if there are Nabaztags sniffing arphids

and accessing the Internet *inside* Favela Chic.

Failed States of 2007

This pic looks plenty dire, and yet this was before the New Depression. I think modern analysts would re-color quite a few of these "failed states," and by no means always for the worse. I'd be nudging Brazil into the Green category, China, Thailand, Turkey and India into a nice mild yellow, while of course Ireland, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia, formerly quiet, solid little entities, are in for it…

Maybe state failure isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Phil Van Allen's NetLab Toolkit

*Hey Internet-of-Things geeks. Don't say I never turned you on to anything.

http://newecologyofthings.wik.is/NETLab_Toolkit

Dead Media Beat: Sony Walkman

*Kazys Varnelis:

http://varnelis.net/blog/on_30_years_of_soundtracks_to_life

"On July 1, the Sony Walkman will be 30 years old. It's hard to imagine what urban life was before the Walkman. Sony first introduced portable transistor radios in 1957 and these proliferated rapidly. With an earphone (like this), it was possible to carry music around on the go, but both sources and quality were limited. Portable cassette players and boomboxes flourished in the 1970s and if the latter served as means of b

Nice geolocative piece

*I've got a soft spot for these pieces that "violate everything we normally think about"

X or Y. I like the ones that are just frankly oxymoronic, impossible on their face.

Like "geeks in social media." Geeks are the least social people in the world.

That's why they're isolated in front of computer screens, right? Except –

the geeks who are working alone, on isolated computers? They no longer

exist as a news story. They're being ignored again.

*Here's noospheric cyberspace getting hyperloca

Squelettes of Las Vegas NV

Hello Bruce, (((Yo!)))

These Vantage Lofts in Henderson, Nevada are just dying for a post-industrial makeover.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr/17/chic-urban-and-deserted/

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=%22vantage+lofts%22&s=rec

http://vantagelofts.com/index.php

My brother Scott lives in Henderson and I visit him now and then. He used to be in the real estate business there. This lofts project has fascinated both of us. As you might imagine, there are many stalled and abandoned building pro

The Disruption of Scientific Publishing

*This guy thinks that scientific publishing is about to become a tech business.

*Maybe — but what *kind of* tech "business"? Radically disrupted, open-source,

screaming-blogger melee ("Favela Chic"), or ice-in-the-veins wholly-owned

subsidiary of Google Inc, "Organizer of All Knowledge" ("Gothic High Tech)"?

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=629

(…)

"What I will do instead is draw your attention to a striking difference between today's scientific publishing landscape, and the landscape of ten year

Transitory Objects

*Liking the atemporal aspects of a self-declared "transitory object."

http://www.tba21.org/program/exhibitions/75?category=exhibitions

Transitory Objects

Displaying architectural objects within the framework of selected artworks from T-B A21's collection introduces the problem of contextuality. A parallel reading of artistic and architectural production today opens up the question of what kind of impact this transfer has on the status of the architectural object as well as on the nature of the "aes

Favela Chic in real life

*I'm unsurprised to learn that there are actual clubs — two of 'em, apparently,

in Paris and London — called "Favela Chic."

http://www.favelachic.com/london/

*They're ten years old. They look gratifyingly cute and creative, too, like a

performance-art Euro-gay Brasilectronica scene. With food, video,

clothing swap-meets and special events.

*Apparently they don't actually build favela housing in disused skyscrapers (yet).

"There is no stopping Favela Chic! Having conquered their home base Paris wit