Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 785

Now that’s a Wired magazine column, gosh darn it

*There are those here who consider my blog here a tad acerbic, but….

http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2009/04/start/column—warren-ellis.aspx

Hey Look, MIT students! A Leftover FEMA Trailer!

http://visualarts.mit.edu/armadillo

“The ‘Armadillo’ trailer is the result of a year-long collaborative art project, the MIT FEMA Trailer Project, in which faculty and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visual Arts Program transformed a surplus FEMA trailer into a ‘green’ mobile composting center with vertical gardens, rainwater catchment system, permaculture library, and indoor multipurpose space. The trailer has been dubbed the ‘Armadillo’ for its ribbed retractable shell.

Dead Media Beat: the prehistory of the dotcom

*Read it ‘n’ weep, pre-web nostalgists.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/clarinet-history.html

The World is Flat Broke and Happier For It, says Pico Iyer

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/

(…)

“I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more.

“But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment t

Five Challenges for Government

*I was watching these British net activists patting themselves on the back for

driving MP’s expenses into the open (and this creating total moral panic),

when I came across this manifesto.

*It’s not new, but it’s kinda loud.

http://www.mysociety.org/blog/page/2/

Top 5 Internet Priorities for the Next Government (any next Government)

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 by Tom Steinberg

To: Anyone thinking of running any reasonably developed country, any time soon.

(((Audience big enough for ya there?)))

Pre

Industrial design is dematerializing and spreading through social networks

*Okay, since this is Paola Antonelli of the NY Museum of Modern Art, this article is written in a shiny, semitranslucent curatorese. However, I think Paola’s right, because she’s describing something that is happening in many other disciplines as well as in design.

*People used to sit next to the factory because that was the basic means of production; even authors rushed to New York because that’s where the presses were spitting ink. If you can offshore that, and phone in the plans… well, yea

Meanwhile, just above the lunar surface

Way to go, Selene probe.

Now that’s multimedia.

*Leah Buechley.

Convergence Culture breeds convergence artists

*Prof Henry Jenkins, your paradigm is wanted on line one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/08/art-collaboration-dance-theatre-music

“These are strange days for purists. In almost every area of the arts, genres are spilling into each other, cross-pollinating, refusing to remain in neat boxes. You go to the theatre expecting actors under a proscenium arch, and you get videos, animation, and intricate dance routines. Go to the opera expecting corsets and coloratura, and you get electric guita

Information Hardware Wants To Be Free

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=137088

How the $0 Netbook Might Just Help Save the Media Industry

Information Wants to Be Free; Now Hardware Does, Too. And That Could Be a Very Good Thing Indeed (((it kills me that it’s an ad guy saying all this)))

by Simon Dumenco

Published: June 08, 2009

Here’s why I’m suddenly hopeful about the media industry: Because the tech industry is screwed too.

OK, let me explain. (((This should be pretty good.)))

It’s considered a truism that “information