Interesting synchronicity today, spinning off from going to get a cat collar ID tag engraved. How things have moved on; I was expecting it to be done by hand or using a pantograph ( for instance ). But no, they used a very nice computer engraving machine not unlike this one . It raised vague resonances, and then I realised what it reminded me of: the execution machine in Kafka's 1919 story In the Penal...
Awesome or Scary? The basic AR tools are already available - Bionic Eye does simple things really well, while Layar has the potential to do a whole lot more if mobile handsets had more memory. Face Recognition is already available on social photo editors (and on iPhoto) as long as you give it something to work from: ie tag some faces and it will recognise them in future. As William Gibson said "The...
Via Lidzville, here's a nice essay from David Grossman on why the return of "V" and other 80s shows is culturally significant. Example: Culture in the 80's was, in general, based on the concept of dehumanization. It's no coincidence that electronica and synth first really became popular during the 80's- it's also when the computer first started becoming at least somewhat commonplace. Machinery...
destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine "Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction," but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description....
Late Links: 19th century law still on the books orders Parisian women to go pantsless . I don’t remember seeing this in my complementary Sky Mall catalog. Cleavage Wednesday: Leighton Meester , Leona Lewis , Beth Ditto , and Jodie Sweetin . Lingerie Wednesday: Bar Refaeli . BREAKING: Carmen Electra is an attention whore . Keeley Hazell would rather go naked than wear fur . We would rather she...
From Gary Hemmel's Outrunning Future It’s hard to out-run the future if you don’t see it coming. Learn from the fringe. What’s true for music, fashion and the arts is true for business as well: the future starts on the fringe (not in the mainstream). As William Gibson once said, “The future has already happened, it’s just [...]
James William Gibson wants us to reconnect with the wild. A fairly constant theme within environmental thought, Gibson treads familiar ground in his 2009 book A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature , even if that ground continues to resonate with many Americans. Gibson believes we have lost touch with the wild around us and that this is a terrible thing. Happily for Gibson, many...
It's been quite some time since we've heard any news about the Neuromancer, but director Joseph Kahn is apparently still working on it. He tweeted about it over the weekend — and William Gibson... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
The Internet entrepreneur and author of the bestselling Little Brother discusses his latest novel Makers and what distinguishes his work from the cyberpunk of William Gibson.
by Michael Moorcock Some houses hold secret chambers, accessible only via hidden corridors and locked doors. We assume such a place is fantastic simply on account of its concealment, but both the banal and the occult can be obscured from the public eye. Assume, for instance, that a hidden chamber contains a bookshelf whose duplicate rests in the building’s main concourse. Does concealment alter...
The Neuromancer movie may never get off the ground, but a performance/video installation version is coming to New York next week. When Sasha Grey accepted her Fleshbot award via video last night, she... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL... Earlier in the year I was concentrating on audiobooks during the daily commute and the regular trips out to visit the parental units. Lately I've been downloading podcasts and listening to them. Here's a round-up of what has been making the rotation through the iPod. The Agony Column: The Mother and Father of All Literary Podcasts. A bit hard to navigate the archives...
I don’t have a post to go with the quote above, but it’s so good I had to write down. I found it on William Gibson’s Twitter feed and he retweeted John Perry Barlow, who overheard it at at dinner party.