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“What kind of society are we likely to get if it turns out that yes, we’re hitting peak oil round about now, but that it’s possible to process random junk biomass into crude oil for $100 a barrel, and $1000 will buy you a machine that you plug into your l
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Stross interviewed by the Guardian: “I think that if there’s one key insight science can bring to fiction,” he says, “it’s that fiction – the study of the human condition – needs to broaden its definition of the human condition. Because the human conditio
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“For as long as I’ve known the term, ubiquitous computing has been largely ignored, written off as a scifi pipedream from the people who promised you AI and cars that would run on water. That’s beginning to change, as hardware such as the Arduino and prog
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Coverage of Prof. Jonathan Zitrain’s (MIT) anxiety over the future of the internet, on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (17/06/08).
links for 2008-06-19
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“the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.”
links for 2008-06-18
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“Would you trade Alzheimer’s for breast augmentation or a luxury cruise? With an ageing population and an overextended NHS, you may find yourself alone, geriatric and diseased in your home, discovering new forms of “Care in the Community”, ordering your
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“there is a hierarchy in architectures of participation, with the most powerful literally building a system in which participation is automatic, and driven by the design of the system itself rather than any explicit request for user contribution”¦ ubiqui
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“The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland, and you can be part of it.”
links for 2008-05-17
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“BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The ability of Google Inc’s map service to put detailed street-level images on the Internet could raise concerns in Europe if it was introduced there, the EU’s data protection agency said on Thursday.”
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“The double-edged sword that comes with keeping abreast of all the latest developments in technology means that we’re always aware of the latest and greatest applications and services to try…but it also means that we’ve tried all of them. Unlike the ave
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“Last week, the fight to manage your social data kicked off in earnest as three major players in the social networking space each announced independent competing approaches to making profile and friend information data portable. MySpace Data Availability
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“Web 2.0 has brought many wonderful innovations and ideas to the Internet. We can no longer imagine the web without a social dimension, and we can no longer imagine an online world that is read-only – it is now a read/write web full of user-generated cont
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“One of the dangers of doing history of science or science studies (both of which I studied when I was in grad school, and taught before becoming a futurist) is that you end up spending time talking to your subjects. Generally, when you’re an anthropologi
links for 2008-05-16
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“muscle memory – a far more important element of software than many designers realise. If you don’t use keyboard shortcuts, then you’re wasting precious hours every week (if not day) fiddling with the mouse, moving around the screen when you could just pr
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Sony’s model for NFC.
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“QR Code is capable of handling all types of data, such as numeric and alphabetic characters, Kanji, Kana, Hiragana, symbols, binary, and control codes. Up to 7,089 characters can be encoded in one symbol.”
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“HP Labs researchers have developed a wireless data chip that could revolutionize the way you think about information stored on paper and other physical objects… The tiny Memory Spot chip – less than half the size of a grain of rice — makes it possi
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Press release: “HP today announced that its researchers have developed a miniature wireless data chip that could provide broad access to digital content in the physical world… With no equal in terms of its combination of size, memory capacity and data
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“Technology can be sublime, but machines aren’t something that happens to us; they’re something we make. That is, they’re less like meteors that come crashing into our planet (actually, “billiard balls” appears to be the preferred metaphor) than
links for 2008-05-15
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“The supermarket chain Budgens has installed face recognition cameras in one of its stores to stop children buying alcohol and cigarettes.”
“Charlie Willetts, managing director of Charton Ltd, which is supplying the software, said about 1,500 images were
links for 2008-05-14
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“On this site I aim to investigate the Technium. What does it want? Why do we embrace it? Is it possible to reject it? How does it relate to God, if at all? What kind of control do we really have on the pace and future path of the Technium itself?”
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” Starting May 31, visitors to New York’s Battery Maritime Building will be able to take part in Byrne’s interactive music installation called simply “Playing the Building.” Like its self-explanatory title implies, the Battery will be fitted with devices
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“What is technology? What does technology mean? Where does technology reside? One
notion of technology, which originated in the Greek téchnÄ“, points to the rational ability
to create and produce. Modern technology grew out of ancient téchnÄ“ by -
“A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a technique for transmitting medical images via cellphones.”
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“You’ve heard of user-generated content? Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they can help make the mobile Internet more useful.”
Equus and becoming-animal
Etruscan black-figured depiction of a centaur on amphora – Flickr user: diffendale
I saw the excellent production of Equus currently playing at the Theatre Royal Bath on Saturday. The cast gave a brilliant performance, I was particularly impressed with the ever-energetic Simon Callow and his masterful depiction of the psychiatrist Martin Dysart. Alfie Allen was also very good as Alan Strang.
All of the allusions to Freud got me thinking though…
“Afterwards, he says, they always embrace.
The animal digs his sweaty brow into his cheek… and they stand in the dark for an hour… like a necking couple.
And of all nonsensical things, I keep thinking about the horse… not the boy, the horse, and what he might be trying to do.
I keep seeing the huge head, kissing him with its chained mouth… nudging through the metal, some desire absolutely irrelevant… to filling its belly or propagating its own kind.
What desire could this be? Not to stay a horse any longer? Not to remain reined up forever in those particular genetic strings?
Is it possible, at moments we can’t imagine, a horse can add its sufferings together… the non-stop jerks and jabs that are its daily life… and turn them… into grief?
What use is grief… to a horse?
You see… I’m lost.”
The opening lines of Equus – Peter Shaffer
‘The politics of becoming-animal remains, of course, extremely ambiguous. For societies, even primitive societies, have always appropriated these becomings in order to break them, reduce them to relations of totemic or symbolic correspondence’
Deleuze & Guattari (2006) A Thousand Plateaus, London: Continuum – p. 273
links for 2008-05-13
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“Almost unnoticed last week, the Government announced it had shaved another £1 billion off the cost of its proposed identity card scheme… It did so by deciding to let the “open market” capture citizens’ biometrics, effectively outsourcing the cost of e
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“Skyhook Wireless’ Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is a software-only location solution that allows any Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device to determine its position with an accuracy of 20 meters. Unlike GPS receivers, which use satellites to determine their locat
links for 2008-05-10
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Drinking water everywhere? Self-healing spinal cords? An embedded super PDA that remembers all you hear or say? Lifespans stretching well past the century mark? Sounds like science fiction, but IBM scientists say that projects incubating in labs today mig