Harold Cohen will be giving a talk at Dorkbot London tomorrow.
Of course I’ll be there! 😉
Month: July 2008
Categories
Friending The Aesthetic
Friend the aesthetic on MySpace.
Like blue? Friend it here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_blue
Like red? Friend it here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_red
Like yellow? Friend it here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_yellow
Like squares? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_square
Like circles? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_circle
Like triangles? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_triangle
Like stripes? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_stripes
Like checks (or cheques)? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_checks
Like dots (or spots)? Friend them here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_dots
Like the fibonacci sequence? Friend it here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_fibonacci
Like the golden section? Friend it here:
http://myspace.com/aesthetic_golden
Like grids? Friend them here:
Categories
ORG GRO
If you are in the UK and haven’t already joined ORG then now is a good time to do so.
In just three short years ORG has effected real policy change on a number of issues, from copyright reform to e-voting. But threats to our liberties are not subsiding, they are increasing, from unchecked snooping by advertisers and bureaucrats to the entertainment industry’s war on online freedoms. From July to December this year, we are working to double the amount of financial support we receive from individuals so ORG is ready and able to meet these threats. This page shows how you can help and what we will spend your money on.
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/org-gro/
And they’ve got a widget:
type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
Categories
NIA
A neural game controller. Kim Plowright mentioned it in her talk at OpenTech.
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ocz_peripherals/nia-neural_impulse_actuator
I want one, I want it now and I want it jacked into my GNU box.
Categories
Neurotic
A quick dash from Opentech to the ICA got me to Fiddian Warman’s “Neurotic” art performance in time to order some Myers rum and then to buy an evil weasel from the merchandise stall (which proceeded to cover the inside of my bag with white paint that rubbed off the plastic).
Fiddian built and trained three robots to pogo to punk music. He then installed them in the ICA theatre and had punk bands perform to them for three nights. When the robots’ neural nets decided that the music was punk, they pogoed. When they didn’t recognise the music as punk, the bands got suitably aggravated.
I’m hoping to get a review together.
On a personal note I met lots of ex-CEA (Centre For Electronic Arts, the Middlesex University bunker^D^Dfaculty that I first met Fiddian at) staff and students in the bar. Some I hadn’t seen for over a decade(!), some of whom had sometimes weirdly synergistic news, and all of whom are extremely cool. It was great to meet everyone again, and I must get better at keeping in touch.
ONE TWO THREE FOUR!
Categories
OpenTech 2008
OpenTech 2008 was amazing.
It was a day of talks about free software, free data, cyberculture, economics, digital rights, the whole technology and society thing. I met lots of ORG, OKFN, OSM and other generally cool people, some familiar faces and a few names I previously knew only from email.
I went to about 10 talks and I can’t mention them all but they were all great. To mention a few examples: I’d like to see Ben Gimpert’s slides from his talk on financial quantitive analysis put online. Danny O’Brien mentioned identi.ca and really put it in the context of restoring freedom “in the cloud”. Kim Plowright used the word ‘jouissance’ in a way that made sense of more complex ideas of virtual presence (the Lacanian league will have dispatched assassins). And Adrian Hon presented some wonderful hypermedia fiction to considerably more than twelve people (the Doctor Who finale having started five minutes previously).
I hope we don’t have to wait another 3 years for the next one.
Categories
identi.ca
Evan Prodromou‘s new project identi.ca may look like just a twitter clone that signs you out if you don’t post anything for a few hours but don’t be fooled. It is in fact a giant leap forward for the freedom to use Internet-based software.
- The code is AGPL, so even if someone tries to modify it to lock users’ data in to the modified version, the users have access to those modifications.
- The system supports federated multiple hosts, so anyone can host an instance and any user can use any instance.
- And the interface supports licencing posts under CC-BY, so that users are free to quote each other and the federated network is free to replicate their data.
I imagine some people will claim that these are not advantages to end users and that they will prevent service providers from making money. But the stability and scalability of such a service means better user satisfaction and less trouble scaling and providing reliable service for any company that provides the computing power for the service.
The fail whale shows that freedom in Web 2.0 matters to both customers and those who think they want to trap them.