A Brief Hiatus

son volt in philadelphia

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Mapping the Territory

http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/web/

Barton & Barton meet Baudrillard. It's not really what I expected from a hypermedia map, but the colonial metaphor seems interesting.

The Precarious Place of Internet Radio

This week Congress entered the fight to save Internet radio.

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0100/t.5809.html

Usually the words "commercial" and "radio" in close proximity leave something close the taste of sweaty garbage in my mouth.

That's assuming the conversation's surrounding a station with an uber tight loop of less than inventive, already over-played tunes--a station's that's licking the fingers of the corporate machines which fuel it.

Internet commercial radio is, in some forms, arguably a different beast.

Take pandora.com for instance.

For the yet-to-be-converted, it's a God in the "box" that, better than I've heard any iPod produce thus far, divinely (and sometimes with a bit of strict displine) selects ecclectic songs that follow musical progressions.

Dilligently prune your station and it might bring forth as opaque an epistemic progression that, personally, I've never experienced from another medium.

In its technology, it's a horse of a radically different color.

So, for the pleasure gained from pandora, for all the other similar and developing technologies, for the progress of audio and online technology in general, let's hope that the two Democratic House members will be successful.

(Un)locking the Symbolic Chain

From AmazingPhil on YouTube.

Maybe useful as part of an argument for the incompatibility of the image/logo centric system to communicate the infinite potential of meaning.

Or, as CriticalHaba responded on YouTube, "ha! congrats, you kept me amused for 2 minutes of my life :D"

Most interestingly, I feel, is that AmazingPhil's video is a response to a new type of automated technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4N7nH6RMNI

Final Version of Film

:)

Mario 3, Technology and Imagination

Been thinking that they should really release Mario 3 again for all the gaming minded youngsters out there.

Releasing old modes of production or repopularizing older modes of production doesn't necessitate a regression; rather it seems to be a sound argument for the compatability of non-synchronous modes of production.

Plus, it was the only computer/ video game at which I haven't totally sucked.

We used to spend hours collecting the whistles, warping to "far away lands," rescuing the princess.

O.K. Maybe they should release a non-gender-biased version of the game. The princess can save Mario (in a non-flying, non-Mario 2 way).

The graphics were basic. You couldn't make a character that resembled your own face. You couldn't (Wiiiiiii!) wave your wands in the air to play tennis or bowl.

There was that duck-hunt gun. Hmmm.

Either way, it's a great option for contemporary kids. Bring it on, gamers. I'm ready.

From a different angle, I have a friend and fellow Carmike serf who is the beta tester of beta testers for computer and video games.

He spends his entire twice-monthly paycheck on games. He stays up gaming all night almost every night.

It makes me wonder about the technology.

How do we comare my friend's love for computer games with othes' love for books or fine arts? Is playing a computer game a form of reading?

He interacts with a symbol set albiet with pre-determined outcomes. In some ways, the computer game limits the outcomes. It's a puzzle that the user is supposed to solve. It's challenging, yes, but it's already been solved by the programmer. How does this compare to a Pynchon novel?

How do computers affect our capacity for subjectivity, our capacity to imagine new possibilities for ourselves as subjects? On one hand they might challenge our ideas about what is Real, if there even is a reality. On the other hand, computer games require our memory, something that has traditionally been on the other side of the theoretical binary of imagination.

I'm not sure what the answers are, but it sure is an interesting time to ask these questions.

TED Awards: Bill Clinton

He won $100,000 from BMW.

Now TED plays fairy godmother to the winners.

Clinton's wish:

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=b_clinton