by cameron | Mar 2, 2008 | science, singularity, Uncategorized
If you haven’t read / aren’t reading Warren Ellis’ work, then you are seriously missing out on one of the most exciting things happening in media (for my money anyway). I only discovered his stuff about a year ago and I’ve become a complete fanboi. Ellis has been writing comics for about 15 years, including some mainstream titles like IRON MAN and FANTASTIC FOUR, but he’s best loved for his original titles such as TRANSMETROPOLITAN (about a Hunter S. Thompson-esque journalist in a dystopian future America), GLOBAL FREQUENCY (about a loosely-coupled team of expert terrorism fighters), and PLANETARY (about a small team of super-powered humans saving the world from the forces of evil, domestic and interstellar). His writing is edgy, political, taps into transhumanism and the singularity, and he usually works with terrific artists who create stunning imagery to flesh-out his stories. He’s got a new web comic called FREAKANGELS which looks like it’s going interesting places as well.
Anyway, this post was prompted by one of his blogs posts this morning (see below) about the Thunderbirds and I was thinking about how shows like that (and, of course, Star Trek), considered camp and silly even at the time by many, inspired a generation. And I was thinking – what are today’s shows which are likely to inspire the next generation of adults to push the boundaries of science, art and business? What shows on TV today are building a vision for a better future, one we can aspire to, strive for, work towards? Most of the shows I love today (or have loved recently), the futuristic shows, are dystopian. BSG, Firefly (RIP)… ummm… hard to think of any others right now. While they each have some cool toys and technologies, I don’t think either of them contain aspirational messages. I do, however, get a lot of aspirational futures from the books I read. Charles Stross, William Gibson, Vernor Vinge – all write about near-term futures which get me bloody excited. But not TV.
Got any suggestions?
| I loved THUNDERBIRDS. Save the world, go back to your island base, get rat-arsed, smoke a thousand cigarettes and hit on the Quality and the Asian girl. These are the lessons tv taught us back then. . I will go now, because Ariana says these notes are taking on the tone of a guy on a desert island talking to his pet coconut. |
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by cameron | Mar 1, 2008 | Uncategorized
Rushing around this morning, driving my kids to piano practice. In a hurry, so the ubiquitous iPod wasn’t jacked into the car stereo. Instead I turned on the radio for the five minute trip to piano.
After a minute, Hunter (age 7) asks me from the back seat “Hey Dad – where’s your iPod?” I explain it’s in my bag, I haven’t bothered to plug it in.
“But where’s the music coming from?” he asks.
“The radio,” I explain.
“Is that like TV?” asks his brother Taylor (also age 7).
I look at their faces in the rearview mirror and realize they have no idea what radio is. They have never heard me listen to radio. They are amazed that music is playing without the iPod plugged in.
If you have any shares in Austereo – welcome to your future marketplace. It doesn’t even know you exist.
by cameron | Feb 27, 2008 | Uncategorized
Was @rambn the first person to twitter about today’s UK earthquake?
by cameron | Feb 27, 2008 | Uncategorized
I was scanning my Bopo Visa card statement this morning and I noticed they charge a 25 cent fee every time I use the card and a $1.00 fee every time I top up the card with funds (it’s essentially a debit card). I’m no expert on bank fees, but does this seem excessive to you? I’m not sure if it’s just that i’m seeing the fees broken out individually for every transaction instead of seeing them aggregated as a single monthly line item and that’s grating on me or if they really are excessive. Thoughts?
by cameron | Feb 26, 2008 | Uncategorized
This is absolutely the BEST summary of why Twitter works that I’ve read. Of course, it’s by Howard Rheingold, the guy who brought us “Smart Mobs” and who introduced me to the online world when I read his book “The Virtual Community” back in 1993.
We were fortunate enough to have Howard as a very early guest on <a href="http://http://noillusionspodcast.com/2005/03/18/on-the-pod-with-howard-rheingold/">G'Day World, way back in March 2005.
Here are just a couple of Howard’s reasons why Twitter works, but read the full article for the rest of the story.
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Variety — political or technical argument, gossip, technical info, news flashes, poetry, social arrangements, classrooms, repartee, scholarly references
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Reciprocity — people give and ask freely for information they need (this doesn’t necessarily scale or last forever, but right now it’s possible to tune your list — and to contribute to it — to include a high degree of reciprocation)
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A channel to multiple publics — I’m a communicator and have a following that I want to grow and feed. I can get the word out about a new book or vlog post in seconds — and each of the 1300 people who follow me might also feed my memes to their own networks. I used to just paint. Now I document my painting at each stage of the process, upload pix to flickr or flicks to blip.tv, then drop a tinyurl into Twitter. Who needs a gallery or a distributor?
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by cameron | Feb 24, 2008 | Uncategorized
I had to go all the way to Edinburgh’s Sunday Herald to find one. A good article by Joanna Blythman on Castro’s retirement.
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Let’s keep the faith with Fidel
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