February 12, 2004
Post-TV musings
Will Self (my second-favourite author) has a collection of essays out in book form called 'Junk Mail'. In an interview with Martin Amis (my favourite author), they discuss how people construct elaborate motifs to grace their lives. Amis goes on to comment that "what people are up to now is post-modernist, in the sense that they are loose beings in search of a form. And the art that they bring to this now, to shape their lives, is TV." It made me wonder what will happen when, almost inevitably, the Internet eventually attains 'ontological validity' and becomes the primary means by which people shape their lives. Hopefully it will be a positive evolution, in that it will give rise to interactive, vibrant connections with the world, rather than passive, muted consumption of broadcast simulacra.
Humphrey Yogart
This is a photo that Imran took with his T610 while shopping in San Diego for iPods. It's signage for a frozen yoghurt vendor, and a real contender for worst pun known to humanity.
February 11, 2004
The second superpower
While I am generally inclined to criticize the airless self-congratulatory atmosphere of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (for that is where I am this week), there are plenty of very interesting streams of thought emerging. One of these is the notion that there may be two superpowers after all – the US and world opinion. This is a pretty idealistic assertion, but it is certainly true that, in some cases, the public are no longer an inert audience. They are organising and coalescing around Net technologies such as blogs and wikis, which have given them a voice. Destinations like Moveon.org and Meetup.com enable distributed, organised advocacy which, some day, may be influencial enough to be able to score a significant victory against institutionalised American interests.
February 09, 2004
Meat Vienetta
Check out this 'meat Vienetta' I saw in a San Diego magazine. I preferred the mint version myself.
