tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73416153345246941362024-02-22T07:26:48.029+00:00Looking Forward UncertainlyTHOUGHTS OF AN UNCERTAIN MAN IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-72116532897199263802017-06-27T13:52:00.000+01:002017-06-27T13:55:42.707+01:00Indefinite Leave to Remain<p>
Indefinite leave to remain</br>
Indefinite, your leave to remain</br>
Definitely leave, relocate
</p>
<p>
An electorate deceived and betrayed</br>
By delegates, careers unashamed</br>
An invective of fear, their campaigns
</p>
<p>
Sentiments, decreed and proclaimed</br>
Insinuate, deceive and defame</br>
Impediments, aggrievements and blame
</p>
<p>
Tenements bereaved, up in flames</br>
Developments conceived for free trade</br>
Non-residents in grief, turned away
</p>
<p>
Deficits perceived as unpaid</br>
Investments unsheathed, unrestrained</br>
Embezzlements with capital gains
</p>
<p>
Malevolent, the greed unconstrained</br>
Ascendant, the thieves unarraigned</br>
Celebrant, they reave unrestrained
</p>
<p>
Interrogate, deprive and restrain</br>
Indefinitely impede and detain</br>
Your indefinite leave to remain
</p>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-53852878318262937282015-11-09T20:33:00.000+00:002015-11-09T22:05:53.391+00:00Feel Better, ChampI had a few thoughts on what Tyler Durden <a href="https://vimeo.com/8263307">might say</a> these days.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptPU6_oSZ8m8z5I0jHOaTWLRVgizYj-E07TAD40vCudbc805eYBQIbhBJ1hswo2i5jFE3JprAZUEP1tUA2k2duCAcnEut_p4uvHqU4O0JkJx8puY-fRCGxJSjOHoRYGbK0SrlDTvdW4J-/s1600/feel_better_champ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptPU6_oSZ8m8z5I0jHOaTWLRVgizYj-E07TAD40vCudbc805eYBQIbhBJ1hswo2i5jFE3JprAZUEP1tUA2k2duCAcnEut_p4uvHqU4O0JkJx8puY-fRCGxJSjOHoRYGbK0SrlDTvdW4J-/s640/feel_better_champ.jpg" /></a></div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-86875896242620587782013-12-01T20:41:00.000+00:002013-12-01T20:41:00.637+00:00A Quote In An Unexpected PlaceIn the Contemporaneity Arts Society exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, accompanying some of the artworks, I was surprised to find a quote from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin">John Ruskin</a>, the Victorian art critic, referring to my home town. Taken from his 1871 <i>Fors Clavigera</i> - his "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain" - it reads as follows:
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<blockquote><i>"There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the Vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening. You cared neither for the Gods nor grass, but for cash. You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley - you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the Gods with it; and now, every fool in Buxton can be in Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell in Buxton; which you think it a lucrative process of exchange - you Fools everywhere."</i></blockquote>
The Buxton to Bakewell railroad finally closed in the late 1960s, leaving behind its two viaducts at Millers and Monsal Dales. It seems it was the viaduct at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsal_Dale">Monsal Dale</a> to which Ruskin so objected but, viewed with today's eyes, it's a magnificent and elegant structure and seems as natural as any other defining part of the local landscape.
Perhaps this means Ruskin's Gods might have returned to the valley from which they were so rudely evicted. As for the fools, well, that's another matter.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-73341388065119377292013-10-08T17:18:00.002+01:002013-10-08T17:18:49.872+01:00 This is the world we're in, and this is what's happening.<i>"There is a man named Dalton. Dalton is dangerous. He is rich, he is strong and he is going to crash the stock market."</i>
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A pseudo-random <a href="https://twitter.com/Horse_ebooks">Twitter spambot</a> and a <a href="http://youtu.be/i_HaMlLJ7Jk">YouTube channel</a> on a terminal countdown collapse into a common message - one of Wall Street, of a white knight, of systems and cyberspace, of you becoming everything you were meant to be; it's the message of <i>Bear Stearns Bravo</i>. <i>"This is the world we're in"</i>, they say, <i>"and this is what is happening."</i>
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It's a call to arms, a call to you. Dalton must be stopped, be regulated, or there will be disastrous consequences. As the sidewalks crack and streets go dark, bankers will shake and scream for his pyramid - but this is all about you. You're in the elevator, you're right on time. You're first class. You're ready. This is where reality and fiction merge. You've got a job to do. This is the world we're in and this is what's happening.
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On the internet, nothing stays secret for long. Just as the websleuths of 4chan and The Daily Dot <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/pronunciation-book-countdown-ending-bender-bakkila/">closed in</a> around their provenance, the internet swirled with disappointment after it was revealed that the spambot and YouTube channel are a years long psuedo-art project, an elongated marketing ploy put together by two Manhattanite social media types, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/horse-ebooks-and-pronunciation-book-revealed.html">creative directors of viral content platforms</a>. <i>Bear Stearns Bravo</i> is nothing but a monetised multiple-choice YouTube game, and a bad one. The viral marketeers proved <a href="https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/statuses/382527635307241472">right those who speculated</a> at an inevitable mundane outcome.
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Still, this is the world we're in and this is what's happening.
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The <a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/silk-road-raided/">Dread Pirate Roberts has been captured</a> and the Silk Road is down. A blow has been struck to the Dark Net, its king dethroned and the curtain pulled back. The FBI and DoJ have <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/rossulbricht">one Ross Ulbricht</a> in custody and what an unremarkable man he is.
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The Dark Net, the unseen underbelly of the internet, inhabited by only those who need to mask their footsteps - whistleblowers, activists, drug dealers, hitmen - and then only those that can find it, for this is not a place you can simply stumble upon. In this place, the Silk Road shone - a bazaar of the world's drugs and other illict goods readily available in exchange for your bitcoin, a similarly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin">untraceable cryptographic currency</a> - and sat at its helm was the man who named himself after the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts">Dread Pirate Roberts</a>.
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Ulbricht's demise was brought about through the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts/">merest of slips</a>. A single message posted on a tech forum under a real name, with a few lines of code dragged from the Silk Road's server and an email address. One slip that just ten years ago might have gone unnoticed, but not today. Everything on today's internet is forever and the Feds have it all. This is a reality that feels like fiction.
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But it isn't.
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This is the world we're in, and this is what's happening, and up through the cracks, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/usa-arizona-krokodil-idUSL2N0HM2FX20130926">Krokodil flows into the market</a>. Fresh from Russia, bootleg heroin, mixed up in a bathtub out of codeine, lighter fluid, gasoline and paint thinner, seeping its way into the veins of the US <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/has-the-flesh-eating-killer-drug-krokodil-made-it-to-uk">and the UK</a>. This is a drug straight out of pulp sci-fi, literally <a href="http://io9.com/5859291/krokodil-russias-designer-drug-that-will-eat-your-flesh">eating its users alive</a>. This is reality at fiction's worst. Dalton must be stopped, or there will be disastrous consequences.
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The United States government has been shut down. Negotations are in deadlock. Neither side are willing to move. Hundreds of thousands of government workers go unpaid while a Republican congress holds a country to ransom over a healthcare bill modeled almost exactly from the policy of their own former Presidential candidate. The invincible Tea Party opinion holds a gun to the head of the middle ground and demands the head of a President they believe to be an impostor, a Muslim, a socialist, a Kenyan. Their eyes are on the prize that can bring the whole system down, the debt ceiling, up for renegotiation in just a few short week's time. This is Russian Roulette with a global consequence. Sidewalks will crack and streets will go dark.
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As the tension mounts and things begin to fray, up on Capitol Hill, the police <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24393775">gun an unarmed woman to death</a> in her car. Two miles away <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/10/reports-man-set-himself-fire-national-mall/70213/">a man sets fire to himself</a> on the Nation Mall. If this was fiction, <a href="https://twitter.com/jwomack/statuses/386251212548358144">it would be going too far</a>.
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But this is all about you. You're in the elevator, you're right on time. You're first class. You're ready. This is where reality and fiction merge. You've got a job to do. This is the world we're in and this is what's happening.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-88253370826475627432013-09-25T16:11:00.000+01:002013-09-25T16:11:26.105+01:00Pay To Win (But Also Lose)Following on from my <a href="http://lookingforwarduncertainly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/gaming-continuing-to-scrape-barrel.html">somewhat less-than-favourable</a> thoughts on EA's Katy Perry and Diesel-themed expansion packs for <i>The Sims 3</i>, it's interesting to see what the <i>GTA V</i> Collector's Edition contains, according to <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CZ8VVUI">Amazon</a>.
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Aside from the <i>GTA V</i>-themed snapback cap, money bag, "SteelBook" (a book with a metal cover, presumably) and fancy packaging, the £150 Collector's Edition also contains an abundance of additional in-game content. Just to run through it:
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<ul>
<li>Custom characters for <i>GTA Online</i>,</li>
<li>Unique vechicles and garage property - a free garage to store vehicles at the start of the game, stocked with a sports bike and 30's-style hot rod,</li>
<li>Another unique high-end car for use in <i>GTA Online</i>,</li>
<li>A blueprint map of the game's world containing hints for things of interest, such as making fast cash,</li>
<li>Boosted special abilities for the characters - each character's special ability will regenerate 25% faster than in "standard" <i>GTA V</i>,</li>
<li>Stunt plane trials - additional aerial challenges to complete,</li>
<li>In-game store discounts - items throughout the game now cost 20% less than "standard" <i>GTA V</i>,</li>
<li>Bonus outfits and tattoos, and finally</li>
<li>Additional weapons, available for free within the game.</li>
</ul>
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It seems to me that the above list basically separates into two main categories: extra things to do in the game and things that make the game easier.
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<br />
While I could argue that the content that fits into the first category (the custom vehicles, bonus outfits etc.) could really just have been included in the standard edition, much like the expansion packs for <i>The Sims</i>, I guess it's a fairly easy way for Rockstar to bit of extra profit with relatively little effort. Having this extra content will probably squeeze a little bit more fun out of the game for those willing to part with the money for the privilege, so I guess in some ways, it's worth it.
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It's the second category of extra content that bugs me though - by paying to make the game easier for yourself, it feels to me like you're shooting yourself in the foot somewhat. Games are supposed to be a bit challenging - that's what makes them fun - so by making it that bit easier, you're reducing the core playing experience ("this is a challenge") in exchange for a quick-fix sense of satisfaction ("I won").
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When I bought <i>Deus-Ex: Human Revolution</i> a year or so ago, I bought the "Augmented Edition", which contained all the previously released DLC and special edition content in one pack (the Augmented Edition was actually cheaper than buying the standard game by this point). This consisted of a pointless "art book" and some extra in-game weapons, as well as a bonus 10,000 in-game credits and a new device that made it easier to unlock doors in the game. Fortunately, in order to unlock the extra content, you had to enter a special code into the game's menu screen, so I actually just ignored the whole lot and went with the standard version.
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For me, paying to make a game easier for yourself is a bit like loading it up and playing with all the cheats enabled on your first go - it's probably still fun, but makes it kind of pointless. I'd rather not be given the extra advantages, the free guns or the map telling me where the fun's at - I'd rather play the game myself, struggle where you're supposed to struggle and enjoy those serendipitous moments as and when I discover them.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-45052727605242572572013-09-10T14:34:00.000+01:002013-09-10T14:34:09.346+01:00"The Consultants"Good news time, team! I'm pleased to say that the recent piece I wrote for my good friends at <a href="https://twitter.com/matzine">mat.zine</a> - a collaborative architectural zine with lashings of art, poetry and the like - is now available online in their latest edition, <i>Jargon</i>. Best of all, it's completely free!
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All contributors were only given the edition's title, <i>Jargon</i>, as a brief and so each response is as markedly different as the backgrounds of the contributors, with poems, essays and short stories clashing together with technical diagrams, photos and artistic works. Despite the differences, the whole thing still fits nicely together and provides a loose narrative on the use of jargon in our lives.
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My piece takes the form of a short story about my own experiences with those notorious purveyors of jargon, management consultants. While there's obviously something that sets the consultants in my story apart from those I knew in real life, hopefully there's enough of a twinkle of reality in there to raise a wry smile on the face of anyone who's been in the same boat.
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Mat.zine issue #13 '<i>Jargon</i>' is available for free via the following link and my contribution can be found on page 16 of the PDF (or page 30 if you print it out). I highly recommend giving the whole thing a read:
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<a href="http://matzine.org/matzine-13-jargon/">http://matzine.org/matzine-13-jargon/</a>
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ps. Along with the <i>Jargon</i> edition, mat.zine also ran a debate discussing the use of jargon, for better and worse, in the communication of architectural design to the public. You can listen to a complete audio recording of the debate <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_YCvTb4Pr0">here</a>, while feasting your eyes on a selection of photos from the event. While this is obviously a lot more directly architecturally focused, I still found the whole thing pretty interesting, although I'll confess to not knowing what either "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_%28process%29">praxis</a>" or "<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminal">liminal</a>" meant beforehand.
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pps. It's probably also worth mentioning that I also wrote a piece for mat.zine #11, '<i>Resilience</i>', which can be found <a href="http://matzine.org/mat-zine-11/">here</a>, if you want to give that a read too.
Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-6367736839701231632013-09-09T16:29:00.000+01:002013-09-09T16:29:45.340+01:00Gaming: Continuing To Scrape The BarrelIn a world where ad-funded mobile gaming, purchasable downloadable content and the fact that people seem perfectly happy to pump millions of pounds into <i>Candy Crush</i> in exchange for extra lives compete for the last pennies in gamer's wallets, perhaps it was naïve of me to think that we'd hit the bottom. However, a rare trip into an actual physical shop that still sells PC games introduced me to a range of expansion packs for EA's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_3"><i>The Sims 3</i></a> that actually managed to horrify me.
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Expansion packs are nothing new to gaming and their quality often walks a debatable line between legitimately worthwhile extra content for a favourite game, or more likely, a combination of things that should have been included first time round and a ragbag selection of bonus features and in-game items. It's not unusual for new games to be released one month, along with some "limited edition" downloadable content for an additional cost, only to be followed up six months later with an add-on pack or two. In most instances, after the initial sales have started to die down the whole lot is then repackaged into a single "Game of the Year" edition and re-sold at premium prices.
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In it ability to sell additional content, <i>The Sims</i> stands head and shoulders above its fellows. In the game, the player must control the day-to-day life of their avatar, or sim, and steer them to success or failure in their career, society and love life, while buying them products and furnishing their homes with an array of furniture. While it doesn't float my particular boat, the formula is incredibly successful, with <i>The Sims 3</i> selling over 10 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful of all time. Even after the first game in the series, it didn't take EA long to work out that they could continue to profit for the game's success by creating a steady stream of purchasable expansion packs adding new sim models, career options, clothes, furniture or new ways and places for the sims it interact. To date, nineteen add-on packs have been released for <i>The Sims 3</i> alone, with a twentieth scheduled for later this year.
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It was three of those expansion packs that I chanced upon earlier. The first two, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006YVKTFK"><i>Showtime - Katy Perry Collector's Edition</i></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007R698BW"><i>Katy Perry's Sweet Treats</i></a> are bad enough:
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iP_MA-zt8W_PwBv1d03MQkk7e6OnXDSddMK4KZudHe1nw0YD1stJTVLXT6tzII9Qk4dT0ztumsa_OpwC2GkzQXLW3W0WDDrMsy-KggcubDIa4Qfwdu6ZznJxgNc84r8JAVp33BjOW3El/s1600/simsKPboth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iP_MA-zt8W_PwBv1d03MQkk7e6OnXDSddMK4KZudHe1nw0YD1stJTVLXT6tzII9Qk4dT0ztumsa_OpwC2GkzQXLW3W0WDDrMsy-KggcubDIa4Qfwdu6ZznJxgNc84r8JAVp33BjOW3El/s400/simsKPboth.jpg" /></a></div>
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It's not that the idea of a computer game involving Katy Perry in itself is a bad thing - there are plenty of games that have involved musicians in the past, ranging from the various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_Moonwalker"><i>Moonwalker</i> games</a> (all pretty good) to the slightly less appealing <a href="http://uk.gamespot.com/kiss-psycho-circus-the-nightmare-child/"><i>KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child</i></a> - but that after reading through the actual content of the expansion packs themselves, there seems to be very little content <i>actually involving Katy Perry</i>. While <i>Showtime</i> does at least involve some musical content, such as a karaoke bar and stage-based career paths, <i>Sweet Treats</i> only lists Katy Perry-<i>inspired</i> items, like a cupcake-shaped guitar. As far as I could see, apart from the fact that <i>Sweet Treats</i> contains a "simlish" version of Perry's <i>Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)</i>, it looks like they've just slapped a (somewhat bizzare looking) picture of Katy Perry on the box to bump up the sales.
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If you think I'm being overly cynical with the Katy Perry expansions - after all they are clearly aimed at kids and I suppose if it make them happy, then what the hell - it was the last expansion pack that really horrified me, the <i>Diesel Stuff Pack</i>:
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi209LjDwZSdV9DcYEGN5IDYm7nYwvJGu3NwmpKy_WTb2P41RZmy93P9yee0_AfG0cRv7LGeg3xXpb2Qx991xkHs8LrM4IZ97DPnrm3LH9GlqW7E93X541RBMUjtlHAt3zJgAIMR6Lx7XN4/s1600/simsDiesel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi209LjDwZSdV9DcYEGN5IDYm7nYwvJGu3NwmpKy_WTb2P41RZmy93P9yee0_AfG0cRv7LGeg3xXpb2Qx991xkHs8LrM4IZ97DPnrm3LH9GlqW7E93X541RBMUjtlHAt3zJgAIMR6Lx7XN4/s400/simsDiesel.jpg" /></a></div>
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In this pack, you're adding a range of Diesel-themed clothing and furniture items "showcasing the trends that are all the rage this season", which to me sounds like a translation for slapping the Diesel brand name all over your in-game world - for successful virtual living, perhaps. While I confess to be criticising without having actually played it, if you have any doubts, just <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0082BR1OC">read the product description</a> on Amazon.
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What annoys me about this, is that adding the Diesel brand name into the game, while presumably a profitable act for both EA and Diesel, is that you're adding very little to the actual game itself. Fine, releasing more items may improve the game for players and it's up to them if they want to pay for it, but is living in a Diesel monoculture actually any more fun? In buying this expansion pack, you're essentially paying to advertise Diesel to yourself. We've long seen product placement in other media and know how little value it adds - do the lingering shots of James Bond's Omega watch improve <i>Casino Royale</i>? Is it important which fast food retailer Tony Stark visited for his "American cheeseburger"? Will we really benefit from knowing Lara Croft wears a Wonderbra or that in <i>Gears of War</i>, real heroes drink Budweiser? I doubt it, but if we keep buying it, they're going to keep making it.
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On a related note, a friend of mine used to work for Microsoft and told me that the day they introduced a purchasable Darth Vader mask for your X-Box Live avatar, they made about £10million in 24 hours.
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I guess I'll look forward to <i>Pokémon Apple</i> and <i>Pokémon Android</i>, then.
Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-4701590230594877612013-08-31T08:47:00.000+01:002013-08-31T08:47:18.470+01:00The Rentokil PestaurantOr, a tale of how I ended up eating a scorpion in the Science Museum.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtph4kud_obZelxIFQ62BEne8J4y1V_U7Hl8RXa2dwtVDIhQ3ZNXmH2wUJw0i4g-BbP884J6Q1gvAF46b23c-xMw9oH5ng8PQPez53AaDb4bwP0ZGnrbn-Q0e7oguSBGNDYC_JKNKq3DoV/s1600/2013-08-28+19.02.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtph4kud_obZelxIFQ62BEne8J4y1V_U7Hl8RXa2dwtVDIhQ3ZNXmH2wUJw0i4g-BbP884J6Q1gvAF46b23c-xMw9oH5ng8PQPez53AaDb4bwP0ZGnrbn-Q0e7oguSBGNDYC_JKNKq3DoV/s640/2013-08-28+19.02.32.jpg" /></a></div>
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One of the things you tend to hear about the future is that due to the world getting busier, hotter and generally less poor, we're going to struggle to produce enough meat to satisfy everyone's demand.
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Feeding meat-eaters is a costly affair compared to vegetarians, as meat takes considerably more resources to produce than most other foods. Think about it like this, in order to feed me bread, you have to grow, say, an acre of wheat, whereas in order to feed me steak, you have to grow enough grass to keep one cow alive for at least two years. Not only are you using more land, water and farming resource to produce the steak, but there's also other knock-on consequences, like an increased carbon footprint. Sadly for those of us who are meat-eaters, on this the vegetarians really do hold their annoying <a href="http://cheezburger.com/6474722816">moral high ground</a>.
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In the West, we eat a lot of meat and therefore a lot of worldwide food resources go to feeding those animals rather than people. As developing countries get richer and lift their people out of poverty, in general their <a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/node/54432">demand for meat will also increase</a> and so we're looking at a world where there's more people, wanting more meat that we have already. Coupled with the fact that climate change will potentially have big impacts on our ability to produce all the crops we need, it looks like needing all this meat will become a problem.
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There are lots of potential solutions to this though, from producing more climate-resistant crops to actually doing something about climate change (just throwing that one out there), but there's two other interesting alternatives:
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The first is that we start producing meat without using animals to do it. The idea of lab grown, or <i>in vitro</i> meat has long been the stuff of science fiction but recently hit the headlines after the first <i>in vitro</i> beefburger was cooked and eaten at a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23529841">news conference in London</a>. Unfortunately for me, as the burger cost around $250,000 to produce, it's a little out of my price range to sample and so we come to the second alternative: insects.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTH2vXl0qdCBik_bZzxEAC8jxFdDk4UtdZsm1TUzeZEJQjpB5D3h7GWtzmkxzrkwQrwSoHiRwb5dGxYIGqssYDKDiJAtImi94fLtXeEpAf-86h0gmEqMNBH14m2WOtbuxWygWcX9xjMGv/s1600/2013-08-28+19.03.12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTH2vXl0qdCBik_bZzxEAC8jxFdDk4UtdZsm1TUzeZEJQjpB5D3h7GWtzmkxzrkwQrwSoHiRwb5dGxYIGqssYDKDiJAtImi94fLtXeEpAf-86h0gmEqMNBH14m2WOtbuxWygWcX9xjMGv/s640/2013-08-28+19.03.12.jpg" /></a></div>
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Insects, bugs and other such creatures are a common protein source for all kind of people around the world. While the idea of chowing down on a daddy longlegs is somewhat off-putting for us in the West, people in other cultures enjoy a whole range of edible treats we are potentially missing out on. Some people think that if Westerners could be persuaded that eating at least some insect-based foods is ok, then we may not need to produce quite so much conventional meat in future.
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For these reasons, and the fact that I'll generally eat anything, I've been wanting to eat some insects for a while. Feeding the world though has to be cheap, and looking online at where I could buy edible bugs produced what I would consider unreasonably <a href="http://www.edibleunique.bigcartel.com/product/flying-grasshoppers">expensive results</a>. This is where the Science Museum comes in.
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At this month's <i>The Science of Food and Drink</i>-themed <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/lates2">Science Museum Lates</a> event, one of the exhibitors was the Rentokil Pestaurant, Rentokil's very own <a href="http://www.rentokil.co.uk/news/2013-news/rentokils-pop-up-pestaurant.html">world's first pop-up insect restaurant</a>, inviting you to come and try the future of food. After a tip-off from a friend, I needed no further persuasion.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf219pmmXe2-Gq8V_RiD5GBocbPKIpaSPy0OBZOERViNIPJbeIkBEJtJNRfmJnfcTMqGNSyfXWcvVfEmi87LXzl060oZCTOCW7jynlQfOwu-zpUEdqGCCkUjE7ULb_A5aT4YPXn3nFdFuc/s1600/2013-08-28+19.04.35.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf219pmmXe2-Gq8V_RiD5GBocbPKIpaSPy0OBZOERViNIPJbeIkBEJtJNRfmJnfcTMqGNSyfXWcvVfEmi87LXzl060oZCTOCW7jynlQfOwu-zpUEdqGCCkUjE7ULb_A5aT4YPXn3nFdFuc/s640/2013-08-28+19.04.35.jpg" /></a></div>
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Now, before anyone gets too horrified, it's worth pointing out that Rentokil were not serving up insects that they had caught / killed themselves but instead served a range of more exotic imported bugs, farmed and fit for human consumption (well, so they said). But just because you can eat them, doesn't mean you'd want to - so how were they? Let's find out.
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First on the list, while queuing up for the main courses, we tried some barbecue-flavour Bamboo Worms, deep-fried and covered completely in barbecue powder. While they were quite passable, they had very little texture and mainly just tasted of the barbecue flavouring, so it was difficult to start judging. If you're squeamish, you might want to skip to the end now, as it doesn't get much better from here.
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Next up, a mixed bowl of assorted salt-and-pepper grubs (as you can see in the second picture above). I ate two of these but only because I didn't believe myself first time round. You know when you get that bit in a bag of crisps that's like a small bit of the potato has somehow avoided the whole crisp-making process but still made it into the bag, a kind of dark brown, lumpy, mud-flavoured blob? Well, that's what these tasted like, at best. (Or you can refer to my friend's <a href="https://twitter.com/Savageless/statuses/3734639728315760642">slightly less measured</a> opinion).
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The next few samples, like the roasted, salted Queen Weaver Ants, were all somewhere in a middle ground between the first two tasters, but that soon changed when presented with the grasshoppers.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Opf1ioooveJ9anMcKFQWhHDhKNubsqTRZxzQ_Vyfv6e0osiG6xnq1UxVQC6SkPWbUXKx0GD__uQsVJ_dAMcSxwqD1E4xKU3A_MRM3UchCdR0ZMMWSqrCum3cEKm2c4hLGR_mGXLa7INM/s1600/2013-08-28+19.06.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Opf1ioooveJ9anMcKFQWhHDhKNubsqTRZxzQ_Vyfv6e0osiG6xnq1UxVQC6SkPWbUXKx0GD__uQsVJ_dAMcSxwqD1E4xKU3A_MRM3UchCdR0ZMMWSqrCum3cEKm2c4hLGR_mGXLa7INM/s640/2013-08-28+19.06.04.jpg" /></a></div>
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Going into this, I'd been fairly optimistic that being someone who's historically not squeamish in the slightest about eating any kind of food - and I've eaten some reasonably unusual things - that eating insects just wouldn't phase me. Turns out, I was wrong.
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Each of the larger grasshoppers on the plate was about the size of my little finger. Picking one up and inspecting it, it looked exactly like a grasshopper. It wasn't coated in barbecue crumbs or an unintelligible shape, it was a two and a half inches long and definitely a grasshopper. Getting my brain to accept that I was going to eat this just did not want to happen. You never get anywhere without taking a few risks though, so after holding it stupidly for fifteen seconds or so, I took the plunge.
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It would seem that for what grasshoppers lack in flavour, they more than make up for in texture. The grasshopper has virtually no flavour at all, but was like eating, well I don't know really, maybe very thin glass. The sensation of its crispy exoskeleton shattering as I chewed is not something I particularly want to repeat. Overall, I would rank the experience as horrid but worse was yet to come.
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Being a sucker for punishment, and the vague notion that I "had" to do this "for science", or something equally silly, meant that I continued through the bug buffet and put the grasshopper to the back of my mind with a few chocolate-covered somethings. I can't remember what they were, but they weren't grasshoppers, which was good. However, upon reaching the end of the table something else caught my eye and it was with a grim realisation that I decided I was about to eat a scorpion.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFmwlY-kx1cfFrRvoZ9n5oLsPulbv-3XWXEPoJ8il5PdLSjEm1Tgiit75AC3XO5iAtGkYjxlu8v2KyYlbZQG_j8zux9DaeMGdI9CaAmd0kTIuPIRAhJN0ykmNQtj2bKoMSzGFDThUxffPX/s1600/2013-08-28+19.07.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFmwlY-kx1cfFrRvoZ9n5oLsPulbv-3XWXEPoJ8il5PdLSjEm1Tgiit75AC3XO5iAtGkYjxlu8v2KyYlbZQG_j8zux9DaeMGdI9CaAmd0kTIuPIRAhJN0ykmNQtj2bKoMSzGFDThUxffPX/s640/2013-08-28+19.07.21.jpg" /></a></div>
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There weren't many Chinese Armour Tail Scorpions from which to choose and, from the picture above, I picked the middle one. Holding it tentatively between my fingers, I looked at my friend, who had given up even before the grasshopper. He shook his head slightly in almost resigned understanding of what was about to happen. I looked at the girl next to me who was staring at me like I was out of my mind. It was decided, and in it went.
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I say "in it went", but a scorpion is quite big, so I actually had to chew half of it off and eat that, which is easier said than done. It was a bit like eating a crabshell, but without the crab. Once I'd separated a mouthful, chewing it was near impossible and probably not advisable to anyone who doesn't drink enough milk. It crunched. It stabbed my gums. It tasted like bark, or mud, or something else distinctly inedible. It was awful. <i>Why am I doing this to myself?</i>, I thought. But I still ate it. It took a while before it was even possible to swallow and when I could, it was only as a way to get rid of it. I returned the uneaten half to the table and stepped away from this dreaded feast.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBbCB9ySaRfU2lR5Wubx6RHTpfVP9uhpmumaFcl8CfGn882ldSTzIzFzoYt1-Vg58WaIARTX4MB4zARBeaTap83LiREzCYVkTh4c-QwlgLcAsTDcTV_KF-KKyjfWu-vCoYrMTODUHmAG0/s1600/2013-08-28+19.50.10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBbCB9ySaRfU2lR5Wubx6RHTpfVP9uhpmumaFcl8CfGn882ldSTzIzFzoYt1-Vg58WaIARTX4MB4zARBeaTap83LiREzCYVkTh4c-QwlgLcAsTDcTV_KF-KKyjfWu-vCoYrMTODUHmAG0/s640/2013-08-28+19.50.10.jpg" /></a></div>
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And so this brings us to the end of the tale of how I ended up eating a scorpion at the Science Museum. The scorpion was immediately followed by an emergency pint of cider and packet of crisps but the memory of it, and the grasshopper, still lingers.
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So what did I learn? Is eating insects going to be our future? Well, based on my experience, I would say there's a lot of work to be done before that's likely to happen. I went into this about as open-minded as it's possible to be and have come out of it about as put-off as possible. Perhaps I shouldn't dismiss insects as food based only on my <i>Pestaurant</i> experience - it's not like Rentokil are generally known for their gourmet cuisine and maybe it's a bit like refusing to eat steak because you ate a bad hot dog once. Plenty of other people seemed much happier with their dinner than I did, so perhaps it's just me. Maybe I should wait until I'm somewhere that serves insects as part of their day-to-day life and see what the difference is.
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In the meantime, I think I'll start saving for that <i>in vitro</i> burger.
Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-38108951561579924062013-08-23T14:24:00.003+01:002013-08-23T14:24:42.323+01:00I Get Pi (With A Little Help From My Friends)<p>
One of the advantages of being (hopefully temporarily) unemployed is that you get a bit of time on your hands. Rather than spend my spare moments finding out what all the Breaking Bad-<a href="http://chaos-central.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fuck-it-making-meth.jpg">related fuss</a> was about or recreating <a href="http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/optimus-prime-1384214/">nostalgic childhood memories</a> in Minecraft, I thought I'd try and do something a bit more productive.
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As if almost by magic*, the kind folks at my old work saw fit to furnish me with one of these as a parting gift:
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<p><i>(*I may have given some hints.)</i></p>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlx3gMxLTYoXjtDMKAmGUxedi0f-2k35OednpROqfOrMw6txGmfvk1xJOWy5AjDfvLIxrfHwYwdfMNqSK5bwlh-g9LmwbZUMIR9l1-JLVeZCRF7HZBNpm1SvqTYyvAjVc3DpYmv7BA6Ebi/s1600/2013-08-22+13.47.46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlx3gMxLTYoXjtDMKAmGUxedi0f-2k35OednpROqfOrMw6txGmfvk1xJOWy5AjDfvLIxrfHwYwdfMNqSK5bwlh-g9LmwbZUMIR9l1-JLVeZCRF7HZBNpm1SvqTYyvAjVc3DpYmv7BA6Ebi/s640/2013-08-22+13.47.46.jpg" /></a></div>
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So, for the uninitiated, that's a Raspberry Pi, a kind of bare-bones, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009SMWSQA">supercheap</a> computer with which you can do all kinds of cool things.</p>
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As you can see though, it doesn't look much like your conventional laptop but all the basics in terms of the hardware are there, you're just missing the peripherals - screen, keyboard, hard drive etc. These can all be plugged in to the various slots around the unit: there's two USBs for mouse/keyboard/WiFi, an HDMI connector so you can plug it in to your TV and a slot underneath for SD cards (like you have in your camera), which serve as mini-hard drives. Once you've got all those plugged in, you're good to go.
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While the use of the Raspberry Pi was <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/about">originally intended</a> as a cheap, risk free computer on which kids could learn to code, already in its relatively short lifespan it's been turned into all sorts of awesome things: a mini-Street Fighter 2 <a href="http://youtu.be/xLTvTxidc-s">arcade machine</a>, a <a href="http://www.ctn-dev.org/index.php?page=phoenix">quadcopter drone</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/aKQFsiDUH4A">cool music synths</a> and even <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1620">sent into space</a>.</p>
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I think perhaps my ambitions for the Raspberry Pi lie a little closer to home though, so I'm going to start off trying to work out how to turn it into a <a href="http://xbmc.org/about/">home media centre</a>, plugged into the TV, streaming music in from the internet and my other computers over the WiFi. Well, that's the plan anyway.
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And if I get bored, who knows what geeky delights this might offer up:
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHcfegK9Nb-ObJ9btmzdPysI8ZmH6fePbUBxf1p7nCJzGA1S0mVFYbfqc0myXB6XmZMk4o4nTMFuiqvN-B9S0TcYxjCTEeb52SCgbCQisXrUouUJdfVrvHUBFUfD8jEKVGMDIxBUtikc9L/s1600/2013-08-23+14.03.13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHcfegK9Nb-ObJ9btmzdPysI8ZmH6fePbUBxf1p7nCJzGA1S0mVFYbfqc0myXB6XmZMk4o4nTMFuiqvN-B9S0TcYxjCTEeb52SCgbCQisXrUouUJdfVrvHUBFUfD8jEKVGMDIxBUtikc9L/s640/2013-08-23+14.03.13.jpg" /></a></div>
Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-27320931159808502082013-08-11T12:38:00.000+01:002013-08-11T12:38:01.355+01:00Fire and FortuneThe product of a rainy Friday afternoon - my cover of Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker's song, <i>Fire and Fortune</i>.
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F104854785" width="100%"></iframe>
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If you haven't heard the original, it comes highly recommended. <a href="http://josienneclarke.co.uk/">Josie and Ben</a> are good friends of mine, winners of last year's <a href="http://www.festivalsforall.com/article/rising-stars-josienne-clarke-and-ben-walker-win-bristol-folk-festivals-isambard-national-music-award">Isambard Folk Award</a> and recently graced <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01dd3qx">Dermot O'Leary's show</a> while at the Cambridge Folk Festival.
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<i>Fire and Fortune</i> is the lead track from their new album of the same name, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CN2MMH2/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_kDPbsb0XSREN0">out now</a> on Navigator Records. Hopefully, they are equally impressed and horrified by what I've done with their music. Just my way of saying "well done", guys!
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JfXwQEcW4Aw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-25212087765788243622013-08-09T12:57:00.000+01:002013-08-09T12:57:01.852+01:00Printing Me, Printing Guns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In preparation for their October exhibition "<i>3D: Printing the Future</i>", this week the Science Museum were offering the opportunity to come and <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/events/demonstrations_and_experiments/antenna_live_scanning_in_3d.aspx" target="_blank">get yourself 3D scanned</a> by the guys from <a href="https://twitter.com/DNAInnovation" target="_blank">Digital Native Academy</a>, so they could use your printed figurine in their upcoming displays.</div>
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Being a man of some leisure at the moment, it sounded pretty cool, so I paid them a visit. Hopefully, I should be getting a copy of my very own CAD file (or whatever format) of me too, so I'll be able to get a copy of myself printed! </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's amazing what you can do with an X-Box Kinect, lights, a big beast of a computer and custom made turntable.</td></tr>
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Here's the results:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They wanted us to strike a pose, so I went for "Why, God, Why?!". Kind of like that bit from the end of Platoon.</td></tr>
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Also at the Science Museum, they've got a copy of the "<i>Liberator</i>" 3D printed gun, famously created by Defense Distributed. If you haven't seen the ridiculous promo video for the Liberator on their website, you should definitely <a href="http://defdist.org/" target="_blank">check it out</a>. The only non-printed part is the metal firing pin. </div>
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Anyway, this particular model was apparently downloaded and printed by a Finnish journalist, was fired under supervision and, as you can see, didn't survive the first shot. </div>
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3D printed guns sounds scary but at present actually creating your own copy of the Liberator isn't as easy as the media tends to make out - today's home printers just aren't up to the task yet so you'd either have to convince a company with industrial printers to make one for you, or buy your own industrial printer, which of course is far more expensive that just buying an actual gun.<br />
<br />
That said, technology isn't a stationary thing, so 3D printed guns may soon become a everyday possibility, but they're not the only potential bad thing technologies like this may enable. There's a good article <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/13/3d-printed-guns" target="_blank">here</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/doctorow" target="_blank">Cory Doctorow</a> talking about some of the issues in regulation.<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/13/3d-printed-guns" target="_blank"><br /></a></div>
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For me though, it's also worth remembering that Defense Distributed chose to release the Liberator at the height of the recent US debate on gun controls, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. My view is that in doing so, they wanted to influence the debate to say "you want to take away our guns, but look, we can make our own anyway" and hence support the continuation of America's current rather lax gun controls. As their website says, their sole aim is to "<i>defend the civil liberty of popular access to arms as guaranteed by
the United States Constitution and affirmed by the United States Supreme
Court</i>".<br />
<br />
Lastly, I was amused to see that one of the objects someone at the Science Museum had scanned was one of Games Workshops' Space Marine figures. I'm not sure Games Workshop <a href="http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/3-d-printing-patent-law/" target="_blank">would have approved</a>...<br />
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Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-19512056932777356512012-08-25T20:54:00.000+01:002012-08-25T22:41:15.155+01:00Hadda Be Streamed Over SpotifyMy European soverign-debt crisis reimagining of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg">Alan Ginsberg's</a> epic and visceral poem <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuBDhpQ4VM"><i>Hadda Be Playin' On The Jukebox</i></a>. Enjoy!
</br></br>
<b>Hadda Be Streamed Over Spotify</b>
</br></br>
It had to be promulgated by the Daily Mail</br>
It had to be recorded on Sky+</br>
It had to be derided on Top Gear</br>
It had to be played on your smartphone</br>
Goldman Sachs & the IMF are in Cahoots</br>
</br>
It had to be written in text speak</br>
It had to be rerecorded for a US audience </br>
Obama stretched & smiled & got double-crossed by House and Senate Republicans</br>
Rich bankers with zero accountability</br>
Money launderers in ECB working with money launderers from UK working with Wall Street syndicates Downtown New York</br>
</br>
It had to be searchable on Google </br>
It had to be endorsed by the record company</br>
It had to be written in one hundred and forty characters or less</br>
It had to be formatted for mobile</br>
It had to be kettled in the park where students were protesting</br>
It had to be read by politicians to TV cameras in working class areas</br>
It had to be available as an app</br>
It had to work as an emoticon</br>
It had to raise the fees for a University education</br>
It had to be written in blog posts, unattributed</br>
It had to be on the frontpage of the Huffington Post</br>
It had to be watched on Fox News</br>
It had to be shouted out loud on in-store radio</br>
It had to be uploaded to YouTube</br>
It had to be iPhone ringing, Reality stars stop dead in the middle of a scene in New Jersey</br>
It had to be novelist philosopher Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan Chairman of the Federal Reserve meeting in East 36th Street N.Y. together Saturdays since the 50’s reported posthumously VICE magazine</br>
</br>
It had to be the IMF & Goldman Sachs together</br>
Started War on Greek insolvency & Spanish housing debt crisis headlines</br>
It had to be Credit Ratings Agencies & the IMF</br>
Sold all that austerity in Europe</br>
It had to be ECB & Conservative Politicians working together in Cahoots "against the Socialists"</br>
Kept Silvio Berlusconi out of Jail economising Sicily Mediterranean drug trade</br>
It had to be Goldman goons and Lucas Papademos’ concealing spiralling national debt credit default swap index</br>
It had to be ringing on Cayman Island Cash registers</br>
World-wide laundry for off-shore Corporate money</br>
It had to be IMF & Goldman Sachs & ECB together</br>
Bigger than Europe, bigger than Law.</br>
It had to be a stamped boot full of profit</br>
It had to be secrets and lies a solid mass of greed</br>
It had to be a cold black heart, a glint in the corner of an eye</br>
It had to be in Draghi’s brain</br>
It had to be in Monti's mouth</br>
It had to be sanctioned by America </br>
Wall Street "conservatism" the IMF Goldman Sachs off-shore money ECB Credit Ratings Agencies & Multinational Corporations</br>
One big set of Corporate gangs working together in Cahoots</br>
Hedge Fund banksters everywhere unmoderated, on the make</br>
Greed drunk </br>
Ruthless </br>
Filthy Rich</br>
</br>
On top of a Slag heap of countries, Economic Cancer, financial smog, garbage cities, grandas' pensions, Fathers' resentments</br>
It had to be the One Percent wanted money and power and they got everything</br>
Wanted redefined status quo, wanted Ireland, wanted austerity </br>
Wanted Spanish unemployment</br>
Wanted technocracies in Greece and Italy</br>
</br>
It had to be IMF & Goldman Sachs & the ECB</br>
Multinational Capitalists' privatised public services, "Private security Agencies for the One Percent"</br>
And their Funds, Debts and Futures Commodities Trading.</br>
It had to be Capitalism the Vortex of this debt, provoke competition man to man, libraries closed in poor areas, London burns & rumbles, Hedge Funds, austerity cuts across oceans, impoverishing Mediterraneans, bail out the debt then Wall Street Traders pillage all over again</br>
Greece's ancient democracy bumped off with IMF promises & praises, a warning to European governments</br>
</br>
Politicians embraced for decades</br>
The Federal Reserve & ECB keep each other’s secrets</br>
Goldman Sachs & Standard and Poor’s never hit their own </br>
Wall Street & IMF one mind-brute force</br>
World-wide, and full of money</br>
</br>
It had to be greed, It had to be unaccountable, It had to be endorsed at the highest levels</br>
It had to impoverish in Greece 9,000,000</br>
It had to impoverish in Spain 47,000,000</br>
It had to impoverish in Portugal</br>
It had to impoverish in Italy</br>
It had to impoverish in Ireland</br>
</br>
And It had to impoverish in the United Kingdom</br>
Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-52402365178234649802012-07-07T18:32:00.000+01:002012-07-07T18:32:42.824+01:00Looking Forward Uncertainly<div>So, I thought it was about time I explained why I called my blog <i>Looking Forward Uncertainly</i>. </br></br>
Before I can do that, you probably need to know (if you don't already) that I'm a musician and have been in a band called <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Capulets">Capulets</a> for, well, quite some time. We've been a bit off and on over the last couple of years as after our last drummer moved to Scotland, my main collaborator in the band, Pete, rather unreasonably decided to both do an MA and get married. Despite these testing circumstances, Pete and I have managed to keep things ticking over in the background on days when he wasn't reading, psychoanalysing or deciding what kind of flowers went with bridesmaid's dresses. Hopefully we're now starting to get things back on track, so watch this space, so to speak.</br></br>
So, why <i>Looking Forward Uncertainly</i>? Well, it's the title of a song of mine, written back in 2007, on a melancholic train journey heading Northward out of London and a late night a week or so later.
</br></br>
The title itself actually came from an article I read in some free literary magazine I picked up in Soho (remember those?), in which it was printed in massive blue letters across a whole page for no apparent reason. I liked it so much I pinned it to my fridge and kept trying to find a use for it in things I was writing. In the end, it just seemed to fit perfectly with this song, so I stole it wholesale for the title.
</br></br>
As an expression though, "looking forward uncertainly" seems to encapsulate something of what I perceive as the current mood and of the both the hope and the doubt that we feel when trying imagine or understand how the future might pan out. When I started this blog, those are the ideas I wanted to explore, so it seemed like a good opportunity to steal the expression all over again.
</br></br>
The song <i>Looking Forward Uncertainly</I>, however, addresses a topic a little closer to my heart and while I don't want to give too much away (the meaning is in the eye of the beholder, after all), I will say that it's a bit of rare one for me, in that I don't often write about myself and, well, like I said, I was a bit melancholic at the time...
</br></br>
I've added the lyrics in down below and you can listen to the original version of the song via the soundcloud link at the bottom (recorded in one take at about 3am on the night I wrote it). Enjoy!
</br></br>
<b>Looking Forward Uncertainly</b></br></br>
<i>
Tonight I dream of the radio telescopes</br>
Giving me hope</br>
I imagine a Universe</br>
A coil, spiralling upwards</br></br>
I could dream of the future, but I can't find something useful</br>
Leonard Cohen sang Hallelujah, but it don't mean anything to you</br></br>
You're drifting away</br>
You're drifing through space</br></br>
Telescopes from this moment on</br>
And if I look in the same direction</br>
Then I can see what they can see</br>
The future mapped out in front of me</br></br>
I could dream of the future, but I can't find something useful</br>
Leonard Cohen sang Hallelujah, but it don't mean anything to you</br></br>
You're drifting away</br>
You're drifing through space</i></br></br>
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F51577856&show_artwork=true"></iframe></div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-13132111589583441722012-06-12T14:01:00.000+01:002012-06-12T14:01:07.123+01:00YesterdayThis is a blues riff in "B", watch me for the changes, and try and keep up, okay?
</br></br>
Yesterday
</br></br>
<i>
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,</br>
I’d never heard the word austerity,</br>
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
</br></br>
Suddenly, I'm not half to man I used to be,</br>
Recession’s shadow hanging over me.</br>
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
</br></br>
Why we have to grow, I don't know, economically,</br>
We did something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
</br></br>
Yesterday, debt was just a banker’s game to play,</br>
Europe’s leaders declared fait accompli,</br>
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
</br></br>
Why we have to grow, I don't know, economically,</br>
We did something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
</i>
</br></br></br>
Uh, I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-60755705978032039862012-05-13T19:14:00.001+01:002012-05-13T19:14:54.515+01:00A Trip To The Future (To Reflect On The Present)<div style="font-family: inherit;">
The other day I chanced upon a website that once I’d started reading, I found almost impossible to stop and lost several hours of my Saturday morning in the process.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/21stcentury.htm"><i>FutureTimeline.net</i></a> is exactly that, a timeline of the future, kicking off in the year 2000, taking a year by year trip through the 21st Century and then onwards into the far distant future. Rather than being a completely imagined journey, the site bases each prediction on at least one source and, with a little creative interpretation, extrapolates from there (although unfortunately in at least one instance, the source is the <i>Daily Mail</i> – but you have to take the rough with the smooth!).<br /><br />
<i>FutureTimeline’s</i> view of the future is in equal parts incredible, hopeful and terrifying. Being based on loose science fact, rather than entirely science fiction, theirs is not a future in which humanity is exonerated from its own responsibility, but for all the doom and gloom about the environmental impacts of our current way of life, there are equally as many optimistic predictions about our ability to manage these changes and, at least for some of us, to overcome them.<br /><br />
I won’t go into too much detail about the world that they predict (or the predictions that go way beyond our world) but the overall synopsis goes a little something like this: The early part of the 21st Century combines the technological advances made possible by the digital revolution, driving progress in all the major sciences, with the fading of what we could refer to as industrial times. Climate change and resource scarcity provoke conflicts across the globe, particularly in the Middle East and the ever warming Arctic. Throughout the 2030’s and 2040’s we start to break the back of renewable energy with fusion power finally becoming a reality and advances in computer sciences such as quantum computing bring about the dawn of artificial intelligences. This doesn’t help the ever worsening environmental situations in Africa and Asia, which cause food shortages, climate refugees and ever deepening political instability.<br /><br />
Somewhere in the 2050’s we not only land a man on Mars but start to plan our first settlements there, which many of the developed world’s citizens experience through neuroscience-enhanced virtual reality, which is rapidly changing people’s day to day lives. The 2060’s and 2070’s are ravaged by the effects of climate change but with a stable worldwide population and environmentally focused industry and energy generation, extinction rates start to peak. Advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and medical techniques lead to an increasingly blurred distinction between humans and machines and as the century draws to a close the average human will bear little resemblance to those of the end of the previous century (many of whom would still be alive).<br /><br />
The 22nd Century begins much like the last one ends, with environmental disaster and technological advancement completely transforming the planet. Whilst virtually all industry and energy is sustainable, the positive feedback loops triggered in the previous century feed ever greater ecological change. By this time, scientific advancement happens so rapidly that it would exceed the comprehension of 20th century minds and what we would call AI takes over as the predominant decision making force on the planet. Towards the end of the century, humanity has established itself across the local solar system and the environmental catastrophes on Earth finally start to abate. After this somewhat staggering journey, <i>FutureTimeline</i> understandably opts to let the predictions drift off into our science fiction future and provides only a loose narrative for what happens next. <br /><br />
The thing I loved about <i>FutureTimeline</i>, and the reason I’m recommending it, is that it seems to provide something that is missing from our early 21st Century consciousness. For most of us, our current view of the future tends to be relatively short term thinking, without too much concern given to that happening outside of the next few years. Even with the ever darkening cloud of environmental issues, which I think it would be fair to say that the majority of us feel extremely concerned about (and if you aren’t, then you’re in for a bit of a surprise), our thinking tends to be focused on the immediate or forthcoming effect, rather than that on the world of future generations. <i>FutureTimeline</i>, whilst being fun to read (although in a somewhat alarming way), is also a welcome and accessible change to that way of thinking, creating a story of things yet to come that leads us back to thinking about how today’s world might turn out. <br /><br />
When I say that that <i>FutureTimeline</i> provides something that’s missing, what most makes me think this is a rather fond memory of a book I owned as a child. The <i>Usborne Book of The Future</i> was perhaps my favourite book growing up and, much like <i>FutureTimeline</i>, provided a compelling narrative as to how the world might yet develop. As is almost always the case with any sort of predictions, while some of the <i>UBoTF’s</i> estimates weren’t too bad, I think it’s unlikely that the 2020 Olympics will be held on the Moon, space mirrors aren’t providing us night-time lighting and the prevalence of fully electric cars is about 30 years behind schedule - I’m sure many of <i>FutureTimeline’s</i> predictions will end up the same way. Also, amusingly with hindsight, <i>UBoTF</i> missed many of the things we would now take for granted (an obvious contender being no mention of the Internet) and many of its other ideas come across with almost twee Buck Rogers nostalgia, like the apparent desire for everyone to wear unitards! <br /><br />
To complain about the accuracy of the predictions would be to miss the whole point though. Obviously no-one really knows what the future will be like and any serious attempt at guessing can only be made with a hefty pinch of salt. The point of predicting the future is not to be correct but to inspire people to think about what could be done. Growing up, I dreamed of a future with robots and spaceships, solar energy and moonbases. Some of these things are now becoming a reality because others like myself imagined these kinds of futures and tried to think of ways to make them happen. To me, <i>FutureTimeline</i> drew me back into this almost nostalgic view of the future, of a world to come of both terrible and incredible events, and gave me just that little bit of inspiration to do something about it. <i>FutureTimeline</i> is a fun ride, a scary ride, and at the same time, a rather worthy one.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.futuretimeline.net/" target="_blank"
title="Future Timeline"><img src="http://www.futuretimeline.net/images/link-to-us/future-timeline-technology-234-60.jpg"
width="234" height="60" border="0"></a><BR>
<br />
<i>After a little digging, it seems you can download your own PDF copy of the Usborne Book of The Future <a href="http://life.enhasa.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The%20Usborne%20Book%20of%20the%20Future.pdf"><b>here</b></a>, which I heartily encourage you to do. It’s virtually impossible to find in print these days (well, for less than about £20) so should you ever chance upon a “real” copy, then snap it up (or at least let me know and I will).</i><br /><br />
</div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-20097876356901219892012-01-30T14:08:00.001+00:002012-01-30T14:33:38.085+00:00"It's not who you're sharing with, it's who you're sharing as"A few days ago, Ben Goldacre, science writer/doctor and <i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience">Bad Science</a></i> columnist for the Guardian, posted an article on his blog expressing his <a href="http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/spotify-seems-to-be-creepy-software-that-shar">concerns</a> about Spotify's relatively recent integration with Facebook, sharing the music you're listening to, as you listen to it, via your Facebook profile (and since I started writing this, it seems that fellow Guardian contributor Charlie Brooker has taken <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/sharing-obsession-revealing-every-detail">similar</a> umbrage). <br />
<br />
Goldacre's main point is that, rather than Spotify asking you what you'd like to share, it assumes a default position of sharing everything, all the time. Whilst you can turn these features off, he argues, to do so is unnecessarily complicated and once done, resets itself back to sharing again next time you log in. As he points out in his examples, there are certainly circumstances in which you may not want be sharing music, as your choices would tend to reflect your general mood (e.g. publicising the fact you just listened to Michael Bolton's <i>"When I'm Back On My Feet Again"</I> fourteen times because you just got unceremoniously dumped). His examples are useful, but it seems to me there are wider implications to be considered.<br />
<br />
Without reading through Spotify's End User Licensing Agrement in detail, I'm making an assumption, but I would have thought that the terms and conditions of the agreement allow you to consume music for personal use, which would therefore entitle you to broadcast Spotify's music (i.e. not through headphones) throughout your home. This would mean that people who were not you, such as your family or housemates, were essentially getting to listen to the music for free, much like they would if you were playing a CD (as you've done the purchasing). One would also assume that your family or housemates would be entitled to control the Spotify application (it would certainly be extremely hard to enforce the opposite) and so they are in effect accessing the music of their choice for free, again much the same as if they changed your CD to a different one. <br />
<br />
Now, considering the above, Spotify, unless told specifically otherwise, would now be posting someone else's musical preferences via <i>your</i> Facebook profile, arguably without either yours or their (direct) consent. There are possibly terms within Spotify's EULA covering this but from a practical position, this seems to be the case.<br />
<br />
This is clearly a problem, as, depending on who those users are - your children, for example - you probably wouldn't want this information being made publicly available to your Facebook friends (it's probably worth pointing out at this stage that your Facebook "friends" should be more accurately classified as "people you sort of know, including your friends and maybe colleagues"). Fundamentally, this is also breaking the underlying principles of the Spotify/Facebook integration, as you now have a "many to one" (users to profiles) relationship between the two systems. <br />
<br />
From Spotify's point of view, this isn't such a bad thing as, while it no doubt does sell on it's user analytics to third parties, having a greater and more diverse range of music posted to (advertised on) Facebook will only increase the chances it will draw in new paying users. For Facebook however, who are only interested in the statistical data to sell onwards, this is a big negative, as this impacts the accuracy of the data it holds on you and hence its commercial value. A useful way of thinking about Facebook's position was summarised rather eloquently (and now somewhat famously) by the MetaFilter user blue_beetle: <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-youre-the-product"><i>"if you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"</i></a>.<br />
<br />
To me, this kind of "enforced sharing" is inherently a bad thing for social networks, and for privacy in general, and yet is becoming continuously more prevalent as social networks become more dominant in our online lives (not to say this exclusively a problem of social networks, Google has already been doing this for years, but with your IP address rather than profile; social networks just further exposes the issue). <br />
<br />
As an example, when recently browsing Facebook, I saw that a friend had read an vaguely interesting article in the Independent, however when I tried to click through to the piece, Facebook demanded I allow the "Independent App" access to my profile first, presumably so it could repost the article under my name. This presented me with a problem - it's not that I thought the article contained anything I wouldn't want others to know I'd read - but why should I post an article to my profile that I only had a passing interest in, in such a manner as to direct others to its attention? Also, why would I want to give the Independent access to the entirety of my profile on the basis of a single article? To me this doesn't feel like sharing, this feels like monitoring.<br />
<br />
Consider the difference if, rather than sharing your browsing or purchasing habits of media lke music or news, if yuo were sharing your recent purchases at Amazon, Tesco or Boots. No doubt all of these companies would love for you to be able to advertise for them by posting your transactions automatically online but it's eeasy to see for each why you may not want to: Amazon, perhaps, as you'd be pulicising gifts for others before you got the chance to give them; Tesco because you live off a shameful diet of ready meals and gin; and with Boots I'm sure we can all imagine a number of purchases best left unmentioned. As enforced sharing encroaches further into social networks, perhaps we would all need to be careful as to what we purchase where and how, to prevent unnecessary publication of our activities?<br />
<br />
This, however, all comes down to a fundamental problem ingrained in the major social networks; that they all take a single view of you as a user, that all your social interactions are equally weighted and are intended for the same audience, i.e. everyone. This, of course, is not true and 4chan founder (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan">here's a SFW wikipedia link for the un-initiated</a>) Chris Poole sums it up as follows:<br />
<br />
<i>"Google and Facebook would have you believe that you're a mirror, but in fact, we're more like diamonds. The portrait of identity online is often painted in black and white, (that) who you are online is who you are offline. But human identity doesn't work like that online or offline. We present ourselves differently in different contexts, and that's key to our creativity and self-expression. <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4chans_chris_poole_facebook_google_are_doing_it_wr.php">It's not 'who you share with,' it's 'who you share as,'</a>. Identity is prismatic."</i><br />
<br />
This multi-faceted approach to online identity can only presently be expressed via the use of different social networks for different purposes. I personally have a Facebook account, a Twitter account and this blog and I tend to use them all for different purposes. This blog is a tool to express longer ideas that tend to be fairly serious and non-personal in nature; my Facebook account is the opposite, a personal feed of random thoughts (banal or otherwise), interactions with friends, invites to parties and so forth, largely not a place I'd feel the need to post up every interesting news article I read and the like; <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/LF_Uncertainly">my Twitter account</a>, which I link to this blog, tends to fit somewhere in the middle, intended to semi-serious but with a real-person approach, full of links to content I'd like others to see and fit for worldwide consumption. Of course, there tends to be a little bit of crossover now and then (I'll be posting this blog post everywhere for example) and I've no doubt that it's different for other people, this is just how it seemed to fit in best with me. I'm not picking my audience, I'm choosing how to express myself.<br />
<br />
Think about your other online interactions and how they vary - would you want pictures of yourself drunk with friends posted to your professional LinkedIn profile? Probably not. Some fiends of mine are long-time members of a local car forum - would they want everything they post there posted on their Facebook profile as well? Again, unlikely (and would you want to read it if it was?). Of course, the internet is also popular for another, FAR more private purpose - you almost certainly wouldn't want to auto-share your more <i>late-night</i> browsing history or your participation in more adult-themed forums. Our online selves, just like our real selves, have many faces and, increasingly, Facebook, Google+ and the other major social networks don't see it like this.<br />
<br />
Without the ability to share what you wish to share in the manner you'd prefer to share it, we are being increasingly forced into the network's view of a person - as a single piece of statisical data around which to sell analytics. In a way, this surprises me as one might think that understanding the way people actually <i>want</i> to share, rather than the way they are forced to would be far more valueable. This, however, likely comes at a cost they're not yet willing to invest in (and why would they? Business is booming!).<br />
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For at least the forseeable future, this flattened view of enforced sharing seems to be with us and I for one, where still possible, will be opting out.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-90592073525388564792011-10-25T21:53:00.005+01:002011-10-26T00:08:32.143+01:00An Uncertain End In Uncertain Times<div><p>Today, I found out that a rare Vietnamese sub-species of Javan rhino had been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15430787">announced as extinct</a>. According to reports, the International Rhino Foundation had been aware of just one individual rhinoceros living in the Cat Tien National Park, followed for over two years by genetic analysis of its dung, and that it had been found shot and killed, presumably by poachers, who had cut off its horn. The Vietnamese Javan rhino was no more.</p><p>Having never previously heard of the Vietnamese Javan rhino, I found it quite an odd sensation to learn of its demise and unnecessary plight. An animal that I never knew existed was now extinct and the first time I'd ever heard of it was to learn about it being crossed off God's big list. The tale is lonely, grim and resonating with loss; the last surviving rhino, unaware of both its importance and plight, living its life in the everyday Darwinian battle of the wild, shot dead by men for the price of its horn, for the sake of homeopathic medicine or lavish decoration.</p><p>I was surprised that, despite being completely ignorant of this rhino until that moment, I felt somehow complicit in its death, that in some way through either my actions or lack of them, I had played a minor part in this shameful story, that although I may not have pulled the trigger, I might have paid for the gun. For sure, I should feel a sense of loss in the passing of this beast, but should I feel as though I was an actor rather than the audience?</p><p>Now, clearly, if I am involved, my part is a small one. I am not, since I last checked, trafficking ivory, financing poachers or purchasing expensive homeopathy. As you would expect, my stance on all of the above rest on the right side of reason, respect and compassion, but is that enough? On the opposite side of the argument, I've never really spoken out or acted for the rights of animals. Apart from the occasional conversation in the pub or at a convenient zoo, my involvement with this sort of thing registers almost nil. I guess I sit somewhere in the middle on the animal rights scale, pro-medical but anti-cosmetic testing, pretty much anti the rest. Perhaps that's a bit more on the left, I don't know, I've never really thought about it.</p><p>So taking into account the above, is it my lack of participation in the story of the Javan rhino that grates me? I suppose the answer is a yes, but a frustrated one. </p><p>I think I find it frustrating not just because of the seeming impotence of anything that I could realistically have done to save the rhino, but mainly because I never had the chance. Ignorance isn't an excuse, don't get me wrong, but having only learned about the rhino's existence when learning about its extinction, I might have well been reading about the dodo, except it happened today, not in the late 1600's. This is something that every generation after ours will look back on with the same disbelief as we look back on those dodo hunters, drunk with greed, decimating the flightless bird, either unaware or uncaring as to the consequences. </p><p>I know I can't compare the lives of the Vietnamese poachers with my own and I think it would be wrong to expect to impose my set of values on them. They're obviously the rhino's executioners in this tale, but the far more powerful judge and jury are the system and societies in which we all live. At the risk of oversimplifying, if there was no demand, there'd be no poaching. </p><p>While it might be hard to see exactly where I fit in with the system that killed this particular rhino, it's not so hard to see it elsewhere. There are countless similar stories of endangered animals, exterminated in our drive to mine deeper, or cheaper, to trawl harder, or build further. I would guess that parts of the laptop I'm writing this on, or the phone I'll upload it with, come from such places, were assembled in others and flown here over at the cost of a whole lot more. If asked, would I trade one to bring the rhino back? Probably, who wouldn't? Sadly, that's not an option.</p><p>It would be nice to think that from now on that I'll try to be more aware of the criticality of some of the endangered animals around the world, after all they are endangered entirely by us, but it's naive to think that I'll become some kind of eco-warrior. Yesterday's sadness will become today's melancholy, will become tomorrow's memory. Hundreds more species will die at our hands and the vast majority of us will do nothing. We'll buy iPods with conflict rare Earth minerals in them, we'll <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-15436309">mine for gold in National Parks</a>, we'll still buy tuna sandwiches and we'll continue to pay for coal-powered electricity.</p><p>So what do we do? We live in a system where the real basic choices are taken away from us. Where the decisions that get made are too distant, bureaucratic, disempowering or alien for us to change them or know about them in the first place. We're babies in a pram, spoon fed and almost totally reliant. The Vietnamese Javan rhino is just another unfortunate victim on the way, part of this arching tale of our time, both insignificant and immensely important, and now gone.</p><p>I should tell you to be more concerned about where your products come from, to make sure they're responsibly sourced, not to buy animal tested cosmetics; you could also work and campaign to demand more transparency in business and in Government, write letters, get on Twitter, whatever you're good at or at least you could just vote with these things in mind come election time; maybe you're one of those people that can really make a difference. These are your decisions to make and hopefully you'll make them however best suits you. I would like to think that the passing of the Vietnamese Javan rhino at least made me stop and think. It made me write this. It made me want to tell you about it. One lonely rhino dies and the world moves on; let's hope too many more don't have to before it stops. Vietnamese Javan Rhino, I will miss you.</p></div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-23832031462964310112011-08-29T16:52:00.001+01:002011-08-29T16:54:28.163+01:00Globally Detrimental Problem<div><p>A perpetual motion machine is a something that, once started, will continue to move forever without any further input; think about a swing that once you've pulled the seat back a few feet and let it go, rather than it swinging forward back and forth in ever decreasing arcs, before slowly coming to a rest back in the centre, the swing continues to swing back and forward, always swinging to the same height on each side, never loosing an inch, never coming to a stop, never needing another push to get it back up to speed.</p>
<p>In energy production terms, perpetual motion machines are the Holy Grail. Imagine a power plant that once you chucked in your first shovelful of coal, the big pistons started moving and never needed a second shovelful - it would basically be free energy forever after, no more coal burning, no more pollution; it would change the world.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for us, despite our best efforts, perpetual motion machines don't exist. Coal power stations still need more coal, oil plants still need more oil and my laptop still needs recharging.</p>
<p>This concept of "always more" is synonymous with how we think about our economies. Economically speaking, in order for a country's economy to be doing well, it needs to be growing; if it stops growing, well, the power plant breaks down and we have a recession. This growth is measured mainly using a single metric, Gross Domestic Product or GDP, which is the sum total of everything of monetary value that gets made or sold in a country in a given time period. At its most basic level, GDP is simply the amount of money spent in total by everyone and everything in that country over time (you, me, businesses, government, net exports etc).  There are other things that can be used to measure an economy, such as employment and investment levels, but GDP is really the primary factor.</p>
<p>When GDP is growing well, life in that country is generally a bit nicer - employment is up, wages are up, investment is up and so on. When GDP growth is slow you see the inverse happening - high unemployment, lower wages, investment spending cuts. Any of this sounding familiar? Guess which is happening at the moment. Our power plant requires more coal, or economically speaking, we're going to run out of steam.</p>
<p>Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad, globally speaking, if it were only happening to us, but as we know from the relentless torrent of financial doom and gloom in the news, this is happening pretty much everywhere. The US recently shook the financial world with the unprecedented downgrade of its financial rating from triple A as it teetered on the edge of defaulting on its $14 trillion debts, brought on in part by the insane wrangling of the Tea Party and the Eurozone continues to shudder as Greece and other struggling Euro nations have their empty accounts refilled by the more affluent likes of France and Germany, who aren't keen on a third round of ever more expensive I.O.U.s.</p>
<p>This global, or certainly Western, slowdown of GDP growth has been a long time in the making. Since the concept of measuring GDP was invented back in the mid-Thirties, after the massive post-World War Two boom in Western economies started to even out, economy growth rates started to slowly tail off. Over the next decades, on average, growth continued to slow, leaving growth rates between 2000 and 2007 at just 2.7%. When the 2008 financial collapse came about, economies had very little room to play with and since then we,ve seen all manner of innovative ways of trying to prop up the rapidly deflating GDP balloon.</p>
<p>So where does this leave us? Well, not anywhere particularly enjoyable. There seems to be two main schools of thought about how to resolve an economic slump and kickstart an economy, either scale back public spending and cut regulation and tax in the private sector to encourage business growth, as favoured by those on the right, or to raise taxes and increase spending on the public sector side, reinvesting in the economy, which is more favoured by those on the left. Both aim at a net increase in GDP over a given period.</p>
<p>To me though, although I certainly favour one of the above options over the other, the whole concept seems to be based on the premise that successful economies always have to be growing, that no matter what the "real" circumstances of that country are, it must always be doing more; equilibrium is death.</p>
<p>The idea that economic growth is a mandatory factor to success, or even normality, seems somewhat unsustainable. As mentioned above, historically speaking we've seen a general downward trend over the last 50 years or so anyway, so the fact that we now have to force our economies to squeeze out the last tenth of a percentage of growth in order to stay afloat seems not just counter intuitive but completely unrealistic.</p>
<p>Economic expansion, as we know, comes not without its costs; whether industrial expansion and its effect on the environment or financial expansion and its effects upon our debts, these ideas seem to smack of a 20th century ethos, of an unreal  so-called "golden era" of naivety that humanity could do whatever it wanted and consequences be damned. The generations before ours have exploited everything they could, have pushed the resources of our planet to the limit, almost to collapse. They have constructed a system so engrained with the military-industrial complex, with every aspect and every level built around a need to always do more, to always build more, to mine deeper, to consume greater, to create a bigger profit. To continue down this path without any kind of miracle cure leads only to a bleak future for those generations after ours; a planet ruined by climate change and environmental destruction, draconian states serving the interests of corporations over citizens, a disparity of wealth distribution so great that it will make the have-nots of today look like landed gentry by comparison. This is all great stuff for a dystopian sci-fi novel, but it's no way to plan our future.</p>
<p>Perhaps as we move into the 21st century, it is time we re-assessed the yardstick by which we measure ourselves, after all, GDP's drive for more is only a construct of our devising. To me it seems, like a lot of the mindset of the 20th century, that the thinking is we have is that because they system is set up in a certain way now, that to change it in any way seems impossible. Since its inception in the mid-30's, GDP may have been the driving force behind the way the world has run but, as we all know, the  world is a changing place; old technologies make way for newer ones, governments come and go, nations rise and fall. </p>
<p>Rather than base our world on the coal power plant that always requires more fuel, perhaps we should look to the perpetual motion machine as our inspiration, to the idea that once something has settled into something of an equilibrium, that it requires no further pushing to maintain speed, that perhaps the focus should be on the quality of the parts, rather than how many we can make. Maybe we should allow the more settled Western economies to reach that point of equilibrium, the seemingly inevitable point when growth simply stops and a country reaches what we could call its  "potential". </p>
<p>One such example of this is the tiny nation of Bhutan, which is the first nation to base its success on not GDP, but what it calls "Gross National Happiness". GNH attempts to define the success of a nation by determining the quality of life and social progress for its citizens, rather than the sum total of the country's financial worth. While you might initially think this may seem unquantifiable, GNH is actually based around many economic factors such as sustainable development and good governance; as we know from GDP, happy people tend to come from economically successful places, they have jobs, they have education, they have rights. GHN takes into account that the nation of Bhutan, with its 750,000 inhabitants, has a finite amount of resources and therefore once it has reached a moderate economic level, its focus became not that of relentless expansion but more internally focused on of well-being; that's not to say that GNH prevents growth, as increased happiness, as we said, has massive related economic impact, but that growth no longer becomes the only measure of success.</p>
<p>That's not to suggest that GNH is the final answer to the GDP problem, there are several other main contenders out there for measuring economics, for instance the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) measures economic factors of sustainability and welfare of the nation in a similar way to GNH but retains several of the growth-based metrics of GDP at the same time. One of the main drawbacks of both GNH and GPI is their susceptibility to political influence (to measure happiness, you must first define what happiness is) but one would perhaps naively hope that at a global level that a general definition could be found.</p>
<p>It's my view that over the first half of this century, the world will change a great deal. Perhaps by refocusing the way we measure our success at a global level, we can ensure that some of that change will be for the better. Perhaps the first perpetual motion machine should be not one that produces energy and powers our homes, but one that powers our thinking, that drives our achievements, one that provides a sustainable future for the generations after ours.<br></p>
<p><i>Hello, well done if you made it this far, much appreciated! As I've put this post together using my phone, there are no links included in the above text; I assure you there are some, I've not just made it all up! I'll put them in when I'm next near an actual computer. I hear there's this great website called Google which is full of links to useful information, so you should try that in the mean time. Until then, yours, always looking forward (uncertainly), Luke.</i></p>
<p><i>ps. If you wanted to retweet / share this post while you're at it, that'd be most appreciated too...</i></p>
</div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-18048396988039158422011-08-04T18:19:00.001+01:002011-08-05T10:56:26.650+01:00Multiversey Star ParksYesterday, the BBC science news website ran a story about how the a study of the cosmic microwave background, which is basically the very faint echo of the Big Bang that reverberates around through space, has added significant weight to the theory that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14372387">our universe is one of many others</a> and exists in a kind of "multiverse".<br />
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Up until now, the multiverse theory has been just a theory, albeit one that is popular in modern physics, but as you can imagine, is pretty hard to test for - mainly because it was generally thought that in order to find out if there was anything outside our universe, we'd have to somehow be able to actually see outside it. As we already know, we can't even see across to the other side of the Universe, as light from there would not yet have had time to travel all the way to us (which, considering the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, means that that is an unbelievably large distance) and that the other side of our universe is accelerating away in the opposite direction doesn't help much either. So, not knowing where the edge of our universe is is one problem, but even if we knew that, how you get beyond there is anyone's guess and probably impossible, so there's not really much chance we're going to see what's outside and if there's other universes just hanging around out there, putting out their own universey vibe.<br />
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The general idea behind the multiverse theory is that other universes exist in their own bubbles of space and time, just like ours, and as these universes have popped in and out of existence, if they're nearby, they occasionally bump into ours. It's these collisions, and the patterns they may leave in the cosmic microwave background, that may enable us to test whether these other universes exist or not.<br />
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The current tests suggest that there may indeed be these patterns in the CMB but more data is needed before any more solid conclusions can be drawn. Next in line to run some tests is the cutting-edge Planck space telescope, which can measure the CMB in far greater detail, but results won't be available until 2013 so we're going to have to wait 'til then to find out more (well, I guess we've waited this long, so what's another 18 months...).<br />
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So far, so good. I think we're all relatively alright with the idea of other universes as a general concept, it's just extrapolating the scale up another level - our planet near other planets, our solar systems near other solar systems, our galaxy near other galaxies - why not more universes? It does tend to make you think "then what?" or "so what are those universes in?", but it seems that those might be the wrong kind of questions.<br />
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Quite reasonably, we tend to think that our universe is a big place, full of things, all bundled in there in a nice 3D kind of way. It turns out that this may be completely wrong; our universe may in fact be a hologram.<br />
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Now, unlike with multiverses, this is not quite as easy to explain so I'll skip over <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128221.300-existence-am-i-a-hologram.html">most of the detail</a> and try and get the main points. <br />
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If you imagine a plain white ball and onto that ball you cleverly projected an image of a man onto it so that it looked like the man was inside the ball. Next, when you rotate the ball, the projection also makes it look like the man is rotating at the same rate so, no matter how you move the ball, it always looks like there's a man inside it, even though you know there isn't. If you did this well enough, it would be impossible to tell whether you were really looking at a man in a ball or a projection of a man in a ball. By using the projection of the man, we have essentially encoded the surface of the ball with all of the information that our eyes need to be convinced they're actually seeing a man in the ball, even though they're not. <br />
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This is a bit like how the hologram theory suggests the Universe might work, that we are the man in the ball. From our perspective, inside the ball, you'd think we wouldn't be able to tell whether we were really in the ball or just a projection on the outside - we're just the man in the ball - but it may be emerging that we've found out a way to actually test this without having to step outside the ball (or Universe, which as we said before was probably impossible). <br />
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The problem with the man in a ball analogy is that it would actually be impossible to make the projection absolutely perfect, that the surface of the ball couldn't quite contain enough information on its 2D surface to render the 3D man perfectly. For the Universe, the same should be true, that if we are a projection on the outside of the Universe, we should be able to tell if we can find any points at which the 3D universe isn't perfectly rendered.<br />
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Now, we know that Spacetime, the thing that makes up our physical universe, is grainy, a bit like pixels on a screen - while the picture looks fine and mulitcoloured mostly, if you got really close you could see the individual pixels which would all be one colour each. By undertanding the Spacetime is made up of these small pixels, we know that these must be the smallest things can get, as they're the most basic building blocks of our physical universe.<br />
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The problem is that in an experiment in Germany in 2008, a super-sensitive motion detector, looking at gravitational waves, picked up measurements that were actually smaller than it should be possible to actually detect. These measurements were a bit of a fluke, so now require their own dedicated tests to confirm, but by suggesting that there's something smaller than the building blocks of Spacetime, this adds weight to the theory that we're the projected version of the man in the ball, rather than a real one. If we're the projected version, then we're not really inside the ball at all, we're information about the man, projected onto the 2D surface on the outside.<br />
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A bit lost? Fair enough, I don't really get it either. This is head melting stuff; that we're a 2D projection of ourselves (as well as everything else) on the surface of the Universe, somewhere about 42 billion light years <i>over there</i>, is outstandingly high-concept stuff. For the most part, for us, it wouldn't matter either way if were "real" or a hologram, as we've seemed to get on mostly fine so far. <br />
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I'm not that convinced that hologram theory will hold up to much in the end; to me it seems that perhaps our understanding of the facts we think we know are more likely to be incorrect than the more esoteric hologram suggestion. This all heads merrily off down Stephen Hawking heavy physics <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory">string theory</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory_%28simplified_explanation%29">M-theory</a> routes so we're all pretty out of our depths from here on in.<br />
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In conclusion: Space is mental. The end.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-37765867803899500382011-07-17T18:11:00.003+01:002011-07-17T18:28:38.534+01:00All The News In The World<div><p>I've been trying to write this post now for nearly two weeks and, frankly, it's been impossible.</p><p>As anyone who's not been hiding down a hole recently will know, Britain is currently going through some rather dramatic revelations regarding, largely, illegal phone hacking undertaken by our then best selling Sunday tabloid "newspaper" <i>The News of the World</i>. This has, at the time of writing, resulted in the shock closure of said 'paper, the arrest of ex-editor and ex-Head of Communications for the Conservative Party, Andy Coulson, the resignation of the NotW's ex-editor and parent company News International's CEO, Rebekah Brooks, FBI investigations into State-side phone hacking, huge payoffs signed off by Murdoch junior, the complete replacement of the Press Complaints Commission and two judge-led inquiries, one into the general hacking and police payments scandal and another into the culture and ethics of the British media.<i>*Phew*</i></p><p>In fact, it turns out that even just what I've written there is now already out of date. I just Googled "phone hacking arrests" and it turns out Rebekah Brooks has now been arrested too. 53 minutes ago and counting. Basically, no matter how fast I type, I have to bear in mind that this is already a historical document. If you're reading this on Monday, you might as well be reading the Dead Sea Scrolls. </p><p>With such dramatic news conditions taking place, in which the expression "breaking news" has started to lose all meaning - red hot stories have about 30 minutes until they're reduced to room temperature by the next slab of sizzling revelations - it leaves the more casual opiner (i.e. those of us not doing this for a living) woefully behind the curve to get digital pen onto virtual paper before the world has moved on. In the hour or so that I get of a lunchtime at work, I usually try and pull together useful links and quotes and such for the next post; this week, most of my notes were irrelevant by home time.</p><p>It's not just me though, anyone who reads a daily newspaper must be feeling the same. I'd often catch the headlines of <i>The Metro</i> on the way in to work, only to find that by the time I'd had a look at the BBC website, <i>The Metro</i> was already yesterday's news. Flicking through my mate's daily copy of <i>The Guardian</i>, who were responsible for breaking most of this story, seemed oddly quaint compared to the online onslaught.</p><p>To me it seems kind of ironic that a relentless pace of a news story about the conduct of newspapers is demonstrating the slow transition to irrelevance that many newspapers now face. Getting the initial 'scoop' aside, once a story is out in the wild, once daily paper-printed updates seem somewhat archaic. This week I imagine journalists must have been submitting their articles of an evening, praying that nothing new broke that either required a significant late-night rewrite or simply made the whole thing seem like ancient history before people started buying a copy in the morning.</p><p>The online spread of information is delivered in minutes, even seconds; whether it's <i>Guardian</i> journo George Monboit's or C4's Jon Snow's blogs, or Alistair Campbell's or John Prescott's instantly tweeted commentary, the latest breaking news is there at your fingertips just as quick as you can search. 24-hour news channels pump out updates with mechanical regularity, looping the coverage round and round, updating and amending the narrative as it happens.</p><p>So where does this leave the (real) newspapers? Do we still need them or are they, like their news stories, rapidly heading out of date?</p><p>To me it seems that the printed press has three distinct advantages: its ability to break stories by investing time and money into its journalists, the in-depth analysis they have room to provide and the fact that by being a physical medium it presents all the information in the same place. The BBC may tell you all the same facts, but they won't give you much of the back story or three different people's opinions while they're at it, or not usually without watching three different programs. Online reporting may be first off the blocks, but they can't guarantee the weight of impact that the morning press can (or perhaps not yet). Most online breaking news is also intended to have a very short shelf life, hastily written in the race to be first, never intended to set the world alight with its insight; similarly if it doesn't make the homepage there's a greatly reduced chance it will get read at all. Journalist's personal blogs are good swift opinion, but always seem mindful of saving the best for their more lucrative main events; those sites that do specialise in more heavyweight analysis, like Truthdig for instance, also seem slightly restricted by it, sacrificing fluidity of reporting for depth of content.</p><p>So while I think the printed press is not without its limitations, it still holds its niche in its ability to provide both ends of the spectrum in one handy format. The problem for their future, it seems, may not just lie with the delivery of the content, but probably more in the time that people can dedicate to reading it. People aren't buying newspapers because they don't want to read one, they're not buying them because they don't have time.</p><p>It's hard for me to say what it was like 20 years ago, being 10 and not overly interested in the news at the time, and why the pace of life has supposedly increased as such that we can't enjoy a newspaper every day. Perhaps there are more distractions today, more things vying for our attention that we feel sparing a whole 30 minutes or an hour with <i>The Independent</i> is too much. Probably its more likely that we pick up the basics from <i>The Metro</i>, more news through osmosis from the internet throughout the day and top up with <i>Channel 4 News</i> over dinner to warrant any extra time dedicated to a whole other newspaper (cynics might suggest that perhaps a greater percentage of the population would prefer to top up with <i>Hollyoaks</i> and the problem lies down that road instead). </p><p>Whatever the true reason for the decline of (real) newspapers, I think that they still currently provide news in a way, both content and delivery-wise, that isn't quite available elsewhere. If we are moving to a print-news free world, I think that we should be careful not to lose more than we gain. I'm not saying that we should all buy papers we don't want or read, but that perhaps those newspapers or other similar services need to think about that gap in the online market and exploit it.</p><p>As for Rebekah Brooks' arrest all those paragraphs before, that was hours ago now. A quick Google already shows thousands of links, blogs, tweets and articles offering their own slant on the event; the first part of my post is already history. What do you think I'll do now, wait for tomorrow's papers to catch up on the facts or have a look on Twitter and see what else has happened since?</p></div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-9419842025859828632011-06-30T14:02:00.001+01:002011-07-03T15:41:55.005+01:00All Your Secrets Are Belong To Us<div>On Thursday night, the hacker collective Anonymous, as part of their Antisec campaign, released the third installment of their <i>Chinga La Migra</i> attack on the police force of Arizona. The hack released huge volumes of the officer's personal information and email history - some of which contained extremely embarrassing content for the force, including racist remarks about torturing terror suspects, anti-Obama propaganda and the police force's efforts to spin the fact they were employing a convicted sex offender - as well as terrorising and shutting down a number of their websites.<br />
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The <i>Chinga La Migra</i> (which loosely translates as "Fuck the Border Patrol") hacks are a direct response to what Anonymous are calling the "racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona", who recently introduced the <i>Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act</i>, a very controversial anti-illegal immigration policy which requires all aliens over the age of 14 to register with the US government and carry identification with them at all times. As you can imagine, this has led to numerous racially tense situations with US citizens from racial minority backgrouds being arrested as "illegal immigrants" as they didn't happen to have documentation proving they were US citizens with them at the time; the assumption here being "guily until proven innocent". <br />
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This particular online attack was initiated by the Anonymous splinter group LulzSec, short for Lulz Security, six hackers who decided to run a 50 day campaign of "high-quality entertainment at your expense". It was LulzSec who were famously responsible for bringing down the Sony Playstation Network, claiming to have comprimised the usernames, email addreses and passwords for over one million PSN accounts (although Sony claims it was far less). The Sony hack was claimed to be in response to Sony's legal action against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz">George Holz</a> for cracking the allegedly watertight Playstation 3. <br />
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LulzSec went on to compromise and steal data from a raft of corporate and government databases and post it online, along with a basic description of how easy it was for them to invade the local system, the main objective of which being to embarrass the victim company by exposing their often extremelty weak security. This "grey hat" hacking doesn't aim to maliciously exploit the data it steals, or use it for personal gain (like black hat hacking) but does often break the law in order to expose the holes in the company's system's security (unlike white hat hackers, who are often security consultants hired directly by the company).<br />
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This kind of "hacktivism" isn't really a new thing but LulzSec's activities have gained it a lot of exposure in the media spotlight both for the sheer scale of their exposures and the witty delivery of the results in their releases and Twitter feed, mainly by their spokesperson, Topiary (not really what you'd expect in a hacker name - I don't imagine that the Matrix would have had the same impact if when Keanu Reeves is fighting Hugo Weaving, the dialogue goes: (Smith) "Goodbye, Mr Anderson", (Reeves) "My....name...is...Topiary!"). After Sony was brought down, certainly in the UK, LulzSec was making its way onto mainstream news programs - Channel 4 News even ran a whole article on them - always amusing to see their logo used in a serious report.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Lulz_Security.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Lulz_Security.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center"><b>The LulzSec Logo</b></div><br />
At the end of the 50 day LulzSec lifespan, LulzSec called it quits and its six members merged back into the anonymous Anonymous horde, citing a new combined approach to a larger campaign, Operation Anti-Security, or AntiSec. AntiSec's aims follow the initial examples set out by LulzSec but with a much more politicised agenda, specifically targetting Government agencies, corporations and banks and utilising the combined power of Anonymous rather than the limited resources of just the six LulzSec members.<br />
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Operation AntiSec has been running for nearly two weeks now and largely it's living up to its word, causing myriad problems online, taking down both the Brazilian and Chinese government's websites, the US Navy website and dumping 12,000 usernames, email addresses and passwords from the NATO online bookshop. Some of their corporate targets have seemed, to me at least, more opportunistic than particularly interested in direct protest, with Disney, EMI, <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5816496/anonymous-hits-universal-and-viacom">Universal Music</a> and the online game <i>Battlefield Heroes</i> all coming under fire.<br /><br />
Whilst engaging with Anonymous in Operation AntiSec has clearly given LulzSec's activities a number of benefits, it also could be seen as something of a retreat, or at least a regrouping. Media claims that the arrested Essex-based hacker Ryan Cleary was a core LulzSec member seem to have been somewhat exaggerated as although the MET charged him under the Computer Misuse Act for <a href="http://content.met.police.uk/News/Man-charged-with-hacking-offences/1260269119954/1257246745756">DDOS attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the IFPI</a>, the SOCA attack's dates line up with LulzSec's attacks but the IFPI charges date back to November 2010 - way before LulzSec even existed, as they themselves pointed out via Twitter (they also seem to claim that Cleary wasn't part of their attack on SOCA but he may picked up on what they were doing and joined in). Whether Cleary was a LulzSec member or affiliate or not, it's fairly obvious that the six members of the team must have been starting to feel the heat from their actions, with both police forces and other rival hacker groups such as <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeaMp0isoN">TeaMp0isoN</a> (seriously) racing to identify them. By slipping back into the blanket anonymity of Anonymous, LulzSec have perhaps wisely hidden themselves, at least for now, from any returning fire.<br /><br />
Operation AntiSec seems to now be gaining some further momentum and expanding its influence, with plans for a WikiLeaks-style website, based on stolen rather than leaked material, a kind of <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/06/30/anonymous-launches-a-wikileaks-for-hackers-hackerleaks/">HackerLeaks</a> if you like. This shows something of a maturing attitude from the initial "just for the Lulz" approach and may prove to be a bigger thorn in the side of the authorities than WikiLeaks itself. While WikiLeaks had.its spokesman and media friendly face in the form of Julian Assange, he was also their easiest and most obvious target. Conspiracy theorists would tell you that the rape charges eventually brought against Assange were a meticulously planned "honeytrap" to bring down WikiLeaks; whether that's true or not, Anonymous certainly has no such frontman to target.<br /><br />
What I think LulzSec realised, in the support for their actions from the general online population, is that in Operation AntiSec, they could galvanise the online community under the blanket banner of Anonymous to enact a new level of protest. As I stated before, there's nothing that new in what they're actually doing but it's just never been done on such a massive and mainstream scale before. <br /><br />
In our Western democracies, it's been proven multiple times in recent years that normal forms of protest are becoming less and less effective. As stated on Wikipedia, in early 2003, some sources claim that up to 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war and yet our governments still went ahead with their plans. Similarly in March of this year, anywhere between a quarter and a half a million people came to London to protest against our Coalition government's proposed spending cuts and were met with almost complete indifference from those in charge. The media agencies covering the recent London protests chose to spend their time reporting on the small amount of breakaway violence that occurred, whilst the police force imposed heavy handed "kettling" tactics against numerous peaceful but determined groups.<br /><br />
In the form of protest that Operation AntiSec aim to undertake, you could argue that the few anonymous individuals involved, rather than the millions that marched, could have more power in influencing government through inciting voters via exposures of corruption and leaked or stolen documentation. In taking down governmental websites and databases they continue to prove that they're one step ahead, both strategically and technically than their targets, although its harder to see the same levels of support across the population for similar attacks against online games companies like <i>Battlefield Heroes</i> or multinational record companies battling bankruptcy like EMI. For me, Operation AntiSec needs to focus its efforts on more legitimate targets in order to widen its support; the <i>Chinga La Migra</i> hacks are an undeniably powerful political statement, the more of which we see, the strong AntiSec's influence will grow.<br /><br />
However you choose to classify the propagators of Operation AntiSec: as a nuisance or as terrorists, as self-indulgent geeks or as revolutionaries, they are capable of showing us something - that sometimes, it's not the actions of the many that make the difference, it's the actions of the few. They're capable of being more than the sum of their parts; they're a movement, they're a force for change, fighting to show us that it's not <i>this</i> government or <i>that</i> corporation that's the problem, that the problem is the system itself. <br /><br />
Back in 1995 there was an Angelina Jolie film called <i>Hackers</i>, in which a small group of (unrealistically attractive) computer nerds saved the planet. Being 15 at the time, I obviously loved it and its naively optimistic view of the world (and still do). Operation AntiSec isn't as glamourous, doesn't involve Angelina Jolie and presumably doesn't involve as much bad CGI, but will it change the world? Maybe. Even if it's just a little bit.</div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-30541479379693308752011-06-20T18:48:00.000+01:002011-06-20T18:48:49.795+01:00President BachmannLast Monday, the Republican Party of America set out it's seven potential candidates to challenge Barack Obama at the Presidential election in 2012 in a warm up debate in New Hampshire. Thrusting her way into the limelight, the percieved big winner of the debate was Michele Bachmann. Bachmann's performance was reportedly slick, strategic and full of stage presence; a strong-minded, attractive and resolutely American-blooded woman, the current darling of the Tea Party and second to only Sarah Palin in their crazy Fox News universe.<br />
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Palin, of course, has so far neglected to stand for the forthcoming election and although you might think that's a good thing, Palin is such a devisive figure in the States, that many think although she'd get the backing of the more right-wing half of the GOP demographic audience, that the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20070206-503544.html">more moderate Republicans would abandon ship</a>, leaving Obama with a clear path to victory. Palin might very well be the very worst chance the Republicans have to regain the seat behind the desk in the Oval Office.<br />
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It's also interesting to discover that recently, for the first time, more than fifty percent of Republicans support <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/160021-gallup-poll-sees-growing-support-for-third-party-in-gop-tea-party">the creation of a new third US political party</a>, most likely in the form of the separation of the Tea Party from its Republican Party host. Over sixty percent of Tea Partiers would prefer a three party system and it's not hard to imagine that a lot of the more moderate Republicans are equally frustrated in being lumped in with the more extreme elements of their party.<br />
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However, splitting the Republican party down the middle has some very obvious downsides for them, namely that no one is splitting up the Democrats too. If the Tea Party decides to go it alone, then there are serious concerns from <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20072036-503544.html">within the GOP</a> that Obama could simply coast to the finish next November. More bad news for the Grand Old Party then.<br />
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So this leaves us with the possibility of a Bachmman / Obama contest in 2012 and, as many of you would probably agree, right now the stakes could not be higher. In order for any of us to stand a chance in the forthcoming century, we need forward thinking, modernist leaders withn sound econonimic and scientific understanding of the world, people willing to push things forward rather then letting them slip into reverse. Although you might agree that in some respects Obama might not represent enough of those things or always endorse or enforce them in ways we might wish, Bachmann doesn't represent any. Bachmann is, in my opinion, not just a bad choice, she's frankly a dangerous one.<br />
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The possiblity of President Bachmann, or maybe just even her existence, prompted Truthdig's columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr to pangs of <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michele_bachmann_makes_george_w_bush_look_good_20110616/"><i>"nostalgia for Bush"</i></a>. Based on his previous articles and has he himself states, that's not something he ever expected to have.<br />
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Bachmann has already called for the closure of the US's Environmental Protection Agency (created by Republicans, actually) as part of her swathe of spending cuts and obviously diametrically opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare, as she'd call it) and pretty much every other form of government aid as <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/"><i>"socialism"</i></a>. You could argue that this is just down to politics though and that sacrifices have to be made somewhere; the environment and healthcare might not be the first choice of everyone but they're usually fairly close when it comes to the Right getting to weald the spending cleaver (our <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13527620">NHS</a> anyone?). Hoever, I think there's something far more worrying about hearing it come from Bachmann - the fact that she's a hardline fundamentalist Christian (described by possibly my favourite website - Conservapedia - as a <a href="http://conservapedia.com/Michele_Bachmann"><i>"Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod"</i></a>).<br />
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This puts Bachmann firmly into the climate change denying Creationist camp, something she's gone on record about several times. In 2006 she claimed that <a href="http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/bachmann-doubts-evolution-wants-intelligent-design-schools"><i>“there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact… hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel prizes, believe in intelligent design.”</i></a>, which as the linked site rightly points out, is so completely false it's borderline farcical. She's spoken out similarly fantastically incorrect fashion about Global Warming on several occasions too, claiming <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/04/28/37880/bachmann-energy-solutions/">as recently as 2009</a> that <i>“[T]here isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle.”</i>. Needless to say Bachmann is also pro-life and pro-guns (always a bewilderingly illogical combination, I think). <br />
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To me, this kind of denial-based reasoning, the hide-your-head-in-the-sand attitude, is the most terrifying aspect of Bachmann. Her extreme religious views propel her forward, certain under the knowledge that she is correct because God tells her she is. I find it very hard to believe that she would ever even bother listening to a reasoned scientific argument that didn't already support one of the views she already holds. In September of this year, we'll be remember how religious fundamentalism flew some planes into a building and killed a whole load of people; if Bachmann's fundamentalism takes the Presidency next year, I am confident we will see a much bigger crash and a much more severe collapse, of which the fallout will not just kill a few thousand but that its effects will be epochal. We're well known to be on the brink of a paradigm shift in the world; it's a knife edge, one last chance to step back from the void; with Bachmann, the Americans seriously risk seeing the ground give out beneath both them and us.<br />
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That said though, I have hope that the American's are simply not that stupid. We, over here in the jostling, secular world of Europe, often tend to regard our US cousins with a fairly dim view when it comes to religion. We can't really understand how middle America obsesses over Christian values, how their nation struggles with separating morality and rationality from religion, how they give face time to Fred Phelps and Fox News. The nearest we get to religious interference is when a bishop <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/06/rowan-williams-government">has a bit of a go</a> at a few Coalition policies and even then most of us, even the non-religious, respect the fact that although he's a holy man, he's also talking about non-religious things; we might not agree with Dr Rowan Williams about his his choice of deities, but that doesn't mean we can't agree with him about anything else.<br />
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I suppose the hope comes from facts like the potential divide looming in the Republican party. We have to hope that those elements that have arisen to power within the GOP remain cowed by the moderates on whose votes they depend. We have to hope that the moderates see through the smokescreens and outright lies to see exactly who and what they're voting for. If I had to offer any advice, I would call that moderate Republicans should stand up and defy this new wave of ridiculous Tea Party candidacy, they should vote with their voices, their actions and frankly, their votes. Maybe they should vote Obama, just to show Bachmann how it really is.<br />
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Dionne is right when he says that against such candidates, one would wish for the return of Bush. He may have invaded Iraq because <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa"><i>"God told him to"</i></a>, but at least we weren't very worried that he might actively be seeking the End Times.<br />
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Oh yes, one last stat I forgot to add in, the one that inspired this whole article actually... As you'll remember we recently managed to avoid 21st May's notably absent <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-preacher-warns-end-of-the-world-is-nigh-21-may-around-6pm-to-be-precise-2254139.html">Rapture</a>, as prophecised by the US televangelist Harold Camping. A recent <a href="http://www.politicususa.com/en/sarah-palin-rapture-2012">national poll</a> of the GOP primary voters revelead that although Bachmann at the time was only supported by nine percent of the pollsters, a staggering <b>thirty-five percent</b> of them believed the Rapture was really going to happen. Compare that will Palin, who was second place for potential Rapturees (is that a word?) who was way down at seventeen (which is still obviously worrying).<br />
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Perhaps we should have a little more faith, if you like (small "f"), in our more sensible American cousins. Clearly, most of them thought the idea of the Rapture was ridiculous and hopefully enough of them will think Bachmann is too. I couldn't name you a single person I know that would come out in defence of Bachmann and I'm sure if I was in America that would still be the case. <br />
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Really though, America, it's time to pull your socks up. This kind of thing is going too far.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-72297124963652656752011-06-12T15:16:00.001+01:002011-06-12T16:27:05.120+01:00Antimatter Anticertainly<div><p>So this week, as you may have read in the paper, some rather clever fellows at CERN have managed to create some anti-hydrogen and hang onto it for about fifteen minutes.</p>
<p>Anti-hydrogen is the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen (I think you'd probably already worked that out) and, in this instance, was created by getting some positrons (which are anti-electrons) to orbit some antiprotons, thus creating said anti-hydrogen. This isn't the first time this has been done but what's remarkable about this instance is that they held on to them for so long - fifteen minutes is literally <i><i><i><i><i>ages</i></i></i></i></i> in atomic physics terms.</p>
<p>As I understand it, as matter and antimatter are true opposites, if they both exist in the same place they will cancel each other out. Think of it a bit like having +1 and -1 in an equation; if you put them together, you just end up with zero. Therefore, one of the main gists of CERN's experiment will ultimately be to determine why we live in a universe with so much matter in it, when the Big Bang happened and huge equal  amounts of matter and antimatter were created, why was so much matter left over afterwards (when they should have added up to zero and left nothing)?</p>
<p>Anyway, I watched a BBC news article about this, loosely explaining the above, with helpful on-screen magic like turning half of the picture to negative colours when explaining antimatter. Well, I say helpful but I actually mean not really very helpful at all.</p>
<p>Reading back over what I've written above, it just makes me think how virtually impossible this sort of thing is to understand. When the BBC demonstrate antimatter as being a bit like a negative colour screen, or I compare it to plus and minus one, you think "yes, ok, I get it" but in reality it's nothing like either of those things. I can get my head round the facts presented and even understand them in a (moderately) scientific kind of way but what I can't do is relate them in any way to anything I can actually comprehend.</p>
<p>For example, let's take an obvious question: what does antimatter look like? You would imagine the opposite of matter to look like nothing, like a vacuum; something and nothing are opposites, right? Wrong. Antimatter <i><i><i><i>plus </i></i></i></i>matter equals nothing, so what we were saying before is that we know what the +1 and zero parts look like but not the -1 part. </p>
<p>Now, if I say that mathematically I understand the concept of minus one, but I'm fine with the fact you can't have, say, minus one apples in your hand so this is a bit like antimatter I'd be wrong again. Antimatter is a physical thing and given enough of it you could theoretically hold it in your hand, test tube or Large Hadron Collider. If <i><i><i><i><i><i><i>it </i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i>is</i></i></i></i><i> </i>a thing, what does it look like?</p>
<p>Now I know I'm jumping the gun here and we can't really be expecting lovely press shots of a substance we created in super-micro amounts for a matter of minutes. My point is that when we get on to topics like this, cutting edge sciences and so on, is that there's no real way to explain them in layman's terms.</p>
<p>The LHC also rustled up something called quark-gluon plasma this week too. This stuff is the densest material we've ever created; denser than a neutron star and a hundred thousand times hotter than the centre of the sun, the only things we think may be more dense are black holes; a cubic centimeter of quark-gluon plasma would weigh around forty billion tons. Great stuff, anyone understand that? Not really.</p>
<p>(Which kind of reminds me of watching <i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>The </i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>World's</i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i> </i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>Strongest </i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>Man</i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i> and the commentator saying that the giant rock the ridiculously massive bloke has just picked up weighs "as much as two baby rhinos" or "a chest freezer full of food". Do I know how much those things weigh? Of course not. A lot?)</p>
<p>The problem is, I guess, that in science the numbers are getting so big or small, the concepts so esoteric and exotic and the background understanding required becomes more deep or specialised, that it's increasingly difficult trying to make these things into palatable subjects for consumption by normal people. </p>
<p>My concern is that as cutting edge science moves steadily off over the horizon, normal people will lose sight of why it's important. I've said it before about climate science but I think it applies across the board; science and scientists need to think about the way they communicate about what they're doing and why and how it might affect the rest of us.</p>
<p>Perhaps antimatter is a harsh example; it's probably up there with the most complicated things we've ever done. Perhaps science is already doing a remarkable job in even distilling that understanding down to a point where particularly interested people like me can write about it. </p>
<p>I love all this stuff and I find it genuinely engaging, interesting, meaningful and important and I think other people should too. I just don't think you should have to be a particle physicist first.</p>
<p><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>NB</i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i>.</i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i></i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i><i> 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</div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-71245424873201379552011-06-07T17:43:00.001+01:002011-06-08T00:04:48.872+01:00Utopia or Dystopia?Last night I was back at the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/ScienceBL">British Library</a> for another <a href="http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/outof/about/index.html"><i>Out of this World</i></a> talk, this time discussing <i>‘Utopias and Other Worlds’</i>, with a panel consisting of Gregory Claeys, Professor of the History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the authors Francis Spufford and Iain M. Banks (with an M, as he was there with his sci-fi hat on…). Overall, it was a bit more of a generalised discussion of the topic than some of the previous <i>Out of this World</i> talks but overall it focused on what utopias and dystopias are, why we have them and how they’re reflected in literature, especially science fiction.<br />
<br />
As we got round to audience questions, I posed the panel a question around the nature of utopias and dystopias, a kind of thought experiment to see which way they’d go on a given potential outcome of our society. It went a little something like this (a little less eloquently at the time, but forgive me my poetic license):<br />
<br />
<i>“Within the next one hundred to two hundred years, Humanity continues down its current path of environmental exploitation and destruction, leading to a catastrophic event which renders the planet largely inhospitable to human life. At the same time, we also invent a way in which to upload our conscious thought onto computers and, merging with artificial intelligences and so forth, create a digital paradise in which the “surviving” members of the human race can live on forever in total happiness, regardless of the damage done to the outside world. Would you say this was a utopia or dystopia?”</i><br />
<br />
All the panel were in agreement that this scenario would be a dystopia, based on the fact that we’d caused widespread destruction to the planet and a significant proportion of humanity, mainly the poorer half, will have perished <i>en route</i>. Francis Spufford also argued that it would be a dystopia because humanity had lost all physical, or real, interactions with the outside world and each other and Banks, quite rightly, pointed out that those who did survive would just be total bastards. Claeys highlighted some of the gaps in my question and how it took a broad brush to a plethora of issues, about which he’s obviously correct but a) I thought this up about 30 seconds before I asked it, so give me a break and b) it’s my question, so I can assume whatever I like anyway.<br />
<br />
Now, you’d probably agree with all of the above points (and so do I for the most part) but I think that although we may not like the circumstances in the situation’s arrival, it doesn’t mean that we can’t argue that <i>it is</i> a utopia. My basic justification for this is that the people who do survive get to live in a paradise and although it’s potentially a paradise for the few at the sacrifice of the many, <i>it is still</i> a paradise (although I didn’t actually specify in the question that we hadn’t managed to upload everyone before said disaster).<br />
<br />
In Banks’ own utopia, the Culture, he talks about the fact that his vast civilisation made many mistakes along the journey to being the galaxy spanning wonderland that it is. Who’s to say that similar situations to the one above wasn’t one of them (apart from Banks, obviously)? You can’t make an omelette… right?<br />
<br />
I suppose the definition of a utopia is that it’s defined by those outside that are perceiving it as such, rather than the theoretical (or otherwise) individuals who live in it. If you’re already living in one person’s idea of a utopia then the likelihood is that your idea of a utopia is somewhere else that you perceive to be better than your own situation. We currently live in a utopia by the standards of the entire of human history, however that doesn’t mean that <i>we</i> have to think it’s paradise. In my proposed world, those citizens of the digital paradise live in an all encompassing heaven, so by the assumptions set in the question, therefore they must live in a utopia of sorts from our perspective.<br />
<br />
Also, I don’t think that dismissing their perception of “fake” reality as being any less true than our “real” one counts for much either way as, as is often spelled out in many science fiction novels, reality tends to be a blurry thing once you have more than one (am I a man dreaming of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of a man, for instance).<br />
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In summary, I think that I agree that all of the panellist’s main points about the situation that I laid out are totally valid and obviously the situation is a bad one, although I have trouble labelling it as either a utopia or dystopia though as I think it fails to be either. The situation is awful by nature’s standards, but humanity continues in a form (let’s not get into digital animals) so the situation isn’t a total nightmare scenario. If we assume that everyone got “copied over” at the start, then on a human scale the loss is a trade of one perception of reality for another. A dystopia for the natural world then, perhaps?<br />
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The citizens still have to live with the guilt of their actions from the previous “reality” and their circumstances are still under threat from external “real” forces, earthquakes etc, so the paradise is definitely tainted in some aspects. Mankind has a reasonably short memory for guilt though so perhaps they’ll get over it (well, I guess that goes with death, so with immortal computer people, who knows?). Maybe they’ll invent a way to get back “out” into the real world eventually and sort things out.<br />
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Ultimately, it goes without saying that I’m not suggesting we pursue the proposed course of action but I think that it’s an interesting way of showing that perhaps from some perspectives a utopia or dystopia isn’t necessarily what we might normally assume it is.<br />
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I do agree with Banks though, those digital citizens would definitely be total bastards.Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341615334524694136.post-61233647850524679732011-06-05T15:35:00.001+01:002011-06-06T16:32:04.036+01:00Transhumanist Bling<div><p>Transhumanists are a funny bunch. Their basic outlook is that one day in the not too distant future, probably within our lifetime, humans will cast off our physical bodies and unite ourselves in digital-only form with our AI counterparts, creating a new form of immortal 'transhuman' that exists entirely on computers. No-one will ever die and those of us 'natural' intelligences and the other artificial ones will be entirely indistinguishable. This concept is known as the Singularity or often jokingly referred to as the "geek rapture".</p><p>Now, this all sounds a bit sci-fi to most of us, but the possibilities of this are taken very seriously by a lot of notable scientists, perhaps the most famous of which is Ray Kurzweil. Over the years, Kurzweil has had a lot to say about our future and even in the mid-90's correctly predicted much about the digital, internet-based world we currently enjoy - wirelessly accessing a worldwide internet using tiny handheld personal computers anyone? My school didn't even get the internet until 1998; that was only 13 years ago...</p><p>In his 2005 book <i>The Singularity is Near</i>, Kurzweil has predicted that by 2018 you'll be able to buy a computer with the same memory space as the human brain for about $1,000 (that's 10 to the power 13 bits, apparently) and by 2020 it will be just as clever as you too. By 2029 he thinks that the first computer will pass the Turing Test, basically proving it to be "sentient" and in the mid-2030's we'll all be uploading ourselves to computers willy-nilly. After that it all gets a bit crazy, but ultimately he's hedging on the Singularity happening in around 2045, so keep that year free in your diaries.</p><p>So far, so sci-fi though in my opinion; scientists and geeks are very easy to excite when they start talking about this stuff, so I think they miss out on some of the more basic questions when they start pulling out the geek rapture story. </p><p>Firstly, while it's easy to say that we're just organic computers, I think there's a bit more to it than that. Our brains might be a mega-complex computer like series of neural connections but it's also subject to the whims of the rest of our bodies, hormones 'n all. An obvious example is, if you're uploaded to a computer, do you still get randy? You won't have the appropriate parts any more, so that's going to be difficult to deal with. What about the bit of you that enjoys going for a poo, does that bit get copied over too? My point is, that even though our brains might do the thinking, there's a bit more to us that just that.</p><p>Another issue is that it might seem like a great idea to keep everyone around forever, it turns out a lot of people aren't really that great. Osama bin Laden forever anyone? Didn't think so. </p><p>Humanity has evolved socially over hundreds of years, slowly, you might argue, advancing our morality, leaving old prejudices behind and overall becoming fairer and more egalitarian. While that's a rose-tinted view, the principle stands and my point is that death is very much a part of that process. Old ideas die with the people who have them, making way for new people to have new ideas of their own. If no-one dies, then are we pretty much stuck with the opinions that we have today? Alright if you're a geek and live in a bit of a bubble, but I think the rest of us would agree that we've still got a long way to go before we can draw a line under our society and say "yep, that'll do".</p><p>To be fair though, I recently went to a talk on the future of humanity at the British Library, as I've mentioned in previous posts, part of their <i>Out of this World</i> series and exhibition, and was hugely surprised by their transhumanist panelist, Anders Sandberg.</p><p>Sandberg, a Research Fellow at The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, had a lot to say about exactly the kind if thing I've mentioned above and helped assure me that not all of those who believe in the Singularity are necessarily only thinking about a giant magic World of Warcraft future.</p><p>Just to give an example, when one of the audience asked the panel about cryogenics and whether we should be freezing ourselves when we die so that we can be reanimated once everyone else has worked out how to do it. Sandberg's response was to reach inside his academic's tweed jacket, pull out a small silver medallion and say:</p><p>"my answer is yes; this medallion signifies my insurance policy that means should I die i'll be frozen. It cost quite a lot but I'm hedging my bets that one day someone will be able to both bring me back to life and repair whatever needs repairing. </p><p>My main concern being that when they wake me up they'll all be laughing at some of the ridiculous predictions that I've made, but hopefully it'll be better to be embarrassed and alive than not; this medallion, I call it my Transhumanist bling". </p></div>Looking Forward Uncertainlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08870830094097271727noreply@blogger.com0