THAT'S SO FUTURISTIC

Feel good drones pick me up drones love me drones.

Sun, 05 May 2013 14:36:26 -0400

Feel good drones pick me up drones love me drones.

Stealth Wear continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and...

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:52:00 -0400

Stealth Wear continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance.

http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:59:27 -0400

http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:20:35 -0400

Video

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:39:18 -0400

The Cyberstride suite generated its first printout on 21 March...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:17:00 -0400

The Cyberstride suite generated its first printout on 21 March 1972.

“The whole thing was impossible and we did it.” I.e., revolutionary socialist cybernetics.

The economic simulator never passed the experimental stage. Since work on the project was cut short, it is impossible to say how the finished system might have furthered Chile’s revolutionary process.

The Marxist slant in Cybersyn’s design appears clearly in two system diagrams later drawn by Schwember, both of which illustrate the centrality of worker participation to Cybersyn’s operation.

Does it take more courage to be a cybernetician than to be a gunman?

Like the many other casualties of the Pinochet [h/t Margaret Thatcher (—Ed.)] dictatorship, Cybersyn disappeared.

Photo

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 10:43:48 -0400

Video

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:56:03 -0400

On the Internet, when something is free,...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:32:00 -0400

On the Internet, when something is free, we———our DNA———become the product. Beam us up, Scotty!

If, for example, you’re genetically prone to male pattern baldness, Miinome’s algorithm might be able to infer that environmental factors like stress or smoking could be contributing or accelerating your hair loss from your social media posts. If you choose to broadcast all of that information to Miinome’s business partners, they could show you very targeted ads for Propecia or nicotine patches, meditation, yoga or spa services.

‘Stop the Cyborgs’ aims to prevent a future where...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:41:20 -0400

‘Stop the Cyborgs’ aims to prevent a future where privacy is impossible and central control total.

Photo

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:46:14 -0400

The computers will see what we can’t see.

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:55:30 -0400

The computers will see what we can’t see.

The prediction of who you will be… ...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:46:00 -0400

The prediction of who you will be…

…from who you are.

Proving that everything in the universe really is made here in...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:17:00 -0400

Proving that everything in the universe really is made here in Brooklyn, Ted Southern and Nicolay Moiseev run Final Frontier Designs out of a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they design and build prototypes for NASA spacesuits. And—to make sure the story has even more of an “ONLY IN BROOKLYN” quality—they got much of their funding from Kickstarter.

just above the ‘Angry Birds Rotisserie Chicken’ at...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:41:00 -0400

just above the ‘Angry Birds Rotisserie Chicken’ at the Gourmet Heaven.

Jean Luc G. to make his next film, Goodbye to Language, in...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:52:00 -0400

Jean Luc G. to make his next film, Goodbye to Language, in 3-DDD.

Ramzan Kadyrov has a difficult life. Not only is he the ruler...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:01:00 -0400

Ramzan Kadyrov has a difficult life. Not only is he the ruler of an impoverished republic only now rebuilding itself after years of bitter civil war, he is also regularly forced to fend off accusations of rampant human rights abuses and runaway corruption.

Over the weekend, however, the Chechen leader admitted he is also struggling with an additional burden: Instagramming.

The 36-year-old has become an unlikely internet star since opening an account on the photo-sharing site, uploading several images a day.

via TS

"short bursts of useful information in your peripheral vision"

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:53:06 -0400

“short bursts
of useful information
in your peripheral vision”

- *

“There is a lot of negative propaganda about what will happen...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:49:38 -0400

“There is a lot of negative propaganda about what will happen after 2014,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that it has come to be thought of it as “the 2014 movie,” suggesting that it was being forecast as a disaster show.

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto Information is power. But like...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:04:00 -0500

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.

Everything up until now will have been lost. That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?

Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal —there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Aaron Swartz

July 2008, Eremo, Italy