. "Generated by Triplify V0.3 (http://Triplify.org)" . . . "2006-03-17T10:26:28"^^ . "about" . "

Where the hell am I and who the hell are you?

\r\n[In Plain Sight] is the personal blog of Michael Turro... it exists solely for the purpose of providing me (mturro) with a space to work through random thoughts and ideas generally regarding the future of the magazine industry, publishing in general, technology, culture, media and sometimes politics. This site also serves the purpose of putting my life out in the open (thus the name). It lets me get out in front of my digital identity and gives me some sort of control over what I look like through the prism of a Google search.\r\n\r\nIn my professional life I am the Director of Technology for M. Shanken Communications, publisher of Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, Food Arts, and other magazines. (By the way: All writings, opinions and comments are entirely my own and DO NOT represent M. Shanken Communications or its publications in any way, shape or form.)\r\n\r\nIn my personal life I am a father, husband, son, son-in-law, brother, uncle, friend, and neighbor to a small group of individuals who take residence in the hills of North Jersey and other more remote areas of the country.\r\n

Working from life back to books...

\r\nA random fact about me that might give you a more full picture of who I am and what I believe: I walked away from my Master of Arts Degree in Literature with only six credits left to complete. After reading Marshall McLuhan I decided that I needed to get out of the academic trap... I needed to explore the real and practical effects of media.\r\n\r\nSo I got a job with a magazine publisher (or as they now like to refer to themselves - a media company) and dove into learning how magazines actually get made. I became a production aficionado.\r\n\r\nI was extraordinarily lucky to get into the business at a time when the computer - the Mac really - was transforming the printing and publishing world. I grew up on Apple so the Mac was natural to me - I was well versed in its culture, its excentricities, and it's application as a creative tool. This understanding gave me a leg up on people who had been in the business for decades, people who had (perhaps jokingly) claimed to set type in hot metal, people who looked at the Mac with scorn.\r\n\r\nAll in all I am happy I walked away from academics and found real life waiting for me in the media and publishing worlds. I'm not sure I could see myself being happy teaching Mellville and Emerson and Thoreau to college kids. Not that there is anything wrong with that... I come from a family of teachers - I'm even married to one... it's just that it never felt like a fit for me. I need to be confronted with market level uncertainty... I love to (here I will paraphrase Nassim Nicholas Taleb) work from real life back to books, not from books to real life.\r\n\r\nIf after all of the above you feel like I might be of some help to you, or you might be of some help to me, or you just want to say hello, feel free to contact me." . "2010-01-13T16:53:32"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T10:41:01"^^ . "One Click and Gone" . "Easy come easy go... at least that's the only way to deal with what I just did to this site. With one simple click I killed over a year's worth of posts. I was trying to drop a table from the DB and, not really paying much attention to what the fuck I was doing, I inadvertently dropped the entire DB... gone.\n\nI have learned to take things like this in stride... not get too worked up over it. I look at as a chance to make a fresh start... a symbol of the transience of life, the impermanence of it all. Nothing gold can stay you know.\n\nSo here we are... square1. Kind of frustrating, kind of liberating, but life moves on, we all move on. So I best start creating some new stuff." . "2006-03-17T10:41:01"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T11:52:03"^^ . "E-Train’s Drunken Night Before Christmas" . "After some merry making at a company holiday party, our friend and Bluepear \"house-boy\" E-Train graced everyone with this reading of the classic poem \"The Night Before Christmas.\" Since E-Train's English gets a little loopier as he gets drunk he has a few stops and starts along the way, but he manages to deliver one of the greates all-time renditions of the piece. Many thanks go out to daveB for adding the backing track. So here it is folks the first ever Bluepear Radio podcast... E-Train's Drunken Night Before Christmas.\"\n\n[audio:http://bluepear.org/podcasts/etrainchrsitmas.mp3]\n\nDownload this Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T11:52:03"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:06:57"^^ . "Brad Sucks | Dirtbag" . "This is the song Dirtbag by Brad Sucks. There is nothing else on this but the one song. If you dig it and want more like it go to Brad Sucks website at http://www.bradsucks.net\n\nDownload This Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T12:06:57"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:09:19"^^ . "Instead Of Church" . "Download This Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T12:09:19"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:11:14"^^ . "Military Industrial Complex" . "Download This Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T12:11:14"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:12:21"^^ . "41 Pages" . "Download This Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T12:12:21"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:13:39"^^ . "With Six You Get Rock-n-Roll" . "Download This Podcast!" . "2006-03-17T12:13:39"^^ . . . "2006-03-17T12:21:40"^^ . "It’s All About The Buzz" . "Buzz Heavy is the twenty-first century… a mashed and mixed collection of bytes and bits from another time and place recontextualized for a more complex, yet somehow simpler now. An exploding persona that grabs you by the brain and pummels you with a seemingly sugar-soft craft that ages better than wine, cheese or the Olsen twins, Buzz is both immediately lovable and an acquired taste.\n\nBy co-opting bits of pop culture and utilizing the familiar he is able to instantly bring the casual listener closer while simultaneously working at a subconscious level to broaden the conversation. Before long you’re humming tunes about lesbians, murder, weed, self-destruction, the sexual appetite (passion) of Jesus, and two-dollar man-whores. Yes friends, these are love songs for the new world… the Brave new world.\n\nThe more I listen to the new Buzz record the more I realize that this is exactly the fuck-it-all record that I needed right now. In a time when greed and corruption are so pervasive that even Hippies are enveloped in hate, Buzz Heavy means something. This music is the music of the tired, the broken, the disgusted. This is the music that says we don’t all have to be corporate whores… plain ones will do just fine.\n\nTo by the new Buzz CD and the equally great Fat Raleigh CD visit these sites:\nhttp://www.buzzheavy.com\nhttp://www.fatraleigh.com\n\nDownload This Podcast!\n\nPS: Thanks to Steve Leonard for finding the original post in the Google cache!!" . "2006-03-17T12:21:40"^^ . . . "2008-05-26T21:58:15"^^ . "Just finished Lions for Lambs...." . "Just finished Lions for Lambs. Good, thought provoking Memorial Day film. After that and Recount last night I'm in the mood for change." . "2008-05-26T21:58:15"^^ . . . "2008-05-27T08:33:33"^^ . "Wet fence, symbol, open space...." . "Wet fence, symbol, open space. - Photo: http://bkite.com/00jV3" . "2008-05-27T08:33:33"^^ . . . "2006-04-06T15:23:51"^^ . "Meaningless Text?" . "So this post is really not much in the way of a post as it is a test. You see I'm writing this from an OS X dashboard widget rather than the usual Wordpress admin screen. The implications in this are of course that this will let me post more often, yet the posts will most likely not be terrificly thought out. I'm going to try and write more like a traditional \"blogger\" rather than the sort of careful, journalistic writing that I'm used to. Raw thought. It'll be interesting for me at least, and perhaps if you read this site more regularly it might be interesting for you as well. We'll all just have to wait and see." . "2006-04-06T15:23:51"^^ . . . "2006-05-12T14:28:36"^^ . "Wait, Baseball?" . "I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I should be doing with this site... lately it's been a pure music/radio site that was a forum for my thoughts on music. Before that it was a political forum for lefties who had grown to despise the Bush agenda and everything it stands for. Before that it was a literary magazine, a publishing company, a record label, a dog grooming site, and a Chinese restaurant... ok, maybe not all that, but you get the point.\n\nThen yesterday I read this item on serendipity over at Steven Johnson's blog and suddenly my mission was clear... stop trying to be something and just write about what I am thinking about... write about my own peculiar tastes and don't worry about presenting a cohesive theme. Simple. Brilliant.\n\nHideki Matsui... that's what's on my mind today. In case you don't know, the Yankees' left fielder is probably out for the season with a fractured wrist, ending his consecutive game streak at 1768 games. His injury leaves a hole in the Yanks lineup that has a lot of folks worried, but for some reason I'm not one of them. Logic dictates that as a Yankee fan I should be panicking and calling for trades, but I feel kind of hopeful really. Things happen for a reason. The reason here? Melky Cabrera.\n\nMelky has been hitting the shit out of the ball in AAA all year so far and he was just called up to handle right field for the Yanks while Gary Sheffield is on the 15 day DL... also for a wrist. With Matsui going down this could be the kid's time. I say put him in left immediately, give him the spot to lose and see what happens. I have a good feeling about it and we can all check this post in three months to see how prescient I am.\n\nSo that's it... baseball in bluepear." . "2006-05-12T14:28:36"^^ . . . "2006-05-15T11:06:41"^^ . "West Wing Ends - National Nightmare Continues" . "Admittedly the West Wing offered a somewhat idealistic portrayal of what Washington is like... there were just too many well meaning righteous people for that show to be about our government. Do people like that really exist in Washington anymore? Isn't just a town full of money hungry corporate functionaries getting hammered and nailing hookers? Seriously, there aren't actually people in Congress, let alone the White House, who care about people... are there?\n\nStill, as unrealistic and naive as the show may have been, I enjoyed having that hour every week where corruption wasn't the primary business of government and the President was actually a well-read nobel laureate respected for his brilliant mind and unswerving ethics. It was just a little comforting to know that if we couldn't have a real President that read Michel Foucault at least we could dream about one. Fantasy. It's good for the soul.\n\nNow it's gone... just as a new, vigorous, youthful, ethnic administration was set to take charge. I would have enjoyed watching Matt Santos tackle the issues of the day... enjoyed seeing a man actually think inside the Oval Office. Goodbye catharsis... I hardly knew you." . "2006-05-15T11:06:41"^^ . . . "2006-05-18T11:15:23"^^ . "Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control" . "Yes, George W. Bush is in office to make as much money for his defense contractor friends as he possibly can. This article from the New York Times proves it. What's next... Bush turns to big military contractors for education plan? Really now... is there any issue that this guy doesn't see as being solvable through some sort of militaristic deployment of weaponry, technology, or other expensive bone for his cronies?" . "2006-05-18T11:15:23"^^ . . . "2006-05-19T11:18:21"^^ . "Ascension of the Goddess" . "The Da Vinci Code opens today and with it comes an avalanche of supplementary specials, protests, copycats and all around Grail fever. Scholars and priests have been dissecting the book since it was first published in 2003 and have been refuting the main thrust of the story since 1982 when the progenitor of The Da Vinci Code, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, first introduced these ideas to the world.\n\nThose who seek to discredit the ideas put forth in these works have tended to concentrate their efforts on the more sensational theories in the books. A careful exposition of the fantastic tales of the Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene, Merovingians, Cathars, mysterious rogue priests and the like have dominated all criticism of these works. The clamor over the accuracy of the fine details in the story, while masquerading as scholarly criticism, is actually a (not necessarily intentional) distraction from the ultimate implication of these theories.\n\nWhat The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood Holy Grail have really done is challenge the stifling, corrupting, unnatural patriarchy of the Catholic Church, the Christian religion, and society in general. Through their fantastic accounts of conspiracy and intrigue the authors of these books have brought to the mainstream the discussion of the prominence of the female (specifically Magdalene) within the Jesus Movement of the early first century.\n\nWhether or not there is actually a royal bloodline of Christ present today and what role organizations such as the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar may have played in protecting it is secondary really. Restoring the Goddess is the real work at hand.\n\nThese books are successful and accurate in that they are able to tap the undercurrent of recognition within popular culture that the world is indeed out of balance. Male dominance through the centuries has given us war, avarice, greed, and an unnurturing gap between rich and poor. Only when the Goddess has been restored to her rightful place in the iconography of humanity will we even begin to make progress toward a more caring society. These books and now the Da Vinci Code movie are steps along that path." . "2006-05-19T11:18:21"^^ . . . "2006-05-22T11:00:28"^^ . "Music By Friends" . "Listening to music made by someone you know is always an interesting experience... you want the tunes to rock... to be some of the best shit you've ever heard. Often that's just not the case. However, when it is true it makes your listening experience just that much sweeter.\n\nI have been lucky to know quite a few extremely talented musicians who make some really mind blowing music and it makes me really happy to be able to pass that stuff along to others. Case in point... one of my oldest friends (and part-time contributor in this space -- Will.) is working on a new record. I'll admit that sometimes when I hear his raw stuff I'm a little scared... sometimes the tunes are just too drippy, sentimental, melancholy, whatever. More often than not he'll whittle those tunes into some really profound music, but the anxiety (for me) is still there anytime he tells me to check something new out.\n\nThat's how I felt when I went to his soncibids site to listen to a few of his new tunes. And grooved was how I felt after listening. These tunes... still in a raw kind of demo state... are true pop gems. I dig the sound so much that I was actually moved to write this post... something I rarely do (write about Will's music that is). So check them out for yourself... they really are quite good." . "2006-05-22T11:00:28"^^ . . . "2006-05-26T12:19:53"^^ . "Bipartisanship Decoded" . "In an effort to demystify the rhetoric that tumbles out Washington DC I have decided that, from time to time, I should try to decode some of the hottest political buzzwords in use today. One that struck me today as I read the New York Times editorial page (over someone's shoulder on the morning train) is perhaps one of the most overused yet ultimately meaningless buzzwords of all time: bipartisanship.\n\nSo, without any further exposition, I give you bipartisanship decoded:\n\nBIPARTISANSHIP: When two political parties, both dependent on money from the same corporate donors, work together to craft legislation that has the maximum benefit for those corporations." . "2006-05-26T12:19:53"^^ . . . "2006-06-01T12:54:29"^^ . "The Guts To Leave The Temple" . "\"Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.\"\n\nSo says Karen Armstrong, author of The Great Transformation, in a recent Salon interview. She has a pretty interesting perspective on the nature and meaning of religion and how we have gotten to the spiritually starved, ego-driven world we have today. As the author of 20 books on religion and an ex nun who left because she had trouble finding god in the convent, Armstrong provides a refreshing approach to religion and sacred text: read it as myth and poetry.\n\nSimple enough, but religion continues to be controlled by an egotistical crowd of strivers who are clinging to the easy conformity of institutionalized religion. All around us, in the media, on the street, in the bingo halls, the dominance of the church enforces a crippling patriarchy that has lead us to a world filled with violence, war, cruelty, perversion, hunger, and pervasive unhappiness. This stew grows more and more pungent as the religious reading of sacred texts becomes more and more literal. In taking these words as direct proclamations from a humanoid god-man we are limiting our ability to be truly kind to one another. We trip over each other's interpretations of scripture and fight over things that we have no earthly way of determining because we are too scared to face the world as not us... to leave our ego, our sense of self behind, and contemplate a world without a \"me.\"\n\nThe title of this post is from the song I'm Free by The Who. It comes from the rock opera Tommy in which a messianic deaf, dumb and blind kid suddenly gains his senses and reaches the highest high. As his following builds he is asked by followers how they might attain this highest high for themselves. His response is one of the greatest lines ever written in a rock and roll song:\n\n\"I'd tell you what it takes to reach the highest high, but you'd laugh and say nothings that simple. But you've been told many times before, messiahs pointed to the door, but no one had the guts to leave the temple.\"\n\nThat's what's needed now... the guts to leave the temple... to stop kissing the rings of popes and start living for each other... for humanity." . "2006-06-01T12:54:29"^^ . . . "2006-06-09T12:11:02"^^ . "The Best Songwriters Of All Time" . "Paste Magazine, which is a magazine I read and respect, has just published a list of the 100 best living songwriters. Without a doubt there are some great artists on their list, yet also without doubt is the fact that this list is extremely subjective and more than a little capricious. OK, so Bob Dylan is their greatest living songwriter... I'm sure a lot of people will agree with that and a lot more will choke on it. My question is who cares? Why even bother with something like this? Aside from being a great way to stir up a shitstorm of reader opinion does ranking songwriters in this way have any real value? Isn't this sort of numerical listing at odds with what music and art are really all about? Is the use of superlative in this sense responsible cultural analysis or is it just a cheap behavioral experiment?\n\nI know that my personal favorites, who I consider to be the greatest, changes on an almost daily basis. I sure as shit wouldn't want to be tied down to any given opinion on any given day. Some days Dylan is so heartbreakingly profound that I can't stand it and other days he seems just a little too coarse for my ears. At times I could swear that Robert Hunter (who is curiously missing from this list) is the reincarnation of Shakespeare, while at others he's just a little too much of a hippie romantic for me. The point is this: the human experience and the art experience are largely contextual... what plays like a masterpiece today may seem trite tomorrow and then be a masterpiece again on Friday. The quality of work has the ability to change as the world around it revolves. To try and cement that quality into place comes off as a little bit foolish." . "2006-06-09T12:11:02"^^ . . . "2006-06-13T16:45:29"^^ . "Spielberg’s Munich" . "I finally had the opportunity to see Munich last night and I have to say that the film really stayed with me. Certainly the subject matter is haunting and the clandestine operations of various intelligence agencies is a curious context, yet this film has much more than just great spy punch. It is undoubtedly the first movie made since 2001 that really explores the nature of the worldwide bloodshed we are currently living through. By keeping away from black and white good and evil portrayals Spielberg provides an excellent commentary on the “with us or against us” mentality that has so tragically gripped policy making in the last five years.\n\nMunich does not try to be a historical document and warns the viewer that the story is in fact only “inspired” by actual events. In taking artistic license rather than attempting to patch together the memories of necessarily sketchy and shadowy figures or snippets of declassified and redacted documents Spielberg and writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth are able to truly delve into the social and personal ramifications of “eye for an eye” response policies. Ultimately though, Munich raises more questions that it answers... and that is the film's most powerful aspect." . "2006-06-13T16:45:29"^^ . . . "2006-06-14T15:39:03"^^ . "Idiots Of The New American Century" . "For an excellent assessment of the Iranian nuclear situation, and the consequences of a military solution, do yourself a favor and take a gander at this article by Michael Carmichael. The article centers on a recent lecture given at Oxford by Richard Perle, the Neo-Con shill who did so much drum pounding in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. What I find so amazing is that anybody is still listening to this guy after his ideas have so blatantly failed in Iraq. Yet here we are... on the eve of yet another major blunder in the Middle East.\n\nIn a bit of related news, it seems that the Project For a New American Century is closing its doors... at least according to this article. I guess the unmitigated disaster in Iraq has taken a bit of a toll on the architects of the whole thing, but I'd much rather see some of them in front of a judge. As it stands they'll just filter back into the vast right-wing conspiracy and lose themselves behind big oak desks at the American Enterprise Institute. Bastards. Idiots. No... wait... bastards... idiots... BASTARD IDIOTS!!" . "2006-06-14T15:39:03"^^ . . . "2006-06-27T10:38:38"^^ . "Art, Death, Integrity" . "\"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.\"\n\nI recently came across this quote, by developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, in an article at Adbusters. It kind of sums up a few of the things that have been buzzing around my brain lately. It captures, for me at least, what the endgame of life should be... a steady progression of unfolding experience that ultimately leaves us in a state of fulfillment in which we can safely lay in our deathbeds and embrace what dreams may come.\n\nThat fulfillment is right now for people all over the world and it is right now for a unique and thought provoking writer who has played a role in shaping my experience of life... Robert Anton Wilson. While I am by no means a Wilson expert or even very well versed in his works, his energy runs through mine... and now he is dying.\n\nHe's doing it with flare though... deciding to use his impending scarcity to raise some cash on ebay. His personal mystery auction could be a commentary on capitalism... or perhaps it's a genuine last attempt to connect with his readers... or maybe it's just a way to occupy a mind trapped inside a dying body. In any case he is meeting death with integrity." . "2006-06-27T10:38:38"^^ . . . "2006-07-06T10:16:58"^^ . "The Democratic Party Killed Al Gore" . "While reading this article about Joe Lieberman's primary fight in Connecticut and the seemingly hopeless situation in the Democratic party I had a bit of a revelation: Al Gore's 2000 Presidential bid was not a matter of his being too robotic or stiff or underwhelming, but rather it was a blatant case of group think gone bad.\n\nIn 2000 the party was fat, lazy, and vibing on an increasingly bland centrist policy that was ripe for being undermined by a more radical, thought provoking ideology... an ideology like the one Karl Rove gave to voters. In picking Joe Lieberman as VP the party in effect rolled over and died. Had Gore searched his soul and run a campaign that even partially resembled his recent one against the climate crisis he would have had given himself a wide enough margin to avoid the unfortunate battle in Florida... a battle which the dems didn't have the stomach for.\n\nOnly now, after six years away from Democratic Party group think, has Al Gore found himself. It's a shame that in that time little or no progress has been made in the party and centrists like Lieberman still have too much influence on the party's voice. If there is any grace in politics Lieberman will lose his primary, become an Independent or Republican, Democratic Senators will line up behind Ned Lamont, and progressive thought will once again have a place in the Democratic Party." . "2006-07-06T10:16:58"^^ . . . "2006-07-11T16:15:35"^^ . "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" . "Syd Barrett, the original guitarist and creative force behind Pink Floyd, has died. The inspiration for the landmark floyd album Wish You Were Here, Barrett retreated from public life and slipped away into a private battle with mental illness... one that had been exacerbated by massive, self-administered doses of LSD in the late 1960's.\n\nHearing this news makes me wonder what kind of life Syd lived over the last four decades. Was he totally mad? Was he not allowed to play with scissors? Did he have a nurse? A nanny? A favorite pet? Did he leave his mind in 1965?\n\nObviously this was no Chappelle style exit from the stage... this was a breakdown, a de-generation of every artistic inclination the guy ever had. But how complete was it? I wonder if Syd continued to think serious artistic thoughts or if he just enjoyed \"very ordinary conversations about everyday things.\"\n\nEssentially what I want to know is when Syd Barrett really died. Certainly the death certificate will say July 7th 2006, but I have a strange feeling that the artist died much earlier than that. In a very real sense Syd Barrett died sometime in the early 1970's. He shed his persona like a second skin and once again became plain old Roger Barrett. Hopefully Roger was able to live happily inside the simplicity of everyday life.\n\n" . "2006-07-11T16:15:35"^^ . . . "2006-07-17T12:06:58"^^ . "What is Murdoch seeing in Myspace?" . "Fresh off a cover profile in Wired and now the owner of what has recently become the USA's most visited site, Rupert Murdoch seems to be invincible. And while I may not be a huge fan of the way Murdoch lets his news rooms run, I have to say that I do respect and to some extent admire the way he sees the world of mass media. He knows how to capture attention and how to turn that attention into profit. After all that IS the name of the game in the world of big media.\n\nWhen seen in this light it's no real wonder that Murdoch's interest would be piqued by Myspace. The site has quickly grown to be the lead attention grabber on the net and continues to grow at a feverish pace... it's new users per day equals roughly the circulation of one of Murdoch's newspapers. So it's a no brainer right? Plunk down $580 million for the eyeballs and worry about guiding them into profit later. It can't be that hard to convert attention to money... that's what media is.\n\nStill, one look at Myspace and I have to question what the fuck Rupe sees here. I've tried... on numerous occasions... to find something of interest or lasting value there, but I just see cheap plastic community. Substance... in technical infrastructure, features, and content... seems to be largely absent. In fact I'd be reluctant to call Myspace a community at all. If anything it's a scene... a trendy club... a kind of cultural fad that inevitably flames out. Would you pay $580 million for a scene?\n\nMurdoch did and for now I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he's doing. If he can make it work he'll be building the next generation's MTV. But if Myspace is indeed built on the kind of fleeting, me-too, where'd you get those shoes, mentality that most scenes live and die on, he just paid $580 million for Studio 54." . "2006-07-17T12:06:58"^^ . . . "2006-07-21T12:30:26"^^ . "Chaos, Fear, Death, Money." . "Yesterday I sat down to write a post... a reaction to this article by Jacob Weisberg at Slate. I was writing it through the Wordpress posting form online and while I was checking a link or looking for some info or something, I accidentally googled out of the post (which was basically complete) and lost the whole thing. I couldn't bring myself to re-write the whole thing over... even though I remembered the gist of it quite well... perhaps too well.\n\nYou see each day my frustration with what's happening in the world... and the degree to which Bush apologists go to deflect their furor's responsibility for it... each day that frustration grows exponentially. In fact it grows so much that it is now morphing into fear... fear that the world is spinning out of control and the people in charge have no interest in calming things down.... there's just too much money to be made off of the chaos.\n\nAnd this is where we can blame Bush... he has let this all go down on his watch. He has created a context in which Israel can indiscriminately re-destroy a country that had so successfully re-constructed itself as a cultured and sophisticated cafe society. The Bush doctrine and the administration's illegal war in Iraq have set the standard in the region... bomb first, manipulate the media second.\n\nWith the media interested only in reporting the \"official\" truth we are losing sight of the fact that we, the USA, re-ignited this mess. In March of 2003 Bush sent troops into the crowded theater that is the Middle East and they started yelling fire. The fallout from that action and the scandals that soon followed have incited a predictably angry Arab response and given a green light to Israel to act as the region's thuggish cop. That is role that they seem to relish playing and have engaged it with zeal.\n\nIsrael's latest assaults on Hamas and Hezbollah are positioned in the media as a response (proportionality anyone?) to the recent taking of Israeli soldiers. The mainstream press happily parrots the official Israeli line and dutifully skirts the facts on the ground. Quite plainly, Israel kills as indiscriminately as the \"terrorists\" of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Bush Administration do (for an excellent recent history of the conflict please read this article by Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch).\n\nStill if we take a closer look at what's brewing in the region and examine the charged rhetoric that is coming out of all sides we can't help but see that Israel's latest actions play like a back channel skirmish in the continuing US/Iran nuclear standoff. In building up Hezbollah as an arm of the Iranian military this current conflict has the express potential to provide an American foot in Iran's door.\n\nSo I guess what it comes down to is that we are about to see some next level shit in the Middle East. Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Syria... all mixed up in a stew of hate, violence and religious intolerance that the US, Britain, Russia, China and the rest season to their liking. How it ends, when it ends, who will die, how many will die, cannot be known. The only thing that is certain is that the oil conglomerates of the world will ride the backs of chaos specialists like Halliburton to new heights of wealth... and you'll pay more for gas." . "2006-07-21T12:30:26"^^ . . . "2006-07-27T12:21:25"^^ . "Stop Religion Before It Kills Us All!" . "Perhaps the greatest planetary emergency we face... greater than the global climate crisis, greater than global war, greater than global famine... is the perpetual stranglehold religion has on the good sense and reason of the human animal. It is this seemingly innocuous, yet entirely pervasive aspect of human existence that, through it's prescribed and willful march toward the end, feeds all other crisis currently enveloping the planet.\n\nWithout a doubt religion has placated the minds of the believers and provided them with just enough moral wiggle room so they just don't feel the true weight of human suffering. To them the world is as it is not because we as individuals or as a species fail to act to change things, but because that is the way it must be in order to validate the faith with which they live every day. There is no sense in trying to change things... this is prophecy.\n\nThis fatalism is not restricted to the Bible schools, the congregations of Falwell and Robertson, or the Madrasahs in the Middle East... it is an ingrained part of governments worldwide. Whether it's a blatant case of evangelical fundamentalism (as in our president) or a more subliminal case of political pandering (hello Democrats), the predisposition to eschatological deteminism is rampant.\n\nWe are saddled with a religion even before we have any sense of what that means. We come of age in an environment in which our realites are molded by the tenets and practices of these religions and they become a filter through which the world passes into our experience. Our actions rest upon the foundation of that experience and are limited to its boundries. Outside the boundries of our actions lies God's will... that which must be. Destruction of the Earthly flesh is God's will and it must be.\n\nIt would seem the only way forward is to move away from the controlling paradigm of traditional religions and churches and toward a new one of spirituality and humanism. We must reposition our relationship to sacred text and start to view it as literature rather than prophecy. In short there must be enlightenment... a global awakening in which we shed our traditional boundries and activley engage our experience rather than filtering it. If we can make this happen we might have time to save ourselves, our planet, and perhaps we may even save God itself." . "2006-07-27T12:21:25"^^ . . . "2006-08-18T11:17:54"^^ . "I’ll protect myself, you protect the Constituion" . "This article over at Science Blogs' The Questionable Authority really brings home a point that I have been quietly making since the last days of 2001... that the President fundamentally misunderstands his primary role in American Government.\n\nThe rhetoric out of The White House constantly pounds the trope of the President as protector. That protection is a fundamental part of his job I do not question... what he's supposed to be protecting is where we diverge. For some reason Mr. Bush believes that it is his solemn duty to protect the people of the United States from harm... not so. the protection of the people is provided for in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President's primary role and most solemn duty is to protect THAT document and its principles. Just look at the oath of office: \"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.\" There it is.\n\nWithout the rights provided to us by the Constitution our physical protection is rendered more or less meaningless. We enjoy life as Americans because we have the rights and freedoms necessary to engage in a fulfilling and humane way of life. We don't have to worry that our religions or thoughts or ideas will land us in prison or limit our ability to travel at will. Take these things away or abridge them in any way and we cease to be free.\n\nWhen The President authorizes and vigorously defends unconstitutional activity such as wire tapping it degrades the strength of the Constitution in profound ways. Through this abdication of his one true charge, the President is slowly killing the one thing that can truly protect the American public... and that may be his greatest failure." . "2006-08-18T11:17:54"^^ . . . "2006-08-21T16:21:39"^^ . "The Mustache Works" . "\"giambiIn honor of the Yankees 5-game sweep of the Red Sox I proudly post this picture of myself with a Sal Fasano style mustache. The stache is obviously Photoshopped (not by me), but I can honestly tell you that I am wearing it in spirit on the streets of Manhattan everyday. I hope all of you Yankee fans will follow the grand example set by Sal Fasano, Jason Giambi, Jaret Wright, Ron Villone and Johnny Damon... and grow yourself a mustache. Or at least Photoshop one on." . "2006-08-21T16:21:39"^^ . . . "2006-08-25T12:49:59"^^ . "The Tube Music Network" . "Last night after getting home from work and flipping on the TiVo I was confronted with a message indicating that a new channel had been added to my lineup. Usually I skip right through these things and don't look much further into it. This time however, the name of the channel intrigues me... the tube.\n\nWhen I remembered to check out the new channel 184 a bit later I was greeted with a music video channel. After a half hour of watching I was happy to see that the channel had done nothing in that time but play videos... Peter Tosh, The Pretenders, Tal Bachman, Jamie Cullum, The Cars, Maroon 5, and Rob Thomas to be precise. Not a great selection, but not a bad one either.\n\nWhat I was more excited to see... or not see really... was the lack of advertisements, promo spots, inane \"reality\" shows, or any other piece of programing tripe that has made that other music network so painfully unwatchable. This was just music, pure and simple. Made me feel like it was 1981 all over again. That feeling, as I learned today, was actually rather intuitive. The Tube Music Network is the brainchild of Les Garland, co-founder of MTV.\n\nI guess its still too early to see how the tube will stack up in the coming music video wars... other than an e-commerce operation that lets you buy the music they play the tube has no real online presence. Sites like YouTube have a huge advantage over them in terms of interactivity, social technology and online capabilities. Within a few short years (or perhaps months? now?) music video consumers will not settle for just sitting back an watching a random stream of videos. They'll want to comment, make playlists, upload their own, tell their friends about new stuff, and learn about new stuff from their friends... or at least from some slick algorithmic robot that nows what you'll like. That's the future.\n\nStill it's nice to see a video channel that just plays videos... I have fond memories of 1981." . "2006-08-25T12:49:59"^^ . . . "2006-09-13T14:36:49"^^ . "Let it Go… Let it Flow" . "In this post on his Rough Type blog, Nicholas Carr highlights what he sees as the tension between the openness of \"Web 2.0\" technology and the need for online firms to yield a profit from their web properties. This need, he contends, is defined by control... \"maintaining control over the user, keeping him within the bounds of the site in order to expose him to more ads\"... a practice which is frequently at odds with the flow of Web 2.0.\n\nCarr's comments are a reaction to recent statements by News Corp COO Peter Chernin. At the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference Chernin effectively stated that Web 2.0 companies like YouTube are eating out of MySpace's trough and that the Murdoch web giant could effectively shake them like a bad habit whenever they want... simply by doing what the leaches do.\n\nThe shortsightedness of this thinking... and Carr's seeming agreement with it... is a prime example of how corporate media has an apparently endless disrespect for the power of the user (hello DRM). In essence they posit that the control that profit-seeking firms will exercise over the user will overwhelm the user's appetite for freely flowing information and the imaginative use of technology. After all economics... money demands it be so.\n\nThe flaw with this is the inconvenient fact that economics has always followed and catered to human nature. While Chernin and Carr seem to assume that human nature is essentially money hungry and materialistic, we are in truth a profoundly social animal. We long to be known and to know and to share that knowledge. The technology of Web 2.0 builds on this foundation. It is, in a very real sense, an extension of our conversations, our relationships, our lives.\n\nJust as we would not stand for the limitation of our freedom of movement in the real world, we will not stand for it in the virtual world either. If a critical mass of the user base wants the online experience to be open and flowing in the ways that Web 2.0 has shown it can be then the economics follow the technology and obey that.\n\nGranted companies like News Corp might fight that trend... they are primarily lazy and would rather attempt to use their might to enforce the existing paradigm rather than innovate. Still, in no time there will be that person, that company, that innovator who understands the confluence of human nature and technology and uses that knowledge to define the new economic paradigm. Perhaps it's already happening." . "2006-09-13T14:36:49"^^ . . . "2006-09-15T20:47:33"^^ . "Diamonds In The Rough" . "I've been involved in an interesting discussion over at Scott Karp's blog... Publishing 2.0. The original post dealt with the recent announcement by Frito-Lay that they will be using \"user-generated content\" to produce their Super-Bowl spot this year... you can get all the details here. Scott's post posed the question of how long this sort of promoting... or as I prefer to call it, production method... can last. His take is that the \"best\" talent will inevitably require professional level compensation and won't simply keep producing new content for big corporations for free.\n\nThis looks good on its face, but it soon breaks down when you realize that the \"BEST\" talent is not always known. Under the 20th century production model the barrier to entry was significant so this unknown talent went unused. Rarely would the disenfranchised have the capital it would take to put together the a reel that would make anyone that \"mattered\" take notice. In order to produce anything of quality you would have to track through the accepted channels... school, internship, assistant, apprentice, whatever. Materials of production were expensive and some kid off the street just couldn't be trusted with them.\n\nAs technology developed this barrier became almost non-existent and now almost anyone with a few dollars and some imagination can produce something that can be shown on the Super Bowl. So is it problem that the kid off the street might produce a Super Bowl spot and get little more than a slap on the back and a trip to the game? Is he a sucker?\n\nI for one don't feel comfortable making those kind of judgments on people I don't know. But if you ask yourself where would that kid be if he hadn't entered that contest things start to make a little more sense. One thing is for sure... he wouldn't be at the Super Bowl and he wouldn't be the creator of perhaps the most watched and talked about 30 seconds of video in the world.\n\nSo the kid wins. Frito-Lay wins. But can it last?\n\nIf we assume it can't, we'd also have to assume that at some point everybody making videos... or at least those with talent... will be getting paid for their services. I would love to see that, but I just don't think it's going to ever happen. No matter what you want to believe cream will not always rise to the top. There will always be people with talent who for whatever reason just don't get noticed in their field. And there will always be a Frito-Lay willing to find that diamond in the rough." . "2006-09-15T20:47:33"^^ . . . "2006-10-02T16:36:13"^^ . "Nextfest Blahs" . "Recently I had the opportunity to spend a short while checking out Wired's Nextfest at the Javits Center in NYC. I had been eagerly anticipating the show for a few months now... checking out the photos from previous incarnations... reading engaging accounts by those who have been... swallowing the Wired spin machine whole. Essentially I was pumped to get a glimpse of the future.\n\nAnd it is perhaps that level of excitement that was setting me up for the ultimate letdown. The place just didn't measure up... didn't radiate with the same electric hum that reading about it did. All the hope, the wonder, the kinetic weight that ran through the written accounts of the show seemed to outpace the actuality of the event. The pregnant promise of the future was aborted by the cold vanilla pain of here and now.\n\nSure there were some interesting things on display, but nothing really mind-blowing. The hall had a kind of unfinished feel to it... like they were up all night trying to bring the future into view, but they only had enough time to stitch together a few shattered visions. There was no totality... no enveloping sense of tomorrow being intrinsically better than today... just a little greener... a little lighter.\n\nIronically the whole experience left me with a new-found respect for Wired as a magazine. The editors of Wired are able to paint a picture... to conjure a sense of the future that the actual toys in their stories fall short of. Reading the average issue of Wired is a joyride through the streets of future worlds. There is potential dripping from every page.\n\nIn person... where the cracks are visible... where the noises less elegant... these toys tell a much, much blander tale." . "2006-10-02T16:36:13"^^ . . . "2006-10-09T16:02:39"^^ . "Publishing is Dead" . "For some time now I have been trying to express in specific terms my general feeling that publishing... magazine publishing in particular... is in crisis. It's no secret that massive disruption in technology over the past decade has shaken the industry to its core, but for all the debate over how to best navigate this change surprisingly little has been solidified (at least in my head) with regard to what magazines will look like ten, twenty or fifty years down the line.\n\nAnd then today... while reading this piece by Robert Young... I had a moment of clarity. Young's piece deals with the importance of communication in the social network space (Myspace, Flickr, etc) and as I read it that word... communication... spoke to me. THAT is what magazines need to do... stop thinking in terms of publishing content and start thinking in terms of fostering communication.\n\nFor the most part magazines have been looking at the technological landscape and trying to superimpose their traditional publishing model onto it. Rather than understanding and taking advantage of how changes in technology empower people to be their own editors and information gatherers most publishers have simply \"repurposed\" content to emerging media. Same data, new wrapper.\n\nProducers of magazines need to start thinking more like software developers and less like traditional publishers. If a magazine is to stay relevant to the community it serves it must give its readers tools to successfully and productively navigate the information landscape. Applications that engage readers and foster their participation in the overall community will go much further in the evolving technological environment than the standard authoritative model.\n\nBy expanding their operations beyond the one way street model of traditional publishing and embracing the back and forth nature of a communications model magazines can build on their privileged spot atop niche communities and stay relevant into the future." . "2006-10-09T16:02:39"^^ . . . "2006-11-06T12:05:58"^^ . "Now THAT’s what I’m Talking About" . "My last post on magazine publishing attempted to crystalize some of the things I have been feeling about my chosen profession... the magazine business. That post, which hailed the death of publishing, hinted at some of the things I've been sensing without really nailing them. Lucky for me I'm not the only one who is thinking in the magazine world and so I will now provide you with a link to a very insightful essay by Derek Powazek, the Editor of JPG Magazine, on how magazines, which are traditionally three separate communities, need to start thinking of themselves as one. Simple really... and in the same neighborhood as my thinking... but this is a bit more focused. Enjoy!" . "2006-11-06T12:05:58"^^ . . . "2006-11-06T14:24:54"^^ . "Hemingway is Simplicity" . "The title of this post is true... on two levels. Yes Ernest Hemingway is the master of simplicity in literature and his writing has inspired me on more than one occasion (I must confess... I am and ex English Lit Grad Student). However, that is not the Hemingway I intend to praise here today. Instead I wish to heap some praise on Hemingway the Wordpress theme. This example of the clean and simple organization of data has saved me. You see I have been wrestling with the development of my own themes for this site and in doing so I have lost sight of one simple fact... I am not a code poet.\n\nSure I can hack together some interesting bits of PHP, and I certainly have learned a lot by mucking around with the guts of this site (and as such I will continue to do so), but I found that I need a place to cleanly and simply express my thoughts through words... and Hemingway has provided that.\n\nI'm just starting to learn the ins and outs of the theme, but I knew as soon as I saw it that it was exactly the skeleton I was looking for. It totally breaks from the old stand-by center-column and right-sidebar approach of the majority of WP themes... something I have been trying to do with my own work only to be met at every turn with validation, browser and loading issues. That's a great learning experience... but it's also a mindfogger.\n\nSo now I am just going to concentrate a bit more on the words that people read and a little less on the letters that machines do and hopefully start making more headway on converting my inner dialogue to some sort of coherent personal and professional philosophy. Good luck to me." . "2006-11-06T14:24:54"^^ . . . "2006-11-08T14:25:15"^^ . "Starting to Love Last.fm" . "For a few years I used to run a Live365 radio station that went by the name of Bluepear Radio. What drove that station was not only my passion for music, but my need to share what I listened to with friends, family, strangers, the world at large. It was never about making money or a building a radio station per se... I just wanted to share what I was feeling when I listened to music with everyone I could. I wanted others to feel the same electricity... vibe on the same frequency I was.\n\nThat experiment sadly ended as the financial obligation related to running a Live365 station, although relatively small, began to overtake my willingness to be that dissemination point. With other things in my life needing my time, energy, and money I had to retreat into a more solipsistic listening mode... my music library would have to once again be just mine.\n\nAs you can imagine I still had the itch to share even if I didn't have the time or money to be a station manger. That itch led me to last.fm. While last.fm wouldn't let me program a stream the same way Live365 would it did let me effortlessly push my listening habits from iTunes to their database where it could be tagged, searched, cross-referenced, compared, and best of all shared.\n\nAt first... with little or no data (of mine) in the Last.fm system... I was unimpressed with what they had to offer. Yet it was free, effortless, social. I was listening to iTunes for about eight hours a day at work so I figured I'd just let the data pile up... scrobble for a few months and see where it took me.\n\nRecently... announcements of improvements to the site piqued my interest so I decided to revisit and see just where this social music revolution was heading. Well... after months of scrobbling data to last.fm my profile there is much more robust. I have a long list of neighbors (those whose taste in music is similar to mine) and those relations have led to some interesting recommendations... many of which have made significant contributions to my daily listening. I now find myself listening to last.fm almost as much as I am listening to my own iTunes library.\n\nAs Last.fm is a social site it's value is amplified with each connection you make. As such I have reached out to some of my neighbors to make them friends and have taken steps to invite real world contacts into the community. Listeners of the old Bluepear Radio can now join last.fm and not only become passive listeners, but actually influence what I play (or listen to) in a way that emailed requests and forum posts could never hope to.\n\nIn essence every last.fm \"station\" is more than just a fixed stream... these stations are fractal growth points that can evolve and mutate organically according to users listening habits. Tag based radio channels are born every minute and many die just as quickly. Along the way some interesting associations are made.\n\nA prime example of this is Dead Man Radio. While doing Bluepear Radio a friend and I had an idea for a theme of music by artists and bands that had died or had members that died. I never put the list together for a number of reasons, but now with Last.fm I just have to tag artists and songs with the tag \"dead man radio\" and they will automatically be placed in a channel under that tag name. Now that stream is a reality and it is making for some interesting combinations (Syd Barrett, John Coltrane, Elliott Smith, Jimi Hendrix, Morphine, and Blind Melon are are recent examples). Slowly dead man radio will take on a life of its own.\n\nAlthough some may consider the mention of love in description of how one feels about a certain type of technology somewhat bizarre, I would have to say that this is more than just technology. This is technology that is so profoundly entwined with the cultural and human that the mix becomes something entirely new. And I do love that." . "2006-11-08T14:25:15"^^ . . . "2006-11-09T17:41:16"^^ . "Idio - Just Another Digital Magazine" . "Ahhh the digital magazine... that misguided, ineffective, awkward attempt to recreate a solid and successful print format in the world of bits and bytes. So many of us in the industry are falling prey to its seductive possibility... its flash and novelty... its artful reproduction of the \"print experience\" in digital form. Page turning... reader spreads... folios... it's all there, just like a real printed magazine. The only problem is that it's not a real printed magazine and trying to make it one (or feel like one) is a recipe for failure.\n\nTake as an example the recently launched Idio. On paper (pun intended) this looks like a great idea... the melding of the magazine form with the personalization and intimacy of a social web app. Idio aims to be \"your magazine\" and as such it lets you manage your own interests through predefined sliders. How you set those sliders determines which articles will be culled from Idio's selections and assembled on the fly into a digital magazine. As Idio's content base grows and as it learns more about you the magazine will increase in its personal relevance.\n\nNow this all sound great... that is until you actually get to the magazine. Reader spreads.. page turning... folios. The excitement of being involved in a next generation project to build a truly personalized magazine is lost when this twentieth century digital magazine hits your screen. Granted, this is a start-up and their heart is in the right place, but this is just not it. This is not what the magazine world is waiting for... this will save nobody.\n\nI can't help but feel that Idio would be better served by building something that not only seeks to capitalize on web 2.0 hype, but actually takes advantage of the technology that the hype thrives on. Not doing so, especially in an age when the average reader is extremely used to those technologies being there, just leaves the user feeling short-changed... like they're not seeing everything there is to see.\n\nWhen it comes right down to it what makes the magazine experience a fulfilling one for readers is not the ability to turn a page, but rather the connection made with the point of view of the magazine. The artificial replication of the \"feel\" of a more traditional format is a dangerous distraction from that connection. The technology behind a publishing format should be invisible... a foundation upon which the content stands. In the case of digital magazines like Idio it's more like Christmas lights draped across the gutters." . "2006-11-09T17:41:16"^^ . . . "2006-11-10T16:36:16"^^ . "A Hollow Victory" . "For the past few days I have been trying to process this latest \"revolution\" in the US Congress... what does it mean? ...what kind of change can we expect? ...are we being set up? While most of my anti-Bush friends and family are rejoicing over the Republican loss (and the demise of Rummy) I am finding it hard to be happy about it. I can certainly appreciate the idea of having an oppositional Congress in place to keep the runaway Executive branch in check, but something in me is still skeptical.\n\nI think John Stewart had it right when he compared the Democratic party to the kid who slowly backs out of the room as his brother gets scolded. In fact Democrats have been backing out of the room for six years now... never once exhibiting the integrity of opposition that the country so sorely needs. In a real sense the Democratic party is complicit in a whole host of Republican crimes and misdemeanors. From voting away their own oversight responsibilities to letting the right-wing Christian cartel set the social agenda, this party has been little more than a Republican lap dog for six years. And now they have some sway.\n\nThe answers to the questions I pose in the first paragraph of this post will take some time to sort out. However one thing is true... there is an opportunity here. If the Democrats can suddenly find some sort of moral center... some touchstone that brings them back to their best FDR, JFK, RFK moments... then maybe we might see some real work get done. I won't hold my breath." . "2006-11-10T16:36:16"^^ . . . "2006-11-21T12:42:01"^^ . "Print, Web… There’s a Difference" . "While the title of this post seems ridiculously obvious, most magazine editors... especially those who cut their teeth before the Web became what it is today... just don't seem to get it. Look at almost any popular magazine web site and you will find that the majority of articles are simply \"reprinted\" from the hard copy without any reconsideration. Very little content is tailored to the web... although that is changing as magazines are starting to blog (albeit in a very structured \"print\" sort of way).\n\nPersonally I have been keenly aware of the effect that any given presentation technology has on the text it presents since I ran across Marshall McLuhan as an English Lit grad student over a decade ago. The concept (that print articles and web articles should be written differently) just seems so basic... like the title of the post... that I find it baffling that magazine editorial teams have taken so long to see it as well. For ten years we have been forced to deal with magazines that have been shoving the square peg of print-centric text into the round hole of digital presentation spaces. Thankfully it looks like there might be some light at the end of that tunnel.\n\nThat light comes in this acknowledgment by Technology Review editor Jason Pontin.\n
In short, the Internet is a very good medium for economically expressed, timely stories. More, the Web is unapologetically responsive to the market. Online, the posture of editors before readers is slavish: we listen to your demands, or else we (more tangibly, our \"audience traffic\") are punished.\n\nYet editors can do more than give readers what they say they want; they can also offer up stories that surprise and delight. In print, editors can be purveyors of serendipity. Such a function may not be wanted in the yawping, demotic marketplace of the Internet. It can seem unacceptably elitist to those who are skeptical about the intelligence, expertise, impartiality, and good sense of what the blogosphere calls the \"mainstream media.\" But there are still many readers who will pay for that old-fashioned virtue, nicety of editorial selection.
\nFinally someone sees the blindingly obvious. Hopefully the path that Technology Review is taking with regard to print-centric text is contagious and we'll start to see magazines living up to their ultimate potential as communities of vibrant debate, comment, and thought." . "2006-11-21T12:42:01"^^ . . . "2006-11-21T13:43:52"^^ . "AmEx Publishing Dips Into Wiki" . "Here's one to watch... according to Advertising Age, American Express Publishing is dipping it's little toe into the wild and wooly seas of wiki publishing. It's an interesting move and it fits perfectly with what my personal vision of what twenty-first century publishing will look like, yet if the Ad Age article is any indication of what the suits at AmEx understand about the technology this story is just starting to get interesting.\n\nIt seems that AmEx is operating under the assumption that design... making the interface pretty... can overcome whatever the perceived flaws of wiki based models are. From the Ad Age article:\n
\"With the old wiki sites, every one was different and the rules of editing were different,\" said Mark Stanich, chief marketing officer, American Express Publishing Group. \"If you were really intense you could get on there and go crazy but it wasn't really user friendly. This is really like using a word-processing tool. The ease of it to the consumer is important.\"
\nOK... Stanich has a small point here. The easier the wiki is to use the more content users will be able to contribute. But it's a long jump from there to successfully harnessing the power of wiki in an ad based publishing model. You have to wonder how much thought AmEx has given to the protocol of dealing with dissent, invective, vitriol, and other inappropriate uses of the wiki. Wikipedia, the most visible and successful implementation of the technology, thrives on a the community policing efforts of hyperactive users... can Executive Travel SkyGuide claim the same sort of rabid devotion among its readership? Is that level of involvement natural for a ad-based model? Is it possible?\n\nObviously it's too soon to tell how this will shake out, but I applaud AmEx for going there. Somebody has to step up and start mixing editors, advertisers, and readers in the social stew... and with the right spices in the right amounts, we may have a tasty new publishing model." . "2006-11-21T13:43:52"^^ . . . "2006-11-27T14:16:04"^^ . "How Do You Say Hello in Chinese?" . "When I was in high school in the late 80's it was commonly thought that anyone interested in having a reasonably good chance at earning a living in \"the future\" should learn to speak Japanese. At the time it looked like they were on their way to owning most of the US and an American who could speak to them in their native tongue would be living high on the hog... samurai style. Then came the personal computing and internet revolution and Silicon Valley made it safe to be plain old American again... with a new found appreciation for sushi of course.\n\nWell friends, it seems like our reprieve has run out. The very thing that saved us once before, the network, now threatens to leave us on the side of the road squirming in our irrelevance as China and India speed right by us. (At this point I'd advise anyone who is concerned by this to go an read Thomas Friedman's new book, The World Is Flat. I haven't been able to rid it's themes from my mind since I read it over a month ago.) Yes once again it seems that acquainting our children with the cultures of Asia is a smart and necessary play... and this time there may not be an escape hatch.\n\nIn a recent lecture former World Bank head James Wolfensohn warned of the coming shift of economic power from the wealthy western states like the US to Asian countries... most notably India and China. Essentially, Wolfenshon's argument boils down to this basic advice... if you don't want to be one big, fat, lazy third world also-ran you need to get your asses in gear and start taking some steps to prepare for this shift. (This is Friedman's basic take on things as well.)\n\nThe most glaringly obvious step would be to shore up the educational efforts in math and science, but there is something else that may have a more profound effect... nationalized health care. If the US is to be at all competitive in the economic environment of the twenty-first century it needs to do something to lessen the burden on businesses and lower the costs of manufacturing, research and development in the states. Government sponsored health benefits would go a long way toward doing that.\n\nThe US Government also needs to take more initiative in developing solutions to the burgeoning energy crisis. We need to be oil free and we can be. With right mix of Federal policy and private sector innovation green energy companies could spawn an economic boom that would not only help save the planet, but would make the dot com boom of the late nineties seem insignificant by comparison. Someone in power (maybe President Gore) needs to jump start this... somebody needs to throw down a challenge and make it an unassailable, national fact that we will be oil free in ten years.\n\nWhile it seems that our economic future is rather bleak it is not necessarily so. There is a lot that can and should be done and with a progressive and enlightened government it will be done. Wait... may be we are fucked. How do you say hello in Chinese?" . "2006-11-27T14:16:04"^^ . . . "2006-12-04T16:58:40"^^ . "New Year… New Paper" . "I love it when I look through my afternoon feeds and find that one of the giants of \"old media\" is taking steps to keep relevant in the new and wonderful world of always on digital news streams. Realizing that people are increasingly being informed of events via electronic device, the Wall Street Journal has decided to cut some inches from its daily paper and retool it with that fact in mind. Those inches (which will save the company an estimated 18 million dollars annually) will be cut from breaking and straight news items which will gain new life online.\n\nThe new look Journal will hit newsstands on January 2 and it will be temporarily free... a chance to let readers taste the future. Further, in what looks to be a blatant admission that free news can be the foundation of profitability, the WSJ also has plans to give complimentary access to online and paper editions to \"young\" executives. The access will be delivered through something they're calling a \"mentoring\" program.\n\nAlthough I don't read the Journal I am intrigued by their approach here. Chopping down the standard broadsheet format is a pretty strong statement on the changing landscape of print... one that other publishers would do well to heed. To simply cling to a form factor for sentimental reasons or misguided purist elitism could soon prove catastrophic.\n\nThe only question I have is this: What effect will all this have on the editorial slant of the printed content? With hard news being pushed to the web there is an excellent opportunity for the editors to put more opinion and analysis in the print edition. Perhaps we will start seeing longer, more complex investigative articles... or maybe more human interest, culture, and art. That's certainly what the medium cries out for... I guess we'll have to wait and see if the WSJ editors hear that cry." . "2006-12-04T16:58:40"^^ . . . "2006-12-08T17:27:16"^^ . "1960s Anti-Drug Propaganda" . "[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNMU052BCg8[/coolplayer]\nHave we really come that far? Sure today's propaganda is slickly produced and dripping in the cultural vernacular of the day... but is it any less ridiculous?" . "2006-12-08T17:27:16"^^ . . . "2006-12-11T13:50:35"^^ . "Software and Community in the Early 21st Century" . "[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorfgQlEJv8[/coolplayer]\nHave an hour to kill? Want to get a good take on where software is going in the twenty-first century? Then watch this meaty keynote by Eben Moglen from the most recent Plone Conference. It's a brilliant assessment of free software's role as a profound social and cultural force that is killing off the industrial paradigm... and Microsoft with it." . "2006-12-11T13:50:35"^^ . . . "2006-12-12T12:52:38"^^ . "Roll In The Mud, Have A Ball" . "A while back I wrote a post titled Music By Friends. In that post I dealt with the paradox of emotion that I experience when listening to music by artists I consider personal friends... trepidation and joy. The fear is of course that the music will fall short... leave you uninspired. The joy comes when I hear something beautiful and realize how accessible the work is... how close I am to the source of the inspiration. That sort of personal connection really is a magical feeling and it is what drives groupies and deadheads in their quest to get as close to \"the band\" as possible. Music is beautiful positive energy and the musician its primary conduit. Access to that conduit brings access to that energy and creates a feedback loop that is pure, uncut, undiluted art in action.\n\nWith all of that at the tip of my mind I went to my friend William's site to download the final tracks of his new record I Was Never Here (You can download all the tracks free for a limited time through his site). A few of the tracks were those I had already posted on in the \"Friends\" post so I new there was going to be some gold there... but I hadn't heard the bulk of the album or any of the finished product. Let's just say that Will has had a mercurial and varied history when it comes to musical styling and the tracks I loved so when they were in demo form could have had all the cheer ripped from them if William's mood swung too much toward the melancholy in the weeks leading up to the final mix.\n\nWell folks I am happy to report that this record is strong. Sure it has peaks and valleys like any other album will, but the peaks nearly touch the face of God while the valleys are pleasant fertile valleys that give way before they turn into arid, barren desert. This music is the music of a man who has stopped trying to be anything but himself... it is some of the most sincere work William has ever put together.\n\nI won't go into what this album reminds me of, what might have influenced it, what it sounds like, or which tracks I like and why... that's for a record review. No this post is really something else entirely. This post is a letter to a friend... a way to tell him I think his art is alive and meaningful. This post is also a way to thank the cosmos, god, life, for not beating my friend beyond the point of hope and for letting him continue to produce inspired work. Joy to the world." . "2006-12-12T12:52:38"^^ . . . "2006-12-12T15:41:33"^^ . "Yes Indeed, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Lives" . "[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYRTDz3j-eA[/coolplayer]\nEvery once in a while it's a good idea to touch base with the things in your life that have helped to craft the person you are. For me one of those things is Hunter S. Thompson. Reading his articles in Rolling Stone had a profound impact on the way I view the politics, culture and counter-culture of the USA. I still have no idea what made him kill himself the way he did, but at some level I certainly understand it. I suppose that a lifetime of running in the opposite direction of the vast majority of folk you come by gets tiring. In any event, I came across this video and remembered all over again what it was about Hunter that still lives on. And check this out too. And this." . "2006-12-12T15:41:33"^^ . . . "2006-12-13T13:33:10"^^ . "Transparency And The Future Of The Magazine" . "Wired Editor (and author of The Long Tail) Chris Anderson wonders what radical transparency might mean for his magazine in a two part post (part one - part two) on his blog The Long Tail. It's a truly fascinating read and is some serious food for thought for anyone who is involved in developing technologically coherent operational strategies for the evolving magazine space. Parsing emerging cultural, technological, and social signals into a workable framework and publishing model is a process that has many publishers scratching their heads... having a glimpse into how one of the most culture-tech savvy pubs in the industry is managing that process is not only interesting and valuable-- it's damn near priceless.\n\nThe idea that a magazine might thrive by becoming as transparent as it possibly can... by exposing its innards to the reading public... by letting the outside world inside... is a dangerous idea. The traditional publishing model for magazines was based almost entirely on control. To be sure there have been some brief points of reader interaction (letters to the editor the most oft cited example), but for the most part the editorial voice of the magazine was strictly authoritarian. The editor was the pacemaker, the prime object in a workflow that moved with purpose from a stage of raw data to refined information that ultimately ended with the reader-consumer. As long as the reader was conditioned by social, cultural, and technical mores to be a passive consumer this model thrived.\n\nObviously those mores have changed... are changing... and will continue to change... as technology develops at a blistering pace. Readers are no longer conditioned by their environment to simply consume... interaction is enjoying a resurgence and once again becoming a vital part of the human experience. People are getting up off their collective asses and they want to build things, process information, customize their own experience. Once voice won't hold their attention. The Editor's role has changed... it's just that nobody is quite sure yet what the role has become.\n\nAnderson's thoughts on the changing nature of the magazine and the role of the editorial voice in the emerging mediascape are an excellent starting point. His \"catalyze and curate\" methodology is a logical evolution of the traditional role and his idea of transparency fits perfectly with what the modern reader is conditioned to expect in terms of interaction. Only time will tell how well this works on a business level. Will advertisers be able to find a logical space inside the conversation that will develop? Will sales personnel have the necessary vocabulary and vision to sell inside this new conversation?\n\nCertainly there are an abundance of questions that still need to be answered before these new models can take hold. Yet one thing is clear... there will be change. It's going to be a lot of fun getting from here to there... enjoy it." . "2006-12-13T13:33:10"^^ . . . "2006-12-14T16:04:56"^^ . "“Jack Kerouac” Made Me Write This Poem" . "[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4z8Zvo2PDw[/coolplayer]\nsomething of the city builds inside as a lonely horn pines for the connection... the moment in the past... when we had something besides a plain future and instead saw everything with wild eyed color and deep depressed shadow. that me has gone leaving a strong scent of information and light for this one to cling to...\n\n(mturro - NYC - 12/2006)" . "2006-12-14T16:04:56"^^ . . . "2006-12-21T13:53:01"^^ . "Exploitation My Ass!!!" . "Of late, throughout this rather impotent universe so lamely termed the blogoshpere, there has been some buzz regarding the fairness of big user generated content communities like YouTube. The thinking goes something like this: All these poor souls are posting their hard work and getting nothing... not a share of ad revenue, not a free meal, not a hot dog, or pencil and pen set... nothing in return. In fact Nick Carr has gone as far as to refer to these unfortunate souls as sharecroppers... a term which not so lightly evokes the social ills of the Jim Crow south. I guess it's not too far of a stretch to compare a system that was used to extend institutionalized racism post-slavery to one that denies drunk frat boys direct revenue from their weekend party cellphone video.\n\nWe seem to have gone through the looking glass... at some point we went down the rabbit hole, swallowed the red pill, ate the brown acid... somewhere along the line we lost any sense of what exploitation looks like. To argue or even suggest that millions of users happily sharing their lives and experiences with friends, neighbors, and family are somehow being exploited because the vehicle that makes this community possible turns a profit is really kind of stupid. This is after all a capitalist society and services rendered usually require payment. That payment in the case of these sites is simply deflected to a third party. Imagine if that worked offline... free meals at the local bistro if you watch advertising at your table before the meal.\n\nTo be sure there are many (myself included) who wouldn't want to watch ads before every meal... and for those of us who don't there would be plenty of restaurants willing to take cash in direct exchange for food... it's our choice. And that's the bottom line here... choice. Every single person sharing video on YouTube or images on Flickr has the choice to exit the system anytime they want. They also have the choice to host their stuff on their own site (if they want to pay for the service and administer the technology on their own).\n\nWhy don't they? Simply put, it's just not worth it. Why go through all the trouble of setting up your own site, learning the ins and outs of web administration, paying a monthly fee just to share a few seconds of video that could be easily hosted on a free community site? For most people it's a no-brainer... they get something for nothing.\n\nSo why are all these \"bloggers\" throwing around terms like exploitation and comparing MySpace to a sharecropping system? Again, simply put, it's fear. Most of these bloggers are professional content creators... they make their living off paid content models that are under attack by new sites that are monetizing user generated content (UGC). This fear precludes them from viewing the UGC phenomenon with clear eyes. It also makes them view the companies that are taking advantage of the phenomenon as heartless, wicked, and exploitive. Rather than adapt they attack, constantly throwing cold water through cautionary posts and caveats.\n\nIt's true that the media landscape is changing... dynastic fortunes are being won and lost based on decisions being made right now. Technology is spreading out the game, bringing in more players, less professionalism, more egalitarianism, less elitism. Conversations are igniting ideas... moments are being immortalized in bits... and people are starting to talk.\n\nThis can be scary. It can also be a time of unbounded opportunity. And as with most things... we each have a choice which one it will be for us." . "2006-12-21T13:53:01"^^ . . . "2006-12-21T17:15:20"^^ . "There Once Was A Time When Televison Educated" . "In this video (after the \"read on\" jump) two of America's best known intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley, debate the nature of American imperialism. The year is 1969 and the war is Vietnam, but the arguments sadly remain relevant. It's also quite sad that this level of debate no longer has a home on network TV... we get Bill O'Reilly.\n[coolplayer]\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt-GUAxmxdk\n[/coolplayer]" . "2006-12-21T17:15:20"^^ . . . "2007-02-05T16:04:26"^^ . "When Inspiration Dies" . "December was a good month... as far as posting to this site is concerned. I was able to eek out a number of posts and had a pretty good run up to the last week of the year... my thoughts just seemed to be ready made for the online world. I was channeling ideas to the web and getting inspiration back... a positive feedback loop that had me feeling alive, plugged-in, digital, electric. Then came Christmas, family, New Years, parties, food, champaign, wine, beer, January... a long list of things that just drained me of any impulse to push thought to the outside world. I was as cold as winter.\n\n\n\nNow... almost a full week into February... I am forcing myself to shake off the cobwebs and get something out of my head and into this space. My hope is that the act of posting... of staring down the blank screen... will spark some sort of inspiration. Hopefully the words your are reading now will be the fruitful ancestors to a torrent of future ideas, thoughts, and comments. And if we're lucky, maybe some of those thoughts, ideas, and comments will be useful to someone somewhere. We'll just have to wait and see.\n\nIn any event all of this has me asking myself one simple question: Why should I really care? Is there any reason I should feel obligated to write in this space? I'm not taking advertising or making money from this site... nobody depends on my words for their livelihood, intellectual sustenance, or news about the world. So why do I feel compelled to write? Why do I get more and more depressed as the date of my last post recedes further and further into the past?\n\nMy only answer... the only answer that begins to make sense... is that there is some therapeutic value to it. Living in a world where news, information and images relentlessly bombard us, an output becomes vital. Without it the pressure builds and starts to manifest itself as a slight haze of depression. This depression serves as a trigger for the release of that pressure which, in my case at least, comes in the form of this site. That you are here to read the results of that process is purely secondary.... I am not writing for the sake of an audience, I am writing for the sake my of my own sanity.\n\nSo, for the few of you who have managed to find this, welcome to my world, make yourself at home, and as always... feel free to comment." . "2007-02-05T16:04:26"^^ . . . "2007-02-26T12:41:23"^^ . "Steven Johnson makes excellent points in defense of “hipster” parents" . "Steven Johnson has an excellent post on his blog... it's a \"close\" reading (I love that phrase... haven't really used it since grad school) of a David Brooks column on hipster parents. Johnson's characterization of Brooks' column as \"breathtakingly superficial\" is good medicine for those of us who, for whatever reason, have tried to maintain some connection to the life we had lead up to the point of conception of our first child. While Johnson's most interesting point doesn't wholly apply to my situation... he is more interested by the trend of urban child rearing... it does do a great job of knocking the legs out from under a pompous piece that is little more than a button down tight-ass assault on what its author sees as a silly, style hungry, left leaning, trend of alternaparenting." . "2007-02-26T12:41:23"^^ . . . "2007-10-26T15:44:01"^^ . "switching my site from wordpre..." . "switching my site from wordpress mu back to straight wordpress... experiment over." . "2007-10-26T16:04:24"^^ . . . "2007-02-27T11:02:21"^^ . "The Last.fm player brings streaming radio back" . "Long time readers of this site will remember that for a period of time it lived as Bluepear Radio... a music intensive blog that utilized the Live365 streaming services to deliver carefully constructed playlists straight to the desktop. For one reason or another (mainly financial... I got tired of paying the monthly fee) that ended.\n\nI recount my feelings about that whole time in this post. Long story short I decided to put my musical time and effort into a free iTunes/last.fm combo. Well friends that set-up is starting to bare fruit. If you take a gander at the sidebar here on this site you'll notice the new last.fm radio player... embedded flash goodness.\n\nWhile this isn't quite the same thing as actually constructing playlists like I did at Live365 it is a nice jump back in that direction. Since Last.fm has so much data on my listening habits (they pretty much know exactly what I'm playing in iTunes at any given moment) they are able to automatically create a \"station\" based on that data. So what you hear when you push play over there in the sidebar is quite close to the music I actually have in my library and listen to on a daily basis.\n\nWhat's missing is any kind of fine grained control over segues, access to bands that I love and aren't in a licensing deal with last.fm, and customized sound effects or enhancements that might make it into a \"hand-made\" playlist. I can live with that and I am... quite happily thus far." . "2007-02-27T11:02:21"^^ . . . "2007-03-01T21:25:25"^^ . "75 Different Rooms" . "I've lived in about 75 different rooms. All of them, at some point in time were painted red, none of them necessarily by me. Most of them have had a window, or two windows, or several windows. These windows were sometimes covered with an opaque film of dust while others were inexplicably clean... transparent. The transparent ones never really offered much in the way of privacy and the opaque ones never let me see out. For years I traversed these two states... at times hidden behind a thick film of skin and snot, while at others naked before the empty glare of morning... never really feeling at home in either. When wallowing in loneliness I was constantly bothered by the grave cold of not being. I struggled to feel anything. Life slowed until all color drained from it. Just. Empty. When basking in glare I was crippled by a persistent self-consciousness. Every move felt analyzed. Each breath scrutinized. Life bristled with the hot insecurity of fame. Too. Much. Each of these rooms were part of my life. Each of these rooms defined me, but only for as long as I lived in them. I've lived in about 75 different rooms. All of them, at some point in time were me, or not necessarily me." . "2007-03-01T21:25:25"^^ . . . "2007-03-02T11:58:43"^^ . "PARAGRAPH is born, consciousness is streamed, depression offset" . "Writing here on this blog is a certain kind of writing. While it's not the pained work of composition that a novel may be, it is the product of some deliberation. I try to think about the post... try to have a point... something to say. Needless to say that does not always come easy. Many times I'm just not inspired to collect my thoughts, organize them, parse them, and package them in a nice neat conversational voice for consumption here. Then there's the question of relevance... will what I'm trying to say have any real relevance to the defined context of this blog (namely is there something to be said about culture, technology, politics, or media).\n\nAs I've recently written... when I can't or don't express my self I tend to get depressed. Too much information taken in... not enough going out... depression sets in. So I've decided to be proactive about the situation and create an alternate space... a space where I don't have to worry so much about \"what\" I'm saying and I can just write... anything. It's an exercise really... something I used to do a lot of back in the day. When I studied LIT I was a big fan of the stream of consciousness. I used the technique heavily in my writing and appreciated it in others'. So today I am pointing you to PARAGRAPH... a return to form, or roots, or something.\n\nPARAGRAPH will live, hopefully, as an unfiltered outlet for my thoughts. My aim is to post about a paragraph's worth of text for each post and to go into each post cold... no preconceptions or ideas, no theories or themes... just me and a blank screen mano y mano for about fifteen minutes a pop. If what comes out makes some sense fine, if not, fine. If it sucks fine. If it radiates with the light of the muse, fine. The bottom line is I don't care... I just want to take what's inside out.\n\nI think this will make for some interesting reading and may even spark more cultivated pieces on this site. Only time will tell. What is certain, even at this early stage, is that PARAGRAPH is already making me feel happy." . "2007-03-02T11:58:43"^^ . . . "2007-03-05T10:07:12"^^ . "Good shit… make you wanna kill for it" . "Police are everywhere. They live and breathe in the fog and in the end of the daylight... pink. Cars, squads, clubs, orders, all string into one long chain of eventual crime... lifting all boats out of themselves and into the next new thing. So you've never had the clams? The only thing better than the clams are the mussels and they only have those every so often... I've been to 15 dinners here... retirements mostly. But once back in '98 we honored this young kid who stopped a mugging on his first day. Nothing really deserving of a dinner, but they had just gotten a shipment of those mussels in and... god damn they're good. An old lady... that's who was being mugged. Some thirteen year old kid had heard that you could get really fucking high off of some Geritol-type of supplement that they gave away over and the Greenview senior center so he waited outside and got one of them old bags as she was coming from her refill. Funny thing is she was beating the crap out of the kid when the cop showed up... would've killed him if the rookie didn't step in. Good shit... make you wanna kill for it." . "2007-03-05T10:07:12"^^ . . . "2007-03-05T16:06:03"^^ . "Ron and Nancy Reagan on the wonders of drug use" . "[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOsnlVEanxk[/coolplayer]" . "2007-03-05T16:06:03"^^ . . . "2007-03-06T10:01:59"^^ . "Things Happen" . "When things happen they happen for a reason... or at least some people feel that way. The truth is, you never can tell what or when or where something will happen... there is usually very little reason behind most happenings. They just happen... a million times second all over the world. Things happen in taxis in hotels in restaurants in shops in parks in offices in subways in transience of all forms. Things happen when nobody is looking and when the entire world watches. Things happen as trains pull into their stations and as the newspaper opens to page 14. Things happen alphabetically and by numbers. Things happen in pairs and in threes. Things happen under careful observation in scientific experiments inside white coated labs. Things... unspeakable things... happen outside bars at the end of a long drunken night. Things happen to everyone all the time everyday all day long. Things are happening now." . "2007-03-06T10:01:59"^^ . . . "2007-03-07T10:28:52"^^ . "The sliding snow makes life alive" . "Coagulation... the stickiness of the blood of people driving into one another, jammed into small space. As the snow falls many things start to become normal... things that slid into nowhere a short while ago are now sliding into each other. That's alright. Some people need to slide into each other... some Bluetooth nightmares can't continue unless they slide into somebody totally unlike themselves. They need that crash to connect... like the movie says. They need to meet the parts of themselves that they never get to see. The sliding snow makes that happen. It brings itself, white, into the gray weekday, bringing with it new patterns of thought. It brings itself, cold, into the warm jelly of mind, firing up new and ancient nodes. It brings itself, sliding, into the abnormally stuck and broken routine of everyday, warning of the dangers of stagnation. The sliding snow makes life alive." . "2007-03-07T10:28:52"^^ . . . "2007-03-07T14:02:16"^^ . "The federal government is intent on killing off internet radio and I feel fine?" . "I'm not sure EXACTLY how to feel about this, but the Federal government is continuing its ignorant assault on the fledgling business of internet radio. My first reaction is the obvious one... this is bad, very bad. The RIAA and CARP royalty scams were one of the main reasons I gave up on webcasting last year. The Feds just seem too intent on siding with the dying hulk of an institution that is the RIAA and killing off new and exciting businesses like Radio Paradise. From looking at this you would think that the government simply hates innovative radio.\n\nBut then I thought... is this really as bad as all that? Perhaps this adversity is the exact thing the medium of internet radio needs to push it over the top. I realize that this ruling effectively ends (at least temporarily) internet radio as a profit making enterprise. It will most definitely kill off most of the field (the ones that exist to make profit)... but the ones that are left, the ones who skirt the RIAA by playing non-RIAA protected, alternatively licensed music, will thrive. In turn the artists who go the independent route and stay far away from the RIAA cabal will find increased exposure through these RIAA-free playlists. Internet radio will be reborn as the center of a new wave of hip and independent cultural cache. Artists will chase independent play the same way they chased major labels in the 20th century and at some point advertisers will follow.\n\nSo cheer up... things are bad, but things are not dead. The RIAA is slowly eating itself and soon every artist worth listening to will realize this. Before long we'll see the explosion of reasonable alternative licensing frameworks (like Creative Commons) and it will seem unthinkable that the next big thing will be attracted to the serfdom that was the TwenCen music industry.\n\n(OK... your still concerned. Me too. Luckily there are things you can do. Check out http://saveourinternetradio.com -- they have a lot of good ideas for fighting the beast that is the RIAA)" . "2007-03-07T14:02:16"^^ . . . "2007-03-08T10:56:02"^^ . "It just needs to be." . "Perhaps it should be something profound, something about the state of the world. Or maybe it should be powerful and force change upon the things that until now have refused to change. But then again, it could be artistically elusive, unknowable and enigmatic. It most definitely should not be politically correct, racially offensive, sexually insensitive, blatantly ignorant, uncommonly dull, commonly cited, overly passionate, stubbornly patriotic, rebelliously unpatriotic, subversively intoned, incredibly weird, posthumously posted, wickedly perverse, deliciously sinful, poetically obtuse, paradoxically inclined, politely discouraged, simply constructed, dreadfully over-thought, hideously deformed, drastically unfair, lovingly smothered, universally feared, romantically linked, proudly trumpeted, sparingly used, or incredibly emotive. It just needs to be." . "2007-03-08T10:56:02"^^ . . . "2007-03-09T10:24:50"^^ . "The object in the back of the fridge" . "Personalities split... shards of separate reality litter the screen with the slow motion ambiance of instant replay. A fantastic distortion of identity wakes the mind from its night of dreams and pokes it into wakefulness. I remember the field. It is now alone in the never ending quiet of the things that don't really matter to me anymore. The things that Thurston says are far from the way he actually feels... he's a poet, but not a very sincere one... so say his wife, his kids, his dog. He tries very hard to get at something useful in the back of the fridge but it sticks there, caked in some sort of caramelized brown gob. It won't budge. Thurston doesn't mind... he is enjoying the cool air on the hairs of his arm. He sits in the incandescence of the appliance... the only light for miles. He lifts the object slowly out of the gob and inspects it... he loves it. He seems to know that this is the object that will explode his consciousness. This is the object that will shatter him into the millions of little particles he really is. This is the object that will make each one of those particles sentient... alive... feeling." . "2007-03-09T10:24:50"^^ . . . "2007-03-09T12:20:32"^^ . "The Bear Flag Revolution: How California is taking the lead in the overthrow of the federal government and why that’s a good thing" . "While looking through the prism of civil rights era righteousness I can certainly see the argument in favor of a strong federal government, but from inside our current national nightmare it sure looks like we have gone too far... the states need to take back their autonomy. A recent paper by USC Annenberg adjunct professor Jonathan Taplin has cemented that notion for me. Check out The Bear Flag Revolution for a glimpse of the real new American century." . "2007-03-09T12:20:32"^^ . . . "2007-03-12T08:56:12"^^ . "She is totally obsessed with telling people she doesn’t wear socks… ever." . "I never wear socks she told me as we both sat shivering, ankle deep in snow. It wasn't the first time she had told me that... she had an apparent need to boast about her aversion to socks. She'd thrust the fact into conversation at every chance she got: And since I don't wear socks... Of course I had no socks on when... The last time I had socks I... -- it didn't really matter what followed because as soon as I heard the word socks I just tuned the rest of the sentence out. She could have been giving me the secrets to the universe, but I couldn't get past her preoccupation with socks... not the objects mind you... just the concept. She was definitely obsessed with the idea of socks... the idea of not wearing them. Perhaps she saw something in bare feet that ordinary folks didn't. Perhaps she saw freedom, perhaps she saw the sort of rebellious, anti-establishment symbol she needed to get through the day. Perhaps working 50 hours a week staring at spreadsheets in a gray office made her need at least some sort of grounding to her youth... to the running days of wet grass. Perhaps, to her, socks were like cotton shackles. I never wear socks she said again... though she never once told me why." . "2007-03-12T08:56:12"^^ . . . "2007-03-12T20:24:06"^^ . "rights" . "All posts and comments on this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to use these words in your own projects... make music with them... set film to them... paint them... write long, complicated novels based on them... whatever. Just please let me know if you use anything and (as per the above mentioned license) DO make the resulting work available under the same license and DO NOT commercialize the resulting work (unless of course you have obtained consent via an arrangement with me).\r\n\r\n" . "2008-05-23T02:30:13"^^ . . . "2007-03-13T08:54:16"^^ . "I always thought there would be cold" . "There are some things the police can't keep you safe from... like floating on the open ocean for 285 days. There's nothing that can prepare you for or save you from the effects of something like that. The endlessness of the ocean, the tiny insignificance of the soul, the reality of things comes rushing through you like good clean drugs. Floating open and alone you feel the mind and the subconscious slowly becoming one... the convergence of cognitive and sub-cognitive processes distorts the previous held reality and bends physical space into non-linear, open-ended time. The undulation of liquid under your feet discloses itself... wavelengths, vibrations, strings, particles, physics itself plays within you as the mistaken ego evaporates into light. Salt bleeds from the skin dripping hot. Weakness leads to superhuman strength. Humor fades. Laughter, or at least what it feels like to laugh, is everywhere. There is no cold though... I always thought there would be cold." . "2007-03-13T08:54:16"^^ . . . "2007-03-14T08:13:09"^^ . "A floating house can’t burn to the ground" . "There's a fire in the house across the street. First responders and adventurous neighbors are rushing inside looking for animals, cats, dogs, fish, people. Water streams down the sides of the house giving it an orange sheen that may be reflecting the flashing lights of the trucks, the early morning sun or even the glow of the fire itself. The house was built in 1939 and at the time it was the only structure on the block... no H&B towing... no Flanders Coffee and News... no Starburst Diner... nothing. The world grew around it like weeds. The house was built by an engineering student as part of a graduating thesis project and as such has a strange, confounding, mystical, but eventually lovable feature. In fact, the house has no ground floor. Its not on stilts or anything like that... it just kind of floats in the air, or appears to. The thing is nobody has been able to figure out just how the student had done it. He died shortly after graduating. In order to get into the house you had to stand under it and ring the doorbell that was mounted to the underside of the second floor. The staircase would slowly lower and grant access. And that is how the firemen got in. As they rushed in and out the owner of the house (an engineering professor) just sat on the corner and laughed a semi-crazed laugh... he knew they were just wasting their time... a floating house can't burn to the ground... he's tried." . "2007-03-14T08:13:09"^^ . . . "2007-03-15T08:54:48"^^ . "Can the human now find harmony with the cosmic now?" . "It's changing... everything is changing. Global highs have been grouped neatly with record lows and the cyclical rhythm of nature has yielded to a chaotic flurry of novelty and extremes. Dependability is out the window and there is no longer time left for poetry, reflection, philosophy, or (least of all) consumerist ideals of a utopian growth based economy. We have stepped into the next big thing only to realize that the next big thing is really not a thing but a choice... a choice between the logic and balance of happiness or the groping need of gluttony. The human mix is face to face with the sort of fork from which rifts in time-space are born... one path leading into a certain future of individualistic want, the other into a field of green communal interoperability. It may be psychologically feasible to follow both, to move forward consciously on one as the subconscious silently follows along the other. As \"reality\" moves ahead it accesses information from both paths, remixes both experiences, mashes the logical extensions of both ideologies into the human now... leading us to the ultimate question: can the human now find harmony with the cosmic now?" . "2007-03-15T08:54:48"^^ . . . "2007-03-16T09:09:30"^^ . "The metrosexual fitting room blues" . "The clothes didn't fit him in quite the manner he had hoped. They were mysteriously baggy in places that he felt himself to be the largest and surprisingly tight in the areas in which he had hoped he was trim. He couldn't explain it. He wanted to think that he knew himself but this is exactly the kind of thing that called into question every long-standing belief about himself he has ever held. He sat there in the yellow light absorbing the reflection from large mirror... trying desperately to understand it, to make sense of it. In some objective sense he recognized the reflection as the same one that had greeted him that very morning in his bathroom, but here, inside this fitting room, he couldn't help but feel disconnected from the image. It didn't feel like him... looking at the image didn't make him feel like he wanted to feel... it didn't make him feel happy... not like the image outside the fitting room... the one on the wall... next to the rack where he took these clothes from... that image was happy... this one was simply depressing." . "2007-03-16T09:09:30"^^ . . . "2007-03-19T09:05:53"^^ . "Another small town writhing in American emptiness" . "Things back east haven't been as good as Gene had told everyone they were. He was home, visiting his mother, going all around town telling everyone who would give him the chance to that he was some sort of director of some kind of department in some town just outside of some other town where they manufacture some kind of product that some people in some part of the world find slightly useful. All of it was lies. He didn't live anywhere near anyplace that made or manufactured anything that anybody anywhere had any use for... whatsoever. Gene lived in a town that held little romance an no passion for anything other than the one thing that mattered to them... lusting after other small towns that had spawned mega-starlets... sleepy little southern nowheres that gave birth to Simpson and Spears and the like. Gene's town wanted to be those other towns. Every Saturday they would hold contests, tryouts, practices, where every little girl in town would get all costumed up and lip synch to their favorite tunes. As the town's Mayor Gene would be responsible for drafting and sending invitations to sleazy management firms in Florida. In turn the management firms would dispatch their slimiest agents to drool over the children, but to this day nothing has come of it. So Gene, partly ashamed, made up his totally believable, marginally interesting, and utterly false account of life in his adopted town." . "2007-03-19T09:05:53"^^ . . . "2007-03-19T10:33:48"^^ . "Hillary 1984 video captures EXACTLY how I feel about her candidacy" . "\r\nWhile I am by no means an Obama man (personally I am hoping Gore runs), this video does do an excellent job of highlighting why I am uncomfortable with Ms. Clinton as a candidate. It's not so much that I don't agree with her on the issues as it's the feeling that she's too inside... too much a part of the way things are when we really need someone who sees the entrenched problems we face. We have to break free of this infantile Bush-Clinton cycle and start looking for someone who is not a so caught up in the machine (or, in the case of Mr. Gore, someone who has been eaten up by the machine, survived, and fundamentally transformed). And in case you don't recognize the base material here it's Apple's 1984 ad introducing the Macintosh... thus the \"Vote Different\" title and the Apple/Obama logo at the end." . "2008-01-28T23:14:29"^^ . . . "2007-03-20T08:16:12"^^ . "The truth, the negotiated truth, and nothing but the accepted and agreed upon terms" . "What a fucking scumbag! Can you believe that absolutely guiltless fucking scumbag!?! He just sits there all calm and lies, obfuscates, distorts, bends reality. His ties must be too god-damned tight... cutting off the flow of blood to his god-damned head. That's it right? He's not getting the oxygen he needs to have any sort of conscience... he's deprived of some physical element hat he needs in order to think like a normal person... it must be that. Otherwise he's just an evil little shit that puts on a suit and gets in front of a Congressional panel and tells everybody a sick, twisted, perverted, lie. And those fucks... they just play right along. Sure they act like they want the truth... truth.. what the fuck? I don't think anyone in that town has any idea what truth is... what it looks like... what it feels like... not a single one of them. They just fabricate some kind of accepted middle ground that lets them divide the wealth among themselves then they sit back and call it truth. They broadcast it across the land into homes into children... this truth. They sell it by the ounce... pure like caviar... a commodity. They sell it supersize with an bottomless sugar-soaked concoction and deep fried Idaho. They give that smell, that showroom smell, and sell it under the watchful eye of Washington and Lincoln. Truth, the negotiated and accepted version of it, is killing us off, slowly and in small groups of one." . "2007-03-20T08:16:12"^^ . . . "2007-03-21T09:00:45"^^ . "Nothing left here at all… just Google" . "It's a forbidding landscape this here country. Speeding through it, looking at it through the train window at fifty miles an hour it really don't look like much, but trust me it is really god damned forbidding. Take a look over there at that highway sign... it hasn't changed in over 20 years. Whatever it was selling... whoever was selling it... the people responsible for that message... they're all gone. Google it damn you... Google it and you'll see that they left with the first ship... left for the less forbidding country up there. A whole crew of them never looked back... forgot all about their advertising campaigns, their brand message, their market segment... left it all to grow tall and wild out here in this forbidding country. Now it sits up there... that message... over grown and wild like some kind of crazy English garden. Folks like you and me... us... we pass by it hundred at a time... some for years on end... cold days, warm days, nights, weekends, using our minutes to try and find somebody that might care... somebody that might be able to provide some kind of context. Nobody. Not a one. There just isn't any context left in the Network. It split on that first ship out. Nope. Nothing left here at all... just Google." . "2007-03-21T09:00:45"^^ . . . "2007-03-22T08:54:49"^^ . "Phil Imagines The Ice Queen" . "ICE QUEEN. Phil sat and imagined exactly the situation that could provide the motivation for someone to scribble that phrase onto the back of a train seat. Just by reading it he seemed to know exactly what inspired the act. Phil imagined the author coming home from class... a budding engineer traveling between home and tech... having just gotten a sub-par grade on a project... feeling frustrated and unsure of his chosen path in life... feeling obliged to take that frustration out on the back of this seat. The seat that Phil now sat behind. The seat Phil was stuck staring at for forty-five minutes. ICE QUEEN. Probably a reference to the author's professor... she wouldn't bend, wouldn't give a micron in giving out her grade. She just gave the author a cold blank stare. ICE QUEEN. He tried to melt that gaze... flowers... candy... lingerie... but that only got him written up by the university police. ICE QUEEN. He tried to appeal to her sense of social indignation... his great, great, great grandmother was half Cherokee... his people had suffered enough. ICE QUEEN. He tried to compare himself to others in the class... James didn't even bother to prototype for Christ's sake. ICE QUEEN. The grade was final... he would get a C... AVERAGE... BECAUSE... OF... THE... FUCKING... ICE QUEEN. Phil smiled." . "2007-03-22T08:54:49"^^ . . . "2007-03-23T08:53:14"^^ . "Never talk about the weather at a cocktail party" . "There was a troubling mist that crept through the towns and highways of the north. It carried with it the sense of calm that comes from realizing that there are no longer any options... any choices to be made. It enveloped the cars and trucks and buses and trains in its simplicity; it obscured the sunlight and dipped a low hanging and wet warmth into the otherwise thankful Friday. Weekend plans were fixed firmly in the minds of the workforce and the soft lap of Spring felt strange and, for some reason, unnatural to them. They had been toiling all week... no all Winter... inside a state of meteorological flux and they just couldn't bring themselves to trust weather anymore. At some point... nobody quite remembers when... it (the weather) traded in its status as a predictable, common, banal, point of conversation for a new and complicated status as a heated, impassioned, vibrant political and scientific cause. Yes it seemed that for the foreseeable future the workforce, at least the socially graced among them, would be expounding a new axiom: cultured, mannered, civilized people... DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER IN POLITE CONVERSATION!" . "2007-03-23T08:53:14"^^ . . . "2007-03-26T09:03:40"^^ . "When the GOVERNMENT takes your money you feel like dying" . "When the GOVERNMENT took all of Jim's money he had a hard time dealing with it. That first night he went into a convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes. He smoked each one slowly in the park across the street from the store. He sat there all night with his hands calmly set on his knees only moving the right hand periodically to his mouth to take a drag then slowly back to his knee. He stared off into the night thinking about a lot of things... how he had never smoked a cigarette before... how it tasted better than he had thought it would... how the smoke made him feel safe... how the animals in the park seemed to understand... how that one star twinkled to the exact rhythm of the car alarm going off a block or so down the road... how the clerk at the convenience store really didn't even stop to look at him... how he could probably have ripped him off for everything in the register and slip into the anonymous night without ever having to worry again. He thought about starting a life of crime... going underground... living on the lamb. He thought it would be the right mix of romance and danger... just enough to bring him back to life." . "2007-03-26T09:03:40"^^ . . . "2007-03-27T08:57:56"^^ . "A communication from deep inside a shared hallucination" . "To whom it may concern-- the roses you sent on the first of the month have wilted and died. They have taken on a blackish-purple color that kind of reminds us... all of us... of dried blood. We have decided to place the stems and dried petals inside the box that had originally accompanied the flowers and take the box fifteen miles outside of town into the desert where nothing much grows. Once we get there we plan on ingesting a massive dose of peyote and digging a hole in the red clay dirt about three feet deep. Once the hole is dug and the peyote is running good and strong we plan on placing the box into the hole and slowly cutting our wrists with a sharp knife... not deep mind you, just enough to get a little flow of blood... and then we plan to let our blood drip into the hole on top of the roses. After that we plan to fill the hole with the blood stained earth, bandage our wrists, and slip into the distortion of the cooling desert evening chased by the memory of blood red roses. We... each of us... as a group and individually... sincerely hope that this message reaches you and that you are pleased by its contents. Praise be your will. Thank you." . "2007-03-27T08:57:56"^^ . . . "2007-03-27T21:36:30"^^ . "Fuzz on the apple… Charlie is good fun" . "\r\n\r\nThis is a video by a couple of friends of mine. They go by the name of Charlie and they are good honest people making good honest art. The video is a series of images... a slide show if you will. The visuals... set to their original tune FUZZ ON THE APPLE... are a mix of photographs taken in and around New York City (and perhaps elsewhere) and original artwork. You can learn more about Charlie, their art and their music by going to their site at fuzzontheapple.com or their myspace page at myspace.com/fuzzontheapple... and if you are in the NYC METRO area be sure to check them out live." . "2008-01-03T17:36:56"^^ . . . "2007-03-28T08:52:45"^^ . "What happened in that bar across the street?" . "When things like that happen you tend to just follow along. Don 't do anything stupid or make any sudden movements or try to be a hero and the whole thing will likely pass without having anybody get bent. That's what Herman thought as he strode purposefully into the laundromat that afternoon. He had with him a load of whites, a pocket of quarters, and a screwdriver. He knew that the screw driver might have been construed as a weapon... in fact he had hoped it would be. He brandished it with something approaching zeal, waving it around has he pointed at notes on the bulletin board, the television, the bar across the street. Inside that bar, the one across the street there, Herman had done something. He was trying to wash it out of his usually clean white t-shirts but he couldn't. He had done the most unbelievable and unnatural thing he had ever done... across the street... in that bar. STOP...NOT...WORKING... This is a dead end my friend... what you are reading right now is not going anywhere... if you have read this far and have taken an interest in Herman and what it was he did in that bar over there... across the street... then I will leave it to you... to your imagination... to imagine just what it was... what Herman did in that bar... over there.. across the street. I just can't..." . "2007-03-28T08:52:45"^^ . . . "2007-03-29T09:02:03"^^ . "The opaque unbeatable block" . "He sat staring at the big wooden block. It was daunting in its emptiness... large, square, brown, empty. He had tried to maneuver past it, work his way around it, find some way through it, but it was no use... the block was there. He decided to walk up to it... to knock on its hard face.. to get to know it... to understand exactly what it was about the block that made it so god-damned insurmountable. He tried to see the block... truly see it for the first time. He tried to get beyond the idea of it as a block and start to see it an atomic level... as little particles or strings or anything other than a big solid mass of inflexible, unworkable block. No go. Nothing he did could get him around the obstruction... it was there and he had to now live his life on its terms. The very idea made him shudder. No more family, no more friends, no more conversation. Nothing would ever be for him again. Nothing but this big, unmoving, inflexible, solid mass of a block. As he started to imagine this life... to accept it.. he started to see something strange. He saw light... and for the first time it wasn't light that fell upon the block, but it was light that shone through it. He, for the first time in hours, let a grin flash across his face. The block... the opaque, unbeatable block, was starting to shine." . "2007-03-29T09:02:03"^^ . . . "2007-03-30T08:58:13"^^ . "Ten yards of red sand" . "It ripped through his right leg letting loose a flow of wild red warmth. The sand beneath him flooded with his American sense of right, evil, ego... the skin that shrouded his bones flashed to white and then slowly trended to a nice patriotic blue. Protection of the homeland... the distribution of democracy and freedom to all corners of the globe... the eternal battle of good versus evil... the glory of GOD... all of this seemed curiously absurd as it ran through his mind. For the first time in country he started to realize the humanity of the situation. He opened his eyes and could see... about 10 yards from the end of his right index fingertip... the rest of his leg. He looked at it and instantly saw it as not a part of himself, but as an occupying force... a colonialist army bent on controlling, dominating the world's resources. The standard issue boot looked out of place, foreign, unwelcome against the landscape. The desert fatigue that covered the leg seemed the flag of some strange idea born in some conference room in some think tank buried along a row of office buildings on a sad and lonely stretch of road just outside Washington... back there in the homeland. He had come all this way... travelled thousands of miles to find truth in 10 yards of red sand." . "2007-03-30T08:58:13"^^ . . . "2007-04-02T08:55:01"^^ . "Yes, it is a rather cruel month, isn’t it?" . "George mowed his lawn in nice, neat, parallel rows. This was the first mow of the year and George always thought it was the most crucial as well, so he took his time. He had done it that way for over seventy-five springs and he would do it for another ten. As he mowed, slow and precise, he was watched from the front window. Loretta had watched him mow this lawn this way for sixty of those seventy-five springs and was never bored by it. She saw something graceful in his methodical back and forth... she enjoyed the way the grass fell into a pattern and wondered about the physics behind the whole thing. Across the street Albert was tinkering with some kind of motor. He was in the garage of the house he had grown old in. The garage door was open wide letting in the fresh, clean spring afternoon. He caught George's eye on the last pass and gave him an age weary wave that was slowly returned. In the living room window of Albert's house sat Grace... she sat with her chin resting on her withered right hand much the same way she had done every Saturday for the last sixty-five years. FUCK YOU... she thought. FUCK YOU LORETTA YOU GOD DAMNED BITCH... I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL... Grace continued to think as she smiled, just as she had for the last fifty springs." . "2007-04-02T08:55:01"^^ . . . "2007-04-02T20:25:47"^^ . "Douglas Rushkoff on the pain of Vista and the grace of Ubuntu" . "While I can't speak fist hand to the mess of idiocy that is Microsoft's new OS - VISTA - this post by one of my favorite writers drives the point home clearly enough. In fact Douglas Rushkoff's \"Vista Sucks; Linux Wins\" is so much more than just another jump on Microsoft rant... it is a clear and cogent account of just why Vista sucks and how Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular will soon be displacing the once dominant giant of Redmond. Witness:\n\n
Working in Linux reminds you that your computer is just one drive in a network. That getting your machine to do something new really just means grabbing a few lines of code from someone who has tried it before. It means working in a collaborative space where productivity and creativity are more important than protecting a movie studio's futile efforts at maintaining control-by-force over the digital media it releases.
\n\nIt sort of makes you wonder just how the hell Microsoft was able to conquer so many desktops with their head so far up their ass. I guess they just got lucky in that their short-sighted, stunted vision of the what technology is was well-suited to the particular mix of naivety and ignorance that permeated most late 20th century IT departments." . "2007-04-02T20:25:47"^^ . . . "2007-04-03T09:01:20"^^ . "Evolution kills" . "Ernest was having a hard time coping in a post-print, post-Microsoft, post-American, post-human world. He was too accustomed to thinking on rails... accustomed to not working with people but working for them. He had uncommon amounts of trouble trying to become something he wasn't. All the years he spent as a Microserf had taken their tole and now Ernest could only think in clearly white-boarded, goal-oriented, thoughts that would pass the censor and please the DRM daemon that no longer lived anywhere but in his own head. While kids half his age were pulling ideas out of vapor and letting them loose into the wild to be expounded upon Ernest had to constantly work and re-work every notion that flashed through his head. He was a slave to revision. He just couldn't let go of a project... he couldn't let it swing into the world organically... he couldn't expose it to freedom... he couldn't bare the thought of unauthorized hands touching it. Ernest would die that way... never having felt the warm embrace of collaboration... never having given up an idea to the world... never letting his creativity flow seamlessly into the world... never getting passed the cumbersome notion of property that would eventually kill him and everyone like him." . "2007-04-03T09:01:20"^^ . . . "2007-04-04T08:55:35"^^ . "Waiting for the bloodletting to come again" . "She sat upright in bed and stared off into the distance... past the television that sat black in the corner. She wondered how much longer she would have to wait... how many more times she would have to sit up at night... alone. She remembers when she could sleep. She could just put her head down and sleep. It happened slowly at first... as she was brushing her teeth she could feel it slowly overcome her as she got further away from the reflection... further away from the motion. The first night she stood mindlessly brushing her teeth for over two hours. She brushed violently through the bleeding gums and made no notice of the red toothpaste that dripped off her chin. When she came around she started to cry. The next time it happened she was shaving her legs. She sat in the tub of warm water::::she sat in the tub of cold(red) water. Three hours gone. Legs cut, bleeding. She had no recollection of what happened... no sense of time passing other than the change in the color of the sky just visible through the window. Curiously she felt a sense of calm, satisfaction, contentment... happiness. She actually felt happy sitting there in a cold(red) bath... her depression bleeding into the tub. NOW:::she sits alone in bed... waiting for it to come again... waiting for a third and perhaps final drop into the semiconscious." . "2007-04-04T08:55:35"^^ . . . "2007-04-05T09:23:52"^^ . "On entering Manhattan by Bus" . "I am starting this at 8:26 am eastern time. I am sitting on a bus bound for the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan and trying like hell not to get annoyed by the row of suburban housewives who just sat down in front of me. It's unfair I know, but there's just something about daytrippers, holiday shoppers, resident tourists, that really kind of bothers me. Perhaps it's the fact that they live within spitting distance of the most vibrant city to ever spew CO2 into the atmosphere and never bother to take advantage of it... never bother to let it happen to them. Instead they regulate their interaction with it... limit themselves to the annual shopping spree, or Broadway musical. They never go in a whim... they must plan months in advance... take time off from their deathly gray cubes... make arrangements for the kids... think about dinner. I guess it's not totally their fault... they are products of the machine in the same way I am. Maybe that's what gets me... they represent the limitations of us all. I am ending this at 8:35 am eastern time. I am still sitting on a bus bound for the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan and trying like hell to fight the nausea." . "2007-04-05T09:23:52"^^ . . . "2007-04-10T08:14:26"^^ . "The importance of play" . "Some things your dog just can't save you from... some things are so undeniable, so necessary, that even a good and faithful mutt will not, cannot save you from having to experience it. You just have to do it... to go through it... to get it done... roll with it... let it happen. You have to decide to not fight it and just flow. You must dive into it and accept its inevitability. You have to forget about owning it... forget about claiming the process and just give yourself up to the cosmos... to fate... to chance... to blind, dumb, luck. You must revel in your powerlessness... approach it organically... let it grow... deny artificiality... transcend materiality... green yourself in blissful surrender to its natural order. You must float mindlessly through its mystery and learn to enjoy its overriding emergence. You must wade mindfully through its teachings and learn to decode and apply their underlying meaning. And... most simply... most importantly... you must play through it... this life... you must play through it." . "2007-04-10T08:14:26"^^ . . . "2007-04-11T08:31:59"^^ . "The gamer always wants to be a hero" . "What the fuck is that fat bastard ME going to do once he finds out? What is he going to say if and when he is able to pry his chubby fingers off of his XBOX long enough to realize what the fuck YOU is pulling on him? ME drags that shit deep inside the head... lets it cloud ME up good... blinds ME to the waste that surrounds ME.... the ecological waste... the human waste. YOU is the lazy, sugar high, pixel drunk comic that is everyday ME. ME is the fuel of the next age... ME is all the ego saturated drones that have fallen into the trap of consumerist YOU. ME plays the part... loves fashion... heated seats... gasoline. ME has a role. ME is what is to be overcome. ME is the issue... the problem. ME is what needs to be left behind. I bet he'll be pissed... that fat bastard ME. I'll bet that if he were able to break loose from YOU he'd be really fucking pissed. After all, the gamer always wants to be a hero... more than just ME." . "2007-04-11T08:31:59"^^ . . . "2007-04-12T09:03:27"^^ . "Conflict in the mind of clergy" . "The pew, wooden and cold, was empty except for him and a seventy-five year old woman at the other end. In between were a smattering of prayer books, bulletins and hymnals. It was Tuesday and they both sat in the front row just before the alter... under a statue of the virgin mother and child... he gripped a Bible his father had given him. As he held the book in his grasp his mind drifted and he slowly began to think the thoughts that he tried... desperately tried... to stop thinking. To the normal mind his thoughts were really sort of banal... many might even consider them healthy... but in his head they seemed perverse, dangerous, seedy. He wanted to escape them... to find comfort in the warm candle glow of the alter, but he still sat in a pool of doubt. He was conflicted. He had certain impulses... nothing like the impulses that some of his order had suffered with... but impulses he struggled to understand. He wanted to say things... to teach things... to live things that would get him reprimanded, removed, or possibly defrocked. He wanted to get up on Sunday... in front of his friends and neighbors... good and decent folk... and tell them what he knew... tell them that this building they meet in... this alter they pray to... this wafer they consume... he wanted to tell them that this was all a big play... a show, carefully forged in antiquity by men with control and power in their hearts. He wanted to spill the truth onto the pages of the book in front of him... he wanted them all to know that this was only the redacted version... the version that fit the political purpose of men. He wanted to tell them that they held the truth in their souls... that sin was a myth... that they could live Heaven now... they didn't have to wait... they didn't need a priest. They didn't need him." . "2007-04-12T09:03:27"^^ . . . "2007-04-17T09:41:49"^^ . "The commuter’s end" . "The heat came first... then the force. It came in a rush of white light and then dark. It blew through him with the soft and comforting wind of a hair dryer and then turned quickly painful. This is it... this is the fear they want you to feel... the fear they've been pounding on for the last five years... the fear that makes the apparatus grind and move. This is the exact moment they kept telling me would come... the exact moment that budgets had been focused on... that wars have been fought over... that lives have been devoted to. This exact moment in time, shared with these 17 people, was everything the last five years had been leading to. This exact second brought everything into clear, undeniable focus. This was the end." . "2007-04-17T09:41:49"^^ . . . "2007-04-18T06:11:00"^^ . "The ninth bell that never rings" . "Every wednesday at nine in the morning the clock would ring... eight times. It is one of those things that the locals know about and to some extent take pride in knowing about, but the newbies really get thrown off by it... more so than you might imagine. You would think that most people don't sit there and count how many times a clock rings and whether or not that number actually correlates to the time, but they do. Not consciously, but almost everyone does. Each Wednesday a local photographer sets up her camera in the park across from the clock and she captures the expressions that the incongruity creates. People rushing to work... running to get to the office before that ninth bell chimes... the ninth bell that never rings. They might think they have miscounted... or they might not have counted at all and just have a sense that something isn't quite right... but they always seem to notice." . "2007-12-03T15:20:00"^^ . . . "2007-04-19T09:22:43"^^ . "The omnipresence and meaninglessness of advertising" . "There is advertising everywhere. It surrounds me... on walls... on cars... on screens and buses and urinals... everywhere. I have become numb to it. I don't even see it anymore... don't read it... don't comprehend it... don't process it as part of anything other than a piece of nature. It has become as ubiquitous as green leaves and as prevalent as air. It surrounds like water. It is the modern landscape and it makes me wonder... does it work anymore? Can it have anywhere near the effect that it is designed to have? Could it ever be as compelling on the street as it is when it gets the go in the boardroom? Can it ever achieve its intended effect? Perhaps... maybe... sometimes... with the right mix of pertinence and wit an advertisement may actually inform and direct a purchasing decision... but I would bet that it happens infrequently at best... sporadically and without any real way to predict how, why, where, or when it will make somebody take an action that they would not have taken normally. Meaningless... abstract... everywhere." . "2007-04-19T09:22:43"^^ . . . "2007-04-19T15:10:40"^^ . "The Sun Came Out Tonight" . "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmmDPHxQdF4\n\n\nWhenever I start to think that this whole internet \"user generated content\" thing is an overblown, media-hyped mess of nonsense, something like this comes along and really, really sets me straight. This video, by a couple of friends who go by the name of charlie, has struck a chord with me. It's a trippy stop-motion pop gem that does a mind-blowingly good job at capturing the essence of life in the twenty-first century... life in fast forward. But that's not even what really has me spinning... what I find truly fascinating here is the liberating effect of accessible technology and how it is empowering the modern, traditionally starving artist. The REALLY exciting thing about this video is that these two, who have so little, can create something so profoundly, explosively good and in minutes have it in front of millions of potential viewers." . "2007-04-19T15:10:40"^^ . . . "2007-04-20T09:01:10"^^ . "The 17th Street Assumption" . "Standing in front of the rows of brand new, hard-cover books he sees it plain as day... the end is near. Apocalypse is certain. Destruction imminent. It's as if the entire universe has suddenly decided to open up to him all of its secrets... all of its inner workings... all of its truth. It's right here, right in the NEW NON-FICTION section of the mega-book-emporium-chain-store-place in Union Square... in front of who knows how many eyes. Hidden in plain sight is everything that anyone needs to know. Individually these books could be discounted as the ravings of a paranoid writer or the sensational trolling of a money hungry publisher, but here, together, in this group, they are most definitely a cosmic force. He is realizing that there isn't much time. He sees that it doesn't even matter whether it's a supervolcano, an alien invasion, peak oil, religious wars, or global warming that's going to do the deed... the ugly truth is that it is going to happen... something is going to happen. It's predetermined... a living fact that is organically growing in the collective subconscious like a cancerous node. We feel it. We want it. We thirst for it. We will make it happen. We have a perverse need for it. For some reason, the thought of living in end times makes us happy... it makes us special. As he stands in front of the books he looks to his left and then to his right and he, for the first time in his life, feels he understands... people." . "2007-04-20T09:01:10"^^ . . . "2007-04-23T08:31:42"^^ . "Thoughts on a lithiom ion death" . "The battery was low... as low as he'd ever seen it. It was so low he wasn't sure that it could be brought back to life... so he just sat. He sat and stared at the low battery, please wait message that replaced the normal screen. He realized how much he had depended on it... now that it wouldn't work. He realized that the energy he drew from it was fleeting, momentary, temporary, captured only to be released back into the universe and recycled through some mysterious process... a process understood by someone, but not by him. He thought about his life... about how it was, how it would be without it... he thought about how he could possibly get by without the entertainment, the comfort, the convenience of it... he thought about the ways in which he was dependent on it, attached to it... he realized it was actually a part of him, a vital organ... and with its death he too would surely die." . "2007-04-23T08:31:42"^^ . . . "2007-04-24T09:25:58"^^ . "The music stopped and…" . "He could hear everything. For the first time in months he could hear every word of every conversation in every seat on the train. He could hear the three women four rows ahead of him prattle on about shoes and diets and sun tan creme. He could hear the news on the radio of the guy in front of him seep out of loosely placed ear buds. He could hear about the the thrombosis battle that the biker dude had waged for the better part of the past two months. He could hear all about stocks, bonds, funds, rollovers, IRAs, and the IRS. He could hear the vacation plans of three different half drunk post college shore bound nymphs. He could hear about four different asshole bosses, one rude secretary, two lazy janitors, seven condescending IT guys, three bad haircuts, and one great night that no matter how hard she tries or how lucky she gets she'll never ever have the good fortune to repeat. Yes, for the first time in months, he could hear everything... whether he wanted to or not." . "2007-04-24T09:25:58"^^ . . . "2007-04-25T09:02:23"^^ . "2012" . "There is a point in time... in the future... in five years... a point that steadily and forcefully draws near. A point that almost nobody realizes is significant. A point that crystalizes everything into a simple, easy to understand moment. A point that ancient shamans have visited thousands of times... surfing through time... finding cosmic strings that vibrate forgiveness and pity. There is a point in time... a point that radiates and devours hope simultaneously. A point that planets have been shifting toward... a point that writers have sifted through language, painters have distilled into color, and filmmakers have realized in motion. There is a point in time... a point that lives in both physical and spiritual realms... a point that science and philosophy have built into theory... a point that markets organically calibrate themselves to. There is a point in time... a cambrian leap... an evolution... a point that we are (to borrow a phrase) slouching toward... waiting to be born." . "2007-04-25T09:02:23"^^ . . . "2007-04-25T11:31:20"^^ . "Daily Lit: little shots of great literature" . "I just started reading Dubliners by James Joyce... only I'm not reading it in the traditional way... I'm reading it via RSS. After reading a post at Lawrence Lessig's blog about his book Free Culture going up on Daily Lit I decided to follow the link and poke around the site for a while.\n\nFor those who don't know Daily Lit takes books that are in the public domain and makes them available in bite size chunks delivered to you through email or RSS feed. It's an interesting way to read a book. The pacing can feel a bit over prescribed, but there's a handy link at the end of each installment to get the next one right away if you don't feel like waiting until tomorrow.\n\nDubliners is set to come to me in 84 chunks delivered once a day for the next 84 weekdays. I could set the options on the feed to slow down to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday delivery or speed up to daily installments if I so choose.\n\nPerhaps at some point in the future I'll get more into the implications of reading great literature (and Joyce in particular) in this way. The critical theorist in may seems to think Joyce would've dug this." . "2007-04-25T11:31:20"^^ . . . "2007-04-25T13:26:45"^^ . "Because I just love me my Cracker" . "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu4Etsd1cI\n\n\nIn honor of the Cracker (Acoustic Duo) show I'll be attending at Maxwell's in Hoboken (check my Flickr page tonight for some live shots) AND in celebration of the band's newish YouTube page I give you this video by Cracker mastermind David Lowery. It goes by the name \"Deep Oblivion\" and it is a sublime, haunting, prime example of what the Cracker vibe is all about. Dig it." . "2007-04-25T13:26:45"^^ . . . "2007-04-27T09:13:32"^^ . "Newspaper" . "Each day it comes... lands in the driveway... gets rained on... gets folded and ripped and pissed on. Everyday it comes and lines the cages of scared and broken animals. Everyday it pretends to break news, to inform, to be relevant. Everyday it peddles ink on paper with an aging, Lomanesque determination that makes a few think that maybe, just maybe there might be a future in that kind of everyday. If we just adjust the format... a daily MAGAZINE!!! A new and bold style change... a daily print run of four color wonder that if we get lucky will fool people into thinking that a daily print run makes sense... if we get lucky people won't notice that we're giving them stale news on dead trees... if we get lucky nobody will notice that we're forcing something that is loose, shifting, ethereal and transient into a fixed format... if we get lucky they won't notice that we're taking something that thrives in the developing present and we're killing it by presenting it via the historical past. If we get lucky they won't see that is just doesn't work anymore... not everyday." . "2007-04-27T09:13:32"^^ . . . "2007-04-27T10:59:35"^^ . "Daily papers, daily magazines, daily print, just can’t last" . "This post at \"Mr. Magazine\" Samir Husni's blog has gotten me thinking. Husni seems to be high on the idea that newspapers, if they become more like magazines, can survive the current crisis brought about by the encroachment of the internet... \"daily magazines\" is what he calls for.\r\n\r\nThis seems off to me. Ultimately the problems newspapers face aren't really problems of style or design... they are fundamental problems that stem from the fact that developing stories (the guts of a daily paper) thrive in a more flexible distribution model... a digital model. The whole notion of a printed daily is becoming increasingly absurd and it doesn't really matter whether what's printed looks like a newspaper or a magazine. The nature of daily content requires that it be distributed in a digital format... printing it is much the same as choking it .\r\n\r\nIt won't be long before the economics of production push all daily, developing content to digital platforms and print finds its own level. I would be extremely surprised if in five years time daily print runs still exist. My guess is that print frequency will top off (and thrive) at the weekly run... god save the Sunday paper." . "2009-02-26T12:41:10"^^ . . . "2009-02-26T13:46:19"^^ . "This kid could be the next All..." . "This kid could be the next Allen Ginsberg - Instead of a paper about a poet he writes poetry: http://bit.ly/nqPjN - funny, funny stuff." . "2009-02-26T13:46:19"^^ . . . "2007-05-01T09:04:40"^^ . "Words written for nobody" . "I've written thousands of lines without ever having written something that has fundamentally changed anything or anyone. I write and churn out half baked thoughts, immature ideas, untested theories, and overly complex notions of what it means to be human in this, the twenty-first century by the clock of some dead prophet. And I am totally cool with that. I don't need to be James Joyce... I'd bet James Joyce didn't need to be James Joyce... the recognition he enjoys is something that is secondary to the very act of producing language... the writer feels the need to explain his life, her experience... not to the world but, first and foremost, to himself... to myself. So these words are written, not to win a prize or to effect a change or to get rich or win the love of some fair maiden... but to try and explain myself to myself... to try and find some sort of meaning not in the world as general experience but in my own narrow perception of it." . "2007-05-01T09:04:40"^^ . . . "2007-05-01T10:39:18"^^ . "Excuse me, is this a work of art?" . "http://www.youtube.com/v/V3Nha7gHGqQ\n\nFound this video (by Ana Velez) via the Wooster Collective feed... it does a great job at poking fun at and underscoring the absurdity of modern, Dadaist, avant-garde art. This video brought to mind Marcel Duchamp and his idea that:\n\n
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
\n\nThis idea certainly extends beyond the world of Art and can encompass any creative act... right now I am especially thinking of Roland Barthes and his notions on the death of the author." . "2007-05-01T10:39:18"^^ . . . "2007-05-02T08:57:27"^^ . "Now is everything" . "Non sequential advisories for the eastern coast have been issued and they can't be taken back... the cat's already out of the god-damned bag and it's not going to be collected again... not without a fight. Jim told me that the blues always played at sunrise... just wasn't that many folks up to hear them. There was a lot of folks today though... everybody was wide wake and waiting. They saw the ships first and then the light... inverted... came from just above them. The sailors were all out of uniform, letting their pale blue skin fester in the new and alien sunlight. They had traveled... it seemed like a billion miles in nanoseconds... time and distance had been conquered though... they were inter-dimensional. All this time they had been right there... living in parallel... molecularly co-mingled with the rich, the poor, the sad, the happy, the styrofoam. We couldn't see them, but when they were discovered... when it was discovered... when we all were discovered... it made terrific sense. The past, the present and the future all happening at the same time all just being... this was that little something that everyone felt... that everyone knew... now is everything." . "2007-05-02T08:57:27"^^ . . . "2007-05-03T09:00:27"^^ . "act of nature" . "He stood alone on the deck, staring emptily into the giant puddle that was now his backyard. It had been raining for over two weeks and the floods had reached into places that had never before seen standing water. His backyard for instance. His house stood on top of a rocky, sizable hill... there were no depressions in the yard, no conduits by which water might make its way, no reason at all that he should be seeing what he's seeing as he stares at himself in the cool reflection in his yard. This is not right... not at all right he thought. Floods are for them... down there... by the river. Water never gets this high... never finds us on this hill. As he thought he knew that he was indeed seeing something unique... something so profound that it would surely, in time, find its way into scripture... he would become a story... sure enough, HE would become a story." . "2007-05-03T09:00:27"^^ . . . "2007-05-04T08:55:15"^^ . "the fine line" . "The end of things always looks surprisingly like the beginning. Call it the circle of life, the cycle of nature, or whatever cheap colloquialism you want, but for some reason, whenever I see a dying man, lying in bed, fatally alone, I always think of my birth. Not that I can remember it much, but I seem to have a sense of it... the kind of opening to the light that popular culture has associated with death. A shocking onset of something profoundly new that blankets us in unimaginable cold... the unknown bleeding into us and restructuring our conceptions of self and dependence... our support, our sustenance, our security, dissolving. We are driven headlong into transformation... taken... changed... downloaded... repeated... perhaps closer to perfection." . "2007-05-04T08:55:15"^^ . . . "2007-05-04T11:37:10"^^ . "The Bandwidth of Books" . "This article by Alice Twemlow (found at Design Observer) is an interesting read that touches on the sometime over-analyzed but always necessary debate on the friction between digital and print media. Written in response to her visit to the current Artists Space exhibition KIOSK (XIX) – Modes of Multiplication (curated by Christoph Keller) the article, as well as the exhibition, focuses on the continuing growth of the contemporary art press in the face of declining readership and increasing digital media choices. The counter-intuitive thrust of the situation highlights the ways in which print (ink on paper) could continue to be a cultural (or maybe sub-cultural) player for a long time to come. Perhaps the most telling passage in the piece is this bit:\n\n\n
The creators of such publications do not expect large readerships — nor do they depend upon sales. Instead their enterprises are funded by subsidies in Europe and in the U.S. many have opted for non-profit status. As Keller has pointed out, “All these art books would cost a fortune if they were rooted in a capitalistic market system… Of the 500 books I have published with Revolver, more than half the copies have been given away or swapped for other books.”
\n\nThat these books are existing and exchanged outside the capitalist market system would seem to indicate that print is in trouble as a commercial mass medium, but has a bright and comfortable future in niche markets where the aesthetic cache of ink on paper still holds sway." . "2007-05-04T11:37:10"^^ . . . "2007-05-07T09:05:30"^^ . "the murdering earth" . "The smothering heat wrapped around like the end of a long and uninteresting story. It had been over three weeks, four days, and seven hours since the thermometer had risen above 130 degrees and we were just about getting used to it. The nights spent in water, the days in the only refrigerator left working in the county... skins blistered as they changed color from pink to purple to brown to a nice crusty dark color that we had never seen before. The mayor had taken to shoveling the sand... about six feet deep... he said to find a cool spot, but his trenches looked uncomfortably like graves. Everyday the scouts would report back on the wire that they had travelled another hundred miles north and still hadn't found temps under 120. The whole globe had been set on fire... it was burning with the vengeful hate of an extremely vapid reality show persona. And that is exactly what we thought... that the Earth was angry... pissed... vengeful... that it had finally reach the point were all the ripping and stabbing and mindless polluting was more than we could reasonably ask it to endure. Mother Earth was killing us..." . "2007-05-07T09:05:30"^^ . . . "2007-05-08T08:58:33"^^ . "indentation ends" . "He sat and wondered about indentation... the little space at the beginning of a paragraph that had started to disappear somewhere around 1996. He still sees it in books and printed pages, but he so rarely reads trees that it's like the convention has all but disappeared. He's not really upset about it and there is pretty much zero likelihood that he'll mount any sort of comeback movement... there's just no zeitgeist for old school typesetting technique and he kind of likes the skip a line style that has become prevalent in the digital world. It seems more natural to him... more of a delineation of ideas... more of a separation of thought from one paragraph to the next. In the digital world the paragraph has become much more autonomous... at home in a larger body of text, but open to extraction... to block-quote... to inclusion in some relevant search result somewhere. Information is being atomized and the paragraph is a prime component in the de/re-construction of text. He sat and still wondered about his place in that mix... about his part in the persistent transformation of ideas... about where he will fit when this moment is taken and mixed and made into the pure information that god/nature intended this-him to be." . "2007-05-08T08:58:33"^^ . . . "2007-05-08T10:50:34"^^ . "eMusic CEO David Pakman on the business of music retailing." . "eMusic :: it kicks ass. Maybe not so much for you major label top 40 types out there, but for those of us who live and breathe mainly for new, innovative, independent artists and labels it is the greatest thing to ever happen to the business of buying and selling music. Which is why I am linking to this post on the \"unofficial\" eMusic blog 17dots by CEO David Pakman. In it he sets forth eMusic's philosophy on selling music in the \"brave new world\" and how they are doing their part to keep music healthy. Bottom line: listen to customers not corporations:\n\n
eMusic makes a splendid bargain with our customers: get a better deal on music from us than what you get at iTunes, and we’ll work really hard at helping you discover great music. But in return, you spend more money on music than you normally would. And that’s good for everyone: artists, labels and customers. And here’s the bottom line: the average customer only spends about $12 per year on iTunes; by contrast, the average eMusic customer spends about $168 per year with us. Imagine how different our industry would look if more retailers could serve their customers so fully.
\n\nImagine." . "2007-05-08T10:50:34"^^ . . . "2007-05-09T09:00:46"^^ . "the beauty of the wake" . "I start off drifting without knowing where I may land. The direction is arbitrary and the destination is unknown. The light may or may not be bright enough to see... sometimes I float blindly through darkness while others I am led by a brilliant wash of daylight. Inevitably I'll stop and take stock of my position... try and make sense of the surround... absorb its meaning if it has any and create it if it doesn't. After the pause I close my eyes and feel directed, guided by the wind of something other... something outside... something not from me. It drives me and there is no waiting... it spills me toward the end and I surf mindlessly to a conclusion. As I approach it I may.... from time to time not always... I may stop and think for a moment... I may collect myself... I may reclaim control and try and steer into the slip without banging up against the edges... and if all is well and good I'll get out and admire the beauty of the wake." . "2007-05-09T09:00:46"^^ . . . "2007-05-10T09:00:20"^^ . "disinformation" . "There was an impossibly yellow truck sitting outside his apartment... it had been there for almost two days and the neighbors were starting to ask him questions. He wanted to answer them... and sometimes did... with fabulous stories about how the truck was in fact outfitted with a detection system for airborne viruses and how he was the only person in the state certified to use it and that meant he had to take it home with him in case some sort of terrorist attack suddenly broke in the middle of the night... he told them that if they didn't see that truck that something was going down. It wasn't long before Homeland Security took him away... for questioning. They wanted to know just HOW the truck worked... WHO gave it to him... WHAT they were planning. He told them that he was an operative for an organization that few have heard of... they numbered in the thousands and were growing everyday... soon their numbers would equal the entirety of the the US Armed Forces... soon they would make a play to control the media... then the food supply... then they would systematically take down the entire system in the name of... no not him... in the name of... he went silent... his eyes shifted to the floor... he made a few breathless sounds... he smiled... and then he died. Within seconds the impossibly yellow truck disappeared." . "2007-05-10T09:00:20"^^ . . . "2007-05-10T11:55:05"^^ . "Bite into the Reality Sandwich" . "After reading and thinking so much about software, technology, media shift, business models, information architecture, and all of the other interesting (though sometimes dry) stuff I engage with on a daily basis, it's good to have a place to go where I can read and think more... umm... psychedelically. So when I read that Daniel Pinchbeck has put together a new webmag over at http://www.realitysandwich.com (with some of my favorite writers and cultural theorists) I immediately dropped everything and took a big-ass bite. While a lot of people will dismiss this as a bunch of New-Age hippy crap, there is a ton of excellent theory, perspective, thought, and possibility there. In Pinchbeck's words:\n\n
Counteracting the doom-and-gloom of the daily news, Reality Sandwich is a platform for voices conveying a different vision of the transformations we face. Our goal is to inspire psychic evolution and a kind of earth alchemy.
\n\nA great goal... even if it is a bit lofty. I for one plan on being a frequent and active layer on the reality sandwich." . "2007-05-10T11:55:05"^^ . . . "2007-05-11T08:59:16"^^ . "notes out of order" . "...the scandal is life really... the way it breaks and manipulates... the development of its characters... the shattering of soul into individual psyche... the relentless posturing of ego... each of us autonomous, fractured, opaque gaps... information congealed... clots of the free roaming brought together under terrific stress... we form like diamonds... soiled by the weight of things... driven by the complicated rhythms of distant music... we grope and stab and bleed for accumulated matter... ruthless and cruel but tragically sincere... consumption reels us in wiggling on the end of a pointed and painful line... desire and youth taunt us... loneliness defines us... simplicity escapes us... love saves us." . "2007-05-11T08:59:16"^^ . . . "2007-05-14T09:05:40"^^ . "power failure" . "The energy is dwindling into nothing... it is sapped and gone... thirty percent and falling fast. HE tried to think... tried to get a solution... a fix... away out but he couldn't get past everything that HE had been up to now. HE couldn't leave behind outdated modes of being in order to save himself... HE couldn't even though HE knew HE had to... HE had to adapt... Twenty-five percent... HE saw it all the way... HE had watched it coming from about ten miles out.... HE had no excuse and now HE was very close to nothing. HE struggled for a moment and grunted against the useless weight of everything that was happening... CRITICAL STAGE... RESERVE POWER... HE closed his eyes and then quickly opened them realizing HE had been wondering about this moment for along time and HE wanted to see it... to know who might be right... and that was all the power HE had left." . "2007-05-14T09:05:40"^^ . . . "2007-05-15T08:21:15"^^ . "describing morning" . "The day starts out in rushes... in fits and jumps and spasms of uncertainty and foggy motor function. The water that beats down is hot and the steam that surrounds deepens the sense of disconnection. The television is annoying and the smell of coffee is the only life in the room. The toaster pops and is followed quickly by the grating sound of a knife scraping across burned bread. The television spits news (it hurts to call it that) and there is a low, slightly warm sun just visible through the curtains above the sink. The refrigerator is opened and left as the sound of silverware heads to a crescendo. With a final slam of a knife the drawer slams and the refrigerator closes. Then there is a silence. Footsteps. A Door opens... closes. Through the walls... a car door... the sound of engine as it turns over... fading as it drives slowly off into another morning." . "2007-05-15T08:21:15"^^ . . . "2007-05-16T08:14:24"^^ . "routine mission" . "The liftoff was rocky but it soon made sense. There was little effort and no fanfare and that kind of made Wade feel better... nothing burned him more than screwing up in front of an audience. He had settled into his chair and started taking the readings that needed to be taken in the first third. Everything seemed normal. After and hour he got up and made himself some freeze-dried ice cream (chocolate) and started the movie. The face on the screen was familiar... the same face that had greeted him on every other mission he had ever undertaken... and it asked him to perform the usual operations and rundown the usual checklist and to make sure he had engaged the proper protocol on the machine. The influx overflow option should... at this point.. be set and the temperature should be fixed and recorded. Everything looked good. Wade eased back in his chair and thought... too bad there isn't an audience." . "2007-05-16T08:14:24"^^ . . . "2007-05-17T09:03:57"^^ . "exchanging flame" . "[GEARBOY56]:You stupid shit. the 344 NEVER had the killswitch in the firstplace!!! They did away with that early in the development cycle of the 324... a good 3 YEARS before the 344 was even conceptualized.... [nodemaster]: OK -- if by killswitch you mean the actual switch, but I was making a finer point about the functionality of the killswitch... not the ACTUAL switch. I guess reading these boards with only a third grade reading level inhibits comprehension of that kind of fine distinction... so sorry. I'll try to be a little more straightforward from now on. [GEARBOY56]: Go fuck yourself. [nodemaster]: Anatomically impossible you twit. [MODERATOR]: THIS DISCUSSION HAS BEEN DECLARED HOSTILE AND IS NOW CLOSED." . "2007-05-17T09:03:57"^^ . . . "2007-05-18T08:54:54"^^ . "illuminated truth mine" . "Along the long runway illuminated creatures move and sense the night has taken them as far as it can. They slip into their holes and wait for the punishing sun to take its place at the head of the corporate day. They had been mining all night and still nothing... still no sign of the elemental truth that they knew was hidden somewhere in the thickening layers of manufactured national reality. The world was still in the same stupid way it was when they began. Children were still starving in the field where everything was born... the transformed were still resolute in their empty but profitable sidelines... and the pious still held tightly to the myth that only they continued to believe. Without the truth nothing can change... at least not in the way the creatures of the night had wanted it to. No matter... when the sun goes down they'll have at it again... that's what they do. Perhaps tonight, in the comforting grace of darkness, they'll find the truth." . "2007-05-18T08:54:54"^^ . . . "2007-05-21T09:04:17"^^ . "the long drive" . "He let the needle drop lightly onto the groove and imagined the cars on the other side of the wall becoming traffic. The cigarette lighters now all fueling electronic daydreams, the radio dead and long gone, the lights now smarter than they were when he was young... this is the road today. Telephonic distractions creep throughout. Climate controlled escape pods navigate the uncontrolled climate, protecting then fragile cargo from harsh reality. News and weather at five past the hour... things like advertisements line the highway prophetic and stark against the dying sunlight... another mile another ten dollar ransom. Tankers breeze alongside high on the gulf-stream and important in their own spectacular way. Vacation... summer vacation... the long and somber summer vacation where petroleum bleeds into concrete and nitrates invade the unsuspecting bloodstream. We are all on our way... driving... burning... heading... somewhere." . "2007-05-21T09:04:17"^^ . . . "2007-05-22T09:00:26"^^ . "another nervous laugh" . "She was joking with her colleagues in the lab and the faint trace of a smile was still on her lips as she looked into the microscope. Within seconds all of the happiness of the morning had drained from her. She pulled back with a quick jerk, breathed a momentary breath to refocus and dove back into the specs... same. She hated this part of the job... having to deliver the news... having to field the grief. It was moments like these when she wanted to run from her education into a comfortable position in a bookstore in some tired old town down south. She wanted to slip silently out the back door... to leave behind all of the grants... all of the research.. all of the futile efforts to reverse the steady and unalterable course of an unfeeling organic process. She wanted to tear down everything about her life that brought her to this microscope in this lab. She pulled back from the instrument again... basking in the quiet humor of the room... another joke... another (nervous) laugh." . "2007-05-22T09:00:26"^^ . . . "2007-05-23T08:57:27"^^ . "an uncolored book" . "This is just an exercise... a forced and painful attempt at tapping some unconscious reservoir of jargon that might, if strung together carefully, yield a compelling pattern. Success is almost always an accident... a cheap stab at developing a poetics out the detritus of the mind... of my mind. The spilling of fragmented thought ugly and dispassionate, occasionally unique, temporarily profound... its meaning is in your hands... the constantly developing context drawn from your own personal experience... there is nothing I can write that means anything... words only... strings... phrases... broken teeth... shattered glass... spread gravel... watered seed... partial downloads... applied profiles... image spam... commingled recycling... slips of the day stored and recalled... language devoid of any sort of actual information... all of this empty is for you... an uncolored book." . "2007-05-23T08:57:27"^^ . . . "2007-05-24T09:08:46"^^ . "don’t dream it’s over" . "Staring at graffiti on the back of a train seat he started to think about how low the general level of discourse had sank. He mused on how the finer points of debate are obliterated in favor of a thumping, shouting, ranting style of argument that serves more to bolster the ego of the arguer than to prove or disprove the argument. He lamented the nature of contemporary debate that attacked the person rather than the logic. He was saddened by empty talking heads and issue whores that saw politics as a means to celebrity. He was disgusted at how political parties were followed as blindly as the local sports franchise. He was angry that the after millions of years of evolution the human mind had only progressed this far. He was surprised that there are so few who see that we are, each of us, little more than a constellation of particles with a deep association to a particular time and space... that identity is an illusion... that the self is a side effect... that the lines we draw and the borders we honor are arbitrary barriers that prohibit a profound understanding of what we call life." . "2007-05-24T09:08:46"^^ . . . "2007-05-29T09:56:49"^^ . "late spring big city" . "The kids are on the train today... the first day after a long holiday weekend... and they have their teacher with them. He's the bookish, concerned, engaged type who brutally enjoys exposing these teenage giggle monsters to the cultural verve of the city. On the train they have the good fortune to meet a graduate... now studying at some tech school just outside the city... and the teacher sits with her and she uncomfortably tells him of her exploits since she left him in high school. He listens and offers back sage sounding empty advice as his charges sit and giggle over the awkwardness of the day. As the train makes its stops everyday commuters... monthly pass holders... file into the train car and right out the back as they see the unusual collection of teenage minds. Some... the older, more retired types thrive on the shot of youth... the conductors seem psycho-sexually charged by the teen vibe... half remembering their high school girlfriends... until the realization of the extra work settles in. At the final stop the train empties and the energy that had collected disperses like pollen into the softness of the late spring big city morning." . "2007-05-29T09:56:49"^^ . . . "2007-05-30T08:56:42"^^ . "meditation on green" . "He thinks the scent is honeysuckle, but it could just as well be lilac or some other suburban flower from his youth. It pushes him into daydreams of baseball and limousines and prom queens and parties at the beach that still hold the slight chill of fading winter. He dreams the growing green and the thawing soil... living chunks turned over in ritualistic planting ceremonies... he feels the continuation... the cycle... the life of everything. He remembers death in spring... early, unforgettable death where life is not lost so much as transfigured... transcendent energy taken in full bloom and trafficked into sublime Gaian consciousness. He wakes to the sound of physics... to the sound of billions of particles smashing into and out of and through each other. The anger, the happiness, the sadness, the truth, the beauty, the pain, the scents, the memories... he sees all of it at the molecular level... twisted and conscious of nothing... open to everything." . "2007-05-30T08:56:42"^^ . . . "2007-05-31T09:04:04"^^ . "last lines" . "Fledgling time waits until it has no more users and then folds in upon itself. The universe and the cosmic weight of crooked borders cut from crooked rivers and crooked shores dissolves into what it always has been. Elements conspire to shake off the imagined cloak of meaning. Identity and self and ego and persona have all given way to a loose yet still buzzing collection of atoms. Vanity and pain have been overcome. Pleasure is indistinct. Milk, eggs, butter, meat, fish, poultry, housewares, softwares, are all broken down into random strings of simple binary opposition. Void and vacuum swirl and absorb emotion, fidelity, trust, hair gel. Information is reduced to data. Signal slowly turns to noise. Minerals, blood, fluids rush into insignificance. The semiotic monster dies as nothing reasserts its dominance over the universe." . "2007-05-31T09:04:04"^^ . . . "2007-06-01T09:01:52"^^ . "telestraction" . "What were they talking about in the corner store in 1907? It wasn't American Idol or The Apprentice or Fear Factor or Top Chef or Deal or no Deal or The Bachelor or The Girls Next Door or The Hills or The Real OC or Survivor or The Real World. It wasn't Anna Nicole Smith or Lindsay Lohan or Tom Cruise or Paris Hilton or Tyra Banks or OJ Simpson. It wasn't shark attacks or killer bees or hurricanes or TB or runaway brides... or runaway TB. What could they have been talking about? The weather I'm sure ...BUT... Could they have been talking about issues? Could they have been talking about things that had a direct effect on them and their lives? Could they have been engaging in something approaching a civic dialogue? Could they possibly have been, free from the burden of electronic distraction, tending to their democracy? I don't know... what happened on TV last night?" . "2007-06-01T09:01:52"^^ . . . "2007-06-04T09:09:57"^^ . "first true human" . "When his life began people were tripping... not just a little... but crazy, inter-dimensional tripping that re-centered gravity. Rockets were launched breeding extra-terrestrial footsteps... minds were blown to molecular pieces that seldom reformed in any way resembling their former state.... music... strange new electronic music bent and twisted and weaved through everything. Sonic waves permeated hallucinatory social interactions and reality transformed from rock solid now into cosmic everywhere. He became a part of it. Another bit in the informational zeitgeist that swept through the landscape with the unforgiving grace of indigenous revenge. He was native and alive... the result of a million years of unfolding code that had reached critical mass. He was here, but somehow everywhere. He could feel outside time... outside space... outside matter. He was human... perhaps the first to be truly so." . "2007-06-04T09:09:57"^^ . . . "2007-06-04T15:22:01"^^ . "A new relationship with the gray lady" . "Perhaps it's some sort of ingrained appreciation stemming from the cub scout field trip I took there thirty years back (a trip which I credit with fueling my interest in print and publishing in general), but I have always had a soft spot for The New York Times. When I first came online years ago their site was one of the first sites I remember seeking out and reading and I have always associated a lazy Sunday with the big ass Sunday Times. So it only makes sense that I try out my new \"newspaper consumption philosophy\" with them.\n\nThis new philosophy revolves around that Sunday edition... I subscribe to that (the sunday paper ONLY) because it is stuffed with good writing (and a full fledged magazine or two) and Sunday is the one day during the week I really don't want to look at a computer screen. The icing on this cake is that my Sunday only subscription unlocks the entirety of the Times' web site giving me full time access to everything in the NYT universe (what prints plus other media like audio and video) for the price of the Sunday paper... a paper I would probably buy at the newsstand anyway.\n\nNow I know that this is a bargain for me and I have found myself spending a lot more time on the Times site... especially inside the pay-wall at Times Select. What I don't know is whether or not this is a value for the Times. If I had to guess I'd say that it has to be... they're getting me all week for the cost of a Sunday print run. My subscription to that one paper a week is potentially as valuable as a full subscription to all seven editions (perhaps more so). Without the cost of having to print an actual paper they have me documented... they can see me visit their site... they know what articles I read... they know what ads I click on and which ones I don't... they can develop a much fuller picture of me and build an advertising space that is tailored to my tastes... something advertisers love to hear. In short they can offer a depth of experience online that they could never even dream of in print.\n\nSo this leads me to the question: is this a harbinger of things to come for newspapers? My lifestyle pattern of being in front of a computer all week and getting away from it on the weekend is awful common. If this setup is working for me, why not for the countless other would-be subcribers to the Times? Could this be a trend in readership that resonates to such a degree that it eliminates the daily paper in favor of a digital week print weekend tandem?" . "2007-06-04T15:22:01"^^ . . . "2007-06-05T09:00:05"^^ . "everything he ever wanted" . "The pressure was hardly bearable. It held him down and kept him coldly aware that his life had been, up to now, a sham. The early morning meetings, the late afternoon lunches, the cocktail hours, the theatre, the dinners... all of it was neatly designed to sell. He thought of the times before he became this person... the times before he was toasted and photographed and fully and brutally socialized. He thought of the windows on the family car and how they would streak with rain. He would sit silently watching the streaks run in patterns across the glass as the roadways and landscape of the nation slid by in background. Now, in front of this window, with this rain streaking across this glass, he couldn't manage to stop. He couldn't help but look out through the patterns on the glass and into his own eyes hanging high above the city flushed with the bright white light of advertising space. This was life to him now... all plastic and thin. He had become a series of colored dots... pixels in an image. As he closed his eyes he tried to feel the dark of the room... the silence... he listened and thought he could hear the sound of a heartbeat... his heartbeat... faint and distant and receding further from shore." . "2007-06-05T09:00:05"^^ . . . "2007-06-06T09:03:34"^^ . "the good christian" . "There was a big glowing red neon sign just above the doorway... it flickered on and off with a slight buzz and spewed the word \"FORGIVE\" out into the night. She stood looking up at it for a moment, or perhaps it was an hour, she couldn't be too sure. She had landed here and she quickly forgot everything that had conspired to deliver her to this exact point in space-time. It might have been a wormhole or a rift between dimensions or some other cosmic anomaly, but the fact was she was here. She looked up at the sign again and tried to think of the things she needed to forgive... she found it difficult to remember, but she knew she would have to if she wanted to go through the door... and for some reason she WANTED to get through that door. She closed here eyes and after a moment... she remembered getting punched, bitten, kicked, stabbed, raped. She remembered being held under water. She felt it all again... she saw his eyes... the anger and pain and she pitied him. His wretchedness encompassed him, defined him, distorted and perverted him. She could only feel, now, suddenly, love for him... a strange and sympathetic love. She stopped seeing her pain and his pain and just saw pain... universal, existential pain. In the brutal profanity of his act she saw a shared moment of physicality... a crashing together of souls in distress... a fragile splinter of failing humanity. She understood violence, war, aggression... held it in her mind... contemplated it... and let it go. As her eyes opened she saw the door ajar. She looked toward it... she took a step, reached for the knob... and for the first time, she felt free." . "2007-06-06T09:03:34"^^ . . . "2007-06-06T10:16:36"^^ . "Cory Doctorow on Internet filtering" . "

This article by Cory Doctorow is a short but sweet take on why Internet filtering is such a dumb idea. Having to deal with one of these filters during office hours I can personally attest to the fact that they do a really awful job at stopping the malicious and pretty good job at blocking the useful. As Cory says...\n

\n...every filtering enterprise to date is a failure and a disaster, and it's my belief that every filtering effort we will ever field will be no less a failure and a disaster. These systems are failures because they continue to allow the bad stuff through. They're disasters because they block mountains of good stuff. Their proponents acknowledge both these facts, but treat them as secondary to the importance of trying to do something, or being seen to be trying to do something. Secondary to the theatrical and PR value of pretending to be solving the problem.\n
" . "2007-06-06T10:16:36"^^ . . . "2007-06-07T09:02:09"^^ . "island man" . "Ego had taken all of the family money and headed straight for some island in the native part of the world. It wasn't a lot but it was everything they had and it hurt. It hurt in every way someone could hurt somebody. On the night Ego left he looked in on his son... he touched his soft cheek... he smiled... he took some comfort in knowing that this boy would never know him. From this island beach Ego imagines out into the ocean... he imagines his son (probably driving now) happy... happy with a girl and a kiss and the touch of a soft hand. Ego sips off his drink. The wind flips his paper. The kids nearby scream at play. The world slows. Ego dreams. When his cell rings he looks at the screen: ID UNAVAILABLE. He thinks of the irony in that. He smirks. He sits alone in his own mediocrity and sniffs. FUCK IT. Ego used to speak French. He used to order his meals at French places in French and it had always bothered everyone who ever had the misfortune to eat with him. Ego was a shitty tipper. Ego was mean. Ego never did anything or said anything that didn't somehow benefit himself. Ego was shit. He lived that way and he lived alone... Ego reveled in it." . "2007-06-07T09:02:09"^^ . . . "2007-06-07T14:22:35"^^ . "My new scene… Kindie Rock!" . "

Dan Zanes... unless you have kids OR were really into indie rock in the eighties, you probably have no idea who he is. Well my friends, the former mastermind behind the Del Fuegos has a new lease on life and is making some of the best music of his career... for kids. Make no mistake, this is not the stick a fork in your eye car trip repetitive kind of kids music... this is authentic roots music that is fit for adults. In fact I find myself listening to it while I'm alone. It just has a really breezy vibe to it... no pretense, no pressure.

\n

\nIn this interview with emusic he explores the intersection of parenthood and music and talks about the whole idea of the \"kindie rock\" scene, hipster parents, even some politics. And if you do have kids (little ones, toddlers seem to dig him best) do YOURSELF a favor and buy them some Dan Zanes.

\n\n
\nKids especially — being cool is not a part of their world, and thank God for that. I think in a way, that’s the beautiful thing about families and music and listening — that’s where we’re able to get away from all that, from worrying about what’s cool. The whole experience can be so innocent and so freeing, to be enjoying music with your kids. To bring this idea that what you’re listening to is either cool or not cool is really re-imposing the grown-up limitations on music.\n
" . "2007-06-07T14:22:35"^^ . . . "2007-06-07T15:31:40"^^ . "Neuroscience of déjà vu" . "

I swear I have read this before... Neuroscience of déjà vu. Seriously though, I have had some very strong episodes and the \"someplace similar\" explanation doesn't quite explain them for me. For instance how does this explain those moments when I'm sitting in my dining room, talking to my mother-in-law about something and all of a sudden I KNOW I have lived this before. this isn't an \"overlapping blueprint\" it's an existing one. The place is well worn in my brain... perhaps the conversation, the placement of individuals in the room, the level of daylight coming in through the window, the dog barking in the corner, the car that just went up the street, the commercial on TV, the food steaming on the stove, all could be overlapping in some way that although it is temporally new it is perceived my brain as a previously lived experience. Strange place the brain...

\n\nThe MIT link

" . "2007-06-07T15:31:40"^^ . . . "2007-06-08T10:49:14"^^ . "the thought" . "He stood looking out into the dessert with only one thought on his mind... He stood on the top of the building with only one thought on his mind... He stood on the edge of the bridge with only one thought in his mind... He stood in the market with only one thought on his mind... He stood in the middle of the diamond with only one thought on his mind... He stood on the train platform with only one thought on his mind... He stood in the open field with only one thought on his mind... He stood at the edge of the beach with only one thought on his mind... He stood on the rocky cliff with only one thought on his mind... He stood on the podium with only one thought on his mind... He stood upright in his seat with only one thought on his mind... He stood at the tee with only one thought on his mind... He stood in the intersection with only one thought on his mind... He stood behind the register with only one thought on his mind... He stood over the stove with only one thought on his mind... He stood at the foul line with only one thought in his mind. He stood, finally, looking down into the freshly dug grave, stark and empty, nothing in his mind, as the thought, for its part, stood singular, alone, shimmering, completely untouchable." . "2007-06-08T10:49:14"^^ . . . "2007-06-11T09:23:20"^^ . "the character" . "The cameras stopped but his life kept rolling... at least it felt that way. He had been here in the public imagination for the last ten years and now they were just going to kill him... stop him from growing... imprison him in syndication for the rest of time. He was a character... fictional but sentient and alive. Sure there had been a fair amount of friction between him and that guy they got to fill out his corporeal form but he felt OK with it... he felt they had come to an understanding after the wrap party on season four. They found a nice little middle ground... an artistic commonality that let both of them grow without one ever limiting the other. He had enjoyed that but he was fixed now... an image stilled in time... unresolved... never fatter... never older... never human. He wanted to break out and push violently into reality... to step out from behind the idea and live... but he would have to settle for a blind progression... a life lived (in a sense) but never filmed. Words gone... continuing in fragmented, parallel post-ficitons... divergent, fraying threads of imagination would splinter him... unravel him into almost nothingness... a variation on a theme. He would recede slowly into the mind of everyone and sit there... simmering in the cultural sub-conscious... a new archetype... a template... a study waiting for reprise.\n\nTechnorati Tags:\npoetry, death, thought, poem, character\n

" . "2007-06-11T09:23:20"^^ . . . "2007-06-11T12:41:15"^^ . "Don’t Stop…" . "

The movie never ends it goes on and on and on...

\n\n

The finale of The Sopranos has been and will be talked about perhaps more than any television show should be so I'll keep my reaction to the ending brief. I thought it was brilliant... the ending that ends so quickly it really didn't end at all. Sure I felt cheated at first, but that was just because I wanted to see something happen... I wanted to see it!!! No dice.

\n

Then I thought about the last sequence... the tune... the whole idea of not stopping... not ending... and I realized how perfect it really was. Ultimately what happens at Holsten's... whether or not Tony lives or dies, goes to prison, goes crazy, or lives happily ever after... is immaterial. What matters (to me at least) is the idea of the anti-ending. By simply cutting to a few seconds of black screen David Chase seemingly escapes any express resolution of the narrative, while actually making a profound existential statement. We all end in a shroud of darkness and swirling questions... should a TV show be any different than life?

\n

Still... the questions remain... what is that light in the distance? ... does The Sopranos have an afterlife?" . "2007-06-11T12:41:15"^^ . . . "2007-06-12T08:20:10"^^ . "the last one" . "When he first started it was hard to kill somebody. He thought about their mothers, their kids, their dogs... but now he doesn't think at all. And... when he does think he thinks... if they end up with me they probably deserve everything they have coming... they probably screwed somebody so completely that death was the only suitable revenge... the only fair outcome. CEO's, drug kingpins, dictators, pedophiles, rapists... he kills them all. He's a leveler... a ghost... and right now he's looking down the barrel of his gun at his foot... wedged neatly between the bottom of a $500 haircut and the top of a $3000 suit. As he pulls gently on the trigger he feels a slight twinge... time slows... his heart beats loudly... his mind floods... quickcut... he wipes the blood from his shoes and sighs... relief. He puts down his gun and picks up his coffee... he steps back and lights a cigarette admiring his work... he takes a drag and swears that this is the last one... he's killing himself... he has to quit." . "2007-06-12T08:20:10"^^ . . . "2007-06-13T09:02:40"^^ . "some kind of poetry" . "In the morning... some mornings... the last thing she wanted was to sit and confront the emptiness. It was monumental and despairing and so gut wrenchingly existential that she had a hard time relating to anybody or anything for hours after. In these glowing sunless mornings she felt exceedingly quiet... exceedingly still... exceedingly removed. There was nothing for her to feel and she would dwell on that... blanket herself in the numbing cold and drift into some deep internal contemplation. Slowly splintered color comes... in waves... in particles... in ideas. She starts to warm... words sprout and collect themselves in phrases... outside the sun... running in short sprints... some kind of poetry is born." . "2007-06-13T09:02:40"^^ . . . "2007-06-15T09:08:07"^^ . "needless" . "Dry spell... nothing to report... the wind has died... the rains have stopped... the world is moving in continuous sunlight. There is time to rest... time to spend alone in the field... time to contemplate the endless unfolding." . "2007-06-15T09:08:07"^^ . . . "2007-06-18T09:06:52"^^ . "summer mind" . "Perhaps he was just reaching his saturation point... nothing more could be extracted... nothing more could be released out into the acrid commute. He had started this as an escape route for the torrent of images and ideas that he swam through everyday... a way to vent the thoughts generated by incoming information.... AND at first it was easy... at first he had no problem connecting... no problem entering the flow state... NOW it seemed like he had to work for every phoneme... every bit of sound. It was sweat and exercise. Summer mind he thought... heat... sun... summer... no time to think. It's going to be a fight... all labor and hard work until the cool of September... THEN the mind will flow again." . "2007-06-18T09:06:52"^^ . . . "2007-06-21T09:11:32"^^ . "forced march" . "The ugliness of this... the difficulty of creating it... the cumbersome nature of its flow... the played out tropes... the tired metaphors... the dusty style... it all weighs heavy like another horrible simile. Still... committed to this space... to this experiment... to this idea that spilling thought pure and uncut is worth while... time slips by... measured in unnatural keystrokes. Sense is hard to see... incoherent and rambling yet existentially necessary...... the entropy of consciousness... the effort of order... the toxic drip of uninspired phrasing... out of mind out of measure words drain, sit, dark, motionless... undiscovered." . "2007-06-21T09:11:32"^^ . . . "2007-06-25T09:02:16"^^ . "reunion" . "It was green... the music... the memory... green. Everything about it was still fresh with life as if it had in fact been only a few short hours earlier. The years (decades actually) had been spent, but had not really lent themselves to distance... it was all right there... front forward. The games, the grass, the sound of air pumped into an empty keg, the smell of stale beer, the brominated stench of used hot tub water... all right there. The ideas, emotions, uncertainty of youth RUSH like a liquid drug... a line (a chord) relived... the suburban night sounds the same... still no charms for the restless dreaming youth... but warmer and filled with data." . "2007-06-25T09:02:16"^^ . . . "2007-06-27T07:34:22"^^ . "Hospital WiFi" . "

Faced with the prospect of spending hours and hours over the next day or so at Hackensack University Medical Center (supporting the mother-in-law), I held tightly to the hope that I might also experience the good fortune that Jon Udell blogged about in this post from a few weeks back: (Exeter Hospital gets WiFi right). Well I am happy to report that I am in fact writing and posting this from the hospital connection! Thank you HUMC! Now I can actually pretend like I'm not here... or something like that.

" . "2007-06-27T07:34:22"^^ . . . "2007-06-28T10:38:30"^^ . "If you publish a magazine you should read this…" . "I had a thought today... and this is probably a thought that is lost on those of you who happen by this space without any interest in magazines or magazine production... but here it goes anyway: digital magazines are kind of like two-color printing. You could certainly do interesting things with both, but at some point any serious attempt at making a durable publication will have to evolve beyond the limitations of the structure they impose.\r\n\r\nIn the same way that two color printing is a limitation of what ink on paper can do digital magazines are a governor on the possibilities of digital communication. What determines how deeply your readers \"feel\" your digital product is not how well you can replicate the printed look and feel of your pub, its how completely you take advantage of the capabilities of the device on which your content lives. A lot of publishers just don't see that. They are so tunneled into their conception of what a \"magazine\" is that they are stuck trying to recreate a \"paper\" experience on a digital device. As a result we have a slew of publications essentially taking their printed format and sending it as PDF or Flash or some combination of the two to readers via some digital channel (email or download).\r\n\r\nThat may be a practical stop-gap, but it is not going to get the job done in the long run... readers don't want a paper experience per se, they want a meaningful experience. In print that means (among other things) four colors not two... in a digital world that means an easy to use, easy to carry, cool looking, reasonably priced multi-use device displaying compelling content that is flexible enough to take advantage of all the things that the device can do. It means awareness of and interaction with other applications on the device and, more importantly, on the network.. It means enhancement of pass along via social applications and buddy lists. It means aggregating content elements from a variety of sources... reading a review from your favorite music mag, getting real-time prices from all music retailers online, and buying a download instantly, concurrently, effortlessly.\r\n\r\nSo what's a publisher to do? Decouple yourself from the whole idea of paper... break free of the stagnant, still notions of issues, pages, and covers. Make paper just another channel in your stream, not the defining one. Atomize... let your information live and breathe and run and jump... embrace and understand XML and its variants... redesign your design staff... revolutionize your production processes... and above all else study and know what's happening in the consumer electronics market. They are your new printer. The devices they are building are the going to be the way your work meets your readers in the digital world.\r\n\r\nIf all of that isn't enough to get you sweating try this... you also have to do the impossible... you have to stop thinking about your advertisers. If you obsess over how to fit advertisements into these new processes you're going to end up building clunky, print-like digital products that don't resonate with end users. Your ads will stick out like ugly, sore, swollen, throbbing thumbs and you will alienate your most valuable asset... your reader. Have faith that if you build a compelling experience for your readers your advertisers and sales and marketing people will figure out how to piggy-back on to it. To borrow an over-borrowed (but so appropriate) line from one of my favorite movies... if you build it they will come.\r\n" . "2007-10-29T12:23:23"^^ . . . "2007-07-10T15:01:14"^^ . "of the people" . "He started into thinking about independence… his independence and how it played across the county. He knew that he had perception problems, not only how he was perceived, but more importantly he had problems perceiving anything for himself. He found it extremely difficult to read anything or anybody. He used to spend hours on end watching video of facial expressions, days on end in libraries across the county reading books on body language, and years on end toiling in the select misery that comes from not being able to deduce the smallest hints. It was for this reason (and not soulless corruption as his opposition had contended) that, on a hot, humid, July night in 1976, he had relinquished control of himself and his entire agenda to a loosely knit but tightly wound group of county businessmen. He just had to smile his smile, look good in his suit, and they kept him comfortable, warm and well fed… and he was happy not to have to work at his opinions anymore. He could just coast… oblivious." . "2007-07-10T15:01:14"^^ . . . "2007-07-20T14:49:22"^^ . "Going Micro" . "Not sure if anybody has noticed or not, but my usual posting habits have kind of... well dramatically... changed. It's been a while since I've sat at the keyboard and given thought to anything that would require more than 140 characters to get out. I have been bitten by the micro bug... I blame twitter, really... but I guess you could also lay some blame at the feet of more entrenched services like del.icio.us and Flickr that I'm using in new ways (for me at least). We could get deep into the why of this move, and that might be fodder for a longer essay down the road (once I can clarify what's going on inside my head), but for now I'm just enjoying the flow... the data flow that is my life... meaningless perhaps on a surface level... but I can't help that I'm subconsciously cooking up something good.\n\nYou'll also notice (if you're reading this at my site and not via feed) that I've redesigned the site to accentuate my new style. Twitter updates, latest Flickr photos, and del.icio.us links all up top... followed by an essay section (which I may update once a month or so) and then a spot for notes (of which this is one) and a riff - freeform fiction in paragraph form. These last two may get moved up since they'll probably update more often than the essay section, but we'll have to wait and see for sure.\n\nUPDATE: The bottom two sections (\"a note\" and \"a paragraph\") I have now moved on top of the essay section. The change is due the fact that I plan to update these more frequently." . "2007-07-20T14:49:22"^^ . . . "2007-07-26T12:47:33"^^ . "Initial thoughts on using LibraryThing" . "I have avoided diving into tracking my reading habits because I have dreaded the idea of manually adding the books I have read and am reading into a web interface. After all the beauty of Last.fm for me was the fact that it took my iTunes data and just cataloged it... no need for me to do anything other than install the plugin.\n\nStill, the urge to bring my reading list into the world of digital me was strong and I guess my experience with Netflix kind of convinced me that there was a way to mine this information... if not automatically at least easily. So I tried a few different things... some Facebook apps, but that kept all the info locked in Facebook... a site called aNobii works well enough but is kind of spare.\n\nThen I read this post by David Weinberger about LibraryThing and their use of tags and mashing and all the good stuff David talks about in his excellent book Everything is Miscellaneous. I headed directly to LibraryThing.com and got my account going and in no time I had a library filled with stuff I've read without ever having to look through any kind of physical library. I simply start entering things from memory and LibraryThing tagging system brings up all kind of links based on how other readers have tagged those books. In a big chain of relational memory I find not only distant parts of myself in books I have read and long since filed in the back of my brain, but I find a network of readers who, through tagging and such, have been able to create something approaching a conversation.\n\nSimply put, the LibraryThing is everything that is good about social sites. It lets me easily and quickly create data regarding my reading habits and then share that data with anyone. Sure it's a bit slow and it may just stop for a few minutes here and there, but it's ad-free and claims right on top that it is still in beta so I can excuse this.\n\nThe next step for me... aside from populating my library... will be to come up with an interesting way to splice all that data into this site. Not sure exactly what form that will take, but I know it will be fun to figure out. Until then check out my LibraryThing profile at http://www.librarything.com/profile/mturro." . "2007-07-26T12:47:33"^^ . . . "2007-07-31T10:53:43"^^ . "getting closer to the total me…" . "getting closer to the total me feed - via feedburner - one feed streaming blog, flickr, delicious, and twitter... facebook next? pownce?????" . "2007-07-31T10:53:43"^^ . . . "2007-07-31T12:30:03"^^ . "rss" . "From this page you can decide what parts of my life you would like to be tuned into. Below is a listing of all the RSS feeds I produce - each one represents a little corner of my digital life and each one offers a different type of information. Feel free to subscribe to any one of them - or if you want the total me - you can subscribe to the mturroTOTAL feed which will give you real time updates on my status, my pictures, my links, my thoughts, my ideas, my entire online life.\r\n

\r\nmturroTOTAL - http://feeds.feedburner.com/mturro This, as stated above is the whole enchilada - an rss feed of every move I make online. It contains all the data from each of the following feeds. \r\n

\r\nUPDATE: I have taken my twitter updates out of this feed... it just seemed too redundant.  So if you want to follow my twitter life, you must either subscribe to the twitter RSS below or, better yet,  join twitter and get in on the conversation.\r\n

\r\nmturroNOTES -http://feeds.feedburner.com/mturro_notes Notes are perhaps the closest I come to traditional blogging. Posts to this feed will be more gut level responses to things I come across everyday... reactions, ideas, and experiences that are longer that the 140 character twitter limit, but not quite on the order of the longer, more thought out essay.\r\n

\r\nmturroESSAY - http://feeds.feedburner.com/mturro_essayEssays are exactly that... essays just like you learned to write in school. Since these are by nature more of a thought out, worked and re-worked, drafted sort of composition, these posts will be much less frequent.\r\n

\r\nmturroRIFFS - http://feeds.feedburner.com/mturro_riffsThis category is really the \"out there\" category... a leftover from my days as an English Lit grad student. These posts are short-form fiction/poetry that is written cold and of the moment. They are pure stream of consciousness and may or may not make any explicit sense. Essentially they are a way for me to keep my writing mind nimble... a way to write when I don't have that much to say (or don't THINK I have that much to say). These posts will come in fits and starts. I could post them everyday for six weeks then stop for six more.... no pattern, all vibe.\r\n

\r\nThe last three feeds make use of three popular tools that have surfaced over the last few years. Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Twitter have changed the way I approach the web, this site, and communication in general. Each of these allow me to communicate at a \"micro\" level. This type of communication is extremely in vogue right now and I am certainly not the only one playing with these services... in fact I strongly advise you to sign on with these services and get all \"social\" with me outside the confines of this blog or RSS. Any way, enough drivel here's the feeds:\r\n

\r\nTwitter: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/6040892.rssI am really starting to love twitter. At first I didn't get it at all... why make little meaningless 140 character posts that could just as easily be posted to a blog with no limit? Then I started using it. It felt good... it felt like communication... it felt like the medium being the message. Then I read (and continue to read) a bunch of analysis on what twitter means, on what exhaust data and phatic communications mean. I understand it now... perhaps more so on a visceral than intellectual level, but I am slowly coming to terms with its potential. These posts, since they are short and sweet, are frequent... sometimes several times a day... issued from anywhere on planet Earth I can get a cell signal.\r\n

\r\nFlickr - url too long to post - just click hereFlickr, for me, is simply a photo blog. This is where you can get a view into my life. Posts here are by and large straight from my cell to the web so the posts are on the average of about once a day or so.\r\n

\r\ndel.icio.us - http://del.icio.us/rss/mturroThis is the link blog... the feed that points you to other interesting things on the web. Roughly once a day I try to point ya'll toward some things on the net that I find interesting.\r\n

\r\nSo that's my rundown of RSS feeds. Obviously with the changing nature of the technology behind all this, and with the changing nature of my own vision of what my digital life should look like, this is all temporary. If you should feel like something here doesn't work or perhaps you ahve a reccomendation on how it might be more user-friendly, the drop me aline via the contact page or leave a comment on this page and I'll see if we can't make it better." . "2008-05-23T02:29:19"^^ . . . "2008-05-22T23:09:20"^^ . "@Scobleizer I wouldn't dare d..." . "@Scobleizer I wouldn't dare dream of cluttering Apple's beautiful, clean, artful design with stickers - I just don't have the guts." . "2008-05-22T23:09:20"^^ . . . "2008-05-23T08:37:09"^^ . "Head in the clouds - Photo: ht..." . "Head in the clouds - Photo: http://bkite.com/00gOK" . "2008-05-23T08:37:09"^^ . . . "2008-05-23T09:21:56"^^ . "pearls of wisdom from njtransi..." . "pearls of wisdom from njtransit: \"never get on or off a moving train\" - Sage advice indeed." . "2008-05-23T09:21:56"^^ . . . "2007-07-31T13:37:04"^^ . "bug labs buzz" . "In a recent essay I gave the following advice to magazine publishers: \"above all else study and know what's happening in the consumer electronics market. They are your new printer. The devices they are building are the going to be the way your work meets your readers in the digital world.\"\n\nFollowing my own advice I figured I'd post a little something here about a new company that has piqued my curiosity (as well as a few other, more notable, people). That company is called bug labs and they are doing something interesting with hardware. I'm still fuzzy on what EXACTLY this thing is, but I am already loving the buzz around it. Witness Dave Winer:\n\n

so maybe Bug will be a prototyping environment for more polished mobile devices, like future iPhones. As a user and a developer my creativity has been locked out of the mobile market because I don't have the requisite hardware skills. Podcasting is one art that would be further along if we had access to the design tools that designers at consumer electronics companies have. There certainly are others. Imagine the mobile devices doctors would create. Building contractors. Bus drivers. Musicians. Writers. Librarians.
\n\nThis is definitely one to watch. Find out more about bug labs and what they're up tos through their blog: http://www.bugblogger.com/\n\nUPDATE: This post from Bug Labs CEO Peter Semmelhack does a nice job a laying out what the company's vision is... a vision that, as I said above, has me extremely interested." . "2007-07-31T13:37:04"^^ . . . "2007-07-31T20:47:37"^^ . "Everybody on the Yankees hitti…" . "Everybody on the Yankees hittin' homers (8 all told tonight) but A-Rod... ah the irony!" . "2007-07-31T20:47:37"^^ . . . "2007-08-01T07:22:21"^^ . "happy 65th birthday to Jerry G…" . "happy 65th birthday to Jerry Garcia... wherever you may be..." . "2007-08-01T07:22:21"^^ . . . "2007-08-01T15:25:49"^^ . "Using Google Reader (again - n…" . "Using Google Reader (again - now via camino) and finding it much less buggy this time around - readers used: Bloglines, Vienna, NetNewsWire" . "2007-08-01T15:25:49"^^ . . . "2007-08-03T09:22:39"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ The Polyphonic S…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ The Polyphonic Spree - Section 26: We Crawl http://tinyurl.com/26eu4e" . "2007-08-03T09:22:39"^^ . . . "2007-08-03T09:42:56"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ Elvis Costello -…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ Elvis Costello - Crawling To The USA http://tinyurl.com/2gs7xh" . "2007-08-03T09:42:56"^^ . . . "2007-08-03T11:29:46"^^ . "playing with my flickr map, pl…" . "playing with my flickr map, placing some old shots from around NYC: http://flickr.com/photos/mturro/map/" . "2007-08-03T11:29:46"^^ . . . "2007-08-03T16:40:50"^^ . "Is the issue concept (ie: the …" . "Is the issue concept (ie: the magazine) too sealed off to be an effective content type in the world of open-ended digital information?" . "2007-08-03T16:40:50"^^ . . . "2007-08-04T20:29:57"^^ . "Getting ready for a 10 hour dr…" . "Getting ready for a 10 hour drive from suburban NJ to Carolina beach front- a week outside the city, outside work, outside period. VACATION!" . "2007-08-04T20:29:57"^^ . . . "2007-08-05T21:30:45"^^ . "cigar." . "cigar." . "2007-08-05T21:30:45"^^ . . . "2007-08-05T21:32:15"^^ . "cigar. port. deck. ocean. bree…" . "cigar. port. deck. ocean. breeze. buzz......." . "2007-08-05T21:32:15"^^ . . . "2007-08-07T14:24:13"^^ . "Just got out of the hot tub af…" . "Just got out of the hot tub after getting out of the pool after getting out of the ocean... a good way to spend a heat wave." . "2007-08-07T14:24:13"^^ . . . "2007-08-13T07:30:44"^^ . "back on the train… vacation …" . "back on the train... vacation a warm, receding memory." . "2007-08-13T07:30:44"^^ . . . "2007-08-13T08:54:54"^^ . "back to work. back to manhatta…" . "back to work. back to manhattan. it'll take a couple hours and a couple cups of coffee to get back to city speed." . "2007-08-13T08:54:54"^^ . . . "2007-08-13T14:02:55"^^ . "new video old footage" . "Two excellent \"new\" videos from William Mallory -- a combination of his old film school footage and his new tunes. Watching this stuff makes me remember how exciting it was to hang with Will back in the day... both he and his art were electric. It made living in a small suburban New Jersey town feel like something closer to Greenwich Village. Listening to the new tunes makes me wonder at the fact that he never let that excitement drain from his work... even as the vagaries of life might have forced him to.\r\n\r\nNevermore:\r\n\r\n\r\nLook Around\r\n" . "2008-01-03T17:33:45"^^ . . . "2007-08-14T08:44:34"^^ . "wondering why there aren’t a f…" . "wondering why there aren't a few more trash cans in the world." . "2007-08-14T08:44:34"^^ . . . "2007-08-14T10:34:30"^^ . "Holy cow… the scooter is gon…" . "Holy cow... the scooter is gone... sad day... god bless Rizzuto, wherever he may be." . "2007-08-14T10:34:30"^^ . . . "2007-08-15T10:34:39"^^ . "@scottkarp - congrats on the n…" . "@scottkarp - congrats on the news; not sure how you'll square this with the media corps that control journalism now; it'll be fun to watch." . "2007-08-15T10:34:39"^^ . . . "2007-08-15T11:03:33"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Camper Van Beeth…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Camper Van Beethoven - Life Is Grand http://tinyurl.com/ys5pcf" . "2007-08-15T11:03:33"^^ . . . "2007-08-16T06:47:24"^^ . "watched "the number 23&qu…" . "watched "the number 23" last night; wanted to like it but found it hard; think it might have been better without the numerology obsession..." . "2007-08-16T06:47:24"^^ . . . "2007-08-16T16:30:03"^^ . "writing an essay that employs …" . "writing an essay that employs computational metaphor in an explication of john from cincinnati... so many thoughts, so little organization." . "2007-08-16T16:30:03"^^ . . . "2007-08-20T09:39:17"^^ . "dealing with the low, dull, th…" . "dealing with the low, dull, throb of a gray monday morning headache." . "2007-08-20T09:39:17"^^ . . . "2007-08-21T14:05:51"^^ . "It might be the rain over the …" . "It might be the rain over the past few days, but my existential anxiety level has seemed a bit elevated lately... progress? productivity?" . "2007-08-21T14:05:51"^^ . . . "2007-08-21T14:51:19"^^ . "I’m From There" . "I started reading Fred Turner's book From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism and I am amazed at how I continuously find my way back to the same story. Not EXACTLY the same story of course, but a fair approximation of the old hippie mystique... the zeitgeist of the world I was born into on July 15, 1969. In some way I feel as if that era is my era... that it somehow has played a pivotal role in making me who I am. I wasn't born on a commune. My parents weren't hippies. I have no real connection to any of it other than my first breaths on earth were drawn in waning moments of that cultural upheaval and maybe, somehow, it rubbed off on me.\n\nIn reading the book it has occurred to me that the transition that Turner documents mirrors, quite remarkably, my own personal transformation from hippie-slacker to the technology professional you read here now. I guess it just goes to show you that our influences are, more often than we might expect, subconsciously gathered.\n\n\n

Technorati Tags:\ncounterculture, cyberculture, stewart+brand, transformation, fred+turner, digital+utopianism\n

\n" . "2007-08-21T14:51:19"^^ . . . "2007-08-22T08:52:02"^^ . "Walking through the park and l…" . "Walking through the park and listening to Sigu Ros - Staraflur makes it feel like a sunny day even as clouds dominate." . "2007-08-22T08:52:02"^^ . . . "2007-08-22T15:37:29"^^ . "Looking to hire a Digital Arch…" . "Looking to hire a Digital Archive Assistant - scanning, XMP, metadata, taxonomy, folksonomy, tagging - sound good? entry-level; recent grads" . "2007-08-22T15:37:29"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T10:00:05"^^ . "Left my cell at home… at lea…" . "Left my cell at home... at least it will be nice and charged when I get back to it tonight... still feel naked without it though." . "2007-08-24T10:00:05"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T14:53:42"^^ . "@steverubel - I have done some…" . "@steverubel - I have done something very similar at my site http://mturro.bluepear.org - using feedburner to handle complete rss." . "2007-08-24T14:53:42"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T15:22:41"^^ . "Lifestreams and Digital Identity" . "Steve Rubel has been making some noise on Twitter and other places about Lifestreams... a concept that has been trying to find a service for a while now. I know I picked up on the idea a few months back after reading Stowe Boyd's thoughts on Flow (Stowe also recently tweeted this intriguing response to Steve's lifestream tweets - hmm...).\r\n\r\nThe basic idea is that your lifestream is the stream of data that you generate online through various services like Twitter, Flickr, blogging, del.icio.us etc.. For the most part all of these data streams live in separate worlds, closed off from each other. There is no way to easily take all of these streams and create from them something approaching an identity.\r\n\r\nUnless of course you do what I did with this site... pull everything you do online into one place and make it the entry point for \"you\" on the internet. I am even using the URL mturro.bluepear.org as my OpenID. For all intents and purposes this site... the url mturro.bluepear.org is me... or digital me at least.\r\n\r\nNow Steve is doing the same thing with the URL steverubel.com. Though he is using the blog service tumblr.com (I'm also playing with what they have there - see: mturro.tumblr.com) the concept is pretty much the same.\r\n\r\nThis is a hot topic right now and I would expect that in the next few months we'll start to see something in the way of a definitive application of the lifestream concept. Better yet would be the development of something along the lines of Brian Fitzpatrick's Thoughts on the Social Graph." . "2007-10-29T12:26:20"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T15:35:07"^^ . "@garyvee - Castro gone? what …" . "@garyvee - Castro gone? what do you mean? dead?" . "2007-08-24T15:35:07"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T15:36:57"^^ . "@rexhammock - ego-hose… I li…" . "@rexhammock - ego-hose... I like that one." . "2007-08-24T15:36:57"^^ . . . "2007-08-24T15:43:56"^^ . "There is an awful lot of noise…" . "There is an awful lot of noise on Twitter about Fidel Castro being dead. If true it took mainstream media a while to catch up.- or believe." . "2007-08-24T15:43:56"^^ . . . "2007-08-27T10:52:11"^^ . "Advertising…is it necessaril…" . "Advertising...is it necessarily and by nature discordant with deeply felt, meaningful experience?" . "2007-08-27T10:52:11"^^ . . . "2007-08-28T08:51:48"^^ . "Listening to new Amfibian… i…" . "Listening to new Amfibian... it brilliantly underscores just how much Tom Marshall contributed to the Phish sound." . "2007-08-28T08:51:48"^^ . . . "2007-08-28T15:44:39"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Miles Davis - Do…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Miles Davis - Doxy ... So right for right now somehow. http://tinyurl.com/yt4pmt" . "2007-08-28T15:44:39"^^ . . . "2007-08-28T15:46:01"^^ . "I NEED to remember to downloa…" . "I NEED to remember to download my emusic quota for this month... I love emusic." . "2007-08-28T15:46:01"^^ . . . "2007-08-29T11:59:21"^^ . "Oh, by the way, Dan Smith WILL…" . "Oh, by the way, Dan Smith WILL teach you rock and blues guitar." . "2007-08-29T11:59:21"^^ . . . "2007-08-29T15:05:47"^^ . "Wanting a Multidimensional Lifestream" . "I have come across my first real problem with this \"lifestreaming\" thing... namely that streams are flat. As might be expected, the complexity of real world experience is difficult to distill into a stream where every piece of data possesses equal weight. Currently there is no way - via (mainly rss) streams - to create a digital representation of \"me\" that captures the subtleties and nuances that are \"me\" in the real world.\r\n\r\nTake, for instance, my tumblr stream at mturro.tumblr.com - it's dominated by music. Every few minutes it pulls the most recently played tracks from my Last.fm feed and displays them as if they were in fact posts. The net effect of this (and why I leave Last.fm data out of the RSS \"lifestream\" generated on my own site) is that to the casual observer it would seem that my life is by and large about music. While music is certainly a major part of my life it is so in a primarily background way. The fact that I'm listening to Ben Harper right now doesn't really say as much about me as it does about an environmental aspect of a certain point in my unfolding life. Granted, sometimes the song I'm listening to may have resonance beyond that point, but that is when I'll Tweet it (or blog about it if it's really poignant).\r\n\r\nObviously there are ways to fine tune the stream and to make it a closer representation of \"me\" - and indeed in my main stream I have gone beyond the kind of ham-fisted approach that is on display at my tumblr page. Still, even in this refined state the stream lacks any sort of context. If I am on some sort of kitsch kick and ironically spin a slew of ABBA tunes, my Last.fm data will pick up that fact. Critical information gets lost in the stream through... the irony gets stripped and I become true ABBA fan (if such an animal exists anymore). I can choose not to send that particular set of data to Last.fm, but then I'm not really any closer of creating a digital \"me\" - am I? There must be a way to convey the kitsch and the irony along with just the ID3 information... no?\r\n\r\nUltimately there needs to be a way past this sort of one dimensional stream and toward a more complex and layered flow of data that more closely resembles real world experience. Hopefully, in the same way that emoticons have evolved to convey emotion in written communication, a method will evolve to breathe complexity and nuance into lifeless data streams... perhaps it's already here and I'm just missing it. Either way I suspect that if its to do the job I want it will be slightly more sophisticated than :) or ;) ." . "2007-10-29T12:27:05"^^ . . . "2007-08-29T15:21:43"^^ . "just posted on my yearning for…" . "just posted on my yearning for a multidimensional lifestream: http://tinyurl.com/25knaz" . "2007-08-29T15:21:43"^^ . . . "2007-08-30T08:48:43"^^ . "Reading Hofstadter and thinkin…" . "Reading Hofstadter and thinking that a loop is a better metaphor than a stream." . "2007-08-30T08:48:43"^^ . . . "2007-08-31T19:14:41"^^ . "Kidneys still ache from yester…" . "Kidneys still ache from yesterday's pint driven, 3 hour Yankees - Red Sox lunch." . "2007-08-31T19:14:41"^^ . . . "2007-09-02T19:33:40"^^ . "Watching my kid playing with M…" . "Watching my kid playing with Mr. Potato Head... some toys just never get old." . "2007-09-02T19:33:40"^^ . . . "2007-09-04T08:03:12"^^ . "sitting in bus traffic… the …" . "sitting in bus traffic... the worst kind of traffic... and reading on the bus makes me sick so no book to pass the time..." . "2007-09-04T08:03:12"^^ . . . "2007-09-04T11:30:03"^^ . "Doing interviews with prospect…" . "Doing interviews with prospective "Digital Archive Assistants" all day... interesting stuff." . "2007-09-04T11:30:03"^^ . . . "2007-09-05T13:41:25"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ: John Butler Tri…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ: John Butler Trio - Used to Get High http://tinyurl.com/2afzwy" . "2007-09-05T13:41:25"^^ . . . "2007-09-06T08:52:51"^^ . "Apple/Starbucks Deal is Important" . "It took me a little while to digest yesterday's iPod announcements, but now I think I know what I think... I think. Anyway, what has me the most jazzed is the new Wi-Fi iPod Touch (not alone there) and the Starbucks \"Now Playing\" feature. OK, I realize that the Starbucks integration looks, at first blush, kind of limited and useless. But the more I think about it the more I like it... not that I'm going to run out and buy the touch just just for that, but I do think this is glimpse of the future of music retail. Imagine this being rolled out beyond Starbucks... making it a business service targeted at retail, restaurants, bars, hotels, malls, and anywhere else that uses music as background. Hear a song, like a song, buy a song... no matter where, no matter when. The concept could even be extended beyond music retail... information about historical places, museums, art galleries, movie theaters... all available through Wi-Fi, downloaded straight to the device.\r\n\r\nI'm not alone in my enthusiasm... check out what TUAW is saying:\r\n
Still think it's silly? Imagine when ten retailers are on board. Or twenty. Or television networks. Grey's Anatomy ends with a description of the week's featured pop tune. Why not grab it then and there?\r\n\r\nWhen this catches on, it will be big.
\r\nBig indeed... this will fundamentally change the music discovery process.\r\n" . "2007-10-29T12:25:32"^^ . . . "2007-11-06T16:53:13"^^ . "Rolling Stone: One Step Toward Irrelevance" . "It hurts me to write that headline, but it had to be done. Yes folks, the magazine that is almost singlehandedly responsible for my life long obsession with magazines has jumped the shark and taken a big long swig from the digital edition Kool-Aid (courtesy of Olive Software).\r\n\r\nDon't get me wrong, I understand the the importance of experimentation with different digital platforms... investigation of all possible futures is pretty much mandatory if you want to stay in business. Still, every time one of my favorite magazines takes the digital edition plunge I'm usually so underwhelmed by the execution... the ham-fisted shoveling of pages designed for print into a cumbersome flash based reader that is downright painful to navigate... that by now I am tired of even hearing about these \"special\" editions. Sure I keep checking them out... I keep hoping to see something besides recycled print designs... to see something that might actually take into account the medium the design will live in. Just once I'd like to see page geometry that isn't dictated by the publication's print trim size. Yet all I ever see is the shortcut, the afterthought, the oh yeah, lets do this the easy way.\r\n\r\nWhen will somebody... for the love of all that is holy in this great big wonderful world... either shoot this format in the head or start taking it seriously from a design perspective? Seriously... I may be down on digital magazines, but I am not willing to write them off... there are simply too many good people thinking about them right now to leave the format for dead. I just hope that the reinforcements show up soon." . "2007-11-06T16:57:20"^^ . . . "2007-09-06T09:57:42"^^ . "After two days of daycare the …" . "After two days of daycare the daughter gets a fever... kids are so... germy?" . "2007-09-06T09:57:42"^^ . . . "2007-09-06T10:43:20"^^ . "Tired of hearing early adopter…" . "Tired of hearing early adopters bitch about the iphone price cut. You have to be kind of stupid NOT to see a major change within the first" . "2007-09-06T10:43:20"^^ . . . "2007-09-06T15:35:19"^^ . "Watching (and kind of enjoying…" . "Watching (and kind of enjoying) Dora the Explorer... having a kid makes you a kid." . "2007-09-06T15:35:19"^^ . . . "2007-09-07T15:09:02"^^ . "Ben Harper’s new record could …" . "Ben Harper's new record could be the best work he's done... at least since "Welcome to the Cruel World"" . "2007-09-07T15:09:02"^^ . . . "2007-09-11T07:27:39"^^ . "9-11 in New York… almost jus…" . "9-11 in New York... almost just like any other day." . "2007-09-11T07:27:39"^^ . . . "2007-09-11T15:35:47"^^ . "Nothing But Something Before We Lie Dead" . "This day is hard. I just want to forget it... to let it recede... to make September 11th just like any other day. In some part of my soul and mind I have been able to do this. I am able to get up and travel into Manhattan... pass an empty sky and just get to work. Yet there is a part of me that is till trying to make sense of that day... of the images and color and sounds that not only reverberated through the mediascape, but confronted me in real time... in real space. A part of me still struggles with the twisted sense of humanity that has evolved in the six years since.\n\nA great deal of that process, that struggle to make sense of a senseless world, is (for me at least) grounded in art. Good art has the ability to decouple the situation and the emotion... the ability to let you feel the emotion without having to fix the situation in logic. Art detaches you and lets you visit another (perhaps less dangerous) form of reality. This video by my friends William Mallory and Jessica Licciardello does just that... it uses art to feel again. It gives me the ability to make sense out of senselessness.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Technorati Tags:\n911, september 11, 9-11\n

\n" . "2007-09-11T15:35:47"^^ . . . "2007-09-11T15:39:16"^^ . "A good way to remember: http:/…" . "A good way to remember: http://tinyurl.com/2ep4po" . "2007-09-11T15:39:16"^^ . . . "2007-09-12T10:37:09"^^ . "Waiting on a train platform an…" . "Waiting on a train platform and enjoying a beautiful, crisp pre-autumn day... God bless September." . "2007-09-12T10:37:09"^^ . . . "2007-09-12T20:50:15"^^ . "Sitting here in limbo waiting …" . "Sitting here in limbo waiting for the tide to turn" . "2007-09-12T20:50:15"^^ . . . "2007-09-13T07:36:38"^^ . "Wondering why I am frequently …" . "Wondering why I am frequently uninspired by the books that inspired the books that inspire me." . "2007-09-13T07:36:38"^^ . . . "2007-09-13T15:20:17"^^ . "Living As Information" . "He opened himself up for it... there is no doubt about that. He just seemed so clueless, so current, so god-damned full of all the bullshit that you just shouldn't be full of if you want people to take anything you say seriously. Yet people clung to him - to his every word - to his most trivial posts - to his dumbest tweets - and contemplated them with either extreme fascination or wild contempt. His data flowed and churned and looped into readers and aggregators and pod-catchers by the thousands... the tens of thousands. He had followers and friends that seemed to multiply in exponential ways until they formed massive networks of love and hate. He was, without a doubt, a product of the time... a man, a life, living as information.\n\n\n

Technorati Tags:\nscoble, blogger, information, data, lifestream,\nrubel,\nmturro\n

\n\n\n[This is a work of fiction... any similarities to actual persons, living or dead (myself included), are purely inspirational and not intended to be construed as opinion, fact, or biography of said persons.]" . "2007-09-13T15:20:17"^^ . . . "2007-09-13T15:41:13"^^ . "Snitter Just Don’t Flow" . "I momentarily tried the Twitter client Snitter today. For those of you who are not familiar with twitter, shame: go now[http://twitter.com.] I was kind of pulled in to trying it by a few different posts, but the one that got me was Stowe Boyd's tweet that he was dumping Twitterific - the app I have been using. I like his ideas on flow and am always willing to follow his lead... AND I am kind of interested in playing with Adobe's AIR - so I jumped in.\r\n\r\nAnyway, I like it... it's great how you can easily direct tweet people and I love how it gives both real and screen names of the people you follow, but (and this surprises me a bit) it just doesn't flow for me. My problem is actually more with AIR than Snitter though. I like to keep Twitterific running hidden and let Growl or the menubar tell me when new tweets are in. AIR can't integrate with Growl so I was kind of lost and found myself having to manually check Snitter rather than tweets just flowing to me like with Twitterific.\r\n\r\nSo while Stowe may be saying goodbye to Twitterific, I think I'll stay put... at least until AIR gets some Growl integration going.\r\n" . "2007-10-29T12:25:01"^^ . . . "2007-09-13T20:09:43"^^ . "Wishing I was able to spend a …" . "Wishing I was able to spend a little time in Manhattan doing something other than working." . "2007-09-13T20:09:43"^^ . . . "2007-09-13T20:13:27"^^ . "Admiring the zen presence that…" . "Admiring the zen presence that is Dan Smith: http://www.dansmithguitarlessons.com/" . "2007-09-13T20:13:27"^^ . . . "2007-09-14T07:29:22"^^ . "Not sure why but I’m listening…" . "Not sure why but I'm listening to Buffalo Tom's Let Me Come Over... a lot. More than I did when it came out. Missing the early 90's perhaps?" . "2007-09-14T07:29:22"^^ . . . "2007-09-15T17:39:17"^^ . "Thoughts On The Future of Magazines" . "There's a new consultancy in town and normally this kind of news would just put me to sleep... but since the new company is being run by some names I trust and it concerns the future of magazine technology I decided to check it out. Industry big-wigs Bo Sacks, David Renard, and Nick Hampshire are now mediaIDEAS and they want to help you publish your magazine... or at least help you TH(ink) about publishing your magazine... in a digital world.\r\n\r\nAmong the company's subscription based services (which range from $2800 to $7200 per year) are weekly briefs, or TH(ink) Notes. These TH(ink) Notes are billed as \"essential notes... providing unique actionable research and insight on technology and publishing to help you guide your business into the future.\" Lucky for you (and for me) the guys at mediaIDEAS are kind enough to let prospective clients view two sample notes (one on E-Paper, one on the definition of a magazine) right there on their web site.\r\n\r\nWhile the note on E-Paper is a somewhat hopeful look into the still questionable future of mass market electronic readers, the more interesting and immediately relevant of the two is the note entitled The Definition of a Print and Digital Magazine. In it Renard, Sacks, and Hampshire lay out what they believe are the six key properties that magazines must have if they are to \"remain relevant as they move online.\" In a nutshell, they feel magazines must be metered (page oriented), edited, designed, date-stamped, permanent, and periodic.\r\n\r\nWhile I can agree that these are a great core six to describe what a print magazine is, they are limited to being just that - a great core six to describe what a PRINT magazine is. To try and graft these properties onto your emerging digital efforts is not only misguided, it could be fatal. I'm not saying that these couldn't be principles of your digital products in some fashion... some of them are certainly going to be (edited and designed)... but if you make them core principles you are most assuredly courting failure.\r\n\r\nTake for example the property of permanence (which by the authors definition is really better termed stagnancy).\r\n
in a magazine all the content for an issue is set by its release date; even though the edited content for an issue can be more than what each reader is presented with, to allow for varying levels of customization, once it is created, it is set and can no longer be changed or corrupted apart for minor revisions
\r\nIn the print paradigm this kind of permanence is pretty much a given. Everything about print is permanent... as permanent as death. The stain of ink on dead trees just wont budge. Nothing grows in print... nothing quickens or breathes or reacts... the idea of a collaborative, evolving document is entirely foreign to the print experience. To a large extent the conversational nature of the internet and digital technologies are a revolution against the stagnancy, the tyranny even, of print. These technologies empower the public voice and publishers who ignore or suppress that voice are playing a dangerous game. Why, after tasting the sweet honey of conversational expression, would I - your reader - ever want to go back to being written at? To do so, especially in a digital environment that is capable of giving me a conversational experience, would be extremely frustrating.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the most damaging theme in this paper is the idea that publishers really don't have to change that much... that, with the right consultants and vendors, they can make a living in the digital world using the same approach they are using right now in print.\r\n
Understanding that, though the medium will change and a a number of hybrid solutions will appear, the six critical components (metered, edited, designed, date-stamped, permanent, and periodic) of a magazine will not.
\r\nIt would be nice if that were true, but it's not. To stay competitive in the next 25 years and beyond, publishers will need to confront massive, disruptive, explosive change. They will have to realize that trying to take the successful formula of one medium and forcing it onto another will only cause them grief. They will need to jettison ingrained patterns of thinking and learn to see the landscape with youthful eyes. Sorry folks, no matter what you might want to believe, you most definitely cannot take it with you.\r\n\r\nUltimately what this TH(ink) Note... in fact what mediaIDEAS as a company is trying to do - define and capture the essence of a print magazine and apply it to the digital world - is noble, but hopeless. I realize that there are many people in the magazine world who believe in digital magazines, but to me it's an empty concept. What makes print magazines great, what makes readers fall in love with them, has just way to much to do with the medium of print to ever be recreated digitally. The good news is that print magazines will continue in some form for quite a long while... the tactile experience of reading a magazine, of flipping through four color pages, the scent of paper, is too enjoyable to simply fade away.\r\n\r\nThe publishers that endure will continue to print titles, if only as ancillary products, but they will generate revenue predominantly via digital information products that take advantage of the conversational nature of the digital world. So to you dear publisher I say, forget the six critical components as described by mediaIDEAS and explore the new and emerging components of digital information. Still, if you absolutely have to have some kind of formula to hold onto in that long dark night of digital transition then try this: keep the components edited and designed, throw out the other four and replace them with these: conversational, continuous, collaborative, concentrated. I know, I know, that's kind of vague... but stay tuned and maybe I'll get deeper into them in a future post." . "2007-12-11T13:35:43"^^ . . . "2007-09-16T19:41:57"^^ . "Thoughts on the future of maga…" . "Thoughts on the future of magazines: http://tinyurl.com/2x33wm" . "2007-09-16T19:41:57"^^ . . . "2007-09-17T08:22:20"^^ . "running through a brief moment…" . "running through a brief moment - daily shared - in transition from state to state..." . "2007-09-17T08:22:20"^^ . . . "2007-09-17T14:21:14"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Vic Chesnutt - W…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ: Vic Chesnutt - We Should Be So Brave http://tinyurl.com/yoybn2" . "2007-09-17T14:21:14"^^ . . . "2007-09-17T15:53:22"^^ . "Shelley Duncan gives 10 year o…" . "Shelley Duncan gives 10 year old Red Sox fan an autograph that reads RED SOX SUCK - Shelley Duncan" . "2007-09-17T15:53:22"^^ . . . "2007-09-18T10:34:05"^^ . "+ trying out twitternotes" . "+ trying out twitternotes" . "2007-09-18T10:34:05"^^ . . . "2007-09-18T16:05:11"^^ . "My daughter has a stuffed dog …" . "My daughter has a stuffed dog that she clings to at daycare. She calls him Beneful. The kid watches too much TV." . "2007-09-18T16:05:11"^^ . . . "2007-09-19T07:27:07"^^ . "Nothing like a quick, early mo…" . "Nothing like a quick, early morning overview of the concept of TCO for the mother-in-law." . "2007-09-19T07:27:07"^^ . . . "2007-09-20T13:48:45"^^ . "Just got back from lunch in Li…" . "Just got back from lunch in Little Italy... San Gennaro is always interesting, yet always the same." . "2007-09-20T13:48:45"^^ . . . "2007-09-21T08:17:26"^^ . "Just starting Clfford Pickover…" . "Just starting Clfford Pickover's SEX, DRUGS, EINSTEIN, & ELVES..." . "2007-09-21T08:17:26"^^ . . . "2007-09-21T17:04:59"^^ . "Saw Tyra Banks and John Hocken…" . "Saw Tyra Banks and John Hockenberry (not together) on the walk from the office to the Subway." . "2007-09-21T17:04:59"^^ . . . "2007-09-22T14:10:31"^^ . "Just marveling at the steady r…" . "Just marveling at the steady rock of a season that Jorge Posada has put together." . "2007-09-22T14:10:31"^^ . . . "2007-09-24T07:35:10"^^ . "Not sure why, but I am now int…" . "Not sure why, but I am now interested by sports in away I haven't been since I was 12... Sportcenter over Meet The Press... can't explain." . "2007-09-24T07:35:10"^^ . . . "2007-09-24T09:17:20"^^ . "Marcel Marceau is dead… ther…" . "Marcel Marceau is dead... there are no words to describe the loss." . "2007-09-24T09:17:20"^^ . . . "2007-09-24T13:36:47"^^ . "Missing The Target" . "\"Missing\r\n\r\nI was taking care of business at the Mad Hatter Saloon today (an afternoon Yankee game during the week) when I noticed this advertisement. On first blush it makes a lot of sense that this kind of \"guy\" movie would be targeted to the space above a urinal in the men's room of a bar, but on closer inspection I was perplexed to see the tagline: \"What if this guy got you pregnant?\" What the fuck? I mean how hard could it have been for whoever booked this space to realize that maybe there could be a better line to use here? They had to have an idea... after all it's kind of an irregular size... shit, there may even be a standard \"above urinal\" size that would have given it away. Is it laziness or just incompetence that this file wasn't amended to reflect the fact that it would be viewed almost exclusively by men? I guess I'll never know... actually, I guess I just wanted to talk about \"targeting\" and urinals without sounding too disgusting.\r\n" . "2007-10-29T12:24:33"^^ . . . "2007-09-24T15:43:49"^^ . "I’ve been playing with Ning as…" . "I've been playing with Ning as a way to bring some old high school buddies into the the social web. Slow going... a calendar would be nice." . "2007-09-24T15:43:49"^^ . . . "2007-09-24T16:28:54"^^ . "Smoke, evacuation, chaos at th…" . "Smoke, evacuation, chaos at the 23rd street PATH station." . "2007-09-24T16:28:54"^^ . . . "2007-09-25T07:29:20"^^ . "Kickstarting the morning with …" . "Kickstarting the morning with everybody's favorite bombastic rock opera - The Who's Tommy." . "2007-09-25T07:29:20"^^ . . . "2007-09-25T14:07:15"^^ . "Imagining the Representation Engine, Part 1" . "A short while ago, in a post entitled Wanting a Multidimensional Lifestream, I pondered the topic of how to add more context to my RSS lifestream so that it might move beyond a mere data stream and start to become more like an actual human, nuanced identity... a digital me. The example I gave in that post dealt with ABBA, Last.fm and irony... namely the inability of the service to parse the context of the data for something like irony.\r\n\r\nIn imagining this further, and in the comments to the original post, concepts such as weighting and tagging offered new possibilities, but still didn't quite get to where I wanted to be. There's no doubt that the spirit of what I'm seeking is in those solutions, but they still reek of compromise. I wanted Last.fm (or any service that I permit to gather data from me) to really know me... to understand when I'm being ironic... and to consider that when it formulates its representation of me.\r\n\r\nAnd then today, while listening to The Who's Tommy and reading Clifford Pickover's Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves, it hit me... perhaps that is just too much to ask of any one service. Not only that, but would I even want that one service to have that kind of hold control over the \"me\" that lives online? Probably not. No, what I think I really want is something, someway, to assimilate the data (my data) that exists in the variety of services I use... Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Netflix, Amazon, whatever. It seems to me that the data pooled in these services might provide a sense of \"me\" in a way that any one of them couldn't on it's own.\r\n\r\nCould this data, if synthesized in a certain way, provide fertile ground for the development of accurate representation by an engineered system? Could there be some sort of Kalmanesque process that would in fact take this data and distill it into an output approaching my digital essence? Might it be an evolution of Feedburner? Or a highly intelligent and self-organizing descendent of feed splicing? Could there ever be a run of numbers that take a set of data and from it approximate the experience of \"knowing mike\" online? And if this app were built, what might it look like? Wouldn't I just be putting all my eggs in one basket... exactly what I didn't want to do in the first place?\r\n\r\nPerhaps... but what if it wasn't an application, or a service, or a branded site that did the work, but rather an open process? A freely distributed and openly licensed library of code or an algorithm (an engine) that could be used by mad developers the world over so that anyone with the brains and the motivation could elicit real, live, virtual, digital \"strange loops\" from the informational patterns of predefined data feeds. Sort of like Brad Fitzpatrick's Social Graph, but instead of representing who I know, it represents who I am.\r\n\r\nI have no idea what the output of the representation engine might look like... I just know what it would feel like. It would feel like meeting me in person... like shaking my hand and looking into my eyes... roughly. It would offer interaction, sometimes live with me, sometimes with a digital \"me\" fabricated from data. It would have a URI and the ability to answer and ask questions on my behalf. It would be a feedback loop continuously evolving and changing as I do.\r\n\r\nGranted this all sounds a bit like science fiction and there are some disturbing possibilities embedded in the very idea, but it is still something to ponder. While I'll probably unpack the concept in future posts and follow it down all the disturbing rabbit holes, I'll leave you today with a taste of the first possible side effect that came to me during the writing of this post (which, by the way, started with a germ of an idea and then unfolded all by itself into what you're reading right now).\r\n\r\nCould this imagined representation engine (if it ever was developed) not only be a way to create better digital representations of ourselves, could it also be used as a way to create entirely new digi-people? Imagine the output resulting from feeding my Last.fm feed and your Netflix queue and somebody else's Amazon wishlist into the (fictional) representation engine. Imagine a hybrid of all three of us that could live on the web at a specific URI and grow and evolve as its representational parts grow. Imagine asking it questions and getting answers. Imagine it asking questions and understanding answers and rolling that information into itself. Imagine it living, looping... digitally.\r\n\r\nImagine all of that and then ask yourself this question: Could all of this web 2.0 data just floating around out there in RSS and Atom feeds be the seeds of a viable artificial intelligence?" . "2007-10-29T12:26:50"^^ . . . "2007-11-07T17:23:50"^^ . "As Advertising Turns" . "It's obvious to anybody with a pulse that the world of advertising is in serious crisis... everybody is trying to distill the massive change reverberating through contemporary culture into something. Sometimes that effort yields fruit and sometimes it just yields a big load of bullshit that, while it may be entertaining to listen to, does absolutely nothing to advance the idea of advertising.\r\n\r\nToday I had the good fortune to have this fact presented to me plain as day. As I sifted through my morning news feeds two articles in particular jumped out at me and put the situation in bright relief. The first was a post by Grant McCracken that stressed his utter disbelief at recent comments made by Sir John Hegarty, creative director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty. In a nutshell Hegarty throws up his hands and comes clean that his career - his life's chosen work - is by and large a crapshoot. Advertising at it's core is as ethereal and elusive as a work of art - a matter of taste - whimsical, unpredictable taste. Budget that.\r\n\r\nAs I sat scratching my head and wondering if perhaps advertising might be dying I read a post from GigaOM by Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic. Now here's the line of crap that I'm looking for... not that Kingdon' words are crap (he does in fact have a nice grasp on what's happening and where it might lead) they just ring that bell of ad-speak that warms the cockles of my heart. No elder statesman I'm tired and want to see my money thinking at work here. Kindon sees the field and is setting his course accordingly... and that makes me feel strangely better." . "2007-11-07T17:27:41"^^ . . . "2007-09-25T14:46:31"^^ . "AmazonMP3 seems cool so far……" . "AmazonMP3 seems cool so far... downloaded The Wall DRM free for only 8.99!" . "2007-09-25T14:46:31"^^ . . . "2007-09-26T09:29:46"^^ . "@FoxyTunesDJ: John Butler Trio…" . "@FoxyTunesDJ: John Butler Trio - Recognize Me http://tinyurl.com/2xvuq3" . "2007-09-26T09:29:46"^^ . . . "2007-09-26T14:13:13"^^ . "Lunch is always better when th…" . "Lunch is always better when the vendor pays." . "2007-09-26T14:13:13"^^ . . . "2007-09-27T07:50:33"^^ . "I’ve said it before and I’ll s…" . "I've said it before and I'll say it again: Tom Marshall was a huge part of the Phish feel. Amfibian shows that in a big way. Words matter!!!" . "2007-09-27T07:50:33"^^ . . . "2007-09-27T15:45:10"^^ . "Buying fibre linked, redundant…" . "Buying fibre linked, redundant, failover Xserve RAIDs like there is no tomorrow... in case there is a tomorrow that sucks." . "2007-09-27T15:45:10"^^ . . . "2007-09-28T07:35:52"^^ . "The lonliest people always hav…" . "The lonliest people always have the most friends." . "2007-09-28T07:35:52"^^ . . . "2007-09-28T14:53:43"^^ . "Peter Sarstedt Steals The Hotel Chevalier" . "Even though the adolescent web may be going gaga over Natalie Portman's \"extended nude scene\" in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier (his short set before the action of his feature The Darjeeling Limited), the real star of the film is Peter Sarstedt. His song Where Do You Go To My Lovely sets a kind of haunting back drop that is pure Anderson... quirky, melodic, culturally familiar yet artfully obscure.\r\n" . "2007-10-27T15:30:47"^^ . . . "2007-09-28T20:50:51"^^ . "The wind is comforting tonight…" . "The wind is comforting tonight... unless you happen to be a Mets fan... then there is no comfort, only deep anxiety - Joba Rules." . "2007-09-28T20:50:51"^^ . . . "2007-09-30T21:27:35"^^ . "My heart goes out to Mets fans…" . "My heart goes out to Mets fans everywhere. Loosing sucks. Losing like that is soul crushing." . "2007-09-30T21:27:35"^^ . . . "2007-10-01T13:37:53"^^ . "feeling slightly apprehensive …" . "feeling slightly apprehensive and moderately bored." . "2007-10-01T13:37:53"^^ . . . "2007-10-01T13:45:23"^^ . "the internet is doing NOTHING …" . "the internet is doing NOTHING for me today." . "2007-10-01T13:45:23"^^ . . . "2007-10-01T19:50:26"^^ . "@mochant I am truly envious of…" . "@mochant I am truly envious of your recent musical excursions. A pregnant wife and 2 year old at home keep me happy but sidelined." . "2007-10-01T19:50:26"^^ . . . "2007-10-02T06:39:06"^^ . "Read WIREDs piece on Allen and…" . "Read WIREDs piece on Allen and GTD. Still can't connect with that system. My head is where I do all of my best thinking." . "2007-10-02T06:39:06"^^ . . . "2007-10-03T04:24:32"^^ . "Leaving for airport… off to …" . "Leaving for airport... off to Chicago for a quick day trip... home tonight." . "2007-10-03T04:24:32"^^ . . . "2007-10-03T08:50:24"^^ . "Landed safely in Chicago… ni…" . "Landed safely in Chicago... nice, calm flight." . "2007-10-03T08:50:24"^^ . . . "2007-10-03T11:35:59"^^ . "Touring Brown Printing outside…" . "Touring Brown Printing outside Chicago. If print is dead nobody told these guys... awesome." . "2007-10-03T11:35:59"^^ . . . "2007-10-04T07:40:54"^^ . "Back to work after an 18 hour …" . "Back to work after an 18 hour New York ---> Chicago ---> New York one day marathon." . "2007-10-04T07:40:54"^^ . . . "2007-10-05T14:50:06"^^ . "Having the urge to travel…" . "Having the urge to travel..." . "2007-10-05T14:50:06"^^ . . . "2007-10-05T16:49:50"^^ . "Heading home on the train amd …" . "Heading home on the train amd checking the Yankees - Indians score on my cell. 5PM gametime sucks, major league." . "2007-10-05T16:49:50"^^ . . . "2007-10-05T16:54:17"^^ . "Melky coming up huge for Yanks…" . "Melky coming up huge for Yanks so far... outfield assisst to end 2nd and a home run in the 3rd... gotta love the kids." . "2007-10-05T16:54:17"^^ . . . "2007-10-06T20:33:59"^^ . "Rutgers seems to be back on tr…" . "Rutgers seems to be back on track after last weeks loss." . "2007-10-06T20:33:59"^^ . . . "2007-10-06T23:59:27"^^ . "RU kidding me? Local sports co…" . "RU kidding me? Local sports collapse..." . "2007-10-06T23:59:27"^^ . . . "2007-10-08T07:29:48"^^ . "Yankees: out with the old and …" . "Yankees: out with the old and in with the Hughes... Joe: keep throwing young arms!!!" . "2007-10-08T07:29:48"^^ . . . "2007-10-08T09:21:20"^^ . "Just got cash at an ATM locate…" . "Just got cash at an ATM located in the lobby of a hospital chapel... what would Jesus say?" . "2007-10-08T09:21:20"^^ . . . "2007-10-08T10:05:22"^^ . "Saw ultrasound on kid #2 today…" . "Saw ultrasound on kid #2 today. Funny that my kids are the only ones I can ever see in those images. Others seem like just a smudge." . "2007-10-08T10:05:22"^^ . . . "2007-10-08T22:10:29"^^ . "Is there any better indicator …" . "Is there any better indicator of TBS's horrible playoff coverage than a postgame interview with Alyssa Milano?" . "2007-10-08T22:10:29"^^ . . . "2007-10-09T07:29:39"^^ . "I absolutely need to get new e…" . "I absolutely need to get new earbuds... left keeps cutting out... wire frayed and getting worse... will do at lunch." . "2007-10-09T07:29:39"^^ . . . "2007-10-09T12:03:29"^^ . "Problems with Google Reader. W…" . "Problems with Google Reader. Won't refresh feeds - won't mark items read. "oops... an error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds"" . "2007-10-09T12:03:29"^^ . . . "2007-10-09T14:57:41"^^ . "Forget Jaiku as a Twitter kill…" . "Forget Jaiku as a Twitter killer and instead look at it as a lifestream tool... more of a tumblr killer." . "2007-10-09T14:57:41"^^ . . . "2007-10-09T16:39:01"^^ . "Blazing through THE GHOST MAP …" . "Blazing through THE GHOST MAP like some badass Vibrio cholerae." . "2007-10-09T16:39:01"^^ . . . "2007-10-10T08:32:30"^^ . "Memory: Lennon’s Imagine: san…" . "Memory: Lennon's Imagine: sang at my bro's Confirmation in '85 - Church changed the line from "no religon too" to no "nuclear weapons too"" . "2007-10-10T08:32:30"^^ . . . "2007-10-10T11:13:18"^^ . "Google Reader STILL giving me …" . "Google Reader STILL giving me errors, not updating or marking read... same in Safari, Firefox. Had to switch to Vienna just to get my news." . "2007-10-10T11:13:18"^^ . . . "2007-10-10T15:39:00"^^ . "seems like my Google Reader is…" . "seems like my Google Reader is all better now" . "2007-10-10T15:39:00"^^ . . . "2007-10-11T07:29:54"^^ . "wishing i was just a little bi…" . "wishing i was just a little bit better at "networking"" . "2007-10-11T07:29:54"^^ . . . "2007-10-11T08:49:22"^^ . "Poetweet: short, poetic lines …" . "Poetweet: short, poetic lines delivered in less than 140 characters." . "2007-10-11T08:49:22"^^ . . . "2007-10-11T08:54:27"^^ . "Putting down her prayers, pick…" . "Putting down her prayers, picking up her chocolate, she sighs, still empty." . "2007-10-11T08:54:27"^^ . . . "2007-10-11T15:18:22"^^ . "Trying to figure out if the ta…" . "Trying to figure out if the tax assessor is going to hit me with an added assessment bill (due 11/1) after next Wednesday's visit." . "2007-10-11T15:18:22"^^ . . . "2007-10-14T19:07:26"^^ . "Bought new earbuds, left ipod …" . "Bought new earbuds, left ipod on bench outside Apple store (apparently gone for good), won $57 playing poker... interesting weekend." . "2007-10-14T19:07:26"^^ . . . "2007-10-15T10:04:08"^^ . "Silver lining to the dark clou…" . "Silver lining to the dark cloud that is my never-ending home remodeling project: tax assessor can't re-assess!!!" . "2007-10-15T10:04:08"^^ . . . "2007-10-15T13:29:52"^^ . "Listening To The Universe" . "The wire on the left ear of my Shure E2c's started fraying about a month ago. It was a simple case of the rubber coating around the wire getting worn in the area where it rubbed against the holder I wrapped them in during downtime. I knew that at some point the fray would start to effect the sound running through the wire and sure enough after about a month of exposure the sound indeed started to get static-y and then cut out altogether. No matter... new earbuds are a good investment... I use them up to three hours a day during my commute so I decided to update.\r\n\r\nCut to the Apple Store in Woodcliff Lake, NJ. While my wife actually pushed for the trip so she could hit the Children's Place, I was happy to go along, a quick trip through the Apple retail universe. I didn't head to Apple with the conscious intent of buying new earbuds... in fact I only remembered I needed them as I was turning to leave and caught the iPod accessory wall out of the corner of my eye.\r\n\r\nStanding in front of the wall, hemming and hawing over whether to stay in the hundred dollar Shure range or slip down to the fifty dollar Sony pair I have used in the past, I caught a clip of the conversation between a young woman and her father (or father type). She was amazing over the size of the new iPod Nano and going on and on about how she would lose it in no time. I thought to myself: how in the world could you be so scattered as to lose something as important as an iPod? Silly girl.\r\n\r\nA few moments later, I got off the fence and decided to go for broke and bought the Shure SE110s. In a rush to hear them I sat down on the bench outside the store, took out my iPod, and plugged in the jack... excellent sound, happy day, good buy. As my wife, mother-in-law and daughter strolled up the sidewalk toward me I started to put my gear away. After carefully slipping the iPod into it's case I placed it on the bench next to me... and gathered up my new packages... and left... the iPod on the bench... alone.\r\n\r\nGetting back into the car I was more interested in the score of the Rutgers game than in listening to tunes so the iPod's absence didn't register until later that night as I was on my way out to my brother's for some Texas Hold-em. As I went to plug in my iPod for the ride it hit me... I was instantly taken back to the bench... fuck.\r\n\r\nResigned, defeated and depressed I put the loss out of my mind and headed to my brother's... listening to FM radio. After a cigar, a glass of wine, and a bit of conversation, we jumped into cards. For some reason they came to me... the universe gave them to me. Great cards early... big stack of chips... good feelings back. All told I ended up with about sixty bucks toward a new iPod (or iPhone... not sure what to do).\r\n\r\nAs I write this I'm listening to my wife's Nano... a freebee from some promotion a few years back. I think I'm going to wait and see what the universe kicks to me before I make my next move. Hopefully I'll keep getting good cards to play and this weekend will stand as something of a turning point... a spot in time where the universe taught me that no matter what it might take from you it always gives something back... if you are open to it.\r\n\r\nUPDATE: Some unbelievably kind soul has found my iPod and left it with the good people at the Apple Store in Woodcliff Lake. Thank you to that person, whoever you may be... and thank you to the universe for keeping things interesting." . "2007-10-29T12:18:28"^^ . . . "2007-10-15T15:39:36"^^ . "Some kind soul found my iPod a…" . "Some kind soul found my iPod and left it with the Tice's corner Apple Store - I left it on a bench outside after buying new earbuds." . "2007-10-15T15:39:36"^^ . . . "2007-10-16T07:40:50"^^ . "…the (lumbering) ugliness of…" . "...the (lumbering) ugliness of (possible) outcomes (slowly) waking in the minds of (third rate) avant technologists..." . "2007-10-16T07:40:50"^^ . . . "2007-10-17T07:23:39"^^ . "Diggin’ on Dan Wilson’s Free L…" . "Diggin' on Dan Wilson's Free Life and basking in the glow of my outstanding cholesterol levels." . "2007-10-17T07:23:39"^^ . . . "2007-10-17T17:18:56"^^ . "Listening to Live’s Mental Jew…" . "Listening to Live's Mental Jewelry - such a good record - damn, what the hell happened to that band? Youthful rage never matured into wisdom" . "2007-10-17T17:18:56"^^ . . . "2007-10-17T21:09:40"^^ . "More Advice For Magazine Publishers" . "Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?\r\n\r\nThere's a lot of talk about the ways in which emerging technologies are changing the newspaper business... and for good reason... but there's something equally interesting and slightly less talked about going on in the magazine industry. Magazine publishers, unlike the ugly situation in daily news, aren't being killed from without. No, strangely enough, they seem to be dying from within.\r\n\r\nPut simply, magazine publishers are dying from addiction. Yes, friends they are addicted to solutions, to bridge technologies that may do a great job of fixing that digital jones, but do little to help publishers face the truly difficult questions. Like the raconteurs of Gutenberg's time who made a quick living reading books to the illiterate public, these stop-gaps that graft the old model onto the new (digital magazines for instance) may prove fruitful in the short term. Yet, if the slumping raconteur industry has taught us anything it's that model grafting can only get you so far. At some point the people will learn to read.\r\n\r\nIt seems to me that the current publishing model based on copious display advertising revenue has more than a few holes in it when it is imposed onto emerging media platforms. While this fact is hovering in the air wherever magazine publishers gather it is rarely attacked and there has yet to be anything even approaching a solution offered. Currently the digital models that find harmony with the trends of a digitally networked world are not big money makers... at least not on the level that magazine publishers are used to. Finding the model that works is going to be difficult... and it just may be that publishers are going to have to dramatically adjust their concept of success.\r\n\r\nIn any event it is clear that what magazine publishers need more than anything is a source of counsel that does more than just advocate the extension of the current model to new platforms. Publishers need to break free of model protectionism and start to take a holistic view of new technologies and devices. Doing this means more than just looking at new toys... it means taking a good long look at your organization... it means re-inventing operations... it means developing new types of relationships with advertisers... it means getting closer to the reader, the customer, the transaction... it means studying not only what technologies are on the horizon, but most importantly studying how those technologies can and do change the behavior of the people they touch.\r\n\r\nThat last point is the key. I can't state emphatically enough how important it is to take a behavior driven, person oriented approach to parsing emerging technologies. In fact the changes in technology are the least of your worries... it's the changes in people, in the culture and behavior of your workers, your readers, your advertisers, that will really blind-side you if you're not careful. If you fail to understand the hows and whys... fail to comprehend the ways in which human beings respond to technology... fail to grasp the anthropology of what you're deploying... then you might as well fold right now." . "2007-10-29T12:18:52"^^ . . . "2007-10-18T07:45:16"^^ . "thinking about the things I ca…" . "thinking about the things I can't post here." . "2007-10-18T07:45:16"^^ . . . "2007-10-19T09:45:36"^^ . "switching from twitteriffic to…" . "switching from twitteriffic to twitbin... no spel chek?" . "2007-10-19T09:45:36"^^ . . . "2007-10-19T14:44:54"^^ . "watching Leopard guided tour -…" . "watching Leopard guided tour - not sure when I'll upgrade." . "2007-10-19T14:44:54"^^ . . . "2007-10-22T07:51:16"^^ . "feeling ill like I haven’t in …" . "feeling ill like I haven't in quite some time... but still heading to the office." . "2007-10-22T07:51:16"^^ . . . "2007-10-22T10:04:04"^^ . "just fount the firefox about:c…" . "just fount the firefox about:config setting that will spell check all fields... that makes twitbin much more useful to me." . "2007-10-22T10:04:04"^^ . . . "2007-10-24T09:10:31"^^ . "Endorsed by Mike Doughty" . "Whenever Mike Doughty endorses something I always like to check it out. And since I'm not feeling well and just want to get something out into the ether I figured I'd pass this on to you. It's a video by Swedish singer/songwriter Jose Gonzales. As I said up top, I'm getting this from Mike Doughty's blog... if you don't know Mike, his blog or his music, please check him out as well.\r\n\r\n" . "2007-10-26T16:43:24"^^ . . . "2007-10-24T09:34:43"^^ . "listening to Eddie Vedder’s so…" . "listening to Eddie Vedder's soundtrack for Into The Wild" . "2007-10-24T09:34:43"^^ . . . "2007-10-24T12:47:22"^^ . "catching up on Vaynerchuk" . "catching up on Vaynerchuk" . "2007-10-24T12:47:22"^^ . . . "2007-10-24T14:54:57"^^ . "@Peddler321 yo Kaden… welcom…" . "@Peddler321 yo Kaden... welcome to twitter. great to hear from you!" . "2007-10-24T14:54:57"^^ . . . "2007-10-25T13:44:58"^^ . "I’ve been sick so I need comfo…" . "I've been sick so I need comfort food... buying holiday cupcakes for my department." . "2007-10-25T13:44:58"^^ . . . "2007-10-25T14:26:20"^^ . "orange icing… candy corn… …" . "orange icing... candy corn... halloween cupcakes... lose weight next week... or the week after that, perhaps." . "2007-10-25T14:26:20"^^ . . . "2007-11-08T17:14:44"^^ . "Yes, I Want To Be A Guru Too" . "\r\nOK... so I am a bit partial to this video because I make a brief appearance (a much younger me, but me nonetheless), but it is truly one of my favorite tunes regardless. William just keeps churning out good music, good visuals, and good fun... I strongly urge anyone and everyone to check him out. He is the real deal people!!! (And mad respect to his partner in crime - Jess - you make him better)." . "2008-01-03T17:28:56"^^ . . . "2007-11-09T11:51:49"^^ . "Thoughts On Mobile Free Agency - Part 1" . "Last June, as people were getting in line to buy Apple's new iPhone, two crucial factors kept me out of the hysterical queues. The first (and perhaps the more important) was that this was new technology... first release, version 1.0, and as such was bound to be both over-priced and unperfected. The second was my contract with Verizon... still with another ten months of life left in it. Getting out would put the total price tag on a new iPhone at just south of a cool grand... too much for unknown and unproven tech.\r\n\r\nFast forward to now... both of these factors have been, to a large extent, mitigated. The iPhone is both cheaper and slightly more mature and the promise of an SDK on the horizon making it even more attractive. A move to AT&T is also going to be much cheaper as my contract with Verizon goes month to month in February, releasing both me and my number without penalty. I will be a mobile free agent.\r\n\r\nSo, in the interest of transparency, I have decided to play out my decision in this space. Over the next three months, in a series of posts, I hope to explore my decision making process with regard to the potential switch come February. This means a careful analysis of market developments... watching where Google's Android goes, seeing if Verizon can do anything interesting to keep me on or if Apple has anything up their sleeve to reel me in.\r\n\r\nIf today were February 19, and I had to make a decision based on all available information, it would be a close call between the iPhone and one of Verizon's new phones. All things considered I'd probably make the jump to the iPhone for the main reason that it will fit seamlessly with the rest of my Apple dominated digital life. OS X is a major draw.\r\n\r\nStill, three months is a long time in technology. I'm sure that there will be more than a few press releases and announcements that will tug me in all sorts of directions as I try and center in on what works for me as a user. It should be an interesting trip... I'm kind of looking forward to the ride." . "2007-11-09T11:52:59"^^ . . . "2007-11-14T13:05:48"^^ . "Thoughts On Mobile Free Agency - Part 2" . "As I noted in the first part of this series, I am (at least at this point in time) leaning heavily toward making a switch to the iPhone when my Verizon contract goes month to month in February. However, I do have some reservations about the switch and the biggest of those reared its ugly head today as I read this article at Infoworld.\r\n\r\nSilly as it sounds the virtual keyboard on the Apple device has me concerned. Even though I really kind of dig the way it looks, I am a bit nervous about the functionality of it. I like to use SMS a lot and my current LG has a dynamite, tactile, keyboard that limits typos to my own ignorance. All in all this is most likely NOT a deal breaker... after all how long could it possibly be before I get the hang of it?\r\n
Surprisingly, the study found that iPhone texters don't improve with experience. The researchers also asked users in the other groups to send text messages using the iPhone. These novice iPhone users made mistakes at the same rate as people who have owned iPhones for at least one month, the study found.
\r\nHmmm... well, here's to hoping that my natural ability will set me apart from the unwashed masses that participated in this test. ;)" . "2007-12-27T12:26:13"^^ . . . "2007-11-28T11:49:41"^^ . "Thoughts On Mobile Free Agency - Part 3" . "I have decided (or I guess I have always known) that I am going to get an iPhone. The only question at this point is when... which is more or less the point of this series of posts. As stated in parts one and two, my contract with Verizon goes month to month in February giving me the option to switch carriers without penalty. For the most part I have viewed February 19 as a liberation day... the date that I would get my new iPhone.\r\n\r\nThen this happens... Verizon opens up. Granted the iPhone won't work on the network without being fundamentally redesigned, but given the evolution of the iPod over the last five years I can't see that being a significant barrier. Contractual obligations to AT&T may be, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know the ins and outs of contract law (especially at that scale) so I won't begin to speculate on the legal feasibility of Apple selling Verizon capable devices. But I will point to this post by Scott Karp that gives me a glimmer of hope that my dream situation may in fact come to pass.\r\n\r\nSo now comes the question of timing. How long can I hold out on my old LG V? If it takes Apple a year, two years, three years or more to get on Verizon's network, do I wait for them? Or do I make the switch to AT&T in February, stay on for two years and come back to Verizon with Apple?\r\n\r\nAt this point I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I may go a few months past February 19, feel out the situation, see if any concrete statements or announcements are made, wait and see. Maybe AT&T makes a reactionary move in a few weeks that proves equally interesting. Maybe the entire cell carrier model comes crashing to the ground in the next six months and all my current thinking gets thrown out with it. Or maybe I get tired of watching these people on the train gleaming excitedly at their screens as I sit and stare at that little Apple logo on the back and I buy one tomorrow. Hard to say.\r\n\r\nIn any case it sure is fun to watch this stuff unfold... isn't it?" . "2007-11-28T11:58:22"^^ . . . "2007-11-28T17:31:24"^^ . "My Contribution To Passing By" . "

\r\nThe above video is my first contribution to the collaborative \"film\" Passing By. If you're not familiar with the project, the idea is simple: shoot some video out of the window of a moving vehicle (a train in my case) and upload it to YouTube with the right tags and presto... you are part of the fun. Sitting back and watching the landscapes of the world pass by is mesmerizing... even more so when listening to your favorite playlist." . "2007-11-28T17:34:08"^^ . . . "2007-12-10T14:19:27"^^ . "Brokedown Palace" . "I started following Marc Orchant on Twitter after reading his tweets on a few shows he was going to out west... Railroad Earth, Dave Matthews Band, and Phil Lesh to be specific. Anyone who knows me knows that this is my musical sweet spot and Marc hit it almost every night for the week surrounding September 30th. I was jealous.\r\n\r\nIt was sad to read about Marc's heart attack and now that he's gone I can only hope he's enjoying himself somewhere right now the way he must have enjoyed himself that week...\r\n\r\n

" . "2007-12-10T14:21:12"^^ . . . "2007-12-10T16:50:07"^^ . "Testing to see if I have confi..." . "Testing to see if I have configured my Wordpress loop to correctly exclude tweets yet still include them as posts in the DB." . "2007-12-10T16:52:29"^^ . . . "2007-12-10T16:55:35"^^ . "The loop code works... twitter..." . "The loop code works... twitter tools still buggy in 2.3 so it's posting to the wrong category anyway." . "2008-02-01T13:32:06"^^ . . . "2007-12-10T17:08:52"^^ . "Created new wp-cat and told tw..." . "Created new wp-cat and told twitter tools to use that for tweets... let's see if it gets it right." . "2008-02-01T13:31:53"^^ . . . "2007-12-10T17:12:47"^^ . "Nope... created a whole new ca..." . "Nope... created a whole new category... ugh!" . "2008-02-01T13:31:36"^^ . . . "2007-12-11T13:46:23"^^ . "The Magazine and The Mobile Web" . "According to Digg founder Kevin Rose (and bunches of others too numerous to name here) the mobile web is the next great frontier... the next great landscape of media transformation... the evolution of the revolution. Mobility is the future. Mobility is ubiquitous. And coincidentally, mobility is the single most important characteristic of the magazine.\r\n\r\nWhile the idea of reading a magazine on your current cell phone might strike you as something closer to torture than an edifying media experience, the fact of the matter is that as devices evolve and get larger screens, broadband speeds at dial-up pricing, and something close to a standardized navigational interface, the mobile web could prove to be the saving grace of the traditional magazine model.\r\n\r\nThe mobile web offers up the chance to step away from the small pieces loosely joined and return to something that resembles a unit... an information product. On the world wide web... in a browser... magazines diffuse. Edited information sprawls and becomes part of the information soup... perspective, point of view and editorial voice splinter into bytes. In that world magazines stop making sense. Issues, themes, linear development are washed away by granular expedience and ambient findability. The reader becomes a user, an active participant sitting upright at a desk, studying, searching, learning, reveling in the mode of inquiry the desk space creates.\r\n\r\nIn the mobile world, pod world... where devices rule... content thrives in packages. Losing yourself in an iPod is like getting lost in a great issue of your favorite magazine. On the iPod we trend away from continuous partial attention and toward something approaching focus. We revert back to listener, we become the reader, relaxed in the mode of contemplation that the mobile world invokes.\r\n\r\nIt is this focus, this contemplative mode of repose inherent in mobility that affords the magazine its best chance at survival. When we are mobile we are in a mode that print has primed us for... we are relapsing to patterns of behavior that have been cultivated by centuries of ingesting printed media. In the world away from the desk we find a return to form. In that world entrenched media patterns still hold sway. In that world the self-contained media unit, the podcast, the song, the magazine is still vital.\r\n\r\nQuestions remain of course.\r\n\r\nWhat will \"the device\" be? This is perhaps the million dollar question from which all other questions derive. The handheld is up for grabs, and while the iPhone and iPod Touch seem to be the early leaders, where the market finally lands... what becomes \"the standard\" (or if there will even be just one) is, at this point, anybody's guess.\r\n\r\nWhat will the file format be? Certainly today's digital magazines are a good jumping off point. Some kind of Flash or PDF based format seems most likely, yet if the past twenty years in publishing technology have taught us anything it's that publishers shouldn't get too deeply invested in any one technology.\r\n\r\nWhat will the content be? No matter what happens one thing will hold true... certain types of information will just be better suited to the world wide web and the mode of inquiry it elicits from the user. Frequently changing information, news, and encyclopedic knowledge will always thrive at the desk. More artful forms... literature, poetry, essay, fine photography, music, and film will always have a home where contemplation is encouraged.\r\n\r\nWill current design staff be able to shift modes from paper based thought and create compelling digital content? Regardless of what the answers to the first three questions may be publishers will face some rather extensive operational disruption. Designing for digital output... for screens rather than paper... is a totally different way of thinking. What are you going to do with that art director with twenty-five years of good solid print experience that simply does not \"get\" the digital world? What skills will that person need in the next five years? Can those skills be easily taught?\r\n\r\nAll of these questions and more still linger, yet the future of the magazine as information product hasn't looked this bright in years. Having weathered the soul rattling disruption of the the world wide web, publishers finally have something to feel good about: a model they can understand. Mobility is king.\r\n\r\n" . "2009-01-27T17:19:09"^^ . . . "2007-12-20T13:19:02"^^ . "Motion Advertising on the PATH" . "

\r\nThis short clip is my second contribution to the collaborative web film project Passing By. It is taken from the PATH train that links Hoboken and Manhattan and focuses on the everybody's favorite: the motion advertising on the tunnel wall between the 14th and 23rd street stations." . "2007-12-20T13:21:04"^^ . . . "2007-12-27T12:27:01"^^ . "Thoughts On Mobile Free Agency - Part 4" . "I wasn't planning on doing any posting until after the new year, but this item caught my eye. It seems the timing of the release of an Android based Google phone perfectly coincides with my free agency ( if you don't know what I'm talking about see the first three parts of this series). As I have said I am 90% sure I'm going iPhone, but things are so turbulent in the mobile world right now that I can't really be sure what happens. One thing is certain though... it looks like I'm going to have a nice healthy field of choices come February. Happy New Year everyone!" . "2007-12-27T12:27:53"^^ . . . "2008-01-03T13:00:21"^^ . "Wicked Little Town" . "\r\n\r\nI should have posted this a while ago, but this is some video of my good friend William Mallory on guitar accompanying John Cameron Mitchell for the song Wicked Little Town from the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Performance prior to the December 7, 2007 screening in New York. Also: be sure to check out Will's new podcast - When we get to space camp." . "2008-01-03T13:03:21"^^ . . . "2008-01-04T12:14:38"^^ . "Maybe Obama can show us just how ugly we are" . "\r\n\r\nLet's suppose that Barack Obama can ride this wave straight out of Iowa and into the general election. Imagine, if you will, the tone of that campaign... the tensions it will ignite... the ways it will expose the cultural, social and religious divisions that have been slowly pulling at the seams of the American experiment since it's inception. An Obama candidacy has the potential to tear those seams - to bring the festering clash of red and blue to the fore in a way that no presidential election ever really has. Maybe Obama can show us just how ugly we are... how much hate, fear, and ultimately, how much hope lies dormant in the great American wilderness. This could be it America... this could be the big one." . "2008-01-04T12:20:58"^^ . . . "2008-01-08T23:52:43"^^ . "Iron my shirts and swing the female vote " . "\r\nCould this display by apparently sexist young men really have been staged by Clinton supporters? Could the whole \"change\" thing - as empty as it may be - have pushed her into an \"oh yeah\" moment in which she realized that she is actually treading on historic ground herself? Could she be cleverly riding the cultural moment and adjusting in real time? Who knows? What I do know is that her numbers among women killed her in Iowa. What I do know is that over the last few days in New Hampshire Senator Clinton has softened and become vulnerable and has played more womanly. What I do know is that women went for her in a big way in New Hampshire. And finally, what i do know, is that the results in New Hampshire sure look a lot like women coming to the defense of a historic campaign." . "2008-01-08T23:54:48"^^ . . . "2008-01-11T22:37:28"^^ . "In Defense of Food - A Way Forward" . "\r\n\r\nLast year I had the good fortune to be given (as a gift from mom) the absolutely eye opening book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. This past week I blazed through his most recent book In Defense of Food which is to some extent an attempt to answer the dilemma posed in his previous work. Among the many thoughtful approaches he gives for re-thinking our approach to food, one stands above all others as having tremendous potential to effect real change not just in our diets, but in our communities. That is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). To break the hold of the supermarket... the monoculture... the feedlot... the antibiotics... the pesticides... the fertilizers... the chemical nightmare that is the industrial food chain... that may just be our best way forward.\r\n\r\nThis video profiles one of the CSA farms near where I live in Northern New Jersey. Upper Meadow Farm is one of the many CSA farms that are working to change the way we relate to our food and the process by which it makes its way from the field to the table. If I wasn't so lazy... if I wasn't so pounded by the beat of life... I would get off my ass and sign on right now." . "2008-01-11T22:51:05"^^ . . .