Author: PGR
-
Surveillance and legibility: systems of seeing
“Networks weird people.” Quinn Norton and Ella Saitta explain the yin-yang nature of network effects — and the complicity of hackers and “geek culture” in such — to the Chaos Communications Conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWg2qEEa9CE This is of considerable interest to me, for two reasons. First of all, because legibility is a big part of what my…
-
Positivism will eat itself
They’re mixing the Kool-Aid pretty strong in the Valley these days [via @moonandserpent]: Julien Cuny and Louis-Pierre Pharand, former producers and creative directors at Ubisoft on Assassin’s Creed and FarCry, have formed a new development studio named PIXYUL. Their goal: to map our planet at 1:1 scale using drones, and use the resulting 3D recreation…
-
Thoughts formed
Hey, you — here’s your new favourite band! Always assuming, of course — you being after all, gentle reader, merely by dint of your very readership, an unimpeachable model of discernment in such matters of taste! — that your new favourite band has two guitarists, no bass player, and sounds something like Earth and My…
-
Not so new year
Someone keeps stealing time. Someone or some thing, some force or presence… not quite a deity, but certainly something with character, cunning and malice, and terrible hunger for time. I believe its name may be Age. So, I’m just coming to the end of my first semester of my first year of my doctoral research.…
-
The unexamined sociology of transhumanism
One of the reliable bright lights in the gloom of my January is the annual Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky show, a.k.a. their State of the World conflab at The Well. All sorts of chewy futurism and near-field hindsight going on, as always, but sometimes it’s a minor aside that snags my mind, like this…