BigMother.dk

Tonight (10 am Pacific time) Apple will unveil its “fun new products”. Rumors have expectedly swarmed the web and numerous suggestions to the nature of Apple’s new tech wonder have flourished. Some of them very good.

Personally, my brain says a boring iPod screen upgrade or, if the surgically precise hype stunt has any merits, more likely a more full media console like this. However, my heart cries for a mobile phone. Tonight we know if we need to gear up.

I’ve had some personal reactions and discussion on mash ups the last couple of days so I thought I would throw in this baby for your weekend entertainment: Another and seemingly quite comprehensive resource on mash up stuff. Go check out Mash Culture

I Just did a survey on the future of the web by The Pew Internet & American Life Project. It asks you to motivate why you agree or disagree with different more or less far-fetched statements on the future of the web. One of them is clearly BigMotherian:

“Transparency builds a better world, even at the expense of privacy: As sensing, storage, and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals’ public and private lives will become increasingly “transparent” globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture – at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible – this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.”

To the greatest disgrace of my beautiful mind child one of the other scenarios was the infamous J-curve:

“Autonomous technology is a problem: By 2020, intelligent agents and distributed control will cut direct human input so completely out of some key activities such as surveillance, security and tracking systems that technology beyond our control will generate dangers and dependencies that will not be recognized until it is impossible to reverse them. We will be on a “J-curve” of continued acceleration of change.”

To this I responded:

“Ha ha, this is simply third grade science fiction. Dangers come much from more subtle (read: less anthropomorphic) issues.”

But now, I need to abandon the BigMother ship. If it belongs to this company, BigMother is surely an absurd idea.

Please go and do the survey here to balance the idiocy that might result from this survey if prudent and knowing people doesn’t voice their perspective. Afterwards, please get back here and share your thoughts.

PS. Sad they don’t conduct this as a Prediction Markets survey. That would have been quite interesting (unless people are already brainwashed by half-wit futurists).

Back in 2004 when I wrote up my dissertation on biomimetic IT design I was quite frustrated by the lack of credible examples of reconfigurable hardware. One of my main arguments in the dissertation is that in order to achieve truly adaptive IT we need to overcome the dualism between hardware and software technically and not least conceptually. Just like in the biological systems which magnificent adaptivity we’re trying to tap into. However, as a beginning we should start operating with reconfigurable hardware to get ‘deep’ adaptive dynamics and not only software-based adaptivity.

Article in Wired news yesterday on new magnetic chips is very interesting news in this respect. Even if the article solely focus on all the ‘present paradigm’ advantages such as speed, instant booting, very little heat development, the truly interesting perspective in chips that are configurable on the go is the level of adaptivity such technology allows for. It’s the technical gate to a new kind of IT that adapts real time to usage, provide resilience in face of damage or malfunction and facilitate self-diagnostics and healing.

The ‘SandMonkey’, an Egyptian blogger, just rose into blog stardum yesterday. By documenting how Egyptian Paper published the infamous caricatures of the Muslim Prophet, he got himself 30.000 hits overnight. Check it out for yourself. Update: The Freedom for Egyptians blog is the proper source for the story.

Thanks to Thomas for the tip

I’ve been enjoying to dive into to the stream of new creative releases from the vibrant mash-up scene since its mainstream debut with DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. Mostly because it is a funny and ‘light’ kind of subculture that allows me to listen to 50 Cent, Queen and other artists I would normally denounce. But also because it is a very productive soil from where truly creative and skilled producers pop up from. Danger Mouse is a good example of these new producing masterminds, as witnessd by his production of the latest Gorillaz album Deamon Days and also his cooperation with MFDoom on the quite funny and capable DangerDoom album. Titles I’ve listened to include Q-unit (50 Cent and Queen) and The Beastles (Beatles and Beastie Boys). Now San Fransisco based Mash up resource Bootie has released a Best of Bootie 2005 containing some truly amazing and – as always with compilations – some less convincing material. But it’s a free download so what are you waiting for?

From BoingBoing

As if the rage of the entire Muslim world wasn’t enough for us. Now Denmark is taking it up with every Christian in the world with a new caricature. This time created carefully in Lego bricks to emphasize the special Danish touch. Meet The Brick Testament

In fact, Danes cannot take credit for this amazing project. It’s the work of the creative and funny Reverend Brendan Powell Smith. Luckily, the Brick Testament is funny and actually quite capturing in a rather harmless way – unless Muslims want to broaden their war against religious barbarism to other religions as well in orthodox sympathy….

From The Cool Hunter

The Bristish Musician’s Union is promoting a new procedure for imforming on the performative nature of artists. They have suggested that broadcasters label whether artists perform playback or use other prerecorded elements. I would like to add an additional label stating to which extend the so called ‘artist’ have contributed in any way artistically in the production of the material to expose how Britney, J-Lo, Madonna are merely visual cues without any musical qualities whatsoever. Sorry, i know how obvious it is, but I’m sooo tired of people actually thinking that Madonna is cool. From BBC News

Update for Danish readers. Forsoning Nu!

I’ve been waiting for the western world to react to the obviously disproportionate violent reaction in Middle East countries due to some cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

Finally some have started to defend the screaming disharmony in the ‘political correctness vs. violence’ style of uttering dissatisfaction. For instance, Howard Hardiman of The Coterie of Zombies states:

“No-one got shot for Buddy Christ or The Life of Brian, but it’s cool for muslims living in Britain to be calling for more attacks like the bombs on the tube when they’re not telling us on our national radio that homosexuality is immoral and civil partnerships between gayers threaten to destroy civilisation.”

Go to Support Denmark if you want to help end the farce of western silence while Islamic radicals expose their ignorance and tendency to violence.

Recently I posted an idea how to inform hungry homeless people on free lunch from leftovers from receptions and similar events. GarbageScout is a congenial ‘let’s recycle and distribute goods to those who need them’ service that allow people to post, search and find usable items thrown away by others. The service probably only work in places such as New York where people actually dump their old stuff on the streets. But it’s a nice way to promote more sustainability. (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004071.html well I do read other blogs