welcome to the future (11. 917)

The Verge presents a series of interesting articles about the pivotal tech year two decades ago that informs our present with a thoroughgoing survey of Napster and KaaZa and successor music sharing sites and the question of copyright and ownership of one’s media, the launch of the social web, Gmail and one’s permanent digital demesne, podcasts, migration to the cloud and more. The piece on the gap in photos from circa those years was particular resonant and relatable, like this grainy snapshot of the one time I visited Schloß Neuschwanstein in 2004 from among about forty or so bad pictures I could scrounge up.  Whilst there have been innovations and choices in the interim, a lot of this architecture and underpinning infrastructure is locked in and legacy that we are living with today.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Big Foot on film (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: tonal passkeys, the dangers of know thyself, French naming trends, a utopian city plus GIF mashups

eight years ago: the immunology of Tasmania Devils

nine years ago: story-telling and maths serving the same human need 

thirteen years ago: coin collecting plus the occupy-movement

bop spotter (11. 887)

Via JWZ, we learn of Riley Walz’ project that coopts the rather depressingly insidious programme called Shotspotter (™️ presumably and run by subcontractor touting benefits for public safety and security but failing to deliver) that detects and ranges gunfire by arrays of microphones installed in cities across America—though some police forces have cancelled their subscriptions due to cost and the diminishing returns on investment of random bullets—with a hidden phone attuned to picking up songs from street level perched somewhere high above San Francisco’s Mission District. Shazam is an application that can identify music from a short clip and adds the song to the playlist. When first launched in 2002 in the UK, people would text “2580” on their mobile phones and hold it up to the radio or television to get a piece recognised, getting a text back with the title and artist.

6x6 (11. 858)

second-hand baloney boys: director Bong-Joon-ho’s Mickey17 explores indentured immortality with his expendable space colonists—like the duplicates paradox of teleportation 

r/no burp: a Redditor community brings recognition to an undiagnosed but pervasive syndrome 

ultimate world cruise: the social media coverage of a trip to seven continents plays out like reality television  

the ladies annual journal; or, complete pocket book for the year: the 1776 diary of Susannah Dalbiac kept in the back of an almanac 

twenty-eight years later: latest instalment of Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise was filmed entirely on iPhones 

sanewashing: how journalists can resist normalising outrageous and radical ideas—via the New Shelton wet/dry

not ready for this (11. 793)

Though since the advent of photography, there has always been doctoring and outright fakes to promote one agenda or another from the paranormal to propaganda, the media was always accorded the social consensus of a level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt be it evidentiary and exculpatory to illustrative, inspirational, aspirational, enlightening to transporting. Now, however, we have all been forcibly aged out of that universal cohort with the default setting on our gadgets—beginning with one particular model—switched to AI enhancement and open manipulation, seamless and with few effective safety controls in place. A dose of skepticism is healthy, especially in an environment that’s actively trying to pass off fake news and keep journalism and other institutions under siege but seeding doubt strips photography of its objective permanence and with this kind of saturation and ease of use—a feature like the automatic focus and flash we take for granted—it is difficult to forecast our collective credence going forward.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: an independent press for the stateless (with synchronoptica) plus the architecture of diplomacy 

seven years ago: a podcast mini-series on witchcraft plus Babylonia trigonometry

eight years ago: 1980s animated production logos, super-recognisers plus assorted links worth revisiting

nine years ago: conscription, impressment and universal taxation

ten years ago: repentful paintings

odometer (11. 784)

Occurring every one thousand twenty-four weeks—a nineteen and a half year’s cycle—the Global Position System broadcast date, which includes a week number, counted in ten binary digits reaches an integer overflow causing the values to rollover. Whilst not on the level of a y2k or related events because systems reliant on GPS and synchronisation of payments and broadcasting are coded to anticipate this limitation of the satellite network due the relatively short time-horizon. The first occurrence took place at midnight on this day in 1999, and due to its limited use, disruptions were minor. For the second rollover, early April 2019, proactive programming contained problems in the travel industry and most setbacks happened in consumer devices that had not been updated. Unrelated to the ominously sounding Year 2038 Epochalyse for Unix time (y2k38, see above), the next rollover will happen in late November of that year.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: US roadside attractions plus purpose-built advertising columns

eight years ago: emergency preparedness plus more links to enjoy

ten years ago: sponsored links plus encyclopedic errata

twelve years ago: predacious snails plus Norse cosmology

eyechat (11. 739)

Via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake, we are directed to the latest project from Neal Agarwal (see previously) that pairs random strangers’ eyes in a video call, with no audio and no chatter, just focused on the narrow slit of one’s face, in order to appreciate the quiet and how much expression, connection happens within this band. I am no sure how matches are made—whether pre-recorded or two people live checking in at the same time but feel confident it’s above-board.

synchronoptica

one year ago: American Graffiti (with synchronoptica) plus backlinks and hat-tips

seven years ago: generative inspirational quotations, mapping the globe’s most spoken languages post a possessed podcast

eight years ago: assorted links to revisit plus a vertical forest in Milan

ten years ago: a deck of cards, Taishō Era art, disobedient objects plus wine maps

fourteen years ago: filming locations in Germany

we shape our tools and then the tools shape us (11. 708)

Subtitled An Inventory of Effects and co-created by media analyst who coined the phrase referenced Marshall McLuhan in 1967, the collaborative best-seller experimentally formatted had the imprimatur of McLuhan himself to call out how various outlets massaged our senses in order to maintain currency and hold interest—with some anecdotes that it was a typo that stuck—arguing that technologies, from the wheel, to the loom, to the printing press and beyond rather than their content as an extension (and increasingly necessary aid thereto in order to function therein) of our perceptions of the world, informed by the same progress. The recording is not exactly an audio book but rather a montage of main statements punctuated by dissonant sound-effects meant to suggest the fragmentation of the listening experience.

amusing ourselves to death (11. 699)

Using the 1985 bestseller by educator Neil Postman, which draws on the dichotomy of the dystopian futures envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World with the public stripped of rights by totalitarian governments in the narrative of the former and people voluntarily self-medicating and foregoing their liberties in an induced and voluntary state of blissful ignorance in the

latter, Boing Boing contributor Mark Frauenfelder presents an analysis of this dilution, delusion of news, culture and politics repackaged as commodities in our present forms of media, our soma. Presentation and format—“the medium is the metaphor,” see also—makes everything entertainment and a passive and non-critical one at that, written at a time when another celebrity held the office of US president, impressed on the general psyche not in words but in glancing television images and photo opportunities and carefully staged soundbites. Frauenfelder’s excerpts, like the below citation are addressing the fragmentation-effect of network news but accord perfectly with social media as well, TikTok substituted here:

“Now … this” is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly—for that matter, no ball score so tantalising or weather report so threatening—that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, “Now … this.” The newscaster means that you have thought long enough on the previous matter (approximately forty-five seconds), that you must not be morbidly preoccupied with it (let us say, for ninety seconds), and that you must now give your attention to another fragment of news or a commercial.

Much more at the links above.

gallery of the louvre (11. 678)

On the occasion of the record-setting auction in which the pictured painting fetched an incredible three-and-a-quarter million dollars on this day back in 1982 (going to a private collector but on public display), we take a look at the artist, better remembered for his contributions to telecommunications, Samuel Finley Breese Morse. 

First establishing his credentials at a portrait artist and having a success career, several US presidents sat for him, Morse turned to invention in his late forties after encountering a fellow-passenger on a steam ship back from Europe who taught him about electromagnetism and demonstrated some experiments for him. Setting aside the subject painting in 1832 (finished the following year and contains thirty-eight miniature versions of the museum’s treasures—see also), Morse developed a single-wire telegraph, improving on European systems, and overcame the problem of signal-strength and range, a limiting factor, by the addition of relays to boost the distance transmissions could be carried from a few yards to dozens of miles. Patents were awarded but Morse’s invention was not unique or as foundational (see previously here and here) as he liked to present it. Adopted as the international standard for telegraphy, Morse would go on to contribute to his eponymous Code a few years later.  The first public demonstration was held at a steelworks in Morristown, New Jersey with an electronic missive—rather cryptically the message was “A patient waiter is no loser,” sent to a factory two miles away. 

v 16.0β (11. 572)

The Unicode Consortium is proposing the inclusion of seven emoji for the standardised catalogues referenced by operating systems and will be under review through the beginning of July, when expected to be officially adopted. Though uniform and universal (with some exceptions), it will be some time before we can use a leafless tree to convey climate change and drought or the exhausted eyebag expression in general as platforms add their own vernacular in a process that can lag for several months. In addition to these pictograms, scripts from west Africa, India and Nepal are being added as well as new Japanese ideographs plus some four thousand Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and a historic Albanian set of characters and symbols from legacy computing.

9x9 (11. 464)

avis de réception: Gertrude Stein first draft of her manuscript for The Making of Americans returned by a publisher  

greener pastures: ranchers embrace the benefits of virtual fencing  

ἀκρασία: philosophers weigh in on why we do things against our better judgment—via Kottke  

classroom setting: The Function of Colour in Schools and Hospitals (1930)  

haute couture: McDonald’s fashion in France  

heliopause: a NASA-endorsed app designed to photograph the North American total eclipse 

rhapsody in green: warm earth music for plants… and the people who love them 

could’ve been a contender: for what would be his hundredth birthday, some screen highlights of Marlon Brando

peer review: the Journal of Universal Rejection

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: Planet of the Apes (1968)

three years ago: musical hypercards, more links to enjoy, missionary cats plus Blue Moon (1961)

four years ago: vintage railway memorabilia plus drawing elephants sight unseen

five years ago: the Marshall Plan (1948), more links worth revisiting plus conserving Soviet Almaty

and the oscar goes to (11. 373)

Ahead of the Academy Awards to be held on 11 March, the always excellent Kottke, who just turned nineteen, directs our attention to film critic Wesley Morris’ appreciation of outstanding performances in categories that don’t exist but should. We especially appreciated ‘Best Acting in a Mirror’ and ‘Best Acting over a Landline,’ which both seem like an especially displaced skill by the same technology, like period suspension belief over mysteries that would be easily dispatched with and resolved by modern standards though some of the scenes are transcendent of place and time. And yes, the ceremonies are worth it for the GIFs, example not pictured, alone.

♐︎ (11. 357)

Via Boing Boing, we are directed towards a project by Matt Webb that resulted in this handy app that always points to the galactic centre of the Milky Way, the rotational point coincident with the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* surrounded by about ten million older red giant stars in close proximity. When I got my first model of iPhone, I got made fun of for first playing with the compass before anything else, and I’m not ashamed to say, especially for someone with a poor sense of direction, I still find it engaging even with no particular place to go. With little avowed programming skills and no experience in making apps, the details of realising this undertaking in collaboration with AI are really interesting and illustrative of the cooperative effort—it’s not just summoned into existence but was enabled and was a great leveller, but even more internet was the preamble about Webb cultivating a superpower to orientate himself to intuitively know where this dense, far away region was an imagine the waltz of the cosmos relative to this pivot-point and relative to himself—reminiscent of some insular and aboriginal languages using geographical features, landmarks or cardinal directions rather than the egocentric right and left. Webb’s navigational instinct has since sadly waned but can be supplemented by this little creation, grounding  to know even when it’s below one’s feet.

9x9 (11. 243)

sine cure: many jobs in the tech sector are busy work and inducements to stymie the competition—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

smooth operator: one-hundred eighty songs and other cultural touchstones turning forty this year 

shake your hips, puppet legs: a David Byrne dance tutorial—via Nag on the Lake  

crackberry: a physical keyboard attachment for one’s smart phone  

the rise and fall of ziggy stardust: the chance encounter with Vince Taylor, the inspiration for the David Bowie persona 

 long live friendship: the Cantonese version of Auld Lang Syne (see previously) performed at the handover ceremony of Hong Kong in 1997  

the (disco) sound of music: a Meco-like dance rendition of the classic tracks (see previously) from Sarah Brightman  

pole position: the Vectrex, the 1982 revolutionary but mostly forgotten video game console, gets a second look 

mobile aloha: an off-the-shelf, DIY robot that can perform complex tasks and chores—via Waxy

synchronoptica

one year ago: US mid-term elections

two years ago: two Star Wars adjacent films set in 2022,  Twelfth Night plus building the Golden Gate Bridge

three years ago: Waiting for Godot, Moonstone plus an unusual patent-filing

four years ago: puffy planets, the asteroid Eris, mobile car-chargers plus Nazi name mandates

five years ago: notes on Dante plus animal sounds in other languages

9x9 (11. 160)

caput apri defero, reddens laudes domino: an annual procession dating back to the fourteenth century that marks the beginning of Christmas season in London 

pingxiety: an update on the aerospace engineer’s anti-smart phone—see previously  

settled law: a carol to reaffirm that Die Hard is in fact a Christmas movie  

pocket universe: scientists in Germany re-create the Cosmos in a test tube to tweak the laws of physics for this primordial simulation  

pilea peperomiodes: the Chinese money plant goes by another common name for good reasons  

such fun: noun and adjectival usage of the intensifier on either side of the Atlantic  

anthrobots: researchers have created tiny, living robots from human cells that could one day patrol for diseases and repair damaged tissue  

there used to be a house at 6114 california street: a interview at home with Anton LaVey in 1967—see previously—via r/Obscure Media  

coquito ho ho: a guide to festive variations on classic cocktails

pin (11. 104)

The startup called Humane, launched by two former Apple engineers, hoping to introduce an alternative to time-stealing smart phones and touch screens, has unveiled its brooch-like wearable, powered by AI that does not need to be paired with other gadgets, and designed for interfacing with large language models rather than apps, geared towards talking and voice commands (also through gesture and showing it objects) rather than focusing on typing and visuals. Though there is no display, AI Pin can project images with a laser onto the user’s hand. For privacy and disclosure to others within ear-shot, the “Trust Light” blinks when the badge is activated (no listening for a wake word) and collecting data. Though the question remains whether this new device, a lapel pin, might meet the same fate as Google Glass and other augmented reality accessories, the launch demonstration included a round of feats, including an email inbox, message summary, presenting one’s meal to it for nutritional information, navigation and real-time translations.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Lateran Basilica, an archaeological discovery in the muddy ruins of a bath house plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: another MST3K classic plus prioritising driverless technology over pedestrian safety

three years ago: World Freedom Day, unfortunate juxtapositions, a vaccine for COVID under development, a synonym for Schadenfreude plus Poe’s Dream-Land

four years ago: the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) 

five years ago: a resort on the Adriatic, single-use as Word of the Year, the veil of ignorance plus Kristallnacht (1938)

 

7x7 (10. 905)

home taping is killing record industry profits: the 1981 moral panic over mixtapes  

lisa lionheart: labour force participation through the many careers of Barbie  

swipe left: patrons of 1920s Berlin nightclubs could flirt via pneumatic tubes—via Messy Nessy Chic  

the rivers and harbours act: Texas Department of Justice sues governor for refusing to remove a stretch of buoys that violates federal and international law—see previously  

sickbay: the Pirate Surgeon’s Journals—via Strange Company  

comeuppance: it’s time for the annual census on the River Thames—see previously 

a lot of skill, hand-eye coordination—it’s cheap and legal: video arcade addiction was seen as a threat to prevailing social values in 1982

 synchronoptica

one year ago: Ullapool and environs plus Wester Ross

two years ago: a colour advertisement on black-and-white TV (1967), Einstein on the Beach (1976), Thomas à Kempis plus a mosaic along the Thames

three years ago: Trump’s mental fitness, proto-Wikipedia (2000), more on the US Space Force, St Cucuphas, Nixon in China vis-à-vis today’s relations plus more on stock characters and archetypes

four years ago: RIP Rutger Hauer plus a doctored presidential seal

five years ago: a neo-classic Delphic festival (1927), a student project that may have unwittingly identified targets of value in the Gulf War, anti-social media, Mid-Century Modern minimalism plus the hunt for subsurface water on Mars

10x10 (10. 840)

⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️: Neal Fun’s (previously) infuriating password game  

ceiling cat: the European Souther Observatory in the Chilean mountains discovered a feline nebula

bad odds: wagering on climate change to bring the danger and risk to present and personal 

backstage: newsletters (from 1962 to 1980) published for Disneyland crew members, scanned in full—via Super Punch  

homage to magritte: a 1974 tribute in five vignettes to the Surrealist artist 

independent legislature theory: US Supreme Court strikes down suit that would cut checks and balances and judicial review of laws passed 

monkey bars: the first jungle gym (see previously) was built in hopes of teaching children about three-dimensional space and Cartesian coordinates 

magma: mining volcanoes could provide a more ecologically-friendly way to extract metals  

power of ten: NASA’s coding commandments focused on testability, readability and predictability that keeps critical systems safe and running in outer space  

goodnight phone: an interactive web comic for our shared present—via tmn

synchronoptica 

one year ago: assorted links to revisit plus a surprise session of the January Sixth hearings on the US Capitol Insurrections

two years ago: body language, the UN International Criminal Court (1993), Miss Continuous Towel and other spokesmodels plus Pitman shorthand

three years ago: a corporate typeface, a performative masculine simulator game, Martian meteors plus cataloguing one’s possessions

four years ago: the Stonewall Riots (1969), surveying Titan plus bringing back the chestnut tree

five years ago: Paul Simon on Sesame Street, silent cooking videos, assorted links to revisit plus combating fake product reviews

7x7 (10. 790)

fowl-mouthed: Apple’s newest IOS to tweak auto-correct feature that turns a common expletive to “ducking” 

supars: librarians in the 1970s foresaw the coming age of inter- connectivity and distributed learning and helped design the tools for it 

olive grove: climate change bringing new crops to Canada’s Pacific Northwest 

pop 101: a guided formulaic approach to composition  

magic kingdom: research finds that fungi sequester a third of carbon emissions—via Slashdot  

fact-checking: the rise, fall and rebirth of Snopes

ski googles: Apple previews new prototype AR/VR headset—to be on the market next year

the annoying thing (10. 780)

Originally shared as an MP3 audio recording of a student in Gothenburg called Daniel Malmedahl imitating the sounds of a two-stroke engine revving (Tvåtaktare) in 1997 that was picked up as a signature sound for Formula One Racing in 2001, the concept, with the addition of a CGI character, became a ring-tone licensed and rather aggressively marketed in 2004 and on this day in 2005, just a couple of weeks after being released, its incarnation as a Eurodance, techno song by Axel F became the number one single in the UK and a summer hit (internationally—tube de l’été), beating out the likes of Cold Play in the charts. This enduring cult classic, which is periodically called into service, saw more than a dozen remixes, concert tours, a video game, a documentary plus an unrealised television series and feature film. Deng deng!