voice and accountability indices

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, professor and gadfly Timothy Garton Ash recently presented a series of sobering and important essays on the state of free speech, which distills the ideas and necessary dialogue found his comprehensive and engaging internet presence.
Positing that no subject should be taboo in the pursuit of knowledge, we see liberty of expression under assault not only—and paradoxically—by the synapses that an intimately connected world but also in those corridors of learning and ivory towers of educational institutions—also being the last place one would expect to find the aura of censorship and sophistry, Professor Garton Ash elucidates interlocutors with a treacherous trio of veto-powers that elegantly present the threat: the heckler’s veto—wherein in all dissent is lost in the noise and chaos, the assassin’s veto—the threat of violence or litigation, and the veto of the offended—the intimidating prospect of violating the safe-space of another group. What do you make of these mute-buttons and has the internet facilitated the creation of this sort of timorous bully-pulpit?

legal tender

The outstanding BLDGBlog is showcasing the cultured project of Bristol artist Heidi Hinder, entitled Financial Growth, that illustrates the way we exchange microbes is as much the common-currency as coin through petri-dish experiments.
As part of wider research into the meaning of cash in a digital age, where most transactions occur in the æther. Far from militantly advocating the end of coins and paper-notes and full integration into a cashless society or overly focused on hygiene, Money no Object examines what it means for something whose presence (and tangible reminders) has accompanied us all along to suddenly become immaterial, not just invisible like these bacterial landscapes that we keep in our pockets and purses, unseen until given the chance to be unfurled, and ritually exchanged to cultivate a more diverse garden. I wonder if the circulation of resistances and vulnerabilities is as important a social function as other forms of communication and what it might mean were that venue of expression to abruptly stop.

feu de joie and many happy returns

Happy birthday, your Majesty!  Of course, being queen has its privileges and in addition to her natural birthday, in June we will also be treated to the trooping of the colours and fanfare of the monarch’s official birthday, transported by long-standing tradition to a fair weekend in that month owing to the vagaries of English weather.

petsmart

Via the always interesting Super Punch, we find this clever, satirical internet start-up generator that delivers convincingly well-presented shells, frontages of so called tech unicorns—rare and majestic creatures that have attained a valuation of a billion dollars, on paper at least, but as the field gets crowded by copy-cats or vertical monopolies become less viable and hence a dead monoceros (this is an ex-unicorn). With testimonials and angel investors, one would be pardoned for mistaken these snowclone templates for actual start-ups with a similar naming-convention, which have surprisingly, as a cause for concern, achieved that prized status.

sequestered or the long now

Via the Presurfer, we learn about the resting place outside of the city of Chicago where the first nuclear reactor and associated waste was interred. Researchers at the University of Chicago, working under a top secret commission to bring the powerhouse on-line before the Axis Powers, under the supervision of Enrico Fermi, achieved this first sustainable, controlled reaction at the woodland laboratory in 1942.
The experimental Chicago Piles (CP-1 through CP-3) ran for about a decade until brought off-line and buried in situ—marked with granite blocks and the warning to potential grave-robbers that digging is not advised—though safe for visitors due to the low yield and shielding used for this prototype. Reading this postcard reminded me of the call for submissions several years back on how to handle the nuclear waste of contemporary times, which is much longer-lived and far more deadly and poses a significant problem that the next ten thousand generations of Earthlings will need to contend with. From a vantage point far older than human civilisation itself, how could we ensure that the message of danger and to keep away from today’s nuclear waste disposal sites are imparted to the future? Proposals included a defensive, infernal landscape with sand berms and giant totems of tortured souls, giant steely thorns like the sort that enveloped Sleeping Beauty’s castle, or even a priesthood of sorts to bridge the millennia and warn off the curious and scavengers that indeed you will be struck down by beams of invisible energy if you defile this ancient temple. Can you think of a way to signal danger that won’t be liable to misinterpretation, or is our bequest an unmarked grave?

seal of approval

Via Boing Boing, comes a dystopian but probably very prescient look at how the ecology of robots and social media has changed after the disastrous and messy hook and crook of an experimental chatbot from Hugh Hancock that posits in the near future, not only will everyone enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, they’ll also be attended by flights of chatty mobs—potentially making human presence on-line, at least in certain, defined circles, not a very pleasant or varied experience.
Public-relation firms could deploy armies of minions that could rival any mortal army of the most vitriolic and determined army of internet comment-trolls. Such flea-circuses, no matter how rudimentary or sophisticated, could soon manipulate the news and censor what might go against the current of the trending issue of the day by scale and inertia, elevating the flattering and burying the unbecoming. What do you think? Is it like a public garden being occupied by vandals and hooligans or might this never come to pass? Once these pests get into the wild, I am betting that human-users won’t be easily able to cull this invasive species.

the crustacean college of sea-monkey knowledge

Author and contributor to Public Radio’s This American Life Jack Hitt, writing for the New York Times, transports us to the magical undersea kingdom of novelty toy impresario and master-marketer Harold von Braunhut, inventor of the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys and countless other mail-order items, by visiting his widowed-bride Yolanda, former campy pictures vixen, at the Maryland estate that was built by hawking and playful humbug. Yolanda is currently fighting a breach of contract by the toy distributor that assumed control of sales (Sea-Monkeys are still doing a brisk business) for using a Chinese supplier of brine-shrimp, instead of those packaged by von Braunhut herself with a secret process that guarantees reanimation, but the comprehensive article delves into the colourful (and sometimes dark) careers and backstory that brought the interview and the interviewee together for this fascinating remembrance.

galgenhumor

H and I are temporarily displaced while our home is being fumigated for woodworm. Though we disagree with the necessity and method and it was hard work rescuing all the plants in the jungle and such—and worry that the swallows might not come back to roost—the operation and efficiency are impressive. Checking up on the company, operating out of Nürnburg, to see if it had a reasonable reputation, we noticed that all the publicity photos of mostly churches and other historic structures were tented in the same flag colours. I guessed it was supposed to be some cute, patriotic statement or maybe there was a sale on that particular pattern. I didn’t go down, I suppose, the obvious route—associating gassing with Germany, until one of H’s colleagues brought it up.