Jessica Alba, riding a police hover drone.
Among tech journalists, BlackBerry is considered to be “old-fashioned, lame, commoditized technology,” as Mike Butcher, the blogger and digital adviser in London puts it. But BBM is private, decentralized, blindingly fast, and—most important—ubiquitous. My colleague Robert Capps has called this phenomenon the Good Enough Revolution (issue 17.09), though I doubt he [continued...]
Bill Wasik, Wired magazine, December 2011, #Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You
Linklog“How long do you want these messages to remain secret?” Randy asked, in his last message before leaving San Francisco. “Five years? Ten years? Twenty-five years?” After he got to the hotel this afternoon, Randy decrypted and read Avi’s answer. It is still hanging in front of his eyes, like the afterimage of a strobe: [...]
I’ve used a smartphones with GPS mapping for about 6 months now and it’s completely changed how I navigate through the city by foot. Before I would walk off in the assumed direction of my destination and, every fifteen minutes or so, check my position via the maps posted in bus shelters. Now all I [...]
In the last few weeks I’ve been feeling an odd nostalgia for the paranoia of my past (a paranostalgia?). As if we’d actually slipped into a future of non-stop bad craziness I’d once darkly projected. The answers to a decade’s worth of “so what happens when…” started arriving, one at a time. And just didn’t [...]
The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops. (@JPBarlow) “Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place!” came the cry from the members of Hydra, a high tech criminal organisation in Marvel comics, taking its name from Greek mythology. A union, following the [...]
“Ever tucked your baby in from a phone booth?” asked a commercial from AT&T’s seminal “You Will“, David Fincher-directed, 1993 advertising campaign. A professional-looking woman slides a card into a public payphone and makes a videocall to an infant. A slight burst of video static evoking a similar call in Blade Runner. That which comes [...]
On Sunday I saw a message from a friend pop up in my twitter stream. “I love paying more than ten quid for the cinema and then having to sit through 10-20 adverts.” “Oh, I wonder what Phil’s watching?” Naturally, respectful patron that he undoubtedly is, Phil would have ceased internet activity for the duration [...]
Sometimes, in an interview or a DVD commentary, you’ll hear someone say something like “New York is like a character in the movie”. The city doesn’t change, isn’t affected by the emotion and drama of the journey of others. It’s just there. A mere presence, yet critical and essential to the story. And despite the [...]
“Everybody smiles. If you don’t smile it’ll look unnatural.” The school photographer’s logic held no sway with my moody obstinate teenage self (a status escaped, technically, by the grace of Chronos). The actions of others were irrelevant; I’d never feel at home in a world where exaggeration was expected. Besides, I never smile for photos. [...]
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