Tag: culture

the globalization of bad taste

I’ve riled against demeaning adverts and promised to start uploading some that I find bad, offensive or downright unimaginative. All of these will have a common theme: that the Gulf Arabs are “stupid” and as such should either to talked at or down to from the creators of these adverts. Here’s a sample of ads I recorded over the last couple of days.


i have long believed that ads display the worst in a culture. so far this observation held true wherever i went. i always wince when i see commercials.

BBC commons?

Kevin Hinds is the Head of Technical Development at BBC News Interactive:

Larry Lessig came to give a talk a while ago and there’s some serious interest in making much more of our non-commercial archive available under some kind of Creative Commons license.

right on. one would hope that others could figure out a business model that balances the need for escaping obscurity with the need to make money.

feeble minds

Blocking access to artists because you disagree with their point of view does not diminish the artist, it diminishes censor. It reveals him/her as willing to cast aside the collective works of an artist because of one mistake, phrase taken out of context or, expression of a POV which you do not hold. You may enjoy, appreciate and even agree with 99% of what the artists creates, but are willing to cast aside the vast sunny beach that is their work for hatred of the few grains of sand that chafe your soft spots on the drive home. Patently foolish.

wise words from doug. only feeble minds cannot stand dissenters, and call for boycotts.

Future shock

I recently had a new opportunity to test the future shock resistance of someone I know. Exposing people to the geekiest, farthest-out ideas and concepts I am aware of, my aim is to determine how people cope with staggering possibilities that shake their belief systems. Will they deny it? Ridicule it? Marvel at it, fear it?

Future shock
A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic – without exhibiting future shock. Shock Level Zero or SL0), for example, is modern technology and the modern-day world, SL1 is virtual reality or an ecommerce-based economy, SL2 is interstellar travel, medical immortality or genetic engineering, SL3 is nanotech or human-equivalent AI, and SL4 is the Singularity.

The best test for future shock is the singularity.

It began 4 ma ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line.

50 ka ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens.
10 ka ago with the invention of civilization.
500 years ago with the invention of the printing press.
50 years ago with the invention of the computer.

In less than 30 years, it will end.

“Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It’s a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity – a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied – and the world will pass beyond our understanding.”

— Vernor Vinge, True Names and Other Dangers, p. 47.

2011-09-27: I first read about the concept of future shock levels ~15 years ago, and i always found it to be a useful notion. This article popularizes the idea somewhat.

Offspring

Last summer she went with a friend from her hometown of Pittsburgh to a Silver Ring Thing. These popular free events meld music videos, pyrotechnics and live teen comedy sketches with dire warnings about STDs. Attendees can buy a silver ring and a Bible for $12. Then, at the conclusion of the program, as techno music blares, they recite a pledge of abstinence and don their rings. “My friend, who’s also a virgin, said I needed to go so I could get a ring. It was fun, like the music and everything. And afterwards they had a dance and a bonfire.”

more power to you, lenee! why don’t you keep it up all your life, and spare us with your offspring.

Is credibility doomed?

ivan amato reports about video insertion technologies:

The ability to manipulate video data in real time has just as much potential as some of these forerunners. “Now that you can alter video in real time, you have changed the world, Deleting people or objects from live video, or inserting prerecorded people or objects into live scenes, is only the beginning of the deceptions becoming possible. Pretty much any piece of video that has ever been recorded is becoming clip art that producers can digitally sculpt into the story they want to tell.

clearly, these technologies erode the trust that average persons have in visual imagery. the parts of society that rely on television for their news are doomed.

Imagine you are the government of a hypothetical country that wants more international financial assistance, You might send video of a remote area with people starving to death and it may never have happened

amato then goes on to blame the internet because “so much internet content is unfiltered”. the opposite is true, actually. the only hope we have to counter these massive manipulations is decentralized publishing combined with a web of trust. already, mobile devices with integrated cameras are available, personal publishing is here (albeit not on a joe 6pack level yet), and the first crude experiments with trust metrics are being undertaken. big media relies on trust, and if this trust is gone, big media is dead.

towards an amalgamation of culture

i think its somewhat funny to see how it is becoming fashionable to observe halloween, while at the same time carnival is not en vogue at all. if the retail industry had any say in the matter we would observe valentine’s day, thanksgiving, 4th of july, hanukkah, ramadan and 10s of other holidays too. maybe throw in spring break for good measure.