Googlism for: matt jones
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matt jones is my name so i couldn’t tell you what my name is
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matt jones is similarly impressed with anderson’s abilities
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matt jones is most familiar as the script editor on the highly influential drama series
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matt jones is not the starting quarterback
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matt jones is a software engineer earning $50
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matt jones is currently script editor for channel 4?s “queer as folk”
matt jones is to check into music possibilities
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matt jones is pretty excited about that fact
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matt jones is a regular
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matt jones is also a full
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matt jones is leaving the crew for a while to see the world with air supply
matt jones is named district manager for illinois
matt jones is an outstanding runner
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» http://www.googlism.com/index.htm

is a favourite word of mine, but a frustrating state to be in.

Everything about about socialsoftware tends to flummox: the scale and complexity of interactions, the wide range of theories around social interaction to the details of design, development and sustainable operation.

It’s mindboggling to a poor pixelpusher like me.

Today’s been flummoxing. Spent most of the post-lunch doldrums trying to recuperate from an intense and (I think) valuable brainstorm this morning about the socialsoftware project I’m working on.

Right now I can’t mention much about the detail of what we talked through, but one thing that was brought up that has fascinated me for years was the physical modellling of complex systems that was still in evidence well into the times of widespread digital computation and simulation. I just spent a while trying to find a picture of one of the conrtraptions that economists used to use to model national economies with flows of coloured water running through interconnected pipes of varying diameter, but to no avail. Can anyone point me to something about what I’m attempting to describe?

Anyway, just as I thought I was recovering, a wander through meatball in search of how virtual communities can be encouraged to tip-over into real-life activity leads me to something that genuinely not only flummoxed me, but left me boggled to boot: “Cheap Complex Devices”:

” This is the fact: these books were written not by human hand but by computer program. It’s only natural to wonder, How did it do that? And, Why can’t I? Even if they had been poorly written, the simple fact of their existence would be astonishing enough, and we would admire them as curios, like the dog riding the bicycle. And we would want, naturally, to understand the workings of the programs that conjured them up. One might think that the better the novels the greater the curiosity about the mechanics of their origins, but, paradoxically, in the face of their compelling essence, we cease to care so much about how they got here. Kasparov said that at its best, the chess-playing program called Deep Blue “played like God.” At some point the mechanics of the program become irrelevant and the beauty of the play becomes the thing, as who would claim to understand God’s logic?

No claim of Godhead is made for the “authors” of Bonehead and Bees. But these novels do move us in the way novels are supposed to move us. They make us laugh. They make us cry. They keep us up late night turning pages to see what happens next. We care about the characters in The Bonehead Computer Museum and in Bees, or The Floating Point Error, characters unmistakably human. How are we to understand their provenance? Do we need to? It is to these questions that we now turn our attention.”

Whoa.

Britain is covered in a Truman-Show-style inpenetrable cloud dome. Tom Coates is waxing lyrical about our skies, while Webb is somewhere fascinating in innerspace.

Matt Haughey reflects upon the Creative Commons, this being the first day of the Eldred vs Ashcroft case:

“If someday copyright was a different story, allowing people to use and reuse others’ works instead of letting them decay and rot until they someday enter the public domain (in many cases over 100 years after their creation), our culture could benefit greatly in ways we can’t possibly fathom today. The great promise of the internet was to house and make instantly available the entire scope of human knowledge. Without new works entering into the public domain, that knowledge is largely lost.”

» A wholelottanothing: Copyright and the Commons
[via kottke]

» Hughpearman.com: Everything is going to be alright

…from the 802.11b weblog of Glenn Fleishman. A neologism forged in response to an interesting Infoworld article about that chalk thing that made my summer less than relaxing:

“I think you’ve been taken in by the sheer quantity of articles that have made the case against warchalking without evaluating whether people are actually chalking much at all, and how they’re using it, and whether it’s even measurable.

Warchalking was what I like to call a “pre-fad”: it was taken over by the media before it was even spotted in the wild after a single person came up with the idea on his Web site. It’s cool, it’s fun, but it’s hardly what you made it out to be, I’m afraid.”

Heh.

» 802.11b/Wi-Fi News: News for 10/4/2002 [via BoingBoing]

The alternative, much-better name for ‘broadband’ gets a boost from David Birch in today’s Guardian Online.

“I’ve written before how transformative broadband is in the home environment and noted that that is primarily because of the “always on” characteristic rather than higher speed. I rather like the suggestion made by a recent correspondent to Bill Thompson’s WebWise column on BBCi that we stop using the phrase “broadband internet” and start using “permanet”, as this captures the essence of the service more accurately. The combination of “always on” with “on everywhere in the house” because of the Airport is especially powerful. “

» Guardian Online: Wi-Fi is so good: it even works

My dumbness will come as no surprise to those who know me, and neither will this cheap, cheap attempt to get free stuff.

The link to my Amazon wishlist that I’ve had on this blog for a couple of years has been wrong, and pointed to a page that autoredirected to the wishlist of the viewer… So I’ve fixed it (i think) but if you’re reading this, could you just check by clicking here and buying me something?

Thanks!!!!

A bit late on this one. Went along last wednesday (25.09.02) with a few other to an event staged at the ICA billed as “The Mouse vs the mouse: comics and computers”.

Dave Gibbons, Dave McKean – two creator-heroes of mine were to speak on the influence of the universal machine on the form and production of comic books.

Unfortunately, the event focussed on the latter.

It was a fascinating and enjoyable evening nonetheless – but it concentrated on how computers and the internet had made their work-lives easier, not different.

A question each in the woefully-short Q&A period from Yoz and myself attempted to steer the panel round to the possibilities of form and content that the web presented, to no avail. To say nothing of discussing the possibilities of rewiring the creator-audience relationship and it’s possible beneficial effects for both parties as outlined by McCloud and attempted by Ellis et al.

Some positives: I asked the panel if they’d read Patrick Farley‘s awesome, idea-packed “The Spiders” – they hadn’t but a few people who heard me asked the question hunted me down in the bar later and asked me for the URL, so did my bit to spread the word.

Also, AnnaKookymojo, Simon, Celia, Paul, Yoz and myself had an awesome conversation in the pub about bootstrapping an online comicsphere, and many thanks to simon to following up in email with links to ComicsML.

The final positive point was when the fella who organised the talk appealed to the audience to lobby the ICA to stage more events discussing comics and sequential art. IMHO, The Institute of Contemporary Arts should absolutely devote energy and investment into the comics form – which is influencing and instigating more and more ‘mainstream’ creative endeavour, not just blockbusters like Spiderman but more ‘high-brow’ culture like Sam Mendes’ adaptation of “Road to Perdition”*, Ang Lee directing The Hulk and Art Spiegelman’s illustrations for the New Yorker.

So here is the email address of the office Phillip Dodd, the director of the ICA: philipdoddsoffice@ica.org.uk. If you’re in the UK why not write him a nice, polite letter asking for more focus on comics as a popular, yet critically-neglected contemporary art-form that could do with a champion.

I’m just about to…

Half aide-memoire, half-call-for-participation: things I have a burning need to write about/remove from my head by typing – but don’t have the time to address right now. Outboard-brain-dump begin.

• Product-placement in MMORPGS
• More on the UK TV industry, risk, reward and creativity.
• Steven Pinker, s0cials0phtware and ‘telempathics’
• Matt Webb‘s wondering what comes after the oyayubizoku + txting: is it Picting?
• Urban space, le parkour, yamakasi and impending superhumanity.
• Creating webservices for boot-strapping an online comicsphere.
• Victor’s appeal for a digital design strategy plan from now till the Singularity.

Dump ends. Begin prioritisation. What first? If you get to any of them before me – let me know! la la la… i found my sooooldier girl… she’s so far away… she makes my head spin around… la la la… BZZZT. End of line.