The BBC News “On this day” site reveals that today is the anniversary of the first award of degrees from the UK’s Open University.

Growing up in the 1970’s, there were often OU programmes sandwiched into TV schedules, juxtaposed against childrens programming usually. Kids would get theoretical physics with their Fingerbobs. The awe-inspiring theme of the OU [Divertimento for Brass Sextet, by Leonard Salzedo, apparently] was a portent of the strange and new to me.

I remember scrawling green felt-tip nonsense pseudo-equations on the frontispieces of our family dictionary, after watching some OU Maths programme where I really liked what the grown-ups were drawing.

More on this golden age at the ever-excellent tv.cream.org [scroll down about 3/4s], with plenty about one of my childhood heroes, the estimable Dr. Stuart Freake, who to this day still fights the good fight for the public understanding of physics.

I’d still like to get my green pen out, maybe for courses such as AT308 Cities and Technology: from Babylon to Singapore:

“The course examines not only how towns and cities have been shaped by applications of technology, but also how such applications have been influenced by politics, economics, culture and the natural environment. The study ranges from pre-industrial mud-brick settlements of the Near East, through the influence of industrialization on cities as diverse as Manchester and Moscow, to today’s ‘wired’ cities. In your examination of the applications of the main technologies – building construction, transport systems, energy sources, communications – you will develop critical skills, such as comparative analysis and the evaluation of explanatory models of urban development.”

A snip at 450 GBP!

Event at the Tate Modern [via RodCorp]:

“The Institute for Meteorological Mediation is part of Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project. The Institute consists of three sessions on the relationships between society, space and nature, and how they are currently being transformed both theoretically and by technological and environmental changes in the world. Each session features a keynote presentation by a major theorist whose work bridges art and science, followed by discussions involving Olafur Eliasson* and Doreen Massey (Professor of Geography at the Open University)”

” The keynote speaker for the first of the three sessions is Manuel DeLanda – a New York based philosopher and science writer with an exceptionally cross-disciplinary body of work. His publications include War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, One Thousand Years of Non-Linear History and Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.”

* Olafur Eliasson being the artist behind The Weather Project.

Unfortunately, it looks like I will have to settle for the webcast. This sounds interesting too – an artist who re-draws maps from memory.

» Tate Modern: Nature Space Society: Manuel DeLanda

Says Richard Sennett about neoconservatism/liberal capitalism as the spirit of our age, in this excellent edition of “Thinking Allowed” on Radio4. Anthony O’Hear, and Marina Warner also debate the big idea of “The big idea”. “Mythographer” Warner also touches on what the internet has done for the spread of ideas and its effect on the zeitgeist. I’ve never read any of her books, but they sound my cup of tea. Any views?

From Jeff Noon’s new book “Falling out of cars”:

“Noon has taken the idea of signal-to-noise (the ratio of useful information to background static), turned it around and made a viral disease of it, creating a world in which information is still contained in road signs, books, television shows and on radio, but the static in the human brain has become so strong that few people can now process the signal which offers that information.

In this world, mirrors suck out your soul and words disappear from the page as soon as you’ve read them; events repeat endlessly and shops feature simple signs like “Food” for those whose minds are still virus-free enough to read. Only government-supplied drugs can keep you sane, and every sight, every coincidence has such significance that, paradoxically, all the meaning has been bled from life.”

More thoughts for 2004 over at DiePunyHumans.

I think I just got telemarketed over Skype.

Someone I don’t know from Sweden called me and said that he’d made a music track he wanted to play me. I declined as politely as I could and then altered my preferences so that only my buddylist can call me.

As I clicked to confirm I felt a pang of remorse. Maybe this was just a budding musician reaching out across a rich-media-enabled social network to someone he didn’t know to form a connection for a temporary shared enjoyment of some music. It would be ludicrous to think this was some kind of conscious telemarketing effort? What if there is some enterprising Scandinavian marketing services firm clicking down through the public Skype directories calling people up and giving them the sell?

The “media-bleed” from the legacy of phone and telephone marketers coupled with the immersion and intimacy I associated with the acoustic space (computers, desk, chair, speakers, screen) had created a knee-jerk reaction in me.

I felt uncomfortable that I’d felt uncomfortable.

But I didn’t change my preferences back.

“Our esteemed friends at The Register are reporting on how a hoax email caused large numbers of people to flood the switchboard of their local police.

This illustrates a phenomenon of “media bleed”, where the attributes of one medium overflow to pollute or enhance another. In this case, the anonymous nature of email has bypassed the anti-abuse features of the PSTN.”

» Teleapocalypse: DDoS comes to the phone network

Tom Hume on the ettiquette of ‘bluejacking’ and ethnographic opportunity it affords:

“Bluejacking is interesting because it’ll give us the first clues as to how people feel about these kinds of interruptions and how they’ll react to them.”

» Tom Hume: Bluejacking as a learning opportunity

“The gift of the net” by Richard Barbrook in OpenDemocracy:

“Ever since the beginnings of modernity, free speech has been championed as a fundamental right of all citizens. Yet, for most of the population, this concept has been a piety rather than a reality. Big government and big business have long monopolised the media. But, ever since the advent of the net, freedom of expression for all no longer seems like a utopian dream. We can conceive of a society where making your own media is not just possible, but also a mass phenomenon. Sharing knowledge could become much more important than selling information.”

From today’s Independent:

“You’ve eaten a chocolate bar and you didn’t really like it. Can a commercial afterwards persuade you that you did? ‘Memory morphing’ could be a powerful weapon for advertisers.”

» The Independent: Media: Selling you a new past