^ image from http://xroads.virginia.edu/

One of my favourite sites, Today in Alternate History has announced that they are to begin selling serialised novellas from their strands of twisting timelines, with the readership dictating which will make the leap from the site to the novellas:

"When I began this site, it was with the intention of using it to test out some ideas for other, for-profit projects. With your assistance, thanks to our poll, the first such project is now available for you to purchase. Beginning today, TIAH will be selling our novels in serial format – 1/3 of a book every month. At the end of the 3rd month, the serialized parts will be replaced with the complete novel for sale, and the next serialization will begin. By responding to our polls, you will determine which timelines produce novels and which remain curiosities only available here on TIAH. The price for the downloads will be very reasonable – each serialized part will be US$1.50, the complete download will be US$5.00, and the trade paperback version will be US$12.00."

There’s something about this puts me to mind of penny dreadfuls and Charles Dickens – microcontent that plays to the cheap seats in a marvellous way. 

Timelines and What-ifs are a form of fiction I have always enjoyed greatly (I loved David Mitchell’s "Cloud Atlas" and I’m currently reading Phillip K Dick’s "The Man in the High Castle"), so I think I will be trying a couple of the TIAH novellas.

Ok.

Noodle warning … just some stuff that’s been brewing since Amsterdam and catalysed by the above…

A half-formed digression on alternate histories and future histories: do you think our*   science-fiction and science fact vision of the future is getting wider, not deeper? 

 

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Paul on BBC2’s ‘Culture Show’
Originally uploaded by BeMa.

My old china plate Paul Cleghorn of Neuromantics and The Bunker fame was apparently on the BBC this very evening ranting about this podcasting mullarkey that seems to be the rage.

Hopefully a suitably time-and-placeshifted digital record of this unique cultural moment will be available to the expat community soon…

Massive Change: registering opinion
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

… the more stuffy galleries stay the same…

I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by the Bruce Mau instigated and designed “Massive Change” exhibition, and the densely-set, impenetrable and prententious prose that decorated the first room just reinforced my preconception.

But then, pretty quickly it hit it’s stride with innovative displays of process and prototype models for Dean Kamen’s Segway and his kerb-climbing wheelchairs; and input tools for computer system of the last 30 years. Other rooms like one focussed on types of scientific imaging, and another on visualisations of the Earth were dramatically staged and rich with content.

However, the exhibition’s stated goal is that it is not about “the world of design, but the design of the world” (something touched-on here before now) – it’s job is to infect visitors with possibility and have them carry that out into the world. It is also a show that relies heaviliy on visual evidence, often densely-overlayed and spectacularly staged visual evidence, that might require some reflection from the visitor before the ideas could be taken on board.

Why is it then that Vancouver Art Museum doesn’t allow anyone to take photos of this visual evidence? I asked and was given a standard policy line.

Liz Goodman and myself then just resorted to a kind of cameraphone cat-and-mouse with the gallery attendents and trying to look like we were texting with our phones when they circled by. We were timing their passes and whispering “cover-me” by the end of our visit, like we were near completion of some imaginary “Metal-Gear Gallery” stealth-imaging game.

If the goal of the show is to instill massive change, why restrict the spread of the ideas contained within the show to within the walls of the museum?

Mau would do well to revise the next staging to allow some kodak moments for aspiring design activists.

The two John Grays
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

Conflated comically at Helsinki Academic Bookstore.

From a review of John Gray’s “Heresies” in the Guardian:

“Gray sees our faith in progress – “the Prozac of the thinking classes” – as the illusion that underlies the most egregiously mistaken political and social policies of the present day. Certainly there is such a thing as progress, but it is a fact only in the realm of science, while “in ethics and politics it is a superstition”. Throughout his work Gray hammers relentlessly against the notion, first advanced in the Renaissance and reified in the Enlightenment, that history moves inexorably in a straight line, and that human nature will necessarily improve as our knowledge accumulates. He grants that in some areas things do get better: we have abolished judicial torture, for example, and modern dentistry is a great boon. The mistake, he contends, the wilful, foolish and tragic mistake, is to imagine that more dental implants and fewer thumbscrews will make us into better beings. “Human knowledge grows, but the human animal stays much the same.”

From a review of John Gray’s “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships”:

“Unfortunately, his overuse of gimmicky, often silly analogies and metaphors makes his otherwise down-to-earth guide hard to take seriously. Here Martians (men) play Mr. Fix-It while Venusians (women) run the Home-Improvement Committee; when upset, Martians “go to their caves” (to sort things out alone) while Venusians “go to the well” (for emotional cleansing). While graphically illustrative, the hyperbolic, overextended comparisons, particularly in the chapters that refer to men as rubber bands and women as waves, significantly detract from Gray’s realistic insights. “

I am now pretty convinced that these books were authored by two different people who just happen to have the same name.

Mobile TV: Watching TV at work!
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

While at the BBC, and for that matter, consulting for 3; I was a “Doubting-Thomas” when it came to mobile video / TV.

However smooth the picture, or compelling the content, other than a few niches, I didn’t think it was a flyer in the same way as we know that mobile music is, just because of the very human limitations of attention in a mobile context that would prevent you from being engrossed in mobile video in the same way you can be in mobile music.

Today I picked up internal trial hardware (the s90-powered 7700 that won’t be getting a commercial release, but Nokia uses as an experimental platform for new services) for mobile DVB-H digital TV broadcast, and it has immediately made me doubt my doubts.

It’s certainly got immediate wow factor (in a non-scientific survey of me and Chris, and the picture is smooth, a decentish-size (book of postage stamps, rather than postage stamp) and sound crisp over the headset.

Luckily there’s also a fair bit of english-language TV available on Finnish TV for me to understand. I have the handset for a month, so it will be interesting to see how mobile TV fits into my life over that time.

While I can’t go into too many details, the guys at the trial program have said it’s fine to blog general observations, so I will try to do so here.

So Logo event
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

I went to one of the events that the Cass Business School in London run which look at the business side of the ‘creative industries’. It got a little sidetracked into geopolitics (inevitably?) but it was interesting nonetheless.
Some interesting factoidquotes that the panelists dropped (unverified)

• The “intangible assets” of FTSE100 companies make up 70% part of market cap of the FTSE100.
• In 19 out of 22 product categories, the brand that lead that category in 1920s is still in the lead.

Rough notes below…

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To which I’d add the choices:
They are all from the USA
They all have incredibly bad shoes

London bus ticket machine, plus bus and bus user (to help explain the whole arcane process)
Originally uploaded by Tom Coates.

If there is one thing above all others that makes me growl at Mother London on my return visits, it is the London Bus Ticket Machine.

Tom Coates has done a great job in highlighting all of it’s deficiencies at his Flickr stream.

Ken Livingstone should be ashamed of this, London’s design community should lobby hard to fix it; and Londoners in general should rise up against it’s crappitude.

matt goes packing crazy
Originally uploaded by ChrisDodo.

Maybe I’m getting too much into the DVD re-release spirit

^ image from blam1.com

A long silence here, as I had been concentrating on getting married to Foe. It was a fantastic day, and now I am the happy husband of a wonderful woman, who when asked early on in our relationship whether she had seen the Star Wars movies, replied that – yes – she had seen one of them, called “Ewok Caravan of Courage”.

The DVDs of the original trilogy arrive this week.