Some great articles over at Shift Magazine right now.

One is a review of current ‘eco-tech’ innovators:

“Technology has enormous potential to clean lakes, purify the air and soil, reduce our landfills, reverse climate change, even revitalize our economy. But more of us need to step up to the karmic plate and demonstrate its umpteen green applications.

Thankfully, some of us already are. “

Somewhat related to this, Phil is blogging his experiences at the World Future Society’s conference in Philadelphia, USA over at his site Overmorgen, starting here.

The other article that caught my eye on the Shift site, was a ‘future of ideas’-meets-adbusters style piece on the bleak prospects that current thinking and action by commerce on copyright and interllectual property are making possible.

“Let’s not be any more naïve than we have been already. Copyright will not go away in our lifetime. Neither will trademarks and neither will patents. But consider this: As new technologies undermine the business models of the big intellectual property owners, those big intellectual property owners are seeking new ways to defend and enlarge their turf, and this is not a done deal. New and odious bits of IP statute and regulation are showing up in our legislatures and our Parliaments all the time, but they can be stopped, the same way anything else ugly and stupid can be stopped.

They can be stopped by vigorous and sensible public debate, by people who know their culture is under seige and who are committed to helping their fellow citizens understand. This is not pretty or simple, but making law and influencing public policy have never been pretty or simple. Our culture is private because the law has allowed it to become so, and the law can begin to swing the pendulum back, but making it so will require a delicate and persistent effort in the backrooms, in the courts, and in the streets. “

» Shift magazine: “THE PRIVATIZATION OF OUR CULTURE”

“Disney personally introduced the first television show, “Man in Space,” which aired on ABC on March 9, 1955. The objective, he said, was to combine “the tools of our trade with the knowledge of the scientists to give a factual picture of the latest plans for man’s newest adventure.” He later called the show “science factual.” The show represented something new in its approach to science. But it also relied on Disney’s trademark animation techniques.

For example, a portion of the show was devoted to explaining basic scientific principles using an animated bust of Sir Isaac Newton. In one scene, an animated puppy sneezes and moves backward across a sheet of graph paper to illustrate that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Disney also filled “Man in Space” with stereo-typical images of learning and science. For example, Disney appears on camera against a bookcase backdrop and introduces producer Ward Kimball complete with a sketch pencil behind his ear.”

» “The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration”

From linkmachinego:

“I know a lot of artists …like the art to be very, very simple, and leave the detail up to the mind of the reader, but what about leaving it in the mind of the writer and artist, and allow us to bring you into our world and let the reader visit what we’ve envisioned, a complete vision – something that is three dimensional and totally realized and will take you completely out of yourself.”

On Monday we have the good fortune to have Jessica Hammer visiting us here to talk about her work: “Six Principles: Toward a Theory of Interactive Narrative”, in which she discusses the counterpoint to the above view – shared authorship:

“The principle of shared authorship addresses the question of who is the author of an interactive story. A single author cannot create enough meaningful content to have a story that is both powerful and interactive, and artificial intelligence is not yet sophisticated enough to have truly computer-generated narratives. To incorporate the human ability to tell a story with the flexibility and interactivity of computer-generated stories, many people must participate in the authorship of the story. A group of users share the duties of authorship, creating a story that makes sense on a human level but is being created in real-time (rather than being authored in advance).”

Looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll get some notes from her talk up here next week.

» “Six Principles: Toward a Theory of Interactive Narrative”

Some network/fileserver connection problems, and getting used to a different keyboard layout but pretty much smooth and wonderful experience so far. Somewhat optimistically I’ve borrowed a friend’s copy of “Learning Perl” causing nervous-shudders from colleagues.

Things I just can’t get over:

• The amount of cool little details, tricks, tips. It’s a rich and complex palace of experience to wander around, compared to the insurance company district-office of windows.
• The amount of cool little apps, especially opensource that seem to be available and growing in number for MacOSX. Exciting.
• The fact that I made a playlist in iTunes and it FADES BETWEEN THE TRACKS. Oh, my stars. Caught me completely unawares… 4hero mixed smoothly into Curtis Mayfield. Incredible. And iTunes doesn’t drunk when it mixes so it will be far better than me. The rise of the machines, my friends.