A piece on “the things we try and tell ourselves” through writings on armageddon.

“Broadly, demography is a lightning-rod for literary reservations about humanity itself, which can appear repulsive in sufficient quantity, or even seem to deserve its fate when bringing extinction upon itself. Alternatively, fiction can animate the humanitarian truism that, biologically, we all sink or swim together. This collective existential ambivalence helps to express the dichotomy that other people are at once resource and rival: we need social co-operation to survive, yet our fiercest competition for that survival comes from our own kind. Beneath the field’s dry statistical surface, there teems an irresistible Pandora’s box of paranoia, nationalism, racism, rivalry, misanthropy and apocalyptic dread. Consequently, demography is sure to tempt more fiction-writing dabblers to prise open the lid.”

:: New Statesman :: Population doomsday: Lionel Shriver: Monday 10th June 2002

[Via Overmorgen]

Seen on a wall, Rosebery Avenue, London:

Elvis is number one, and Paul has decided to listen to The King:

“Right now, we need to stop talking and start making cool stuff.”

» paranoidfish.org/notes/ : Talking Vs Doing

The UK police, the secret service, and the tax man can find out where you’re surfing. In August, so will the Post Office. If a new rule passes Parliament, over twenty government departments will be able to spy on your browsing without a warrant. Find out the facts. Fax your MP. Stop the order.

You can go get the code for the banner ad above here. If you’re a designer/coder (I’m assuming the majority of people who come here are) – maybe you could contribute a banner ad design for the stand.org.uk team? Mail them with your efforts at stand@stand.org.uk

On ma radio. The radio and music division of the BBC have come up with a lovely little HTML radioplayer app, which redistributes the BBC’s radio output as streams not solely by channel, but by genre. It’s mainly a outlet for the specialist music shows that the BBC produce, and there’s also some limited faceted classification applied to these to increase serendipitous discovery of previously hidden gems.

This from today’s Guardian:

“The simple addition of a list of shows based on musical genre will open up shows to people who would not normally listen to a particular station, believes Chris Kimber, head of BBC Radio Online. “Radio brands work both ways – they probably turn as many people off as they attract,” he says. “A lot of people still think that Radio 3 is wall-to-wall classical music, for example. But it’s changed beyond all recognition in the last couple of years. Using the player, someone who would never usually tune into Radio 3 might stumble across something they love on Mixing It or the Andy Kershaw show, which they wouldn’t otherwise have found.”

There’s also an interesting linkage mentioned in the Guardian article between interface choices and digital rights:

“The sticking point has been in agreeing terms with the record companies who control copyright restrictions on the music played. In a world where the music giants are paranoid about the threat posed by the internet to their industry, it was an arduous task to persuade them to allow shows that often contain records played months before their release to be archived. To mollify them, the BBC has agreed to archive shows for seven days only and to make them available only “as live”, and not for download on to a PC. You can skip through the shows in 15-minute chunks, but it is not possible to rewind them to listen to the same track again and again.”

» Guardian: “Web radio is finally getting its act together”

…you’ll fall for anything.

“On Friday, the Home Office petitioned parliament to add a vast array of organisations to that list. If their passes, everyone from the DTI, any local authority, the Food Standards Agency, the Home Office themselves (of course), and staggeringly enough, Consignia.

The final entry in the list says that “A Universal Service Provider within the meaning of the Postal Services Act 2000” has the same power as the secret services to read your traffic data. There’s only one USP in Britain right now, and that’s the provider previously known as the Royal Mail.
If the idea that the fricking Post Office has access to your web logs (access which would cost a competitive company millions, and would probably get them investigated by the Data Protection people), let alone every minor apparatchik on the block, you might want to kick up a fuss about this. It’s due to appear before MPs on June 18th, and the Lords a little after.

I faxed my MP this morning. Felt good.

» Stand.org.uk: “Post Office To Steam Open Your History File”

Jo has put up a collection of little videos of the talks from TakeItOutside/XCom2002 here:

» http://www.zooleika.org.uk/vids/xcom2002/

My favourite is Celia shouting at the assembled throng while talking about Bots, Semantic analysis and Google: “Library Scientists!!!!!”

» http://www.zooleika.org.uk/vids/xcom2002/are_they_library_scientists.mpg

IMHO, TakeItOutside/Xcom2002 was awesome – well done to everyone involved!

I’m in a better mood today, and maybe regretting not going to the AIGA event with Steve Krug. However, the lazyweb [tm] lets me link to someone who did.

Lee (who I work with at the BBC) blogged it live using his Visor (Lee’s from the future)

• Martyn Perks’s talk
• Steve Krug’s response

From the sparse notes it doesn’t look like I missed much, apart from being a little infuriated. And drinking beer imagining with friends what The Empire’s powerpoint presentation templates would look like seems like a wise decision. So actually, no regrets.

The lazyweb [tm] even let’s me avoid ruminating further on the themes debated!! I heart the lazyweb [tm]. Lee is right-on it seems to me in his short-but-sweet summing-up:

“Innovation isn’t something you can incorporate in the design process, it’s a result you can notice afterwards.”

Yusssmate.

» evilcoffee.org / blog : thoughts on aiga, innovation.

Matt Webb’s playing with something potentially powerful. Leaving your “outboard brain” [cf. Cory’s O’Reilly piece] lying around in unreal-versions of real places [cf. Dan Hill’s take on NYCbloggers] as an “avatar” of sorts…

As I was describing the demo MattW gave me enthusiastically to someone last night, it occured to me to refer them to his earlier thinking on “The sameness of interfaces” so I’ll refer you all to it too… Interconnected, indeed…

» Interconnected.org: 11.6.2002: IMvironments

or don’t as the (upper or lower) case may be.

» Creativepro.com : “Type that’s Tight but not Touching”