The Guild – or, has our new Prime Minister ever played Civilisation?

moleitau6 Comments

David Cameron, age 13, programming a VIC-20

David Cameron, the new Prime Minister – and Nick Clegg, the new Deputy Prime Minister of our coalition (or guild?) government are both 43 years old. Which means they were born in 1967, and grew up in the 1970s and 80s. I mean – they’re not much older than me (38) and they’re the same age as my lovely sister, Emma.

Emma and I grew up through the birth of the home computer industry (our first computer at home was a Vic-20), with programmes such as “Making The Most Of Your Micro” on the telly, and of course BBC Computers appearing in our classrooms.

So it’s not too much of a leap to imagine that Dave & Nick had the same experiences, right?

They would have been 16 when Manic Miner came out. Maybe a bit old to be swept up in it so much (my sister was too busy being cool and listening to Einstürzende Neubauten for instance) but I imagine they might have been quite nerdy, rich kids (they went into politics, after all) – probably BBC Model B households.

So, they were probably playing Elite…

They might have got the bug – who knows. Perhaps they started playing god games and in ’91 when Civ first came out they would have been 24. Maybe some post-grad nights lost to it?

I’m stretching. I have no idea.

But wouldn’t be brilliant if we had gamers governing us at last?

Beware the art-hat

moleitauLeave a comment


Eames Shrine finally installed, originally uploaded by moleitau.

From Charles & Ray Eames ‘India Report’ via Design Observer:

“beware of the professional or specialist who when confronted with a problem having to do with design — seems suddenly to abandon the disciplines of his own profession and put on his art hat — this can happen to those who are otherwise most rational — doctors, engineers, politicians, philosophers.”

Opt for “King’s Lead Hat” instead?

Blog-all-dog-eared-pages: “Another Green World” by Geeta Dayal

moleitauLeave a comment

Geeta Dayal’s book on in the 33.3 series is a bit slight, and doesn’t really go into the depth one would want about the record, but it is full of lovely Eno quotes, which is mainly what I dwelt on.

Page 3:

“Over the years, Eno has generally preferred to make records that exist On Land, not in space. Instead of propelling us into far-flung galaxies, his music coaxes us to reconsider our everyday surroundings”

Page 6

“”I was thinking about escaping,” Eno recalled to Ian McDonald in the NME two years after making the album, in 1977. “I read a science fiction story a long time ago where these people are exploring space and they finally find this habitable planet – and it turns out to be identical to Earth in every detail. And I thought that was the supreme irony: that they’d originally left to find something better and arrived in the end – which was actually the same place. Which is how I feel about myself. I’m always trying to project myself at a tangent and always seem eventually to arrive back at the same place. It’s a loop.
You can’t actually escape.”

Page 11 (lyrics to “The Seven Deadly Finns”)

Although variety is the spice of life
A steady rhythm is the source
Simplicity is the crucial thing
Systematically of course
(work it all out like Norbert Weiner)

Page 15 (on Roy Ascott‘s leadership of Ipswich Art College)

“We were set project that we could not understand, criticised on bases that we did not even recognise as relevant”

Page 23, Artist Judy Nylon

“Sometimes not having enough money is good, because you don’t end up throwing a million dollars at a five-cent idea.”

Page 27, from Stafford Beer‘s “The brain of the firm”

“instead of trying to specify it in full detail, you specify it only somewhat. You then ride on the dynamics of the system in the direction you want to go.”

Page 31

“Everyone thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head – they somehow formed in his head – and all he had to do was write them down, and they would kind of be manifest to the world. But what I think is so interesting, and what would really be a lesson that everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, that the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. And I think this would be important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence in their own lives that that’s how things work.

If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted – they have these wonderful things in their head but you’re not one of them, you’re just a normal sort of person, you could never do anything like that – then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of like, where you say, well, I know that things come from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings. And I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.”

Page 48

Eno’s playfulness in the studio was key. “My quick guide to Captain Eno: play, instinct/intuition, good taste,” wrote Robert Fripp in an e-mail. “Eno demonstrated his intelligence by concentrating his interests away from live work; and his work persists, and continues to have influence. The key to Brian, from my view, is his sense of play. I only know one other person (a musician) who engages with play to the same extent as Brian. Although Eno is considered an intellectual, and clearly he has more than sufficient wit, it’s Brian’s instinctive and intuitive choices that impress me. Instinct puts us in the moment, intellect is slower”

Page 50

Eno mixed it up in the studio at around the time of Another Green World in other ways. “Sometimes you’d be into something really intense, you’d be working on a piece of music and discussing it, and then he’d say ‘Anybody want some cake?'” said Percy Jones. “Eno would pull out a cake and he cut up slices of cake, and everyone would eat some cake, and then we’d forget about all the creative process!”

Interview with Ken Hollings for ResonanceFM

moleitauLeave a comment

Did a fun 15mins chat with Ken Hollings on cities, futures, cosmism and many other things from an arcology floating in deep-space (via the magic of radio) which will be going out tonight at 7pm, and podcast shortly.

Here’s the description for the show:

“Enter Hollingsville at 7:00pm this evening. In this new series Ken Hollings and guests Steve Beard and Matt Jones discuss voodoo science parks, cities as battle suits, pods, capsules and world expos. Specially commissioned musical interludes are by the Hollingsville composer in residence, Graham Massey. Hollingsville is open for 12 weeks only”

http://resonancefm.com/archives/3638

To Nick Raynsford, MP

moleitau1 Comment

I just sent this through to my MP using 38degrees: DON’T RUSH THROUGH EXTREME WEB LAWS. More at BoingBoing, and ORG.

Dear Mr Raynsford

I’m writing to you today because I’m very worried that the Government is planning to rush the Digital Economy Bill into law without a full Parliamentary debate.

The law is controversial and contains many measures that concern me. The controversial Bill deserves proper scrutiny so please don’t let the government rush it through.

Many people think it will damage schools and businesses as well as innocent people who rely on the internet because it will allow the Government to disconnect people it suspects of copyright infringement.

For instance, I’m a partner in a small technology design business, and our type of business is often cited by the government as the type of company and the type of industry that the UK needs to succeed. We’ve been cited by the UKTI for instance for innovation being promoted abroad. Currently we compete with the best firms in Silicon Valley for business. We invent and create intellectual property – we are far from against fair copyright laws and being rewarded for our efforts and research, but our copyright debate has been dominated by incumbent industry that haven’t responded to technology or their customers for too long.

It galls me that lobbyists for incumbent behemoths like the BPI will screw up the nascent technology industry in the UK, without my representative in the House debating it. It galls me that this Bill has been rushed through, and seems ill-considered. It galls me that the Labour party, which historically I have supported, and I have seen as a champion of progressive forces in both society and technology in-particular seems to be siding with vested interests representing the least-progressive side of the music industry instead of championing the infrastructure we need to invent our way out of our economic, environmental and societal difficulties across the spectrum.

Industry experts, internet service providers (like Talk Talk and BT) and huge internet companies like Google and Yahoo are all opposing the bill – yet the Government seems intent on forcing it through without a real debate.

As a constituent I am writing to you today to ask you to do all you can to ensure the Government doesn’t just rush the bill through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.

Best regards,

Matt Jones
Greenwich

Blog all kindle-clipped locations: Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

moleitau4 Comments

Really, really enjoyed this. First of KSR’s books I’ve read – arrived on my radar as I was finishing my talk on Time, and it’s a lovely meditation on time, science and humanity. Recommended.

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 1497-1502 | Added on Tuesday, January 05, 2010, 08:33 AM

“Materials and power available are terrifically advanced compared to your time. And there is a principle called redundancy at the criticalities, do you know this term? Replacement systems are available in case of failures. Bad things still sometimes happen. But there you are. They do anywhere.’ ‘But on Earth,’ Galileo objected, ‘on Earth, in the open air, the things you make don’t have to work for you to survive.’ ‘Don’t they? Your clothing, your language, your weapons? They all have to work for you to stay alive, right? We are poor forked worms in this world. Only our technologies, and our teamwork, allow us to survive.’”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 2182 | Added on Thursday, January 07, 2010, 11:24 PM

“analepsis”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 3535-38 | Added on Thursday, January 21, 2010, 08:48 AM

“Humans sensed only a small part of reality. They were as worms in the earth, comfortable and warm. If God had not given them reason, they would not by their senses know even a minim of the whole. As it was, however, by the cumulative work of thousands of people, humanity had slowly and painfully built a picture of the cosmos beyond what they could see; and then had found ways to use that knowledge, and move around in the cosmos.”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 3676-82 | Added on Thursday, January 21, 2010, 08:49 AM

The present is a three-way interference pattern.’ ‘Like chips of sunlight on water. Lots of them at once, or almost at once.’ ‘Yes, potential moments, that wink into being when the three waves peak. The vector nature of the manifold also accounts for many of the temporal effects we experience, like entropy, action at a distance, temporal waves and their resonance and interference effects, and of course quantum entanglement and bilocation, which you yourself are experiencing because of the technology that was developed to move epileptically. In terms of what we sense, fluctuations in this manifold also account for most of our dreams, as well as less common sensations like involuntary memory, foresight, déjà vu, presque vu, jamais vu, nostalgia, precognition, Ruckgriffe, Schwanung, paralipomenon, mystical union with the eternal or the One, and so on.’

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 4853-57 | Added on Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:07 PM

“Really there was nothing but asynchronous anachronism. Time was a manifold full of exclusions and resurrections, fragments and the spaces between fragments, eclipses and epilepsies, isotopies all superposed on each other and interweaving in an anarchic vibrating tapestry, and since to relive it at one point was not to relive it at another, the whole was unreadable, permanently beyond the mind. The present was a laminate event, and obviously the isotopies could detach from each other, slightly or greatly. He was caught in a mere splinter of the whole, no matter how entangled with the rest of it.”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 4870-72 | Added on Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:17 PM

But in the garden he would sit still, and think. It was possible, there, to collapse all the potentialities to a single present. This moment had a long duration. Such a blessing; he could feel it in his body, in the sun and air and earth sustaining him. Blue sky overhead-it was the part of the rainbow that was always visible, stretching all the way across the dome of sky.

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 8926-40 | Added on Tuesday, March 09, 2010, 09:59 AM

“Reality is always partly a creation of the observing consciousness. So I’ve said what I like; and I knew him well enough to think I got it mostly right. I know he was like us, always looking out for himself; and unlike us, in that he acted, while we often lack the courage to act. I wrote this for Hera, but no matter what time you are in when you read it, I’m sure that the history you tell yourself is still a tale of mangled potentiality, of unnecessary misery. That’s just the way it is. In all times people are greatly lacking in courage. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they keep trying. This too is history. We are all history-the hopes of people in the past, the past of some future people-known to them, judged by them, changed by them as they use us. So the story keeps changing, all of it. This too I’ve seen, and so I persist. I hope without hope. At some point the inclined plane can bottom out and the ball begin to rise. That’s what science is trying to do. So far it hasn’t worked, the story has been ugly, stupid, shameful, sure; but that can change. It can always change. Because understand: once I saw Galileo burned at the stake; then I saw him squeak his way clear. You have to imagine how that feels. It makes you have to try. And so when sometimes you feel strange, when a pang tugs you or it seems like the moment has already happened-or when you look up in the sky and are surprised by the sight of bright Jupiter between clouds, and everything suddenly seems stuffed with a vast significance-consider that some other person somewhere is entangled with you in time, and is trying to give some push to the situation, some little help to make things better. Then put your shoulder to whatever wheel you have at hand, whatever moment you’re in, and push too! Push like Galileo pushed! And together we may crab sideways toward the good.”