Alternative 3

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Alternative-3 was a hoax TV documentary broadcast in the late 1970s.

It maintained there was a conspiracy between the scientific, military and economic elites of the world to escape a forthcoming planetary catastrophy by colonising Mars…

It was parodied perhaps by Douglas Adams with his Golgafrincham telephone-sanitisers, and shown at one of the Strange Attractor events in London.

So far, I’ve only managed to find some bad quality realmedia exerpts online, which is why I’m asking Ben’s new project, the Culture Lazyweb if anyone has an better digital version anywhere on the net.

Eastern Standard Drive

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Andrew jams on itrip pirate-radio with Hill’s iPod projector photoshopware:

otwell_itunescar

Brings to life some of C. Doctorow’s Eastern-Standard Tribe


“I just don’t get it,” Fede said.

Art tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “It’s simple,” he said. “It’s like a car radio with a fast-forward button. You drive around on the MassPike, and your car automatically peers with nearby vehicles. It grabs the current song on someone else’s stereo and streamloads it. You listen to it. If you don’t hit the fast-forward button, the car starts grabbing everything it can from the peer, all the music on the stereo, and cues it up for continued play. Once that pool is exhausted, it queries your peer for a list of its peers—the cars that it’s getting its music from—and sees if any of them are in range, and downloads from them. So, it’s like you’re exploring a taste-network, doing an automated, guided search through traffic for the car whose owner has collected the music you most want to listen to.”

linkstrafe

moleitau
»
Eyetoy at E3 /
games
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robin hunicke : e3 photos /
games
conferences
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Memex 1.1: The font of all knowledge… /
typography
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Virgin King Branson Drives Car Across English Channel /
stargrave
»
Design Observer: writings about design & culture: Designer by Day, Catwoman by Night /
design
»
Nokia announces 5 new phones and more – Engadget – www.engadget.com /
phones
»
How Websites Learn | Acts of Volition. /
IA
»
Snake Charmer: An interview with Alan Moore, Part One /
magic
Comics
»
gilest.org: How chess has changed /
games
»
Premise: Opening up the problem of democratic deliberation on the net /
politics
»
Tidepool | Features: Making Change with Local Currencies /
currency
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Grameen Foundation USA Home /
currency
»
Fresh Mint | Metropolis Magazine | August/September 2001 /
currency
»
Alex Wright: Siam Diary: Part VII: The Buddhist Kingdom /
humanity
travel
godspot
»
The State of Wireless London /
wireless
grid

RSS

A korvapusti for Conan

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Aevil has started a campaign to get Conan O’Brien to Finland.

Think of all the things he could do: take a sauna, eat makkara, make fun of drunks on the trams and subway, attempt ordering coffee and korvapusti in Finnish, bring some Budweiser along and finally determine if Lapin Kulta is even more of a king of bad beer than Bud is, try salmiakki, wear something Marimekko, visit Santa, and sail to Stockholm to personally deliver the message that Sweden does, indeed, suck. 🙂

Finland, expats too, grab your pens, postage and postikorttit and direct your witty goading to:

Conan O’Brien hates my homeland Must Come To Finland
NBC
30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA
New York, NY 10112
USA

Literal > Visual

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A little help needed.

I’m looking for good writing or references which underpin the notion that western societies are moving from a literal to a visual culture, as used as a central theme in Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash.

Thanks!

Rebel MPs without a pause

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theywork_daypop

Democracy-Hack and all-round great idea TheyWorkForYou.com launched this sunday at the excellent and exhausting NotCon, and seems to be climbing the charts nicely.

For those of you who haven’t poked around there yet – it’s a service that takes the report of the day’s proceedings in the UK Parliament, Hansard, and rechunks it with the ability to be annotated and commented on by the electorate, plus a bunch of other great tools for tracking your MP or issues you care about through Parliament.

After all the noise and fury around “digital democracy”, the Howard Dean campaign and the like from our friends across the water, it’s nice to see a thoughtful, useful and downright inspired piece of work like TWFY getting some coverage.

Great work by a gang I’m proud to know, and great to see Chuck D. and Hank Shocklee as the support band.

Notcon

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I’ll be chairing the Hardware panel at NotCon in London on Sunday:

  • Telling the time (not very accurately) using a Marks & Spencer prawn sandwich and a BBC micro
    – James Larsson

  • New hardware/software developments on the Sinclair Spectrum
    – Matt Westcott

  • Why Interactive telly isn’t the Web, why it never will be, and why that’s good
    – George Wright

  • How to Email Your Video (and other things to make your home come alive – literally)
    – Steven Goodwin

  • Camera-Phones: the only remote control you’ll ever need
    – Anil Madhavapeddy

I guess the plan is that a user-experience guy confronted by hardware hackers should make for an interesting debate. Hope to see you there…