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Google Street View sends cameras into Namie, an abandoned town...
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Do GMOs yield more food? The answer is in the semantics - Boing Boing
Do GMOs yield more food? The answer is in the semantics - Boing Boing:
Today, on Twitter, I learned something new and interesting fromenvironmental reporter Paul Voosen. Over the years, I've run into reports (like this one from the Union of Concerned Scientists) showing that genetically modified crops — i.e. Roundup Ready corn and soybeans, which is really the stuff we're talking about most of the time in these situations — don't increase intrinsic yields of those crops. But I've also seen decent-looking data that seemed to suggest exactly the opposite. So what gives?
Turns out, this is largely an issue of terminology...
Friday, March 29, 2013
Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.
Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.:
“Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.”
“Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.”
The Art In the Machine | Alison Jardine
[This artist has a pretty interesting process and some cool results. See also http://alisonjardine.com/sunlight-abstractions/ . -egg]
The Art In the Machine | Alison Jardine:
The Art In the Machine | Alison Jardine:
Disneyland Dapper Day: when Disney fans dress up [feedly]
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Disneyland Dapper Day: when Disney fans dress up
Disneyland fans have created many of their own theme days, some of which I've been lucky enough to happen upon or attend -- Bats Day (goths); Gay Days, and more. But I didn't know about Dapper Day, where 10,000+ people descend on Disneyland and Walt Disney World in natty outfits and style their way through the fun park. Just looking at the official gallery makes me want to mark this in my calendar for next year.
"People are looking for an excuse to dress up," said Justin Jorgensen, who started Dapper Day in 2011 and has organized five of the events, all at Disneyland. The latest Dapper Day — the same Sunday as the Oscars, Hollywood's own dress-up day — drew an estimated crowd of 10,000 to the Anaheim park and about 1,000 more at Florida's Disney World.
"Everything, including the workplace, pushes this idea of being casual," said Jorgensen, 38, of Burbank. "When do I get to wear my great stuff?"
Most of those in attendance that day were in their 20s and 30s. They had come of age in a time of shoulder-padded power suits, windbreakers in neon colors and frizzy hair — not exactly a time that will be remembered for its classic elegance.
"I think people like history, people love nostalgia," said Heather A. Vaughan, a historian studying 20th century fashions. "People love imagining a time they didn't live in."
Dapper Day at Disneyland, the nattiest place on Earth [LA Times/Rick Rojas]
(Photo: Christina House)
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#924; The Diagrammatical Dilemma [feedly]
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Amazing Kinetic Sculptures by Bob Potts
Amazing Kinetic Sculptures by Bob Potts:
Kinetic sculptor Bob Potts creates beautiful kinetic sculptures that mimic the motions of flight and the oars of boats. Despite their intricacy the pieces are surprisingly minimal, Potts seems to use only the essential components needed to convey each motion without much ornamentation or flourish. There is very little information online about the artist, however blogger Daniel Busby managed to get a brief interview with the 70-year-old artist last year. If you liked this, also check the work of Dukno Yoon . (via devid sketchbook)
Kinetic sculptor Bob Potts creates beautiful kinetic sculptures that mimic the motions of flight and the oars of boats. Despite their intricacy the pieces are surprisingly minimal, Potts seems to use only the essential components needed to convey each motion without much ornamentation or flourish. There is very little information online about the artist, however blogger Daniel Busby managed to get a brief interview with the 70-year-old artist last year. If you liked this, also check the work of Dukno Yoon . (via devid sketchbook)
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
3D Graffiti and Paintings by Peeta
3D Graffiti and Paintings by Peeta:
Italian graffiti writer, painter and sculptor Manuel Di Rita (aka Peeta) lives and works in Venice where since 2000 he has risen to international fame for his unique 3D graffiti style. Using a variety of shading, gradients and shadows his work often appears to be hovering just off the surface on which it is painted. Peeta not only creates work in public spaces but also creates similar figures with paint on cavas as well as sculptures. Above is a mixture of artworks both old and new, and you can see much more over on Flickr and at Ayden Gallery.
Italian graffiti writer, painter and sculptor Manuel Di Rita (aka Peeta) lives and works in Venice where since 2000 he has risen to international fame for his unique 3D graffiti style. Using a variety of shading, gradients and shadows his work often appears to be hovering just off the surface on which it is painted. Peeta not only creates work in public spaces but also creates similar figures with paint on cavas as well as sculptures. Above is a mixture of artworks both old and new, and you can see much more over on Flickr and at Ayden Gallery.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Gigeresque corset: "Spine" [feedly]
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Gigeresque corset: "Spine"
Spine, an amazing, gigeresque corset, is a Shaun Leane design that was displayed at NY MOMA in the 2011 show Alexander McQueen show Savage Beauty.
Shaun Leane: He was always fascinated by the spine. So he asked me to create a corset, which was the spine with the rib cage, so that the girl could actually wear this as a corset on the outside of her body, so we would see the beauty of these bone structures on the outside, attached to the dress.
And as we were doing it, Alexander came to me and said, "Will you put a tail on this?" And where he got that idea was out of the film The Omen. When the mother of the omen was discovered—her skeleton—she was half-raven and half-dog, and he was quite inspired by this.
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (via Kadrey)
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High Voltage Erosion: 15,000 Volts Travels Through Wood
High Voltage Erosion: 15,000 Volts Travels Through Wood:
Pratt student Melanie Hoff connected cables carrying 15,000 volts of electricity to a large plank of wood and then documented the results. Surprisingly the areas around each contact point don’t simply catch on fire or burn in a circle, but rather traverse outward in a fractal-like pattern, like lighting in slow motion. Watch it all unfold above. (via colossal submissions)
Pratt student Melanie Hoff connected cables carrying 15,000 volts of electricity to a large plank of wood and then documented the results. Surprisingly the areas around each contact point don’t simply catch on fire or burn in a circle, but rather traverse outward in a fractal-like pattern, like lighting in slow motion. Watch it all unfold above. (via colossal submissions)
Giant Ocean Waves of Wood and Glass by Mario Ceroli
Giant Ocean Waves of Wood and Glass by Mario Ceroli:
According to the New York Times sculptor Mario Ceroli is one of the least known yet most influential artists of the Italian post-war scene. His work spans over forty years and I encourage you to take a deep dive into his website to explore his wide range of installations and sculptures. Two of his most beautiful works depict crashing waves sculpted from thin layers of precisely cut wood and glass titled La Vague and Maestrale. The energy present in the works is remarkable as if any moment the materials are going to crash into the gallery floor. Also, if you’ve ever been to the Adelaide Botanic Garden in Australia you may have seen a similar piece by sculptor Sergio Redegalli called Cascade. (via connaissance des arts, claudio, and tate_ellen)
According to the New York Times sculptor Mario Ceroli is one of the least known yet most influential artists of the Italian post-war scene. His work spans over forty years and I encourage you to take a deep dive into his website to explore his wide range of installations and sculptures. Two of his most beautiful works depict crashing waves sculpted from thin layers of precisely cut wood and glass titled La Vague and Maestrale. The energy present in the works is remarkable as if any moment the materials are going to crash into the gallery floor. Also, if you’ve ever been to the Adelaide Botanic Garden in Australia you may have seen a similar piece by sculptor Sergio Redegalli called Cascade. (via connaissance des arts, claudio, and tate_ellen)
The case of the poison potato [feedly]
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The case of the poison potato
Frying a potato is a tricky proposition. Doing it right isn't just about your skill as a cook, but also your partner, the potato itself. Waxy potatoes — high in sugar, low in starch — brown a little too easily as the sugar in them is altered by heat. By the time the interior is cooked through, the exterior is burnt to a crisp.
Good potato chips come from starchy potatoes. But to get just the right chip color — that perfect, buttery golden brown — you have to pay attention to a lot of different factors, from the types of sugar found in the potato, to the internal chemistry that happens as the potato sits in a sack post-harvest.
In the late 1960s, researchers from the US Department of Agriculture, Penn State University, and the Wise Potato Chip Company teamed up breed a very special potato, which they named the Lenape. More than 30 years later, one of their colleagues still thought fondly of that spud. "Lenape was [wonderful]," Penn State scientist Herb Cole told journalist Nancy Marie Brown in 2003. "It chipped golden."
Yes, the Lenape made a damn fine potato chip.
Unfortunately, it was also kind of toxic.
Despite an almost boring reputation as the squishy white bread of the plant kingdom, potatoes actually come from somewhat nasty roots. Their closest relatives are innocuous enough. Potatoes have strong genetic ties to tomatoes and eggplants. But their more distant cousins include tobacco, chili peppers, deadly nightshade, and the hallucinatory drug-producing flower, datura.
This is a phylogenetic family that is ready to throw down, chemically speaking. Called Solanaceae, its members are known for producing a wide variety of nitrogen-rich chemical compounds, called alkaloids. Nicotine is an alkaloid. So are caffeine, cocaine, and a host of other plant-derived chemicals that humans have taken a liking to over the millennia. Depending on the dose, and on the specific compound, alkaloids can have effects ranging from medicinal, to far-out crazy hallucinatory, to deadly.
Potatoes produce an alkaloid called solanine. All potatoes have it, and it's a feature, not a bug — at least as far as the potato is concerned. Like a lot of other plant-produced alkaloids, solanine is a natural defense mechanism. It protects the potato from pests. Think of potato blight, the fungus-like disease partly responsible for the Irish Famine of the 19th century. The more solanine a potato contains, the less susceptible it is to blight. When a potato is put into a compromising situation — when it's young and vulnerable, for instance, or when tubers get uncovered and, thus, more exposed to things that might eat it — solanine production can rev up.
Those triggers aren't always the most convenient for the potato's human predators. A sudden frost, for instance, can stunt the growth of tubers and promote the growth of vines and leaves, which mimics a younger stage of development and is accompanied by higher solanine concentrations. And if you leave potatoes exposed to the sun for too long after harvest, they start reacting as though they just got accidentally uncovered. They turn green and they produce more solanine. This is actually why you're not supposed to eat green potatoes. Those spuds, and especially their skins, are rich in solanine. How much solanine varies; it might just be enough to make your stomach a little upset. Or, it could lead to serious illness accompanied by vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness, and convulsive twitching. In very rare cases, people who ate green potatoes have even died.
Poor post-harvest handling was not the problem with the Lenape, however. In 1974, after Lenape potatoes had been recalled from agricultural production and relegated to the status of "breeding material", the USDA published results of an experiment where they grew Lenape, and five other potato varieties, at 39 locations around the country. They carefully monitored growing and harvesting conditions and then compared the solanine content of all the potatoes.
The conclusion: Lenape was genetically predisposed towards producing an extraordinarily high amount of solanine, no matter what happened to it during growth and harvest. The average Russet potato, for instance, contained about 8 mg of solanine for every 100 g of potato. Lenape, on the other hand, was closer to 30 mg of toxin for every 100 g of food. That made it nicely resistant to a lot of agricultural pests. But it also explained why some of the people who were the first to eat Lenapes — most of them breeders and other professionals in the agriculture industry — ended up with severe nausea, like a fast-acting stomach bug.
What makes the Lenape really interesting, though, is its legacy as a cautionary tale. I first learned about it from Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, whom I met while I was working on a New York Times Magazine story about genetically modified mosquitoes.
He used Lenapes as an example of risk and uncertainty. Often, people frame genetically modified plants as this huge open question — a giant uncertainty, of the sort we've never dealt with before. There's this idea that GM plants are uniquely at risk of producing unexpected side effects, and that we have no way of knowing what those effects would be until average consumers start getting sick, Gould told me. But neither of those things is really true. Conventional breeding, the simple act of crossing one existing plant with another, can produce all sorts of unexpected and dangerous results. One of the reasons Lenape potatoes are so infamous, I later found out, is that they played a big role in shaping how the USDA treats and tests new varieties of conventionally bred food plants today.
In fact, from Gould's perspective, there's actually a lot more risk and uncertainty with conventional breeding, than there is with genetic modification. That's because, with GM, you're mucking about with a single gene. There are a lot more genes in play with conventional breeding, and a lot more ways that surprising genetic interactions could come back to haunt you. "You try breeding potatoes for pest resistance, but you're bringing in a whole chromosome from a wild potato," he said. "We've found interactions between the wild genomes and the cultivated genomes that actually led to potentially poisonous chemicals in the potato."
In 2004, a National Academies panel on the unintended health effects of genetic engineering reported that conventional potato breeders continue to try to increase the amount of solanine produced by the leaves and vines of their potato plants in hopes of making those plants more naturally pest-resistant. Because of that, the USDA actually has a recommended limit for solanine content of new potato varieties — but that limit isn't strictly enforced.
Gould's point isn't that genetic modification is always better than conventional breeding. It's not. Instead, they're both tools — imperfect technologies that could produce unintended side effects. Which one you choose to use depends on what you're trying to do. But, either way, you can't say that one is scary and one is safe.
CREDITS
• Photo: REUTERS/Hazir Reka
• Mendel In The Kitchen: A Scientist's View Of Genetically Modified Food [Google Books]
• Towards fewer handicapped children [bmj.com]
• Lenape: A new potato variety high in solids and chipping quality [springer.com]
• Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects [nap.edu]
• Effect of Environment on Glycoalkaloid Content of Six Potato Varieties [Google Books]
• The Potato in the Human Diet [Google Books]
• A Review of Important Facts about Potato Glycoalkaloids [PDF, ucdavis.edu]
hFACTORS DETERMINING POTATO CHIPPING QUALITY [PDF, umaine.edu]
POTATOES' NATURAL DEFENCES [McGill.ca]
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Pitch Battles by Colin Dickey by Colin Dickey
[Wow, is this ever weird. A440 and right-wing fringe politics. -egg]
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http://longform.org/stories/pitch-battles
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http://longform.org/stories/pitch-battles
Saturday, March 23, 2013
New Underwater Reefs and Landscapes Made of Paper by Amy Eisenfeld Genser [feedly]
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New Underwater Reefs and Landscapes Made of Paper by Amy Eisenfeld Genser
Connecticut-based artist Amy Eisenfeld Genser (previously) recently completed a new series of coral reefs that she painstakingly recreates using rolled bits of paper and acrylic paint. Ahead of her upcoming exhibition at the Architectural Digest Home Show, Genser sat down with All Things Paper for a brief interview. An excerpt on her process:
These days I usually work with Thai Unryu [mulberry paper], but I have hundreds of papers in my studio from all around the world. I treat the paper almost as a pigment, layering colors one on top of the other to create different colors. My pieces are about a foot wide. Then I roll one layer on top of the other in all different thicknesses. I seal the roll with acid-free, archival glue stick, and then cut the long piece into sections with scissors or pruning shears. I have pruning shears of all different sizes to accommodate different widths.
See and learn more over on All Things Paper.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Joshua Foer: John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented : The New Yorker
[Utterly fascinating. -egg]
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Joshua Foer: John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/24/121224fa_fact_foer?currentPage=all
(via Instapaper)
Why user interfaces should be visible, seamful, and explicit [feedly]
[For the designerly among ye. -egg]
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Why user interfaces should be visible, seamful, and explicit
Timo Arnall from the design studio BERG has makes several great and provocative points in his essay "No to NoUI" -- a well-argued piece that opposes the idea of "interfaces that disappear" and "seamless computer interfaces," arguing that by hiding the working of computers from their users, designers make it harder for those users to figure out what the computers are really doing and to solve the problems that inevitably arise.
Interfaces are the dominant cultural form of our time. So much of contemporary culture takes place through interfaces and inside UI. Interfaces are part of cultural expression and participation, skeuomorphism is evidence that interfaces are more than chrome around content, and more than tools to solve problems. To declare interfaces 'invisible' is to deny them a cultural form or medium. Could we say 'the best TV is no TV', the 'best typography is no typography' or 'the best buildings are no architecture'?
...We might be better off instead taking our language from typography, and for instance talk about legibility and readability without denying that typography can call attention to itself in beautiful and spectacular ways. Our goal should be to 'place as much control as possible in the hands of the end-user by making interfaces evident'.
Of course the interfaces we design may become normalised in use, effectively invisible over time, but that will only happen if we design them to be legible, readable, understandable and to foreground culture over technology. To build trust and confidence in an interface in the first place, enough that it can comfortably recede into the background.
No to NoUI (via Dan Hon)
The science of breast milk: Latest research on nursing and milk vs. formula. [feedly]
[This is completely fascinating, especially the relationship of breast milk and the infant intestinal microbiome. -egg]
Breast milk is weirder than you think [feedly]
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Breast milk is weirder than you think
If you think about lactation too hard, it starts to seem a little strange — like the biological equivalent of saying the word "that" over and over until it's just a weird sound you're making. But, writes Nicholas Day at Slate, the sort of existential weirdness of breast milk is nothing compared to what's going on in the stuff at a chemical level. For instance, breast milk contains sugars that aren't actually digestible by human infants. That's because they aren't meant for the infant, itself. Rather, your breast milk is helpfully feeding your baby's intestinal bacteria. Freakier still: In monkeys, the chemical composition of breast milk can change, depending on factors like your baby's sex and whether your baby is showing signs of illness.
The gel that stops bleeding instantly [feedly]
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The gel that stops bleeding instantly
This video is a bit gruesome, but it is demonstrating a remarkable substance that can stop bleeding almost instantaneously. Jack Millner of Humans Invent interviewed NYU student Joe Landolina, the creator of Veti-Gel.
"In all of our tests we found we were able to immediately stop bleeding," says Landolina. "Your skin has this thing called the extracellular matrix," he explains. "It's kind of a mesh of molecules and sugars and protein that holds your cells in place." Landolina synthesises his own extracellular matrix (ECM) using plant polymers, which can form a liquid when broken up into pieces. He says, "So it goes into the wound and the pieces of the synthetic ECM in the gel will recognise the pieces of the real ECM in the wound and they'll link together. It will re-assemble into something that looks like, feels like and acts like skin."
James Fallows doesn't trust Google not to kill each new product it spawns [feedly]
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James Fallows doesn't trust Google not to kill each new product it spawns
"I have already downloaded the Android version of Google's new app for collecting notes, photos, and info, called Google Keep," writes James Fallows in the Atlantic. "This early version has nothing like Evernote's power or polish, but you can see where Google is headed. Here's the problem: Google now has a clear enough track record of trying out, and then canceling, 'interesting' new software that I have no idea how long Keep will be around."
Electroluminescent paint: like EL wire you apply with a brush [feedly]
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Electroluminescent paint: like EL wire you apply with a brush
A company called Lumilor has announced a permanent electroluminescent paint that can be selectively illuminated by applying a charge to it. Burning Man attendees are already familiar with the ubiquitous, cheap EL wire, but this takes things to a new level:
The LumiLor TM electroluminescent coating system is a patent-pending, practical, durable and affordable technology that can be illuminated with a simple electrical current.
Used in conjunction with simple driver electronics, LumiLor will illuminate any surface brightly, and is capable of being custom-animated to flash in sequenced, strobed, and sound activated modes.
The potential for customization is practically limitless!
ABOUT LUMILOR (via JWZ)
Snowflake electron microscope photos [feedly]
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Snowflake electron microscope photos
Twisted Sifter has a great gallery of snowflake and ice crystal electron microscope photos. At this level of magnification, the ice looks like metal that has been machined by space aliens.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Bike headlight displays speed [feedly]
[Hot. -egg]
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Bike headlight displays speed
My friend Matt Richardson made a system for his bike that projects a spotlight with data onto the street. It's currently set up to display speed, but it can also be used to project other kinds of information (like turn-by-turn directions). He's going to write about it for MAKE so you can build one, too.
Video of Obama's shape-shifting alien secret service [feedly]
[Well, now we know. -egg]
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Video of Obama's shape-shifting alien secret service
A shape-shifting extraterrestrial was on President Obama's security detail during his APIAC speech on Sunday. Above is video evidence. And once you have been convinced, you may want to visit the video's YouTube page for valuable information about Jesus, Satan, cures for Cancer, and that "smoking is of the devil." "OBAMA ALIEN demon UFO ghost 666 devil SECRET SERVICE"
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Incredible algorithm reveals invisible motion in everyday...
[I'm thinking music video. -egg] - -
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Incredible algorithm reveals invisible motion in everyday...
Incredible algorithm reveals invisible motion in everyday video
"Researchers at MIT working at "the intersection of vision and graphics" have created a computer program that offers its users a stunning new way of looking at the world. The intriguing technique, which uses an algorithm that can amplify both movement and color, can be used to monitor everthing from breathing in a sleeping infant, to the pulse in a hospital patient. Its creators, led by computer scientist William Freeman, call it "Eulerian Video Magnification," and it's nothing short of stunning to watch in action."
Google Maps now allows you to explore Everest, Kilimanjaro and other great mountains [feedly]
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Google Maps now allows you to explore Everest, Kilimanjaro and other great mountains
Google this week unveiled the ability to virtually explore, via Google Maps, some of the most famous mountains on Earth, including Aconcagua (South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Elbrus (Europe) and Everest Base Camp (Asia).
These mountains belong to the group of peaks known as the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. While there's nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face.
Start your adventure on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, the dormant volcano known as the Roof of Africa. See amazing views of the highest freestanding mountain in the world covered in snow just three degrees south of the equator.
It's pretty amazing. I attended the Explorer's Club 2013 dinner over the weekend with people who have actually summited these mountains (the experience of being a fly on the wall during that dinner is a blog post all its own), and this is a great tool for the many of us who won't make it up there in our lifetimes. And, for young people whose horizons need expanding.
Official Blog: Explore Everest, Kilimanjaro and more with Google Maps.
Occupy SXSW 2013 [feedly]
[Weirdest sxsw account ever. -egg]
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Occupy SXSW 2013
Image: SXSW 2013, Friday March 8th, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from thelotuscarroll's photostream
I must start with a tweet from my wise friend Xeni Jardin:
"Some of you have asked why I'm not at SXSW: as a person with cancer, have I not suffered enough already?"
Well, some of us still are there at South By South West every year, among hordes of nerds, geeks and unnoticed celebrities in a magnificent carnival of tech in Austin, Texas.
This year, I had Stendhal's syndrome after day two: I risked a stampede while fleeing the endless queue for Al Gore' s keynote. At a festival of this size, people queue like in war zones where any queue means available goods. It's only after you get a firm place in line that you ask: what are we waiting for?
Individualism in armies is not tolerated, and by day three the entire army itself seemed as crushed by the challenge as I was. The geeks walked aimlessly, tired, with dark bags around their eyes, dirty clothes, undone laces. Austin is a besieged town in these ten days: with thirty thousand paying attendees and an un-numbered horde of locals and curiosity-seekers, roaming the streets of this proudly weird city.
The headless and dismembered horde of internet geeks overloaded the Internet in the Austin convention center, and phone service also crashed because of too much downloading, uploading, tweeting, flickring, tumblring and whatever new social media was invented this year. Every startup longs to become a Twitter, leaping into prominence among these early adopters and thought pioneers. They may expect a Twitter at SXSW 2007 and find themselves with an Arab revolution of 2011!
When you are at SXSW, you have an anxious feeling of missing just about everything except the event you are actually seeing. Seeing too much too soon upsets the stomach, and how painful to think that your limited human mind will never comprehend the virtual nomadic language of these young natives. Even their body language changes radically year by year, as they invent new ways of poking, stroking or scratching their new devices. You can forget the mannerly habits of looking people straight in the eye, cordially shaking their hand. Their eyes drift when they speak, they stare at their handheld devices and send smilies to distant comrades, and instead of shaking hands they bump fists.
A new esthetics implies a new fashion. This year the crowd was much better dressed than last year: fewer fat desktop jockeys and more girls who "forgot their skirts" it's all about elastic jeggings and beautiful computer generated patterned tights.
A panel explained how to wear gadgets in the future; expect them to vanish into the electric seams of the clothing. Since we are becoming tech fashion victims, why consider it creepy to wander the streets with head-mounted Google Glass? What could there be to fear in enhancing the human experience, by tossing one's clumsy phone aside and wearing it on your forehead? Why hide the technology, for if you hide it too effectively you're being spied upon by surveillance you can't even see. Put GPS inside your beautiful shoes, then draw tender hearts on the fabric of your jeans and have your trousers send that straight to the pants of a loved one. As your heart beats faster with emotional joy, your blouse and your earrings blush with LED color.
Augmented Reality activist/ artists are getting political, using their devices to "invade" the closed locales of NATO bases, or decorating the air around the tents of the Occupy movement in New York and elsewhere.
Half the participants at SXSW seem to be volunteers, a hardworking invisible army of young locals who supply the sweat and labor behind the fancy screens and stages of the interactive superstars. This found a strange parallel in the film "Good Old Freda," which documented the obscure life of hardworking Beatles fan and secretary Freda Kelly. This teenage Beatlemania devotee was the private, invisible secretary of The Beatles, faithfully answering their fan mail from their very first day and after the band split. A woman who once she stopped working for the Beatles, scarcely bothered to tell her story, even to her children or grandchildren. Until today! and boy, Freda is the best of the Beatles, the only one who wasn't destroyed by all the hype!
At SXSW the halls and rooms and ballrooms were set that everybody could be a star for three minutes: you could sit on throne of the "Games of Thrones" fantasy television series, or stand in an ad for some fancy product…the horizontal structure of social media transforms the masses into Good ol' Fredas with a story to tell. We can only hope there is somebody left to listen!
On Tuesday, with the hordes mostly gone back to the coasts or Europe, the event closed with three Austin gurus, futurists and-or hustlers, Hugh Forrest, Jon Lebkowsky and Bruce Sterling, veterans of the event's early days, confronting a second and third generation of geeks.
It was a moving sign that the show must go on… Occupy SXSW!
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