digitaldust

And while on a anti media rant. Here’s a nice chart showing media ownership. The big six media companies, categorised holdings and some soundbites about each. It’s circa 2001.

This isn’t a new issue but I had a conversation with my girlfriend in the weekend about the move from a 1984 style government mediated totalitarianism to a corporate one. I was trying to think of some good examples where corporations were trying to enforce their world view on consumers (without my ol’ friend the web). And they are, via the very mechanisms that are meant to protect citizens they are attempting to inflict a set of totalitarian laws in place.

The weird rhetoric voiced by old media giant is no more suprising than this reported on the EFF website. People who skip advert breaks are stealing from the networks.

I have kept stumbling over this in the last week via BBC news and various blogs. Its a AI research group out of NCSU called Liquid Narrative.

They are researching various aspects of AI and user interface as they pertain to narative. One of their aims is to create spaces that don’t require human intervention to create narative.

While this is interesting it brings up my loathing of the overuse of the word “narative”. I know that it’s been wrenched from its happy and normal life describing litterature. Its been drafted into the posst modern arsenal of missappropriated words, so that now its used to describe people’s relationship with art and just about any media or mediated relationship. Life is now just an extended narative. I think the usage of the word and concept is bent beyond recognition.

I have this concept of an “experience space” that I’ve been thinking through that should replace narative and it’s thinly stretched applications. It should break us out of the introspective, counting angles philosophies of post-modernism, while keeping a subjective view of media consumption.

Damn! Should have read this sooner. Would have helped out with my reputation research.

I like the cultural approach taken by Howard Rheingold. Futurology is difficult. I remember reading Negroponte’s book about his experiences with MIT media lab at the end of the eighties. He was all on about video recorders, video conferencing and VR. I think he was too caught up in the specific technologies. When you look at what VCRs and video conferencing are about, the social principles behind them are still relevant, personal recording and new means of communication. The big tech/social-evolution issues right now are about this. MP3s and Tivos are the next gen of VCRs, and it’s the personal recording aspects of this that are more important than the technology itself. The same with communication, video conferencing never took off because of the cost, but low cost communication is under going a revolution. Mobile phones and in particular SMS are taking off, both the basis for Rheingold’s book.

So what’s next… Personal recording crossed with communication. The 3R (Recommendation, Rating, Reputation) enabled P2P environment, as described still again in Smart Mobs. Prompts some interesting thoughts.

Vidocq (2001) Rocqs!! You must go see it.

Fantastical Pitof (Digital effects on City of Lost Children and Alien Resurrection, this is his first directorial outing) film based on Eugene Vidocq, the father of modern criminal investigation. It does away with any pretence of historical reality, merely using the Paris revolt of 1830 as the backdrop for a supernatural detective story. It’s like Batman in frock coats.

Shot all on DV with interesting effects; false colour skies, distorted digital imaging, loads of filth and more badies in long black cloaks than you can shake a sword cane at. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it last night.

I just bought an Ixus V3. Oh so sexy. I’m very impressed with the quality of the images and the range of actually useful features. It’s not one of those silly compacts with useless crap for holiday snaps. Manual control over exposure, black and white mode that creates beautiful drifty pics in long exposures and I like the TV playback facility. The video mode is also good. I filmed some fireworks a couple of days ago and the picture and sound quality are both excellent (for 640×480).

I’m going to use it till it explodes.