observations on how technology and culture collides
“A reverse geocache is a box that unlocks itself when the GPS sensor inside senses that it’s in a specific spot on the globe.” Think about this for a bit.
Over the last months I built a reverse geocache that is trackable on geocaching.com, using nixie tubes (Display tubes from the 60s). The red bars are ikea door handles.
Not sure if there was live, wireless video preview in this demo but I’ve have initial success with the same on the Elphel line (via WiFi).
Also: potentially one expensive crash. Be sure to charge your batteries.
The other models are worth checking out too.
Anybody who cares or knows anything about camera rigs, video, steadycams, WHATEVER you MUST watch this if you haven’t already. Pretty sure this changes (almost) everything. Will let you know just as soon as we build one of these…. No seriously :-)
(Source: kontraptionist)
A few months ago I finished reading through The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. The book is a collection of contextualized stories that collectively (and convincingly!) present a historical analogy of the era of the telegraph as functionally equivalent to the modern–day internet; in the context of a technological revolution providing ‘a capability that was not there before,’ the internet isn’t much of a revolution (or, at least yet).
Bear in mind that the telegraph was invented sometime in the 1830’s, about 40 years before biologists first noticed the effects of penicillin and about 100 years before its discovery by Alexander Fleming.
There’s a number of interesting insights that deserve further exploration (ownership of transmission lines, key changes in overall world development, use of encryption and wiretapping, social mobility, etc.). But there’s a particular story worth sharing, reproduced below.
Chapter 8, Love Over The Wires, opens thusly:
“…within a few months of the electric telegraph being opened to the public, it was being used for something that even the most farsighted of telegraph advocates had never dared to imagine: to conduct an on-line wedding.
The bride was in Boston, and the groom in New York; the exact date is unknown, but the story of the wedding was common currency by the time a small book, Anecdotes of the Telegraph, was published in London in 1848. It was described as “a story which throws into the shade all the feats that have been performed by our British telegraph.”
The daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant had fallen in love with Mr. B., a clerk in her father’s countinghouse. Although her father had promised her hand to someone else, she decided to disregard his intentions and marry Mr. B. instead. When her father found out, he put the young man on a ship and sent him away on business to England.
The ship made a stopover in New York, where the young woman sent her intended a message, asking him to present himself at the telegraph office with a magistrate at an agreed–upon time. At the appointed hour she was at the other end of the wire in the Boston telegraph office…
[…merging storylines, but both have happy endings…]
At the appropriate point in the service the bride and groom tapped on the telegraph key to indicate a solemn “I do.” Once the service was over, messages of congratulations flooded in from all the stations on the line. The groom was for many years afterward greeted by fellow telegraph operators, who, upon hearing his name, exclaimed that they had been present at his wedding.”
There are a number of really touching stories along these lines.
Telegraph key and sounder. ©2009 by John Schanlaub. Published and reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic copyright license.
“An Interactive Granular Sampler.” Watch in HD, fullscreen.
via @mikerugnetta
Charles Bukowski’s last poem (faxed to his publisher).
“On February 18, 1994 Hank had a fax machine installed at his home. He sent me his first fax message in the form of that poem. I’m sure he visualized sending me his future letters and poems via fax, but sadly 18 days later he was gone.
“I ran off nine photocopies of the fax, for a total of ten, and numbered and initialed them. Over the next few months and years I gave copies to individuals who were Bukowski collectors and regular customers of Black Sparrow. I think I gave away the last one more than 10 years ago.
“That poem has never been published (except as described here) and the poem has never been collected in a book.” — John Martin (his publisher at Black Sparrow Press)
(via vieapart)
“5th Grader Accidentally Makes Explosive in Class, Gets Co-Authorship on Subsequent Paper”
Calling the process accidental doesn’t give quite enough credit to Clara Lazen – this is what happens when you give creative minds ready-to-(re)assemble tools without preconceived notions of what the result should look like. And it’s the same idea as what’s behind free culture.
Thought I’d share the cutting-edge, state-of-the-art latest developments of what’s possible in video encoding. Click on me. (Update: I’ve disabled looping as to not induce motion sickness.)
Totally saw this coming. Hats off to the NYPL.
I think it might be possible to do this with live video using a (to-be-written) GStreamer plugin and images from a stereoscopic camera.
Couldn’t be prouder of our work at NYPL Labs. Designed and built by the brilliant Mauricio Giraldo
nypl:
The Library has just launched Stereogranimator, a site that lets users turn our historic collection of stereographs into animated images like the one above. Read all about it in the Times and then go play! It’s the latest way we’re using technology to bring our collections to the public, following our What’s on the Menu, Biblion iPad app and map warping projects.
Caturday will never be the same …
(via riordan)
Anonymous asked: <p>Hey George, I’m a current member of UPUA at Penn State and wanted to get in touch with you about your work / attempts to form a Penn State wiki while a member of USG. My email address is spm246@psu — send me a message if you’d be willing to tell me a little more about the project(s)! - Spencer Malloy</p>
I love when old stuff catches up to me. I’ll post a project outline of the Penn State Wiki in about a week. Stay tuned.
Update: posted here.
It’s fascinating to see how humans interact with technology we choose to create and put into production usage. In this case, it’s the conversion of normally low-level radioactive ores into highly-radioactive rods. There are real costs.
…albeit sad, there’s such dignity of purpose here.
Bravo, brave souls
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