BigShinyThing

Bruce Sterling points us towards a new book-length study from RFE/RL, entited Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas. The study offers a fascinating insight into the strengths and weaknessess of insurgent tactical media, including an evident technological and organisational sophistication — handy for production and distribution under extreme conditions:

Biographies of the best-known martyrs are sometimes lavish affairs. Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, the most famous jihadist to have died in Iraq, was the subject of a downloadable “encyclopedia” that includes not on numerous materials on the Jordanian militant’s life, but also a complete collection of his statements, essays on his beliefs and influence, and statements on the jihad in Iraq by Osama bin Laden. Formatted as a 7.7-megabyte self-contained mini-browser, the “encyclopedia” provides users with a table of contents and a convenient graphics interface.

[...]

The impressive array of products Sunni-Iraq insurgents and their supporters create suggests the existence of a veritable multimedia empire. But this impression is misleading. The insurgent media network has no identifiable brick-and-mortar presence, no headquarters, and no bureaucracy. It relies instead on a decentralized, collaborative production model that utilizes the skills of a community of like-minded individuals. (…)

The study authors conclude that:

The popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media [...] reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. A response, no matter how lavishly funded and cleverly produced, will not eliminate this demand. [...] efforts to counter insurgent media should not focus on producing better propaganda than the insurgents, or trying to eliminate the demand for the insurgent message, but rather on exploiting the vulnerabilities of the insurgent media network.

We keep running into ex-colleagues, all of whom, when asked what they’re doing, answer “it’s not that easy to sum up” by which they mean:

I’ve got a couple of paying projects going, plus I’m on the edge of other stuff that might or might not turn into work, but involves people interesting enough that it’s worth some time anyways, plus you know, I’ve got that blog thing going and bits of other stuff on the side.

Long ago, we had a gig as armchair futurists at a Famous Ad Agency. One of our favourite predictions was that the structure of creative business would go the way of Hollywood: rather than existing as long-term corporate entities, groups of highly-skilled freelancers would be assembled for the life of a specific project, at the completion of which they would pack their bags and head of to the next one.

The model never really caught on in adland. However, this month we get the feeling that our generation has finally crossed some intangible tipping point. We see signs and portents: people, it’s practically raining frogs over Soho. Key indicator: suddenly we’re all exploiting network utilities like FaceBook, and communities like PlannerSphere not just to keep ‘in touch’ but to expand the size of the network which we touch (see note [1], below).

We’re building structures which accumulate and expose opportunity, knowledge, income. Crucially, we are doing this for ourselves.

We’re also, in the flux of transmutation, restructuring our personal brands, making our own individual and collective land grabs for authority, influence, status and respect. We’re building a colony, out in the unmapped places, and things don’t need to be the same way they were back home at the centre of Empire. It’s all up for grabs.

Which isn’t to imply that we’re shortchanging shareholders in the companies that pay us — the more efficient our networks, the quicker and better we can turn the work around. Happy clients mean more income and repeat business (we’re tip-toeing quietly over the sleeping issue of where and for whom the glittering prizes of intellectual property and long-term value will accrue).

But before you drink the Electric Kool Aid, we also suggest you pick up (and yes, read, dammit) a copy of Fred Turner’s excellent From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Turner’s book offers a good critical history of exactly this kind of technotopian futurism, a worldview which comes with heavier and more unpleasant historical baggage than you might expect. We say: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. On FaceBook”.

—
1. Sphere is the wrong metaphor. A sphere maximises the amount of stuff held within. Now is all about maximising surface area, expanding the opportunities for contact, the opportunities available for each of us, alone or together, to touch, engage, involve the rest of everything. We advocate forms which are the topographic opposite of spherical — hyperbolic surfaces: folded, gnarly, spaces where surface is everything. We will stand or fall by the richness of our contact with the world as a whole, not just that within the closing horizons of our tiny corner of a corner of it.

Wikipedia was under police investigation today as it emerged that details of the Chris Benoit tragedy were on the site well before police actually found the bodies of his wife and child. Benoit strangled his wife and son during the weekend, placing Bibles next to their bodies, before hanging himself on the cable of a weight-machine in his home, authorities said. No motive was offered for the killings, which were discovered Monday.

According to that Wikipedia entry today:

News of Nancy Benoit’s death was inexplicably posted on Wikipedia 14 hours before the police discovered the bodies. This was initially reported on Wikinews and later on FOXNews.com. The original posting reads: “Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” The phrase “stemming from the death of his wife Nancy” was added to the English Wikipedia’s “Chris Benoit” article at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his seemingly prescient comments as a “huge coincidence and nothing more”.

Via CNN.

UPDATE: the wiki editor who predicted Nancy Bedoit’s death has now claimed that the whole thing was an ‘incredible coincidence.’ On Wikinews the following comment appears:

Hey everyone. I am here to talk about the wikipedia comment that was left by myself. I just want to say that it was an incredible coincidence. Last weekend, I had heard about Chris Benoit no showing Vengeance because of a family emergency, and I had heard rumors about why that was. I was reading rumors and speculation about this matter online, and one of them included that his wife may have passed away, and I did the wrong thing by posting it on wikipedia to spite there being no evidence. I posted my speculation on the situation at the time and I am deeply sorry about this, and I was just as shocked as everyone when I heard that this actually would happen in real life. It is one of those things that just turned into a huge coincidence. That night I found out that what I posted, ended up actually happening, a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening, or so I thought. I was beyond wrong for posting wrongful information, and I am sorry to everyone for this. I just want everyone to know it was stupid of me, and I will never do anything like this again. I just posted something that was at that time a piece of wrong unsourced information that is typical on wikipedia, as it is done all the time.

Nonetheless, I feel incredibly bad for all the attention this got because of the fact that what I said turned out to be the truth. Like I said it was just a major coincidence, and I will never vandalize anything on wikipedia or post wrongful information. I’ve learned from this experience. I just can’t believe what I wrote was actually the case, I’ve remained stunned and saddened over it.

I wish not to reveal my identity so I can keep me and my family out of this since they have nothing to do with anything. I am not connected to WWE or Benoit at all in anyway. I am from Stamford as the IP address shows, and I am just an everyday individual who posted a wrongful remark at the time that received so much attention because it turned out to actually happen. I will say again I didn’t know anything about the Benoit tragedy, it was a terrible coincidence that I never saw coming.

I hope this puts an end to this speculation that someone knew about the tragedy before it was discovered. It was just a rumor that I had heard about from other people online who were speculating what the family emergency Chris was attending to. I made a big mistake by posting this comment on his page, since all we had were what we thought was going on and nothing about what actually was going on yet, and sadly what happened turned out to be my speculation at the time. I assumed wiki would edit out my information, which they did, so thats why I didn’t go back to edit it out myself.

I know I keep repeating it but I feel terrible about the mainstream coverage this has received, since it was only a huge coincidence and a terrible event that should of never happened. I am not sure how to react, as hearing about my message becoming a huge part of the Benoit slayings made me feel terrible as everyone believes that it is connected to the tragedy, but it was just an awful coincidence. That is all I have to say, I will never post anything here again unless it is pure fact, no spam nothing like that. Thank you, and let this end this chapter of the Benoit story, and hopefully one day we will find out why this tragedy ever actually happened.

This is Just Weird. It will also be interesting to see what ramifications this has on Wikipedia itself. To whit: “I just posted something that was at that time a piece of wrong unsourced information that is typical on wikipedia, as it is done all the time.”

A couple of years ago, we pointed out that newspaper covermounts were shaping up as a huge threat to the music (and video) industry hegemonies (our word of the week, kiddies). Look and learn, children: today we read that Prince has done a deal to give away his new album with a future issue of the Mail on Sunday.

Coming as this does the same week that beleaguered retailer HMV announced a 73 percent drop in profits, the industry has responded in the only way it knows how, when faced with a challenge from the ‘talent’: with kicking, biting and scratching. The chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, Paul Quirk, is quoted in The Guardian:

It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career [...] It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

[...] The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.

Ooo, get her. Like, after his long fight with the labels, here at the start of the 21st century, the Purple God really cares whether his music is on shelves, as long as his fans can buy it (and of course turn up to his gigs at The O2 later this year).

While that’s hardly a revelation in itself, danah boyd’s latest essay gets down and dirty with the manner in which the FaceBook/Myspace communities reflect or present (American) class divisions… boyd goes to pains to point out that this is subjective research, but it’s provocative reading independent of any cold hard facts… do you know your “subaltern” from your “hegemonic” teens?

Her summary thoughts:

It breaks my heart to watch a class divide play out in the technology. I shouldn’t be surprised — when orkut grew popular in India, the caste system was formalized within the system by the users. But there’s something so strange about watching a generation splice themselves in two based on class divisions or lifestyles or whatever you want to call these socio-structural divisions.

We challenge you to slip some of this concern into your next social media client presentation, you FaceBook-fetishising media hegemonists, you. At least, please, keep it in mind when you have client money to throw at online communities. There’s an opportunity here to make the world a little less closed for a whole generation of socially-excluded digital natives. If you aren’t part of the solution…

An installation of new works by Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillips with original works by James Cauty and DFace at the Leonard Street Gallery, E2. Go See.

A lovely mesh of old and new(ish) tech. Via Chromaniac.

A brief (highly subjective) list of internet milestones:

• 1980s: newsgroups and email & packet-switched internetworking
• 1990s: multi-user virtuality, streaming media, dotcom 1.0
• 2000s: people (finally) embracing social media

Anyway, you get the idea. Fast forward through Web 2.0 to get to 2007, and this — Microsoft’s PhotoSynth.

A bit of perspective: when I studied computational approaches to vision in the 80s, ’state-of-the-art’ meant software that could get a cruise missile somewhere near Red Square, given a decent topographic map. PhotoSynth can build 3D models of Red Square (or anywhere else on the planet) from snapshots on Flickr, aggregate and process tags & other metadata to build a semantic web describing what’s there, then navigate the whole kaboodle in real time on any recentish networked PC. Google Earth: roll over and play dead. At least for the next few weeks, Microsoft owns the coolest tech on the block, bar none: some important part of the future looks like this. The original post and other options for viewing are here: just watch the video all the way through. You can see what the BBC have been doing with this tech over at their How We Built Britain site.

Paranthetically, note the presence of the 90’s poster child of infinite zoom — a Mandelbrot set — at the top-left of the SeaDragon demo image used in the video. Does the demo go anywhere near it? No way. In 2007 we no longer use trippy fractals to show off the bewildering wonderfulness of our tech. Instead, we are taken on a zoom into a car ad to show how it’s possible to embed tech specs in a teeny corner of the image without pop-ups. How times change. Wasn’t there a moment there when we were dreaming of more than a better car ad? Maybe not at Microsoft. Sigh.

[via Tim, who sent me a link to the early Java proof-of-concept last year, and a link to this video yesterday]

An eagle-eyed observer on the iDC mailing list (who admittedly found this news on Slashdot) recently noted that Facebook applications — those silly little ‘hug me/kiss me/make love to me now, right here, coz honey we’re the last two people on earth and ain’t neither one of us gonna see that sunrise tomorrow’ plugins — are maybe not quite as innocent as they seem. The clue is tucked away in the Facebook Platform Application Terms of Use. Section (II) is in essence a grant of all — repeat all (with the exception of your real-world contact details) — the data Facebook stores about you, to any application you choose to enable.

So: in return for the ability to ’spank’ your buddies on Facebook (yee-hah!), application creators get to know all manner of succulent facts about your online existence — how often you log in, who your friends are, which groups you’ve joined… and much more. Think about it.

There is — of course — no such thing as a free service. Facebook (I hear) has ads on most pages. I don’t see ‘em because I have decent ad filters. But you can bet those ads are tailored to your profile as Facebook’s data-miners see it. Maybe you’ve balanced that value exchange mentally, and decided that for you the fun of Facebook is worth a few dodgy banners. But we don’t think we’re the only ones who object to the same amount of personal information going to the creators of teeny applications which only briefly amuse. And we’re betting that many of those apps only exist to suck up and sell on all that lovely personal data.

Who’s feeling well and truly ’spanked’ now?

Of course, you can just refuse application requests. That’s no big deal. But why don’t we have some fun with this? We wouldn’t be the first to try and subvert the engines of social media capitalism. Take the long-established Google Will Eat Itself project, for example:

We generate money by serving Google text advertisements on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end “we” own it!

By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.

After this process we hand over the common ownership of “our” Google Shares to the GTTP Ltd. [Google To The People Public Company] which distributes them back to the users (clickers) / public.

Likewise the hypothetical (?) Amazon Noir, which uses a crafty bot to steal digital copies of books from the retailer:

The bot will outwit Amazon’s “search inside the book” system, making up to 5,000 inquiries per book and assembling the individual parts afterwards to compile entire books. This would allow “users to ‘legally’ copy and redistribute copyright books from amazon.com.”

Crafty.

So why not spank back on Facebook? We’re thinking of building a Facebook app to do just that. Enable it, and it will slurp up all your Facebook data, same as all the others apps. The difference would be that it will be upfront about its function — only people who want to donate their data to our database need install the thing in the first place. Then, we end up with a huge pool of valuable user data — and some good free press. We go out and sell that data: to marketeers, researchers, whoever pays the highest price. And everyone who contributed gets a proportional share of the profits (if any). Ok, no-one will get rich, but it will raise awareness, be an interesting bit of hacking and maybe a bit of a laugh. Brothers and sisters, we are the means of production. Let it begin.

A friend of ours has just added a plug-in to his Facebook profile, described thusly:

Trakzor is a new facebook tool that helps people see who is checking them and their friends out. Click above to see who is viewing me on facebook, who I’m viewing, and from there…get Trakzor to see who is viewing YOU.

Whilst offices across the country stutter to a halt, that’s what are all these folk on Facebook are actually doing. They’re looking at you looking at them looking at everyone else. All bloody day. Now this is what the boys over at Gaydar have been doing for years but — in contrast — they don’t so much observe as (ahem) seal the deal.

All of this really amounts to everyone sticking a great big ‘I exist’ sign on their heads — we admit it, we’re there too (who isn’t?). In the hyper-connected now, is all we need to show that we really really matter a thriving Facebook profile and a bubbling-over Twitter feed?

BigShinyThing now has a group on Facebook — if you can’t beat, join (etc). Come on over for a chat.

People laughed when we reported on that anecdote a while back that Google was developing an artificial intelligence. Well — it doesn’t seem so ludicrous now does it? This nice post points out exactly what Google knows about us at any one time. And it’s A LOT.

Bits that we’ve hacked out of the post:

With its acquisition of Feedburner, Google now controls the leading company for managing RSS feeds. Thus, Google knows everything about my readers – how many of them there are, where they come from, and how they access my content. How might Google use this information? Targeting ads in my feeds based on context or geography sounds like a start, but using cookies the company could also theoretically collect data on my readers and better tailor ads to them throughout Google’s product line.

[...]

With an estimated 30% market share (based on bloggers, many of whom use Google-owned Blogger, reporting statistics from the now Google-owned Feedburner!), Google Reader is one of the most popular tools for aggregating RSS feeds. By knowing the blogs and news sites I read, Google can tailor ads to my preferences. Additionally, Google could use this data to customize my search results by favoring sites similar to those to which I subscribe.

[...]

Through Gmail and Gchat, Google knows everyone I contact. While you can turn a chat session “off the record,” Gmail’s 2.859GB (and counting!) of storage provides enough space so most people never need to delete a message. Thus, Google has both a history of all of my emails and chats, and can also make inferences about my strongest connections are based on how frequently I correspond with them

[...]

While Google’s photo sharing application Picasa is far from a market leader, with its purchase of YouTube and its homegrown Google Video product, Google is the undisputed dominant player in online video. Thus, Google knows not only what I search for, but what I produce.

(Around here is where it gets scary … )

Hopefully you’re not so unlucky to be one of the guys photographed leaving the strip club or adult book store in the new Google Street View feature, but there is a good chance your house or workplace can be seen via satellite in Google Maps. Additionally, Google Maps competes with MapQuest, Yahoo, and a host of others for providing driving directions, so they have a good idea of the places you frequent.

[...]

While Google is still in the early stages of building out its suite of Office-like applications, their ambitions have become fairly clear. With Docs & Spreadsheets, an upcoming PowerPoint competitor, and partnerships with the likes of Intuit and Salesforce.com, Google is spreading its tentacles far and wide in the business applications space, gaining knowledge into what you do, your finances, and who your contacts are.

With thanks to Adam Ostrow, whose post “MySoul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns” this is based on.

A friend of ours has died and we are very sad. He introduced us to the work of Charles Bukowski (amongst other counter-cultural dons) and it is for this reason that we are posting this poem today. For Steven.

Are You Drinking?

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts.”
“are you drinking?” he will ask.
“are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?”
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
“taking off?” asks the motel
clerk.
“yes, it’s boring,”
I tell him.
“If you think it’s boring
out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be
back here.”
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it’s just
my cat
this
time.

So that’s what £400k spent on Wolff Olins’s endless meetings and stale Pret sarnies bought us. Good to see that some of the money ‘freed-up’ by the arts funding cuts we mentioned earlier has been spent so wisely.

But, enough enough already with the sarcasm. More constructive critics might argue that the desire for “reaching out and engaging young people” (presumably that’s a reference to the ‘funky’ shapes and colours, a la Thompson Twins 7-inch sleeves circa 1982) could have been more usefully satisfied by — for example — actually reaching out and engaging with them. London has a unique street-art culture, and that 400k could surely have funded some ongoing recognition of and support for the nascent design talent on the streets of East London — which might have generated some real interest in the design aspects of the Olympics amongst young people. And just maybe, a better logo. A sadly missed opportunity.

(BST’s editor points out that it does look just a teeny bit new rave. Maybe. If you squint. Hard. After downing a litre of ‘vodka’ at a mid-week Dalston lock-in.)

Anyways. You know you’re experiencing a post-’that kidney show hoax‘ sign-o-the-times moment when the BBC News blog speculates that the whole thing might be a set-up to get publicity, after which the plan is to replace the controversial identity with one ‘made by the people for the people’.

We believe they really do think that their design rocks. The suspicious absence of ‘approved’ comments on the official london2012 blog posting also suggests that they don’t want anyone cluttering up their special happy place with naysaying negativity. Maybe they need ‘blogging’ explained to them, as well as ‘design’.

Google Maps’ new Street View feature provides a street-level view of buildings, composited from images filmed by camera trucks which have explored and photographed every alley and byway of — for the moment at least — a few major American cities. Street View is an early outrider of a new wave of digital services which take ‘pervasive’ to a new level. Pervasive, or invasive? To Oakland, California resident Mary Kalin-Casey, the sight of her cat Monty peering out her second-story window in the Street View panorama of her apartment block meant that Google had peered a few pixels too far into her private world. According to a New York Times report:

“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”

Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”

“Quickly”, one assumes, as the stopwatch is obviously running out on their 15 minutes of zeitgeisty fame.

Concerns about privacy are understandable — but the real issue here is what happens when this information gets mashed up with the rest of the digitally-tagged world-of-tomorrow-afternoon. Close your curtains, hunker down behind the sofa with your cat and laptop, and stay tuned.