Aram Squalls

God's-eye astigmatism in Google Maps

I was cruising Google Maps this morning, looking at the building in Brooklyn where I grew up, and noticed an interesting anomaly: the satellite view of my old building and the adjacent one are taken from different angles, producing a kind of Escherian paradox that violates the basic tenets of photographic perspective.

Of course, on a rational level I know that the maps data are assembled from millions of individual pics, and that although the seams are "invisible," the algorithm's not (yet) smart enough to account for the distortions and contradictions between its constituent elements.

But on an experiential and emotional level, I personally find the image very jarring. Google Maps and the like give us the false promise of a God's-eye view, a vantage point far above the more pedestrian "street view." As any student of art learns, the perspective an image offers us tells us something about ourselves, or about the positions we're supposed to inhabit. I think the reason so many of us like to look at our childhood homes on Google Maps is to gain the distance, detachment, and illusion of total understanding that the God's-eye view offers; it presents a welcome counterpoint to the confusing, subjective and incomplete memories we keep from our earlier years, and allows us to distance ourselves from the power of those memories.

I'm pretty sure that's why I find this image so unnerving; it punctured my sense of remove, and reminded me that I'm not God -- in fact, I'm not even that far from the location where my childhood took place (about a mile and a half, as the crow flies). The good news is, the view from my new apartment offers a more consistent and convincing angel's-eye view (32nd floor -- not quite God height, but pretty darn high), and I can actually see the old place from my living room window.

Moderately funny "Internet party" video ably anthropomorphizes foibles of Web 2.0 sites

Back when I was a dot-com guru-in-training a little over a decade ago, one of the analysts at my consultancy sent around an email to the entire office describing her vision of the Internet: it wasn't an information super-highway, or the world's largest library, or a virtual shopping mall -- it was a giant party, and when you walked in, what you needed most was someone to play host, introducing you to the people you'd most like to meet. That was the gist of it, anyway.

The analyst was promptly laughed out of her job, and five years later, veterans of the early days would still derisively reference the infamous "Internet party" email, in their best "gee whiz" voices. The tacit message was that anyone naive enough to think of the web as something as frivolous as a party (as opposed to a more functional metaphor) lacked the skepticism, savvy and intellectual rigor to offer valuable advice to our clientele. A party, indeed -- what was this, 1995?!?

Well, in the days of 4chan and lolcats, the metaphor seems a bit more apt. In fact, the enterprising yucksters at Cracked.com have put together a pretty funny little video in which a bunch of Web 2.0 sites stage an "intervention" party for MySpace, which doesn't realize it's become obsolete. Worth a viewing, if you follow this stuff at all -- if nothing else, I think it aptly catches the mood of contemporary social network migrants, weary of jumping from roost to roost (or maybe I'm just projecting -- I've got to move into a new apartment on Friday).

UPDATE: The video was set to play instantly when the page loaded, and I don't want to inflict that on my readers, so if you'd like to see it, the link is HERE.

LiveNation banner spelling boo boo

One of my favorite pastimes these days is using my cameraphone to snap pictures of poorly worded, poorly spelled, and otherwise absurd signs, then post them to a Flickr set.

I guess my inner copy editor is primed, because I caught a funny boo boo on a banner ad at a major print periodical's web site today (I won't say which one). LiveNation is running ads for a "Jakon Dylan"
show; I guess being the largest concert promoter in the world, with a $1.2 billion market cap, means you can afford to piss off rock stars by misspelling their names (and probably undermining ticket sales).

lolz vs. lulz: regionalism in emergent online culture

Instead of grading papers, I've been procrastinating some more at my favorite time-suck site, Google Trends.

As usual, a little casual searching turned up something interesting: "global village" rhetoric aside, there seems to be some regionalism in the growth of emerging online subcultures. Specifically, I searched for variant spellings related to the "lulz" phenomenon.

Turns out that the more popular "lulz" spelling variant holds exclusive dominance in the Midwest, Southeast and Northwest states such as Michigan, Washington and Georgia. The "lolz" variant has more traction in the Northeast and rural/suburban California, gaining parity with "lulz" in New York City (w00t!). Strangely, urban California is just as lulz-centric as the Midwest and Southeast.

Not sure what this means. Broadly, of course, spelling variants are kind of a marker for information flows; people who game, chat and email with each other, and who read and watch and play the same mass media, are more likely to adopt similar spelling habits for an emerging lexicon.

It might be interesting to correlate these trends with other, macrosocial trends (voting habits? eating habits?)

Google trends picks clear winner in Dem race

If you believe that the Google search habits of a couple hundred million Americans indicate the nation's relative interests and preferences (there are good arguments for and against this premise), you may be interested to know that Obama's been consistently more sought-after than Clinton.

Here's a chart of Google searches on the two terms over the past year (bear in mind that "clinton" covers both the nominee and the former president, while "obama" can't mean much else than, well, Obama.)

Incidentally, they both beat McCain.

The man who would have been president

Al Gore was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. I have to say, even 8 years after the Great Debacle, I'm still weeping. Somewhere less than a Planck's-length away, there's a parallel universe where he's been in office for two terms, and I'll bet everyone there is having a much better time.

At any rate, I thought it was interesting that, apropros of a question regarding environmental policy and the climate crisis, Gore invoked Internet regulatory policy (such as 'net neutrality and open standards, though he didn't use the terms) as fundamental to the democratic process, and therefore as imperative tools in combating the global crisis. Wish I had a direct quote, but NPR doesn't post transcripts for some reason.

I know, it's wonky, but you've got to love a guy who can see effective communications policy as a vital element of human survival. Also, just for the record, he was warm, thoughtful and well-spoken. When he slipped into a Southern-y drawl while discussing his dad, it seemed like a genuinely unconscious shift, not the kind of hamfisted put-on we're used to. I dunno, maybe it's for the best he's been able to speak honestly from the sidelines, rather than being shackled to a party line in the White House.

Well worth a listen. Here's the link.

Getting inside a composer's brain

One of my arguments about configurability is that it exposes cognitive processes that were once private and internal into the harsh (and/or nurturing) light of public scrutiny. Back in ye olden times, a composer would hear a bunch of influences, integrate and assemble those influences inside his skull, and expose us to the results. Now, we can listen live as this process happens, and even watch a DJ drag and drop samples and effects into Ableton Live.

The industrial side of the equation has a similar story arc. Once upon a time, we could buy a CD or vinyl record, and imagine what each of the parts sounded like on their own (apparently, this is part of the reason nonmusicians like to smoke pot and listen to music -- it allows them to hear the parts separately the way musicians do). Nowadays, musicians will often post the isolated component tracks (e.g. vocals, drums, guitar) to the internet, and invite fans to remix them (as Radiohead did recently).

Well, my crazy composer friend Scott Pinkmountain has taken things to the proverbial next level. He's a music analyst over at Pandora, and he's just produced a fascinating podcast episode for the site where he narrates his compositional decisions while he pulls the tracks of a song apart and reassembles them.

It's really entertaining stuff. Give it a listen.

Click "forward" to show the world you're a n00b

One of the nice things about having worked in the media/tech industry for so long is that I know a lot of interesting people who have done a lot of interesting things. One of the interesting things I often do with these interesting people is get together and bemoan the fact that the whole world isn't as "media literate" as we are, and discuss ways in which we can remedy the problem/exploit the remedy.

Therefore, it's been absolutely incredible to me what a large percentage of my Facebook friends who rank among the media- and techno-elite (including CEOs, heads of major trade organizations, tech gurus for international conglomerates, etc.) fall for stupid gags, especially the funwall rich media messages that say "Click Forward to See What Happen" [sic] or some variant thereof. Many of these folks are 40+, making me wonder whether subtle generational digital divides persist despite professional expertise.

Just for the record, guys:

NOTHING HAPPENS WHEN YOU CLICK FORWARD!

There, I've said it. Now stop forwarding me all that crap. You're only polluting an otherwise surprisingly functional communications platform.

Google bed-flipping device offers "coercive" wake-up techniques

Those jokers over at Google are advertising a new calendar-based "wake-up kit" that includes a bucket of water and a bed-flipping device. Pretty lame as an April Fool's joke, but it does accurately reflect Google's ambition to expand beyond the desktop...

The "wake up" notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your sleeping quarters.

Last in the Union, first to Web 2.0

My friend Arnie, with the assistance of the state of Hawaii, just launched two sites pegged to the fiftieth state's 50th anniversary: a general-purpose site called StatehoodHawaii.org, and a Web 2.0 social-networky site called fifdififdi.com (think phonetically).

The sites are pretty cool. Lots of archival photo/video (much of it licensed under Creative Commons 3.0), plus tons of Web 2.0 features -- geotagging, social networking, blogs and so forth. Nice work, man. Wish I was Hawaiian.