Aram Squalls

So long, Photoshop. You'll be remembered quaintly.

This is so staggeringly simple and such a deft piece of complex engineering, I am blown away. A new program called PhotoSketch turns simple line drawings into photocollages using image search, mapping, cutting, pasting and blending algorithms. In other words, you draw a doodle, and the program turns it into a photorealistic image.

I can easily imagine the day when this functionality is available for audio and video. Without advanced technical expertise, people will be able to create their own films, games, and songs simply by sketching their favorite actors, locales and musicians into the frame. Of course, the Andrew Keens of the world will decry it as yet another victory for mediocrity over greatness. I prefer to think of it as yet another victory for free expression over cultural exclusivity.

Can't wait to play with it.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace, revised

I'm almost done with the syllabus I blogged a few weeks back. But I still need some help from all you smart folks out there. Please take a look, and let me know what I'm missing. Feel free to borrow, as well. Remember, this is for Masters students in Media, Culture and Communication.

UPDATE: Here's the final revision going into the first class:

Topics in Digital Media:

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace

 

Dr. Aram Sinnreich

Description

 

Today, for the first time in history, computer-mediated culture has become mainstream for a majority of individuals in technologically developed societies. From email to texting, from online gaming to online banking, from YouTube to Hulu, from DoS attacks to Second Life sit-ins, nearly every traditional aspect of our lives has found a new expression in its digital proxy.

 

In order to understand the cultural, social, political and economic consequences of this development, we must look to the origins of today’s cyberculture, in the futuristic visions (both dystopian and utopian) that shaped the development of today’s networked technologies. We will trace the genealogy of these visions, as they developed in tandem with the growing digital communications infrastructure over the past three quarters of a century, and evolved into new forms that even the most forward-thinking of visionaries could not have predicted. Ultimately, one can argue that the Internet has both exceeded and fallen short of the hype that surrounded its birth and development, and, by comparing the myth to the reality, we may better understand what aspects of the human condition are likely to persist regardless of technological development.

 

Class will be conducted as a seminar. Students will be responsible for leading discussions on the readings, and are encouraged to critically engage the readings and class conversations.

Schedule

9/9: Introduction

 

9/16: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
  
  AND 2 OF THE FOLLOWING:
  
  
• Borges, J. L. (1941). The library of Babel.
• Rifkin, J. (1995). A view of the future. Utne Reader.
• Slouka, M. (1996). Reality is death. (from War of the Worlds)
• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/23: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Dibbell, J. (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Pendragon, H. (2008) Griefers: Why Dibbell’s Wired Article Was 1-Sided.

 

OR

 

• Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

 

9/30: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Wu, T. (2005). Network neutrality, broadband discrimination.

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Code v2 (Basic Books, 2006)

 

10/7: Freedom to Hack

GUEST: Karl Fogel, founder, questioncopyright.org

 

• Christopher Kelty (2005), Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
• NY Times (1995), A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)
• Stallman, R. GNU manifesto

 

OR

 

• Doug Thomas, Hacker Culture (U. Minn Press, 2002)
  
  

10/14: dot-com Fantasies

GUEST: Gene DeRose, CEO, HouseParty, former CEO, Jupiter Research

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• CNET, Top 10 dot-com flops

 

OR

 

• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Vintage Books, 1996)

 

10/21: Web 2.0

 

• Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired.
• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0?
• Schiff, S. (2006). Know it all. The New Yorker.
• boyd, d. (2007). Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

 

10/28: Remix/Configurable Culture

• Aram Sinnreich, Mashed Up (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

OR

 

• Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture (NYU Press, 2006)

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Remix (Penguin, 2008)

 

11/4: The Cloud

 

• Downes, S. The Cloud and Collaboration
• Zittrain, J. Lost in the Cloud
• Golden, B. Clueless on the Charles: How Zittrain’s Cloud Missive Got it Wrong
• Doctorow, C. Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining
  
  

OPTIONAL:

 

• Google Blog, Introducing the Chrome OS
• Chappell, Windows Azure Whitepaper

 

11/11: Surveillance, Sensors and Semantics

 

• Brin, D. (1998). The transparent society.
• Berners-Lee, et al. (2001). The Semantic Web.
• Dodson, S. (2008). The Net Shapes Up to Get Physical.
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/18: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Dennis Crowley, founder, Dodgeball.com

 

• Doctorow, C. (2004) Anda’s Game
• NY Times (2004). Quick, After Him, Pacman Went Thataway
• Laura Forlano (2010). WiFi Geographies: When Code Meets Place
• Area/Code, Big Games Manifesto (1 page)
• Patti Maes, The Sixth Sense (Video)

 

 

11/25: MOVIE/FIELD TRIP

 

12/2: Presentations

 

12/9: Presentations

 

FINAL PAPER DUE: 12/16

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace

I'm currently putting together the syllabus for my NYU Masters course this Fall, entitled "Topics in Digital Media: Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace." Usually when I teach a class like this, I tell a story on a timeline, painting cyberculture as an evolving entity. This time, however, I'm thinking about it in terms of subject areas, in which each week traces the past, present and future of a given meme or concept. My tentative list of 10 concepts/subject areas is as follows:

1: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud
2: The Metaverse
3: Hackers and Gamers
4: OSS/FS/CC
5: dot-com Fantasies
6: Web 2.0
7: Remix/Configurable Culture
8: The Cloud
9: Surveillance, Sensors and Robots
10: Adventures in MeatSpace

I'd love any and all informed feedback on either (a) subjects I need to add, delete or merge, and (b) vital readings/viewings/playings for a given subject. Email or blog comments will do. Thanks!

Who says government monopolies can't innovate? USPS puts AR to good use

I love, love, love this augmented reality application by the US Postal Service, for its combination of high-tech geekiness and good, old-fashioned functionality. Want to know which package size is appropriate for the item you're shipping? Hold it up to your webcam, and see how virtual boxes fit around it.

 

(Seen on Adverblog)

A quick and easy guide to Iranian twitter spoofing

For the past week or so, many supporters of e-speech and civil liberties around the globe have been spoofing their Twitter accounts to make it harder for the Iranian government to police and censor tweeting from within their own country. As any reader of this blog knows, Twitter and YouTube have been vital to the organization, amplification and dissemination of Iranian protest movements in the wake of last week's contested elections.

(Incidentally, this strategy has its down side: it makes it more difficult for casual observers -- and the mainstream media -- to ascertain that a given source of information is actually an eyewitness, rather than an external spreader of disinformation. You need to decide for yourself whether this is a worthwhile tradeoff; I think it is.)

My friend [redacted] sent me this email outlining the latest, greatest ways in which you can do your part for free speech and protected dissent, if you so choose:

Are you worried about what is happening in Iran? Are you on Twitter? Read below for some things you can do to assist demonstrators in Iran. If you are not on Twitter, you can still help: skip to the bottom of this email for instructions on emailing these instructions to others.

What can you do on Twitter to help demonstrators in Iran?

Security forces are reportedly hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. If you are on Twitter, you can set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3:30 and this will add more noise to the system and make it harder to conduct these kinds of searches.

Three basic steps you can take to make this tactic even more effective:

1) If you are not a Persian/Farsi speaker (or writer), find some random Persian/Farsi text and paste it into your Tweets. The Advanced Search feature in Twitter contains a search by language feature and the Iranian security forces may start to refine their searches to only look for Persian/Farsi Tweets in Tehran.

2) Use the tags #Tehran and #IranElection in your Tweets. Again, Iranian security forces may attempt to refine their searches using these terms.

3) Tweet early, Tweet often: This tactic will work better the more you Tweet. Set a reminder in your calendar, tie a string around your finger, do something to remind yourself to Tweet as much as possible.

Some ideas for "advanced" steps:

1) Use GoogleMaps (or an Iranian gazetteer like this: http://www.fallingrain.com/world/IR/) to find locations all over Iran and randomly reset your location as often as possible.

2) Plot imaginary trip through Iran and change your location using this method.

3) Alternate between the two previous techniques--try and randomize your traffic as much as possible.

France crushes online innovation and dissent with a silicon fist

Well, it appears that Free France has finally given in to the forces of totalitarianism.

Today, the country passed the dreaded "HADOPI" bill, which many American news outlets are calling a "three strikes" law. Here's how it works: if you're accused of copyright infringement by a rights holder, you receive an email with your IP address in it. If you are still suspected of infringement, you receive a certified letter telling you you're in big trouble. If you make the mistake of being suspected of infringement a third time, you'll lose your Internet connection for up to a year.

And there's no right to judicial appeal.

Clearly, there are a thousand problems with this: IP addresses can be spoofed or piggybacked, allegations don't prove guilt, many online uses of copyrighted content fall into exempt categories such as fair use, new business models are built on the innovative (re)use of copyrighted material, political dissent is built on the innovative (re)use of copyrighted material, ... oh, and whatever happened to privacy?

Kicking someone off the Internet is not the same as telling the kids "no TV for a week." We are shifting an ever greater number of essential social functions online, from access to government bureacracy to vital business and personal communications to consumer research to banking to emergency and disaster warnings. The net disenfranchisement (so to speak) amounts to something more like losing your voting rights or your passport.

Fortunately, we don't have any laws like this currently on the docket in the U.S; unfortunately, the "market" is preempting the need for such anger-provoking action on the part of our elected representatives. Already, two of the four major ISPs have agreed to "voluntarily" adopt a 3-strikes rule against their own customers. They brokered the deal with the RIAA back in December 2008 -- a bitter pill dipped in the carob candy shell of a pledge by the RIAA to stop suing file sharers. Too bad they have already broken that part of the bargain.

At least Jacques Attali, France's greatest philosopher of music, technology and culture, has come out against HADOPI:

Jacques Attali tacle Hadopi
by iPolTV

Previously:

• French Parliament nixes awful IP law
• e-Speech: My Truthdig article about free expression in the digital age

Hearing the world through rose-colored earphones

These days, I'm loving this little iPhone app called RjDj. It takes the audio from your earphone mic, routs it through a bunch of DSPs (sonic warping technologies), and feeds them back into your earphones in real time. I love to sit on the bus or the subway, and instead of listening to music, just listen to the sounds around me remixed, reverbed and reconfigured.

As the RjDj site explains, in less than subtle fashion:

The listening experience of RjDj is similar to the effects of drugs. Drugs affect our sensory perception, so does RjDj. RjDj is a digital drug which causes mind twisting hearing sensation.

Ok, so the same could be said about music, but still, I appreciate the sentiment.

Take our Online Video Advertising Survey, win an iPod

My consulting firm, Radar Research, is doing a new project on Online Video Advertising -- trying to figure out which business models, price points, feature sets, and publishers are best suited to this emerging platform. If you're involved in the business, either as an advertiser, a buyer or an agency executive, we'd love your feedback.

The survey's very short, and you could win an iPod Touch. Plus, we'll be publishing the topline findings in an article.

Here's the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Vmt3J9wVh0nwiqTRucgxqg_3d_3d

Configurable building blocks

I love this project by MIT Media Lab grad student David Merrill. They're computerized, self-aware, socially-aware, manipulable blocks. Depending on the software you run through them, they can be an audio sequencer, an interactive storybook, a spreadsheet, or a visual art program.

Can't wait to see what Nintendo does with this technology in 10 years!

(Thanks for the link, Mike)