loose ends

(from email config app)

I need a better name for the act of sitting around, but online. Couch-potatoing reading your rss. Passively finding things out killing time. And I need to stop doing in it.

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can’t do it face to face
I’m talking to you after it’s too late
From my videotape

No matter what happens now
You shouldn’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.

so a bunch of interesting and noteworthy people have caught on to the bliss of photographing with a 50mm prime lens, and i figure i have to chime in.

i got myself a nikon af 50mm f/1.8 about three months ago and have yet to take it off my camera. it’s the most brilliant and useful piece of glass i can recommend to anyone. and it changes everything.

not sure whether this should impress me anymore.

but on a whim, i gathered my in rainbows download link from my gmail. i then downloaded the 50mb file. and unzipped the mp3s to an SD card. and played them. all from my cellphone, far away from home, without touching a (proper) computer.

it’s the kind of thing i hope becomes less noteworthy.

6am and 15 Step was playing. Good things were to come.

The album feels, more than anything else, complete.

Ten intimate songs that fit together. What critics would call a sophmore effort. Concentrated and elaborated. Many songs were written over the years and have now been tweaked perfect.

15 Step is leagues better than live. Bodysnatchers is blissful rock. Nude is perhaps the most beautiful music ever. All I Need is soft. Faust is a surprise. Reckoner sound like It came from The Eraser. Jigsaws Falling (previously Open Pick) sounds like the crushing of fears. Videotape is a veiled farewell.

It feels like a last album. Sad beautiful and amazing. A perpetual sense of closure all over but I hope it isn’t.

people measure the world in units they understand.
like what movies a person likes.
as advertising opportunities.
who’s friend you are.
what you’re wearing.
in units of market change.
what car you drive.
potential self-leverage.

anything goes, and you do it too.

right now, i miss.

would you be ready to die for your beliefs?

would you be ready to kill for them?

so i was watching the lovely hackers (1995) yesterday. you know, for old times sakes.

and when they’re hacking away in the phone booths at grand central, i found this peculiar shot.

of all the ways it could have been,
from a universe of choices,
from everything of everything,
and everyone.
for all conceivable reasons,
this.

today, i hate:
* nuon (for charging me stupidly and not having canceled my service)
* vodafone (for taking three months to cancel phone)
* binnen buiten beheer (landlord. just retarded liars)
* whoever’s living in my old apartment (for ordering two €300 vacuum cleaners in my name)

yay.

someone, please.
my birthday is almost coming up.

i can’t believe Gondry directed this:

no, really. i can’t believe it.

and that Fincher directed this:

and Lynch (thanks Irene).

such unbelievable crap.

so if you are going to do the wrong thing, at least do it right.

[x] magazines
[x] movie distribution
[x] record industry (bonus)
[x] telephony
[x] television
[  ] airlines
[  ] automobiles
[  ] banking
[  ] books
[  ] mobile telephony

guess where you should invest your time & money?

…a few coffees a day keeps the tooth fairy away.

(where I stick my neck out for the kill)

Perhaps it’s all the sci-fi that I have been reading. Or perhaps the end-year positivity. Or even the fact that I’ve been spending so much time on my own lately. But at any rate, I have been thinking a lot about technology and what the next few years might promise.

I must start off with a thought stolen from Ray Kurzweil, who argues that humans are notoriously bad at projecting the future. In historical analysis, technological change is growing exponentially, which I guess is very counterintuitive for us. But first we should shed the knee-jerk reaction that says technology is a bad thing and that you want a cellphone with fewer features. (But that’s a drop in the ocean.) Human-technological interaction is older than you dare imagine and was already far on it’s way up the logarithmic curve when we invented the wheel. Fire, space stations and walking sticks are all facets of the same inescapable truth: technology, in all its forms, exists because of us, and we stand where we stand because of it. We can escape to nature at any time, but the onslaught of technological change is irreversible.

Back to Kurzweil, we should remember that looking ahead by looking at our immediate past is fallacious. Rather, we have to look ahead by comparing it to all of our history. And our history tells us everything is speeding up. Microprocessor density and bandwidth and information access and computational power and communicational capacities are all going up, up, up. And they’re doing it fast.

It’s foolish to guess exactly where we will be ten years from now, but I dare venture into a few modest assumptions which I would be ready to invest (time/money) in:

* The distinction between online and offline will be the first to fall. The concept of non-online work is already difficult to conceive, and perhaps (the somewhat elusive promise of) 4G and Wi-Max will solve the issue once and for all.

* Matter/places becomes information-rich. Cities pre-tagged for tourists, meta-data rich grocery shelves, intelligent invisible signs tell you where to throw your garbage, restaurant menus and reviews when you approach the places. It gives the concept of contextual information a whole new level of interestingness. (This is why Apple’s recent deal with Starbucks is so much more than meets the eye. It’s a first step.)

* Information capture becomes pervasive. Everything (we want) is saved, captured, logged & organized. Cameras in our clothes, cars, glasses. GPSs weaved into our shirts. Every file you ever work on, with it’s infinite revisions, is saved. Everything is kept (and shared in real-time if you want).

* Information access becomes a continuous process. A few years ago we googled every day, today we google every hour. I google from my cellphone continuously already. Take it from there.

* The ubiquity and richness of interpersonal communication will approach that of real-life, regardless of distance. While prices keep approaching zero, we’ll be able to literally feel and touch each other from anywhere.

* Web services become invisible; and bridge the online/offline gap. Photos transparently go to Flickr (geotagged), spreadsheets coexist automatically on Google documents, your desktop is your desktop anywhere you want.

* Games become unbelievably immersive. HD video-walls, projected 3D sound, true haptics, complete motion detection. The technology is mostly here already, the prices just needs to drop to the hundreds.

* People-oriented tools & services will communicate intelligently. When a Facebook friend changes her phone number, the address book on your mobile phone will update instantly and transparently. You won’t even notice.

* A second revolution in corporate web solutions. Your bank website will be less like Citi.com and more like Wesabe.com. Make is social where relevant, make what matters shared.

* Personal area networks will tie our gadgets together to share status, bandwidth and processing power. Your phone will soon be as fast as the laptop you’re sitting in front. It’s CPU could be very useful.

* Transparency wins. More open profiles, more shared lists and tastes, more real names.

* Information wins. More sources, more writers, more choices. Everyone’s a blogger,

* A generation grown up on the OLPC (and it’s offspring) will start writing software, learn about e-commerce, wanting peripherals, publishing, consuming, hacking. That’s a lot of people.

* Internet starts learning. Kevin Kelly said it well. Like Last.fm is now the largest database of correlation between different artists, based purely on the tracking of anonymous habits, imagine the internet knowing more and more about everything. Including itself. Soon.

This is of course moderate stuff, half of which could be done today if the right people got together. Nonetheless, it’s just the beginning.

take a digital photo because i want to make a point. zoom the photo in to 100%. get down to pixel by pixel representation. all the way but no more.

that’s where my metaphor begins. we’re used to photos at 20%. we’re used to zoomed out pictures. the details surrender and we see bigger shapes, not pixels. photographed things only look good at good at a distance because that’s how our eyes see things.

silver halide or pixels isolated make an incredibly poor representation of things up close. you see the blur and the noise and imperfections and the shakiness. you see the details that your eyes don’t see and that your brain ignores when zoomed out.

and that’s there the metaphor lies. the zoomed out photos are how we see the lives of others, whereas the ones at 100% is how we see our own.

here’s a thought that’s been harassing me lately. the society that is my social circle and friends (and people like us) long ago reached the plateau of not needing more things. you, reading this, can not honestly say that there are things (objects, items, stuff, goods) missing from your daily life without which you can not go on living. you have shelter, food and love. as much of either as you can possibly use. so the discussion about what to do with your money is not, and will probably never be whether you need that new shiny thing you want to buy. no, you don’t need it.

the discussion is whether you want it. between that trip or that phone. between that big teevee or a few pairs of shoes. you don’t need any of it. but you enough of money to spare.

and when choosing between the frivolous; does it really matter? why is one extraneous consumer good less volatile than the next? it’s like we’ve reached an personal economic singularity with no return (except for becoming unemployed, which again, if you’re reading this, won’t last long). so forget guilt and just accept.