Russell Davies

i enjoyed this last time...

so here are some more links. It's almost like a blog or something. Maybe it'll have to stop being a cyberstation. Best quote all year: "I would rather be confused for ten minutes than bored for five seconds." Jimmy McGovern as reported by Tony Jordan (I think it's in this bit). A passionate amateur beats a bored professional. All of Jeffre's posts are good. So this one is. Computer entertainment. Best of Contagious. (a pdf) The future of urban journalism. Howies Hand Me Downs. Dark Skies Parks in Scotland. Why do anything else? Less cowbell, more Collings. Printable paper. A good hat. Learn a Christmassy tune. Physics Invaders. (Thanks Boris), A Narrative Map Of London. Predicitions via Stock photography. The joy of the random. Actually, this has always been a Cyber Station.

last polaroid day

New Year's Eve is the last day of polaroid production. I think I'm going to plan on making it a Polaroid Day for me. Just because, you know. And maybe we could make a flickr pool doodah if you fancy dragging that old camera from that bottom drawer in the kitchen and joining in. Then we won't just be getting pissed, we'll be taking part in a worldwide art thingy too.

too linky linky

Some things that might be worth clicking.

PSFK are doing one of their Good Ideas Salon things in London. Mother are up to issue 4 with their Four Feet From A Rat comics. And if they get enough people pledging to buy one they'll make a compilation book. Video worth watching (via Matt and Jerakeen) - 7 minutes from launch to splashdown. A very good game. And the game I've spent most time playing on my touch. Currently in the Internet Cupboard. A crystal chair. The Piano Baschet-Malbos. Beards. Yes. Future Storytelling. Hands playing football. Todd Machover is my new god. You can also hear him talk at the RSA. The other bloke is less god-like. "This is the business we've chosen". Landing a 747. Visual Thinking Reading List. Hear Sir Ken live. Elected to Division One 1892. A project for after Christmas. Runs on a cup of tea. The best Christmas song. And a wish for the New Year - may you be Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. 

december 16th

2007

2006

2005.

I spend a lot of time in cafes.

sci-fi visions from slough

Arthur and I were watching Thunderbirds the other day. It was Path Of Destruction which features the marvelous Crab Logger (above). And I was struck how fabulously weathered and patina-ed it is. And then, having just read this fantastic thing about the respective aesthetics of Star Wars and 2001 it made me wonder whether the design of Gerry Anderson's vehicles had influenced George Lucas at all.

A bit of googling brings me to this page which says that both 2001 and Star Wars used techniques developed for Sting Ray, Thunderbirds etc and which talks about designer/special effects chap Brian Johnson, who worked on Thunderbirds, Space 1999, Alien and The Empire Strikes Back. And contains the assertion that the Star Wars designers were told to 'make it look as good as Space 1999'. It makes you realise how influential Anderson's productions were, and how many of our visions of the future were constructed or conceived in the English suburbs.

Moongadget also talks about Derek Meddings; who took his Gerry Anderson experience and applied it to tons of movies - including many of the most visually imaginative Bonds. Having been to this event with Matt, the connections between the lairs Ken Adam designed for villains and the locations Gerry Anderson puts his various goodies and baddies in became apparent. I'm not sure who influenced who, but maybe there was some sort of scenius thing going on the in the world of British effects and design.

It also struck me just how wealthy the Tracy family must be to fund all this stuff privately. They didn't just have a private island, they had a space programme. The latest Forbes Fictional Rich List puts Scrooge McDuck at Number One. Fair enough. But Jeff Tracy has got to be at least as wealthy as Tony Stark at Number 10.

I was also reminded how the denuded roads and public spaces of the Anderson era seems to prefigure so many scifi visions. He was probably doing it for practical reasons, but there's a bleakness/blankness that seems to echo through the years.

Or something. Anyway.

welcome to my cyberstation

I dug this out of storage the other day.

Did anyone really ever have a 'cyberstation'? I remembered almost everything else in here, but not that. More here.

lyddle end hiatus

I put another bunch of Lyddle End properties in the post a few days ago. There are about 30 out in the world now. But I think, with the analogue friction of the Christmas season now in full effect, I might stop sending stuff until the New Year. The Post Office queues are too depressing. (Except for a couple of hand deliveries I still need to do.)

So if you've not had one yet, don't fret. You could go and get your own, let me know and I'll send you some money. Or you could wait until January. And if you need an extension on the deadline that's fine.

Above is Arthur's prototype. I guess genetic manipulation is going to take a big leap forward.

cage and aviary

Stack is a brilliant sounding thing - a site/service that curates magazines for you. They sell all sorts of interesting and obscure independent titles and you can sign up for a subscription where they'll send you a title every month. This is the sort of media curation all the pundits were predicting yonks ago but which only seems to be starting to emerge now. Lovely stuff. And it'll make a good Christmas gift for that hard-to-buy-for Art Director in your life.

the tiresome pursuit of excellence

I'm going to miss Woolies. There was always one by the seaside. And you could always get dry socks if your child ran into the sea without warning. And you could get mugs there. And those things you attach to your keys to help you not lose them. And toys. And sweets. And kettles.

And even if someone buys them it won't be the same. Because they'll bring in missions and purpose and focus and rigour and we'll be stuck with the bland results of the pursuit of excellence. There'll be no room for the shambolic, miscellaneous and messy, for employees who are earning a living, not living the dream. I'm as guilty as the next person in moaning about queues and lack of stock and all the stuff that ruins shopping, but there should be room for something unkempt and rubbish in our lives too. I know that's not much of a selling point, but I'm going to miss Woolies.

asymmetric politeness

I've been enjoying the flurry of discussion about Asymmetrical Follow sparked by this post from James Governor. I'm not really qualified to debate the ideas involved though it did make me suspect that every tool, even/especially those designed for intimacy will at some point be used for broadcast. And that every tool even/especially those designed for broadcast will at some point be used for intimacy.

But JP Rangaswami's splendid addition to the conversation brought politeness into the mix and that reminded me of Kate Fox's Watching The English and ideas of negative and positive politeness.

As I remember it, in a Positive Politeness culture (such as North America) your primary social responsibility is warmth and openness - making sure the other guy is OK/good. Whereas in a Negative Politeness culture (such as the UK or Japan) your primary social responsibility is to respect the other guy's privacy - not to intrude. Thus the ideal newspaper buying experience in Portland, Oregon involves a ten-minute conversation and the ideal newspaper buying experience in London, England involves no words and, ideally, no eye contact. (I speak from positive experience in both places.)

There's a more informed discussion of this idea here (the perspective of a Briton in America) and there's a Wikipedia entry on Politeness Theory here.

Now obviously these are sweeping generalisations and I'm sure proper Anthropologists, Sociologists and Readers In Rudeness would shudder at my crass assumptions but they seemed true enough to me to be useful when negotiating a trans-Atlantic life for a few years.

So it seems like it might be useful to think about this stuff when thinking about Social Networks too. Because not only are we trying to work out what's polite on IM versus Twitter but we're doing it with a bunch of people who have different assumptions about what's polite in the real world. And for all of our worldliness and globalism, miscommunication, mistakes, sleights and unintentional rudenesses happen every day and every time different cultures meet. And don't get me started on the Finns.

So, when we wonder whether silence is acceptable on IM, or whether asymmetrical follow is joyous or vulgar, it's as well to remember that there's no global consensus on these things in ancient channels like regular conversation. And that until the UN Working Group on International Loveliness reports there probably won't be. In everyday practise most people I know seem to have settled on a sort of mid-Atlantic compromise with the frequent use of no-longer-really-ironic Yays! And internet slang works to paper over some of these cracks by creating another culture/place you can be from. But as these social technologies become more evenly distributed around the world, I suspect frequent use of LOL won't (dread word) 'scale' to the planet. And I can't think what a global equivalent of 'mid-Atlantic' might be, a Lagrange point maybe.

Or something. Anyway. Sorry. (Negative politeness)

(PS - which has just made me realise. If you were going to be create a killer social application in the UK, the Social Object you'd build it around would be The Apology. Anyway. Again. Sorry.)