Blackberry Politics

BlackBerry fuels nasty campaign brush fire is a front page story in today’s Globe and Mail (Campbell Clark, Steven Chase, and Jane Taber, Friday, May 28, 2004, Page A1). This is the second time this meme has surfaced in the Globe – it was embedded in an earlier story by Taber (see below) so I can’t help thinking the Globe was planning this technology angle and waiting for an event hook to get it onto the front page.
That said, it is interesting that BlackBerrys have surfaced as the new technology to watch and that they have become mainstream news. This may be due to the fact the RIM is a Canadian company. It could be that we have a critical mass of people doing instant e-mail. It could be that we are beginning to think of the cultural effects of instant messaging and portable Internet enabled technologies. Elections make great turning points with which to date and explain change.

So powerful is the use of digital technology in the election that single comments can spread like wildfire along broadband lines and satellite signals, from war rooms in Ottawa to campaign buses rolling along distant highways in the Maritimes.The wireless war of 2004 erupted Wednesday night when the NDP Leader went, as political operatives like to say, off message.

Remember Carter and how his election win of 1984 was reported to have been helped by the use of e-mail. Likewise we saw
Howard Dean get attention this year for his web enabled campaign. Technology news and elections make interesting combinations.
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Manovich and Interactivity

On Totalitarian Interactivity is an essay by Lev Manovich that talks about interactivity and interruption.

For the West, interactivity is a perfect vehicle for the ideas of democracy and equality. For the East, it is another form of manipulation, in which the artist uses advanced technology to impose his / her totalitarian will on the people. (On modern artist as a totalitarian ruler see the works of Boris Groys.) Western media artists usually take technology absolutely seriously and despair when it does not work. Post-communist artists, on the other hand, recognize that the nature of technology is that it does not work, will always breakdown, will never work as it is supposed to…

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Computer games, media and interactivity

Computer games, media and interactivity by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen and Jonas Heide Smith is an English translation of a part of their book that appears in the Game Research site.

The beginning is really good raising the question Aarseth asks as to whether interactivity is meaningful any longer. The paper then wanders off into various hot topics like violence and gender. I’m not sure of the coherence, but this is an excerpt.

Wilson: Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactivity

The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events is an online paper by Stephen Wilson that has a nice tour through disciplines discussing interactivity from psychology to anthropology. Wilson tackles interactivity by considering what is non-interactive like a photograph, movie, or book. The difference between interactive and non-interactive has to do with the aesthetic use of choice. Interactive works structure choice into the art. Non-interactive works can be interacted with – but that lies outside the work or author’s control. The other difference is the timing and pace of interactive works. In interactive works timing can be used and they are not linear (typically.)
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System Mimicry

WebSE – System 7.0 – Test Drive a Macintosh… is a site that has a Flash (?) simulation of the Apple Macintosh System 7.0 on an SE. I think we will see more of these as ways of preserving the culture of computing. This project should be expanded to a MAME type project for old operating systems. We build on SWF a simulation engine with which to create interactive simulations of old environments.

(Added on May 27, 2004) Thanks to St?©fan Sinclair, here is another simulation of an old Mac. P.dro Classic emulates not just the screen, but has a mouse that moves on a pad and post-it notes. An interesting idea that isn’t executed completely. I could be wrong, but some parts of the emulation are wrong. It is also marred by an unnecessary folder of low-rez porn. This appears to be more of an exercise in nostalgia than a serious attempt to capture the experience of an early Mac.
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Hackers and Painters

Embracing the Art of Hacking is a review of a book coming out from O’Reilly called Hackers & Painters. (Thanks to Matt Patey for this reference.)
The similarities and differences between art and programming are hopefully worked out beyond the platitude that “programming is an art.” Art is much more than an “art” in the sense of something that can’t be reduced to rules. Just about everything is a small-a art from cooking to dishwashing. To argue that programming is an Art one would have to look at the practices of training, production and consumption. While I doubt the cultures are that similar at the moment, I expect that programming jobs in North America are going to be increasingly in the entertainment area (from games to special effects) and thus programming as a practice will expand our configurations of the arts.

Kings of Infinite Space

kings.jpg Kings of Infinite Space by James Hynes (St. Martins Press, 2004) is a brilliant book that reminds me of that other Texas surreal, Vernon God Little.
Kings takes place in Lamar Texas (Austin?) where Paul, a failed academic, has ended up as a temp in the TxDoGS (Texas Department of General Services) writing an never-ending RFP. The novel is part academic fiction and part science fiction as TxDoGS turns out to be haunted by homeless men downsized over the years who will do work in return for sacrificial offerings. “Are we not men?” is the call of the pale men in frayed shirts with pens in their pockets.
While computers and technology doesn’t feature prominently in the book, one read of it is that it is about the side effects of technology – the outsourcing, the downsizing of services, and the cruel neocon dystopia that wastes lives.
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