Bill O’Reilly Slams PS3 Launch, Gamers, iPods, Digital Tech (not in that order)

BOR.jpgBill O’Reilly Slams PS3 Launch, Gamers, iPods, Digital Tech (not in that order) is a story with partial transcript on a recent O’Reilly (of the “no spin zone”) rant about technology prompted by the PS3.

American society is changing for the worse because of the machines… In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol… now you don’t have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine…

I wonder if TV shows (like the O’Reilly Factor) or books qualify as technologies that are used to flee the real world?
The story is in a blog GamePolitics.com that I just found. Lots of posts on the PS3 launch and related violence.

Don’t Click It: Interaction Research

Don't Click It Logowww.dontclick.it is a site both about research into interaction (and clicking) and an example of how one doesn’t need to click to interact. You navigate the Flash site using gestures, it discusses the question of clicking and alternatives, and it tracks mouse movement.

There is a nice moment when it asks you a quick survey which, of course, I clicked on, at which point it reminds you not to click.

This is thanks to Nick.

Chirag Mehta: US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud

US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud is a sliding series of word clouds for “speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 – 2006 AD.” Chirag Mehta has organized the clouds with time slider so you can move from the latest, “2006-01-31: State of the Union Address” by George W. Bush back to John Adams, “1776-01-15: Foundation of Government”. By moving the slider you can see changes in the high frequency words. Bill Clinton, surprisingly (to me), talked a lot more about families than Bush.

Mehta describes how he generated this at the bottom of the page. Thanks to Gord for this.

Our Lives in Digital Times

Digital Times ImageOur Lives in Digital Times is a report just out from Statistics Canada. A summary is available from The Daily of Friday, November 10, 2006.

The 23 page study reports:

The paperless
office is the office that never happened, with consumption of paper at an all-time high and the business of transporting paper thriving. Professional travel has most likely increased during a period when the Internet and videoconferencing
technology were taking-off, and; e-commerce sales do not justify recent fears of negative consequences on retail employment and real estate.

The paper further demonstrates that some of the key outcomes of ICTs are manifested in changing behavioural patterns, including communication and spending patterns. People have never communicated more, something exemplified by the explosion in international calling and the massive amounts of e-mails and other electronic communications. (“Abstract”, p. 4)

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are not having the predicted effects of erasing distance, creating a paperless office, ending retail, or finishing off surface mail.

The paperless society, the end of mail, the end of traditional retail and numerous other such proclamations have all been grossly exaggerated with quantification at this point in time proving them faulty.more wrong. This conventional wisdom came crashing down from the very early stages of opening up the markets. (p. 11)

Instead ICTs are enabling talk – “people communicate more than ever and their patterns of associations are wider” (p. 17). ICTs are not helping us withdraw, they are letting us spread out (sometimes too thin.)

It is interesting to note that “This paper represents a new direction in Information Society research and analysis, in an attempt to begin to address the socio-economic outcomes and impacts of ICT.” (“Note to readers”, p. 6)

Eddo Stern: Landlord Vigilante and other Machinema

cabvideo.jpgKCET Online has an interview with Eddo Stern on Landlord Vigilante that has links to three of his machinema art films, Landlord Vigilante, Vietnam Romance and Waco Resurrection. Landlord is a longer narrated story of a woman taxi driver/landlord. Vietnam takes period music and games recreating the period stitching together vignettes that recall popular culture on the war. Waco defies description, or resurrection. All use game engines to render the story.

I’ve blogged Eddo Stern’s work on art and games before.

The Dictionary of Words in the Wild

Image of Word Cloud The Dictionary of Words in the Wild is an experiment in public textuality that I’m leading. Andrew MacDonald has done the programming and is contributing images (along with others). You can get an account and upload pictures of words or phrases. We have an application programming interface that you can use to then create web applications that call the dictionary. Join, sample, load! We need pictures.

Try a phrase:


James pointed me to a similar experiment, The Visual Dictionary – a visual exploration of words in the real world. This focuses on single words and has a ranking/rating system. It doesn’t, however, have the API we have. I wonder how we can interoperate? Can such dictionaries be a movement?