Not long ago I blogged about death and your online identity. Now I’ve come across a service called SlightlyMorbid which will send prepared messages to contacts when they are contacted by a trusted party. It is a sort of dead-man’s switch for a bunch of last emails to your online friends who wouldn’t otherwise hear of your death. Great name for a service, though.
Mozilla Labs Jetpack | Exploring new ways to extend and personalize the Web
Peter sent me a link to Mozilla Labs Jetpack, a project to develop a way that makes it easy for people to extend the power of their browsers using Javascript. It strikes me that there is a desire and need for an easy programming extension that provides, as HyperCard did years ago, a way for amateurs to extend their environment with widgets. Widgets, gadgets, and other small utilities have their place, but we need a common ground for them for the paradigm to take off.
Pontypool Changes Everything
Back to Pontypool, the semiotic zombie movie that has infected me. The image above is of the poster for the missing cat Honey that seems to have something to do with the start of the semiotic infection. The movie starts with Grant Mazzy’s voice over the radio talking about,
Mrs French’s cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. Have you seen Honey? Well, we have all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody, until last Thursday morning when Miss Collettepiscine … (drove off the bridge to avoid the cat)
He goes on to pun on “Pontypool” (the name of the town the movie takes place in), Miss Collettepiscine’s name (French for “panty-pool”), and the local name of the bridge she drove off. He keeps repeating variations of Pontypool a hint at the language virus to come.
As for the language virus, I replayed parts of the movie where they talk about it. At about 58 minutes in they hear the character Ken clearly get infected and begin to repeat himself as they talk on the cellphone. Dr. Mendez concludes, “That’s it, he is gone. He is just a crude radio signal, seeking.” A little later Mendez gets it and proposes,
Mendez: No … it can’t be, it can’t be. It’s viral, that much is clear. But not of the blood, not of the air, not on or even in our bodies. It is here.
Grant: Where?
Mendez: It is in words. Not all words, not all speaking, but in some. Some words are infected. And it spreads out when the contaminated word is spoken. Ohhhh. We are witnessing the emergence of a new arrangement for life … and our language is its host. It could have sprung spontaneously out of a perception. If it found its way into language it could leap into reality itself, changing everything. It may be boundless. It may be a God bug.
Grant: OK, Dr. Mendez. Look, I don’t even believe in UFOs, so I … I’ve got to stop you there with that God bug thing.
Mendez: Well that is very sensible because UFOs don’t exist. But I assure you, there is a monster loose and it is bouncing through our language, frantically trying to keep its host alive.
Grant: Is this transmission itself … um …
Mendez: No, no, no, no. If the bug enters us, it does not enter by making contact with our eardrum. It enters us when we hear the word and we understand it. Understand?
It is when the word is understood that the virus takes hold. And it copies itself in our understanding.
Grant: Should we be … talking about this?
Sydney: What are we talking about?
Grant: Should we be talking at all?
Mendez: Well, to be safe, no, probably not. Talking is risky, and well, talk radio is high risk. And so … we should stop.
Grant: But, we need to tell people about this. People need to know. We have to get this out.
Mendez: Well it’s your call Mr Mazzy. But let’s just hope that your getting out there doesn’t destroy your world.
As one thoughtful review essay points out, Pontypool is not the first to play with the meme of information viruses that can infect us. Snow Crash, the Stephenson novel which features a language-virus, even appears in the movie.
Pontypool itself is infectious, morphing from form to form. Sequels are threatened. The book, Pontypool Changes Everything, which starts with a character who keeps Ovid’s Metamorphoses in his, led to the movie which led to the radio play which was created by re-editing the movie audio (and it apparently has a different ending with “paper”.)
Theoreti.ca problems with Google Reader
Thanks to readers for pointing out the spam you are getting when you read my blog with the Google Reader. I’m trying to fix the problem. If you have links to good explanations of the problem please email me.
Circos – visualize genomes and genomic data
Stan pointed me to a neat circular visualization tool, Circos – visualize genomes and genomic data. As the site title says, Circos is for visualizing genomic information, but the circular model strikes me a applicable to other domains. In fact, Camilo Arango in Computing Science, just defended a MSc thesis on a Course Browser design that uses a circular design to show requisites between courses. While the circular design is attractive, I wonder if it is misleading for linear information, like a text, if one wraps the text around the edge of the circle, the way TextArc does.
The Circos site has an interesting slide show on visualizing quantitative information by Martin Krzywinski that starts with Tufte and then shows different genomic visualization models leading up to Circos.
Ben Fry: The preservation of favoured traces
Sean pointed me to a lovely visualization by Ben Fry called The Preservation Of Favoured Traces. The animated visualization shows the edits of Darwin’s The Origin Of Species edition by edition. It is a rich-prospect view of the entire work with color coded lines where changes were made. It was developed in Processing. Ben Fry says the following about the project:
We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.
PONTYPOOL | Shut up or die
Last night I watched a Canadian gem of a zombie movie, PONTYPOOL | Shut up or die. The movie takes place almost entirely in a radio studio in the basement of an old church in the small town of Pontypool Ontario. Grant Mazzy, a talk-radio host at the end of his career, exiled from the big city, stays on the air dealing with the eruption of a language plague where English words (primarily endearments like “honey”) carry the new type of virus that infects people. With his producer and technician they try to figure out what is real or not as strange reports come in and they are interviewed by “our affiliate” the BBC. Eventually the zombies, who follow the sound of speaking, repeating words or phrases, break in to try to eat their way to the voice. Grant and his producer figure out that talking in their poor French (remember the importance of bilingualism in Canada) is one way to avoid infection and they work out a cure which involves disrupting mean by asserting things like “kill is kiss”. Back on the radio to talk through the cure, the movie ends with a count down from 10 in French from off camera. Are the French Canadian troops sent in to eradicate the plague about to blow up the radio station just when they have figured out the cure? Was the talk show of the radio station the source of the plague in the first place or was it the posters for a lost cat “Honey” plastered all over town? Could the interview Grant gives to a BBC news announcer have spread the logorrhea abroad? Can words spread ideas (or memes) like a plague closing down our understanding until we are babbling zombies. After all, in the beginning was the word, not its understanding.
Talking of how zombie movies are often a metaphor for things we fear infection from like communism, the author of the screenplay and original book, Tony Burges, says about the movie that,
(a zombie is) really a metaphor for metaphors that keep hunting you long after they have been meaningful. They keep coming at you. … They’re figures of speech that become predatory long after their sort of meaning as figures of speech have sort of left the stage. And so … that for me is the interesting last hundred yards of a zombie’s life. (From an interview with Tony Burgess in December of 2008 at the Drake Hotel in Toronto. Interview by Ian Daffern, co-produced and edited by Tate Young of Vepo Studios.
Intensity Challenge in Humanities Computing @ the University of Alberta
Well we have started the first Intensity Challenge experiment for the Humanities Computing MA students and selected Computing Science graduate students. The idea of the challenge is that, working in teams, they have a week to to a challenge project. This year’s project is to develop an Alternate Reality Game. Next Tuesday we all gather and the teams present their games, designs, or whatever they do for this challenge. Let the team with the most points win!
The point of the challenge is to give incoming students an immediate experience of how different humanities computing is here – to orient them to doing team projects with multiple components using the resources at hand. Here is the FAQ from our instructions:
Do I have to be good at something to participate? Absolutely not, but you need to be willing to try. One of the goals of this is to help you figure out what you want to learn and how to learn with others.
Will you tell us what to do? Absolutely not! You are a graduate student. Figure out what you want to do and how to do it. At the end we will tell you how we would have done things, if you ask us. There will, however, be times when you can meet with people on campus who can help you.
I will need to go to a class during the week – is that OK? Of course, work it out with your team. Managing the time of team members with differing commitments is a real challenge, and a skill we all need to improve.
I think this is neat, but have to work during that week. Can I audit? No, this isn’t for credit so there is no such thing as auditing. You participate or you don’t. The key is how you communicate the work you have to the team. Ask a team if they will include you. It is up to them.
I have a friend who wants to do the music for this, but she isn’t a graduate student. Can others help out? Of course. Like any real project, the more you can involve the right people the better. Just don’t exploit anybody.
How much do we have to write up? That’s something you have to work out. A Design Document can take different forms, but there are faculty members with this sort of expertise. Track them down!!! We will tell you some of the things you should include, but part of the project is figuring out its scope.
What do I present at the end? Present your game. Be creative. Perhaps answer some of the questions we asked at the end of page 1. Make sure you know how to present in the HuCo lab (Old Arts 112). If you don’t know how presentations are structured, then ask around.
Does the game have to be fun? Depends on your objectives. Is it a Serious Game? Is it a “game” at all? You might want to discuss “games” with your team. Perhaps your team could answer this question with a game.
Can we cheat? Sure, if you can figure out what cheating is. That doesn’t mean we will be impressed. What you shouldn’t do is anything illegal, unethical, dangerous, or academically dishonest (don’t plagiarize.)
Is this experience a game? Not really, it is designed to give you experience running a project all the way from conception to delivery, even if incomplete. This experience will inform the more detailed discussions in the courses ahead. On the other hand, there might be some playful aspects, and we might throw in a few curves as the week progresses.
Street fighting, Earth’s calmest spot, e-mail rudeness
The Globe and Mail today (Thursday, Sept. 3rd, 2009) have an interesting tidbit on e-mail rudeness in the SOCIAL STUDIES column on Street fighting, Earth’s calmest spot, e-mail rudeness.
E-mail rudeness
Vicki Walker was forced out of her job as an accountant at a health-care company in Auckland, N.Z., after colleagues complained her e-mails were too “shouty” and confrontational. A tribunal heard that she spread disharmony among her co-workers by sending missives with entire sentences in capital letters. She also behaved “provocatively” by highlighting key phrases in bold or red, according to her employer, ProCare Health. The panel found that, while she had caused friction in her office, her conduct did not amount to grounds for dismissal. Her firm had no e-mail style guide, meaning employees could not be certain about what communications were deemed unacceptable. Ms. Walker was awarded $12,600 and plans to appeal for further compensation. (L6, by Michael Kesterton)
The New Zealand Herald has a story Emails spark woman’s sacking by Rebecca Lewis (Aug 30, 2009) with more detail including the one offensive email submitted as evidence.
Rock-afire Explosion Clip – Rockafiremovie.com
Shannon pointed me to The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic band from the 80s that was one of the entertainments at Showbiz Pizza. Rock-afire Explosion has been resurrected by a fan and one of the original creators of Creative Engineering who are programming tunes and uploading video to YouTube. See, for example, Madonna’s 4 Minutes. They take bids on New Shows to Program at a strange and not very clear site. If you bid high enough and it isn’t “dirty” they will program the animatronic band to do a song you want. (Would they do Plato’s dialogues?)
I cannot begin to describe how strangely captivating this all is. Perhaps the documentary made about it (see Rockafiremovie.com) captures the passion. Or, for a computing perspective, see the clip about Programming the Rock-afire Explosion.
Whatever happened to animatronics? Will it make a comeback now that we all carry around smartphones that can control things?