We no longer simply can travel from A to B – we demand constant entertainment and we connect to our social lives as well .

So the Car of this Generation are more like rolling entertainment and information hubs, plastered with screens and multi media players.

The Car offers Bluetooth, a Cell Phone Charger and an iPod Connection as well. And the Car itself speaks to Satellites for Navigation and it’s Manufacturer about it’s health.

Modern Cars are the first machines we willingly accept instructions from. We blindly trust their commands …

Vint Cerf is a smart guy – he is one of the Fathers of the Internet.  So he know technology and it’s impact.

I think we are slowly understanding the recent impact of “the information at your fingertips”: we have more access to information and better knowledge tools, but more and more people do NOT learn how to dissect, understand and expand that knowledge.

To own a digital camera at the end of the 1990’s was pretty unusual and expensive. Ten years later almost every gadget seems to be able to shot photos and videos – even in High-Definition …

Cheap Sensors

The arrival of cheap sensors and storage allowed cell phone and computer manufacturer to stuff a camera into almost every gadget we carry around. There are hardly any cell phones or notebooks without a cam these days.

And the Quality! There was literally an explosion of pixel power – who would today bother with a 1-Mega-Pixel-Camera? Sure pixel resolution is not everything, but the image quality has equally improved with pixel quantity.

Early Nokia prototypes …

Cheap Monitors

But the Revolution of the Pixel includes LCD monitors – which are now huge and cheap (my current 24"-Samsung-Display would have been astronomically expensive in 1999). The analogue monitor is dead – LCDs have overtaken our eyes. Their sharpness and extreme colour range has redefined our viewing habits.

Cheap Storage and Bandwidth

Big sensor create big images – but today we also have the CHEAP big memory cards, sticks and chips to store them – as well as fast broadband to send our crappy holiday shots to all our friends and social media appendices via eMail or Social Media website (like Flickr and Facebook).

The Real Changes: record anything everywhere and at anytime

Because not only Big Brother has CCTV cameras everywhere we mere mortals can and do record anything. Thanks to YouTube and Flickr (and their clones) we can and do share everything we record.

In the last ten years there has been a flood of digital videos and photos. I suspect we all shot more images and hours of footage in these last ten years with our cheap gadgets than all generations before us?!

And the pixelated flood will continue.

On the web you can videos of any occasion and situation: from airplanes crashes, terrorist attacks, amateur sex and children’s birthdays. It alls there.

I wonder how he feels about that (public) video in twenty years?

The new global sharing culture enables us to share our lives with others and see how others live their life’s. It has never been so easy to experience, study and learn the human condition.

Since we love Social Porn (<- see my essay on that subject here) this trend will continue. It’s not Big Brother watching us – we love to show ourselves and watch others. This was first limited to celebrities and personal holiday snapshots. Today we can record and broadcast our own lives 24/7 – and some people already do.

That also means that social acceptance of being watched by the government and others has risen. In a world were everybody can record, share and watch everyone the old idea of privacy is gone …

We all know what you did ten summers ago … and you will never be able to delete that image …

The Real Changes: the Web never forgets and will find you

The global visual sharing culture has just begun, already billions of images and videos are online. And the web never forgets …

In the last century your parents were probably the keepers and guardians of your embarrassing childhood shots – today compromising material will sooner or later land on the web.

Many employers as well as "friends" check on Facebook and other social media your history before they get closer.

Thanks to Geo-Tagging and Facial Recognition it will be much easier to find a specific person in a gazillion images and videos. There is no such thing as anonymity in this brave new pixel world.

Reality – captured from many slightly different perspectives. 

The Real Changes: the global Big Picture and Synthesized Reality

Soon there won’t  be a place that hasn’t been photographed or captured in video. We will have a complete visual memory of our planet.

But there is more: all these images and technology will not only allow us to "find" each other – it will allow us to merge all that huge image and video pool into synthesized memory spaces (<- read my essay here).

Smart software literally stitches photos into a 3D-environment and connect / compute additional information into that "space".

When you think that Google Streetview and Google Earth are pretty amazing than hold on to your socks – the new kind of search will finally feel like stranger than any science fiction movie you have seen …

Is it real or is it … HDR?

The Real Changes: Reality is not as good as High-Definition

The last ten years have also brought a different change: the way we perceive what "reality" should look like.

Cameras, monitors and videos have slowly changed from the old 4:3 format to 16:9. The future is no longer square, but widescreen …

But the sharpness, colour range and contrast of images has changed dramatically, best illustrated by so called HDR-Images.

Before and after the HDR treatment …

Similar to before mentioned synthesized memory spaces already available cameras can combine several shots into one "High dynamic range image" that looks more real than reality.

Before the arrival of digital tools (read Photoshop or Paint Boxes for professional TV and Film productions) it was very hard to manipulate images.

Today almost any cheap camera or cell phone cam offers "image improvement filters" ranging from simple red eye removal to face finders and even body slimmers.

All these technologies have changed our perception of reality: old black & white television was unreal, even analogue colour TV looks unreal to a certain degree – and so do "classic" photos.

But today’s image technology allows us to create images and videos that look and feel more real than reality, but catching and synthesizing more details, sharpness and speed than ever before.

Remember him? 

The Real Changes: The Decade of Photoshop Fakery and empty Movies with too much CGI

The last ten years saw the Perfection of Fakery – thanks to tools like Photoshop, After Effects and many other image manipulation tools.

Movies like Jurassic Park and Matrix paved the way for CGI in movies – and helped the directors to tell amazing tales. But today many movies and TV shows feel boring, because there are too many "amazing effects". Special effects have turned into a big bore …

But Photoshop & Co are now also the #1 toys for Fakery – from Beauty Magazines and Advertising to Viral Videos – Fakes are now everywhere.

Every time people see today an amazing photo or video they distrust what they see: "Is it photoshopped or is it real?!"

Fakery is increasingly hard to spot and image manipulation is now standard for almost anything you see printed or on TV.

Especially advertising was always about fake reality, but now that advertised reality looks absolutely real and can be even more beautiful than ever before. Especially woman still try to "achieve" the beauty standards in advertising – but these fake beauties are unreal and do not exist … their "level of beauty" can never be reached by any real person …

LonelyGirl15 – the first YouTube Superstar? 

The Real Changes: Democratization of Broadcasting

When 8 mm movies came out it was touted as the Hollywood revolution for everyone. But the technology was cumbersome, expensive and difficult to master.

Today a GOOD video camera is affordable even for amateurs and the quality is amazing. Editing and special effects software is also cheap and basically the same the real Pros in Hollywood use.

But most of all there is now a global and cheap way to show and distribute your videos: the web.

New talent and film students can create movies and no longer rely on movie theatres, Hollywood studios or TV broadcasters to bring their work to the masses.

That means there is a wider platform for artists, moviemakers and crap alike – but it is most of all a true democratization of moviemaking and broadcasting like never before.

Low Budget series like LonelyGirl15 became global brands / phenomenon’s. Becoming a superstar on a budget was no possible!

Hello Human! Do you know where are you going to?

The Real Changes: 3D-Environments and Augmented Reality will change how we deal with real life

Today we are quite used to "live" in 3D spaces, either in games or car navigation systems – not too mention Google Earth …

The visuals of Computer Games have made a huge leap forward in the last 10 years. The X-Box, Playstation 2 and Wii can deliver incredible visuals.

Games have been pushing simulated 3D worlds for now over 20 years. New games look incredibly realistic and have left it’s visually primitive forefather Pong far behind.

But 3D engines, geo-tagging, camera sensors and search engines will merge into a new technology called Augmented Reality.

Here you look at the world through a computer display – and the computer will analyze what you and it sees – and add additional information.

The simplest form of this technology have been car navigation systems, but newer versions will go much further.

This is just a simply version of AR …

They could tell you for example which people or businesses are in a building nearby, because a search engine show you all information regarding the location you are currently at – and also know thanks to other peoples computers and cell phones who is currently near that exact spot you are standing.

Like other technologies this will make us even more dependent on our little gizmos. The pocket calculator robbed us of the need to learn math. The cell phone is our external memory for phone numbers, addresses and even our schedule (be honest how many phone numbers can you remember?).

Augmented Play Time …

Most people could hardly read maps anyway, but Augmented Reality will make them totally dependent on where to go. And thanks to "smart software" it will tell them what to shop where and that the person in front of them is their wife …

Conclusion: a new form of Telepresence

We are developing a totally new visual culture. Once the invention of photography radically changed how we captured reality and made it permanent – so will the digital capture, global storage and synthesizing of photos and videos.

Everybody needs a cam like this and everybody will wear some form of camera in the future anyway …

Thanks to a coming 24/7 always-on camera capture we will also develop a new form of Telepresence we have developed in the last century: first there was the telegraph that allowed almost instant reporting of events far away. Then came the telephone and radio, which allowed us to hear live events far away. With television we suddenly had eyes and ears all over the globe. We could watch catastrophes and music concerts unfold live.

A global web connected camera network will allow us to watch anything everywhere. It is not just a network for "watching" – it also will record, store and cross connect everything it sees.

The new telepresence and visual network will let you watch such events even from "unrecorded" angles …

This global camera network is not like Big Brother – it is a decentralized sister network, which consists of millions of independent digital eyes and ears that record and record …

Like a computer game all that data can be used to replay and synthesize the events it captured.

Software is a complicated beast – even with a lot of testing and additional beta releases bugs will go through.

That is why I NEVER install a "full release" numbers, like Photoshop 6.0 or WordPress 2.9 – I always wait until the x.1 patch is out.

In the case of Windows you should always wait for the first service pack.

Only when the software is out to thousands or even million of users all bugs will rear their ugly heads – so let others do the painful testing of the new release and only install the patched "new" version.

No, your personal life is not a "brand" that needs to be shared and fostered by sharing every minute of your life on the intranets.

Collecting and recording every titbit of your existence is not the same of actually living it. Canned memories are not the same as experience. Or are you planning to "experience" it all once you retire and finally grow up?

In the Stone Age of Multimedia there was just one TV, one Radio, one Phone and one Record Player for the whole family.

Today’s multi-channel multimedia families have multiple entertainment and data devices for each family member. Plus everyone has many different online-personalities all over the intranets.

Instead of living and experiencing a "unified family reality" today we spread ourselves over several planes of virtual existence.

So it’s no surprise that so many families are feeling disconnected, hardly share mutual experiences or participate in each other’s lives. They are connected somewhere else with a million strangers …

The Single-Device-Family was certainly less sophisticated, but they actually had more time on their hands. They didn’t need to learn to handle complex devices, configure their computers, VCRs, cell phones, cameras, digicams, Facebook & MySpace pages, update their operating systems …

Their head were less stuffed with following a gazillion TV shows, celebrities, events in remote places, horrors and hysterias unreported or not yet invented.

Less sometimes really is more.

When this Mini-TV was introduced everybody thought it’s a stupid idea. Small transistor radios sold well, but nobody believed in the idea of "portable television".

Today the screens on iPods, cell phones with video and other portable video devices are hardly bigger, but people are mad about watching clips, TV episodes and whole movies on such tiny screens.

Madness!

But once again the quality technology is not important, as long as it is convenient and the content is good. People are willing to put up with technological limits if they are captured by good shows and stories.

Bigger screens, THX and all that nonsense is simply an added bonus, but not the most important thing about listening to a good song or watching an excellent video.

Nature hasn’t built us to sit in the same position and stare at a 19"-Universe. We are built for movement and endurance, not pushing pieces of plastic.

In the Communist era the Soviet Block was far behind in digital technology. So their own computers were celebrated as important achievements and part of the regular worker’s parade.

We still parade our computers in the West – or better say globally, because we love to show our status symbols (so called Digital Penis or Pussy Tech).

So many events are snapped and recorded by hundreds if not thousands of gadgets – and beamed all over the world.

The best example is Obama’s recent Inauguration. The event was recorded from a gazillion angles (or literally points of view). They were saved in our shared digital memory to be be digested by the intranets.

But there is more.

Microsofts Photosynth shows how these collective recording can be merged / synthesized into a fuzzy hyperlinked historical "space".

Click image for more details.

You can experience this new technology on the CNN website – but you need to install a new plug-in for your browser for the magic to work.

Photosynth creates this virtual environment from hundreds of pictures. It’s like a walk able picture space. Amazing, but not very useful yet. But I am sure future versions will be able to synthesize videos, audio and images into one "space".

But once again there is more.

With additional facial recognition you will not only be able to pick people out of the crowd, but each person will be linked to their available data all over the intranets as well.

Just like Google Maps currently records every street view in major cities all over the world – so will we ourselves share moments of our lives online by recording videos, sharing our photos, our travel reports on blogs and locations via Twitter or similar services.  And EVERYTHING will be stitched together by "intelligent" software.

A few years in the future our real lives are more or less publicly recorded by our gadgets and saved on the internet.

Information at your fingertips? Nah, more like "Your life on my screen in every detail."

Sure life has changed in the last twenty years a lot. But apart from the obvious technological change and all these gadgets around us – there are far more dramatic changes in our social, economical and political behavior.

Statistics and mathematical problem solving has been around for ages – but with today’s huge databases, networks and extremely cheap processing power suddenly “smart” computer advice is shaping our everyday life …

Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a preview – you can watch the whole interview here.

It is an illusion that there is such a thing as privacy on the Internet, since everything is based on “labeled” data packets that have your address on it.

And most people give away their privacy by shamelessly sharing and providing big companies (not just the Google) with personal information.

How can you force companies to protect your privacy if you don’t do it yourself?

We are slowly entering the Age of Human-Machine-Symbiosis. Sure – it’s all very crude at the moment and we are still ’smarter’ then machines.

But …

Can you remember all the telephone numbers of your friends?

Would you socially disappear if you cell phone would be gone?

Do you mostly use computers as a bridge to communicate with others – or just your human ‘interface’?

Can you still perform easy calculations without a machine?

Can you write a perfect text without a keyboard and automatic spelling checker?

Can you entertain yourself without a digital machine delivering moving images, games or music to you?

This is not about terrorist propaganda, this is not about free speech, this is not about radicalizing the public – it’s about the truth.

American politicians, American media and most parts of the so called American public simply "sanitize" reality to they don’t have to face the ugly truth: their own soldiers and mostly innocent people die in this stupid war on terror.

Don’t look away! This is your war. You decided to invade Afghanistan and Iraq – now stand up to it and face the blood.

This is the 21st century – you won’t be able to hide such videos and censor images – like the return of your own dead soldiers.

But America has learned from the Vietnam experience – and all side are making HUGE efforts to keep the TV screens clean. Because shocking images can make people change their minds – but cool 3D animations with heroic videos – but no blood or gut hanging out – do not offend …

In the Age of TV families shared quality moments together in front of the screen. In the Internet Age we sit quietly in our rooms and maybe chat via AIM together. Computer screens don’t provide the same social glue as TV screens.

Several people fighting for the remote control was bad enough – but a consensus could be reached which show to watch for an hour or two. But you can’t have four people controlling a computer and surf different websites at the same time.

TV serves as the radio today – it provides the noise to our life, but it is the computer with it’s highly individualized interaction that grabs our FULL attention.

So our media experience is more and more individualistic – and all these digital toys and gadgets (especially cell phones and instant messaging) keep us “busy” and distracted all the time.

In front of the TV the whole family could switch off – today that switch has been lost. We are always “ON” …

Gee, is it already over ten years ago that these oversized pocket calculators achieved the final breakthrough of the PDA? Together with the mainstream revolution of the WWW suddenly cell phones and personal digital assistants exploded everywhere.

Palm created 1996 a huge market that was invented by Apple with it’s Newton 1992. But the original Newton was a brick compared to the slender Palm (which would appear huge compared to today’s machines). And it played nicely with a Mac and a PC. Something Apple always hated until they finally ‘got it’ with the iPod.

Suddenly everyone wanted to have one of these organizers – in every meeting people would try to take notes with Graffiti – a special sign language to make the computer better understand human handwriting. Most people ended up using the keyboard map instead.

Today the PDA’s are slowly disappearing – or better say evolving into the smart phones. Today almost any cell phone offers an extended address book and scheduler. If you need more power – you simply use a notebook or small laptop. Especially since PDAs from Palm and Windows CE are bloody expensive.

The whole PDA market will be killed by smart phones. There is no need to have a small computer if you cell phone can organize your life as well.

More? Palm Pilot @ Wikipedia

After many years if waiting and technical development video is finally sweeping the Internets. It’s not just download little bits here and there, but massive streaming, downloading complete movies and ‘blogcasting’. We are used to get small video clips in our emails or watch important as well as ‘funny’ stuff via Websites like Crooks & Liars as well as YouTube.

The BlogCasting is a sort of Clip-O-Mania which has also grabbed the mainstream media’s attention: news shows include Internet clips as well as those many funny video shows. Videos of people torturing each other were cell phone videos, a lot of ‘funny’ stuff is from cheap camcorders. The video revolution is in full swing.

Since the medium is still part of the message those short clips will only ‘deepen’ the short attention deficit disorder of modern people. Since the introduction of mass media in form of TV and radio the speed and visual presentation of ‘content’ has increased. If you watch a newscast or report from the 1960’s you be surprised how slow and static it is. Today’s presentation hardly leaves any space for thinking. Everything is presented in ever faster image sequences, booming voices and action music. This is no longer just the stupid idea of edutainment, but actiontainment.

The faster, the more impressive and the shorter – the better.

A new generation of clones taking over the world!

Similar to the inability of many modern students to understand or write complex texts this will Clip-O-Mania will contribute to the ignorance of complexity. Contrary to popular believe I say that modern youngsters are NOT stupid, but they simply lack the training and challenges to train their brains to ’solve’ complex mental tasks as well to train patience.

As much as I like gaming myself almost ALL digital adventures only train a very limited set of challenges, which only get harder with every level but not more diversified or complex. The effects of hours of videogaming are very similar to brainwashing, because the same mental paths / messages are hammered deeper and deeper into the brain. Playing is meant to explore different approaches and experiment with different combinations. Videogames lack the variety – they present a very limited set of elements and solutions – under a huge pressure to proceed and win. Similar to the speedculture of actiontainment and videoclubs there is little time and mental space left to develop your own ideas and grow at your own pace.

Slowness has it’s own merits as well as patience and complexity.

On one side big media companies have greatly reduced their international reporter network and therefore lost ‘local competence’. On the other side a huge army of freelance photographers, reporters and cameraman has developed in the least two decades.

But the media mercenaries focus mostly on popular stuff that brings in the money. Unpopular topics are left to a few brave reporters and photo journalists. So commercial news is today mostly about ’sellable’ news. If you can’t sell a picture or a story you won’t report about it again, because you need to pay your bills.

This is why we need support alternative media outlets for journalists and a willing audience to pay these people.

We also need more institutions like the BBC and other democratic and state funded media organizations, who can afford to report unpopular causes and criticize the powerful.

Free markets for news organization is a disaster. To provide a balanced public service will always collide with the quest for higher profits. Let big media create the entertainment, let publicly funded news organizations make the news.

And screw Rupert Murdoch and all the big media tycoons.

The Internet is all about communication. It’s first great breakthroughs were eMail, Chats and Newsgroups – places and mechanism for people to talk to each other, share stories and moments. The Web – with it’s rich multimedia mix of text, images, animations videos and loads of interaction came later.

The first Internet years were pure ‘Text’ – no fancy graphics, no weird interfaces, no flash movies. It was a writers paradise – and boy did people work that keyboard. That is why all those handy acronyms were invented in the first place – because they were used a lot and people got sick and tired of typing it all out. It was intended to speed up the conversation and develop some simple forms of ‘communication blocks and codes’ to ritualize reoccurring situations like ‘ROFL’ or ‘ttyl’.

eMail and chats were already different from formal letters and meeting in the office. But people tried to keep grammar, expression and context intact. It was fascinating to exchange loads of text & context in real time or almost instantly. eMail was like a speed drug for communication and brainstorming. Communication processes that often took days and weeks could be shortened to seconds, minutes or just a few hours. Brains were on fire.

This trend was pushed even further with the cell phone revolution and the invention of the web – which brought texting and web surfing to the masses. Further down the road broadband and multimedia transformed the pure ‘text-only’ online cosmos into a ‘disney-compatible consumer experience’.

Happiness is more then just an emoticon …

Websurfers and companies alike tried to make it short and sweet. Online portals developed the art of content management and squeezing as much tiny headlines and articles on their homepages. Instant messaging and texting on cell phones was the next craze – conversations were chopped up into even smaller bits. The old text emoticons were immediately translated into graphical ones – and a flood of new acronyms and Internet ‘talk’ took over the world.

The use of acronyms and rituals become even deeper entrenched in Internet communication – and it swapped over into the mainstream. Suddenly you could see web URLs in advertising and Internet slang jumped into ‘meatspace’.

But it also ritualized the always on lifestyle and communication even further. Sending jokes, images, videos, URLs or short blurbs became a substitute for describing yourself, your emotions or what you had experienced in YOUR OWN WORDS. Instead of self expression we used ‘blocks of code’ or ‘canned emotions’ to reflect ourselves – but not EXPRESSING our own state of mind.

I love your pixelation!

Instead of encouraging someone with a personal note – we send a picture of a cute doggy. Instead of saying how we feel about a sad moment with some nuances we send a sad emoticon. Instead of describing our vacation to our friends we send them a link of our Flickr gallery of snaps without context.

In all these cases we get shorter and shorter in our self expression. By breaking up complex situations or moments into simple symbols or unrelated bits we loose the complexity. The complexity of what has happened. The complexity of what we think and feel about it. And the complexity of different layers of self expression. Instead of many colour we mix ourselves with words, sentences, long expression – we use static rubberstamps of self expression. Easy and simple to use – but limited in their emotional and mental range – and shallow compared what really might be inside of you.

When you are on MySpace Google will make sure you have no privacy … 

Especially the new world of social networking is ’shrtr’. Instead of messages you send ‘funny’ games or emoticons. Instead of telling a person you like them or you ignore them you ‘rate’ them by giving them stars or declaring them your friend. Symbolism over true friendly dedication or exchange. Instead of socializing we extend our social networks by inviting the highest ranking and rated members of the database. Instead of getting to know someone and exchanging personal stories we explore their personal links, lists of favorite websites and online galleries – plus we Google their names and see if something nasty comes up.

It is no longer about what you have to say and what you are – it’s all about the right links, ranking and cool ’statement blocks’ others can recognize as greatness. You link the right political articles on your blog or stumble, you know the funniest videos, one big celebrity is your friend on MySpace.

I have friends – therefore I am! 

The art and exploration of yourself through self expression and deep thoughts has been substituted by the cleverness of self linking and self promoting. The Google PageRank of your homepage, profile or profile has become a social indicator.

The art of making friends with your personality and what you have to say and stand for. Instead of exploring one’s own inner world and building it by thinking and expressing it – we only reflect only tiny aspects of our self via links, phrases and other people’s work like videos and images.

The modern phrase and lifestyle statement ‘express yourself’ – which can be seen in so many commercials and new age books – is a challenge. It is hard work and it is a personal and social effort to express yourself, to understand yourself, to think for yourself and define yourself.

A complex personality and emotional depth can only come from complex self expression. You are the builder of your self …

Dedicated to Judefa – who inspired me to write this.

The Walkmen Generation had one big advantage over the iPoddies: their gadgets didn’t have an imposed sound barrier. The iPod has a clear loudness limit – which can be annoying while traveling in a loud environment.

But since everybody seems to be born with an iPod in their arse and earplugs instead of ears it’s a good thing. The Generation iPod will be mostly deaf by the age of 30. So less power to your headphones and earplugs might be a good thing.

And it might be nice to actually be able to get through to you – even when you have those super expensive Sennheiser plugs in your head. Total immersion in your own sound bubble is so unsocial you iPod zombie …

Artist: Christophe Gilbert

Ppostsecret.blogspot.com is now an established fixture of the globally shared net psyche. It is amazing – it opened the floodgates for endless confessions. Lurkers come to read emotional porn, dark and funny secrets of others – while the ’sinners’ try to lighten their burden by sharing some secrets of their existence.

Good thing it has already turned in a book – so the makers can rip off so money from the social porn. Secrets are no secret today – not for the media exhibitionists and web heads all around us.

Thanks to RichM for sending this one.

So far the U2 iPod was pretty unique for some time. But now more and more Celebs discover the tech market for merchandise deals.

The J. Lo USB-Stick … sooooo coooool!

Can’t wait to see stuff like the Nokia Paris Hilton edition – silvery cell phone with gems and glitter. Sometimes celebrity endorsement is simply more then stupid.

And I hardly trust Madame J. Lo to give good support for my USB-Stick if it’s broken …

Yeah, the good old digital stoneage, when a bit of memory cost you an arm, a leg and your grandmother’s pension. Good thing that electronics getting cheaper and cheaper. Who would have thought to have 10.000 songs in your pocket – and being able to walk … those old drives were HUGE!

Thanks to Edosan for sending me that ad.

More and more deaf young people? Wired Magazine is spelling out the obvious – once again. I still can remember the same warnings when the first Walkmans hit the street and everybody went earphoned. Actually the worst thing that could happen to your ears is Techno Music and raves. Never been to any party that is really louder: base kicks so intense that they make your clothes wobble. So most modern digital devices have a loudness barrier anyway – they are not as loud as old walkmans or normal Hi-Fi equipment.

Can anyone still remember life before email? Most companies and private citizens didn’t use eMail before 1995 – so the revolution is hardly 10 years old for many people. (I got my first email address 1991)

You remember the pain of snail mail? Typing or printing your letter on paper, stuffing it into an envelope, finding the right stamp and post it into a letterbox right on time for next day delivery?

Old school mail sucked – although spam is taking the fun out of instant electronic delivery as well.

Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography is exactly what it says – and not a bad one! Highly recommended if you want to know a bit more about making good snaps and buying the right camera. Although his tutorial focuses on SLR cameras, most stuff applies also to small snappers like the one above.

Ah, the promise was so neat: a wireless technology for small gadgets. You simply connect your cell phone, headsets, coffee machines or vibrates with each other. Super easy and super simple. Yeah, right …

Reality check please!

Several years after the introduction of Bluetooth this technology suffers from the same stupid mistakes and problems almost all gadgets do: compatibility issues. Often Bluetooth devices from the same vendors won’t talk to each other.

And the bitch is that with wireless devices you never can ’see’ if they properly connect with each other. So searching for the real problem is hard – even for experts.

Even Bluetooth 2.0 didn’t fix the problem – it just made it worse.

I am a big wireless fan myself, but my Bluetooth headset, my Bluetooth mouse, my Bluetooth enables cell phone and my Bluetooth keyboard hate each other. Only one device at a times please.

So once again we have to update drivers, check compatibility before buying and spend hours making gadgets talk to each other.

Thank you so much Bluetooth people – please accept my thanks in form of a real hard kick in your wireless butts.

I think mass media rightfully portrays the net as full of pr0n. Usually the discussion centers around porn mongers, porn sellers, porn buyers, pedophiles and sexual predators – mostly male and eager to get the easy kick.

But who talks of webbased sluttism like ‘flickr’s finest females‘, suicidegirls.com and those many webcam whores? These – often very young girls and woman – are not forced by pimps or poverty to sell themselves. Many do it for personal kicks and some extra luxury money.

All the old concepts of pornography and prostitution fail when confronted with webbased slutism: there is no physical contact involved, the woman do it themselves, there is a lot of technology involved and so much of it is for free or very little money for the buyers. Most interesting of all is the female networking: woman recommending other ’slut friends’ or running whole networks all by themselves.

As much as I am for a liberated sexuality and female empowerment but often unlimited ‘hotness’ smells of stupidity and a very egoistic, greedy or even obsessed mindset. And you hardly can call that liberated, but rather a case for serious therapy.

Everybody can be famous with a good ‘leaked’ porn video.

I also have noticed a growing social pressure for web exhibitionism for young people (MySpace.com is only the current tip of the iceberg). Many online communities and single sites over the years have developed into ‘hot zones’ instead of ‘just’ social meeting places. I guess ‘leaked’ videos by big stars like Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and absolute nobodies like ‘Tammy‘.

I guess the sexual revolution is not eating it’s children, but well connected grandchildren. The pressure to public slutism, to look cool and sexy and do horny stuff has risen to new levels. Slutism on the web or mass media are hard to ignore, neither are the gazillion of young girls who get plastic surgery at an alarmingly early age.

Sexuality should be explored, but it should be a personal and intimate thing. Especially when you are young. So ladies go and explore yourself and your talents, but don’t ‘bless’ the rest of the web with it.

More? Love the spoof Paris Hilton Video

What do these three items have in common?

They talk!

Sunbeds, that cell phone and new cars all have voices that explain stuff to you. And usually in a adorable and caring female voice. It’s like mother explaining you a technical gimmick and you get a boner while listening.

I find this very irritating. A machine goddess talking to me, with no way of proper interaction nor dialogue. It’s all so empty and often beside the point.

Some people say that all technology serves only one purpose: procreation. Well in this case it’s also a workaround for some cultural and religious taboos (by Markus Kison):

The CharmingBurka deals with Freud’s idea, that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. I decided for the Burka, because this cloth is positioned on the very side of shame and add a digital layer to it. With this layer women can decide on their own, where they want to position themselves virtually. This means that the Burka is sending a picture, which the wearer has chosen, via Bluetooth. Every person next to her can receive her picture on his mobile and that way see her self-determined identity. The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran.

Therefore the Burka is equipped with a bluetooth antenna, micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.

Thanks to Edosan for this link.

I just love this: this shirt literally shows you the good vibes around you – actually the strength of a nearby WiFi connection. God bless modern geeky consumerism. Another great gimmick from ThinkGeek.

In the good old days of consumerism you could learn a lot about other people by casually browsing through their record and book collection. But today most people don’t even have CD collections anymore – and they libraries exist only in a digital form.

But switching on someone’s computer, cell phone or iPod just to see what they have ‘on’ is rather intimate affair and not very nice.

The know you are a 21st century person when your friends show their holiday snaps on a computer instead of a slide show of photo album. As much as I love the computer screen – but it sucks as a social event.

To RGB or CMYK – that’s the Question!

You are a person with many interests and many skills? You love art, you produce art – but you also live with a huge pile of creative guilt? Welcome to the club! It’s hard to be a digital artist, since your computer enables you to run amazing tools – which have been unthinkable twenty years ago. A creative powerhouse in one small box.

Wanna make a movie? No problem use Adobe Premiere or AfterEffects. Are you a graphics person? Your choice is vast and wide – Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand, Painter – to name but a few. Wanna go 3D and do amazing effects or animations. Once again the list boasts absolutely amazing tools like Lightwave, Maya, 3D Max.

Oh my – you are a creative person! Wow!

You make music and love to sample and tweak sounds? A small feat these days – cool software is cheaply available, even Star Wars was remixed on a simple PowerBook using everyday digital tools and even great modern musicians use the same Samplers, Synths and Sequencer like you do.

Not to forget our good old writing tools to produce anything ranging from articles or complete books! You can go from a simple solution like Microsoft Word up to publishing powerhouses like Quark or InDesign. And how about your own web page or weblog? I am sure you want to show the world what you are capable off, let’s buy Flash, Dreamweaver or GoLive?

You had enough? Fine.

More human than human – welcome to the new 3D art universe (image: Miles Estes)

Modern designer are rapped and pushed to be digital renaissance artists – nothing is impossible. Since the DTP revolution in the late 80’s smashed the old lines between technician and artist – we creative types have to be both today a Geek and a Michelangelo in one person.

Once it used to be enough to excel as a writer, painter or photographer – know you have to be you own typesetter, reproduction expert, scanner and editor etc. as well. But since this is the analog2digital (A2D) generation we love to have multiple choice – since we know how limited we felt with our old tools: clunky typewriter, tipex, letraset letters, dirty chemicals to develop slides, dangerous cutters, slow snailmail and mechanical copy processes to name a few. No surprise: we love absolute control and absolute choice.

Welcome to a mad artists world.

But it’s driving us mad. Instead being limited to a certain area of art or projects we suddenly find ourselves doing a thousand creative things all at once: writing articles & weblogs, drawing illustrations, retouching photos, programming web sites, layouting a new CV and looking for background music for our presentations.

Did you really think one huge monitor would be enough?!

So much to do, so little time and energy. And the web as a global showcase doesn’t make things easier. There is a constant stream of competition and inspiration to cope with. Have you seen those cool Japanese animations? This great Danish photographer? These old retro covers of some weird fashion magazine?

All these choices, ideas and doors waiting to be opened drive any creator mad. The total overflow of choice makes it hard to focus on just one project, just one set of skills, just one insanely great idea. A tough decision for anyone who loves to surf in possibilities.

Modern artists still want and need to be kissed by their Muses as well.

And we feel a lot of guilt of not pursuing all those ideas that pop up in our minds. The guilt of not pursuing another great business idea or product the world desperately needs. We get paralyzed by all the doors we could jump through and enjoy another adventure in creativeland. And this guilt sucks big time.

Anything else Sir? But there is an additional problem: business. Today’s clients and employers all want a young super geeks with a Maestro’s thirty years of experience and wide ranging skill set. But just one arty farty person please. We are on a tight budget these days.

Ah, when art was simple and computers limited. (Image: Andres Becerra)

So it’s really hard to say ‘I am just an illustrator’ or ‘I can only write good articles’, since you don’t want to cut yourself out of the market. So we learn and buy many different software packages, try to stay on top of a gazillion technologies, names and gizmos. But most of all, we lose the time, energy and focus to be masters of our trade – to be simply open, productive and creative.

Although art involves knowledge and craftsmanship as well, once again we should start to make distinctions between mastering expressive techniques and mastering production technologies.

There is a difference between animating something and writing a flash script. There is a difference between composing a great stream of words to entice your readers and operating a content management system. There is a difference between taking great pictures and layout an art book. Let artists be artists, technicians be technicians and geek’s … oh well …

*repost 2003-08-19*

More and more people find their favorite websites blocked by corporate firewalls. Also email filters clamp down on stupid attachments like the newest ‘funny’ video or porn.

Actually I can only recommend to anyone working in a big company not to visits websites you like in private, nor use the companies email address for mailing your friends and family. Most admin’s don’t care about your stuff – but looking at your mails and surfing habits is a gold mine for any middle management asshole to find a reason to kick your butt.

So get yourself at least a private webmail account that supports secure transmission and is hopefully not blocked by your corporate admin. Don’t surf any pr0n, funny or dating websites during work – not even during lunch break. It will be recorded – and used against you …

One professor called this generation once screenies:

We work all day in front of a screen.
We relax in front of a screen.
We educate ourselves with screens.
We socialize via our screens.
We pick out our next date on a screen.

I think he is right.

Behold the Power of the Princess Salome [make sure to read about her story before continuing]. Her innocence and tempting fertility drives the King and his Court mad. Her display of beauty, untamed sexuality and an almost childish mindset make her an explosive mixture.

While a Queen has to accept the limitations of power and responsibility – the Princess is allowed to play, tease and make mistakes. Since only her fertility mattered in the old days – nobody cared about her character, education or overall potential as a human being.

Be charming! Be fertile! Be tempting! But nothing else …

You find in almost all culture ritualized displays of female fertility (and male shows for courage etc.). It was and still is part of the ‘wedding porn’ of human culture. Picking the best DNA to breed with. The play between the young female and society is nothing else but a cow market at best and simple entertainment at worst.

The Princess shows off her wares for attention and maybe a good marriage deal. She doesn’t need any personality or any skills, just be fertile, healthy and mildly attractive – so society can project it’s desires and dirty thoughts onto you.

Hey, I used to be news …

Amanda Congdon and LonelyGirl belong to the new Cast of WebFems – who like Salome dance before the Kings behind the other side of the monitor. Give them a video stream or a blog – and they immediately attract hungry male eyeballs and curious girlies.

Dance Princess dance, maybe the Audience grants you a wish or some fame for actually doing nothing.

Uhhh, save me Knight of shining Armor … 

It seems like that anything young with breasts is able to create their own cult within minutes these days. Salome’s dance on speed with a million Kings watching.

Although most gurls (to use a web 1.0 expression) have hardly anything interesting to say or are hardly entertaining. It’s like New Orleans: flash your titts to get some simple beads [Mardi Gras].

It is called dicktionary for a reason …

My favorite piece of video mouseturbation is YouTube’s Hot for Words. She actually has something to say about words, but even without sounds she makes any healthy male hump their monitors.

She is Princess Salome with a Dictionary.

So is this the Future of Girl Power? Is this what’s left of Feminism in the Web 2.0 age? Playing Porn Princess Salome on YouTube, MySpace and all the other Mekkas for mouse clicks?

Where are the smart girly role models? An aggressive form of Sluttism seems to be the way to go. Celebs like Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton all have ‘leaked’ their Vaginas to the net. Brittney Spears and her entourage of drunken blondes compete almost daily to show their pussies to anyone with a camera.

Is that the formula and message for modern girls: show your cunt and you become a real person?

Dear Salome – you have started a terrible trend.

Since electronic components are cheap and little computers are everywhere – almost any digital gizmo offers now a built in clock: your cell phone, your iPod and even your digicam. Who still needs a huge ‘machine’ on your forearm that only can you tell the current time? In an age of multifunctional supertoys the single purpose mechanical device is slowly phased out.

I haven’t been wearing a wristwatch for over twenty years – anyone out there still using them?!

My virtual home, complete with Firewall, a secret VPN tunnel for escapes and a house dragon to keep all the spammers and hackers away.

Copenhagen 7. September 1987: telcos from thirteen european nations give birth to the digital GSM network we all know and use today. Cell Phones have been around before – but this was the new age – the digital age.

You see above the Motorola Dynatac the first commercially available cell phone for a mere $4000.

Today 2,5 billion people use cell phones. About 7 billion SMS are sent each day.