I wonder where we should draw a line and say “heck, there’s too much user-generated content out there; web 2.0 is too much to handle because we hadn’t even really gotten it nailed down right the first time around so we should stop.” Why am I wondering about this? Well, where are our reference points/people?
we kill we cheat we develop and we perfect and we market death we do it in the name of something we don’t know but believe in because we’re scared we lie to one another we sell ourselves we sell our love we destroy hope we learn to lie before we learn to listen we need nothings we have nothings we feel nothing we’re afraid of everything we miss the things that make up life
we care about insignificant things that decay faster than a shooting star lights up the sky. we gossip and worry and theorize about things that do not make up any blip of life or Life but we do it because we cannot handle life and Life.
in all of this, we’ve become so fucked up that we’ve just passed the point of no return. please fasten your seat belts. there is no emergency brake.
I’m doing this because I believe BT is one of the most influential contemorary artists, one whose work has done so much for our… spiritual well-being.
This is the second time his studio gets jacked… completely. So he’s posted a full list of equipment with serial numbers and he’s offering up a reward for information regarding the perpetrators. Info on BT’s Official Website.
Everyone down in Cali… get on craigslist and eBay and scout for these items. Entrapment, deceit and social engineering are your tools. Go have some fun!
so we have these devices with lights in them in a bunch of major US cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. and so people get all frightened and scared, in Boston, that they may be bombs. only in Boston. not NY, where 9/11 took place or anywhere else, for two weeks; but one morning, in Boston, somebody got all scared and called 911. and they brought in the bomb squad. which, after destroying one of the devices, was still unable to admit that they were just circuit boards with batteries, a light sensor and LEDs. I mean, don’t the bomb squad people undergo electronics training? or do they just send in their little robot to perform the ‘blowing up’ of the device hoping no biochemical agents are present?
all is fine otherwise. I guess I am happy to see some silly ad campaign go to crap because somebody was incapable of getting the proper permissions. but yes, something obviously bugs me. the two guys that made the devices and had to place them are the only ones that have been arrested and the only ones being tried. without making this a natural law philosophical debate, my issue is: why their employers have not been brought to justice yet and will they ever be? it would be incredibly stupid to have these guys [pic is reportedly taken during trial] put in jail for this.
or they should at the very least ask for a bonus for how incredibly successful their campaign has been.
and you sit and you watch and you feel that you need to break free; that no matter how much you do it’s as if you never do enough. it’s not self-improvement, it’s self-identification. staring in a dark corner and letting images flashing before your mind as the impression decays and you feel it farther and farther away and you want to chase…
there is much beauty to be seen in unresolved feelings, in half-spent loves. it’s just that we don’t always want to deal with our incomplete feelings and uncertain impressions and just simply understand that beauty that’s rolling down our cheeks.
P.S. Thank you :)
Last post I was recommending Rick Dakan’s G33k Mafia as what might have been an interesting book for people fascinated about techie-related fiction. I was wrong on a few points that I’d like to rectify.
I read the book today. That should speak to some length regarding my enjoyment of it I suppose. So I am no longer recommending the book. I am telling you to fucking read it. I mean, it’s free, right? There’s little in the way of time what you might have to lose, possibly some time if you don’t end up enjoying the novel.
First off, this book will not answer any philosophic, romantic or otherwise ‘deep’ questions you might have; for that, look into the properties of the number 42. The novel is, however, abound with social engineering, gadgetry and strung together by a verisimilar plot and a fair load of humour. It is not solely addressed to geeks in any manner and it stays clear of deep technical content - although it could have easily included such content in a manner akin to Neal Stephenson’s ‘Cryptonomicon’.
I do not want to give much away in terms of plot but it is not quite as predictable as I imagined at a certain point. It will make you try and guess its ending numerous times and that will still not spoil your fun; more than anything, it is an indication that you are trying to get in the characters’ mindset. Dakan immerses the reader with such exquisite mastery that it is hard to believe this is his first novel [some details regarding his past work can be found on his website.] ‘G33k Mafia’ will go on the shelf besides ‘Cryptonomicon’ and I foresee purchases with logo-ized items to follow soon [because, yes, it is a kick-ass logo =) .]
Unless my memory deceives me the movie rights have already been sold and I couldn’t wait sooner to see how that pans out; needless to say I would love to see that - despite, naturally, the risks involved in terms of bastardizing the content and whatever other expectations I might make up in the interim.
I had a lot of fun with this novel. I hope it works out well for Dakan and, who knows, maybe there will be a sequel [risks there too.]
Scoop over to Rick Dakan’s website and look at G33K MAFIA which sounds like an interesting novel for the tech inclined out there. There’s a free download for it under a non-commercial CC license.
