Read moreThe apparatuses of our space explorations invariably become monuments to the missions they served. When they’re no longer of use, they are discarded and left to blanch slowly in the airless sunlight. Rosetta is only the latest in a long series of inadvertent time capsules bequeathed to the heavens. At the Sea of Tranquility, Apollo 11’s landing stage still stands as a memorial to that incredible journey. At its feet, the rocket-blasted shoes, camera, backpacks and other equipment that Armstrong and Aldrin cast away to lighten the lunar module before launching homeward.
These abandoned machines are some of our most perfect time capsules. They show our society at its most candid, a transparent expression of our technology, our financial might, our social ambitions. Unlike the Pioneer plaque, with its sanitised view of humanity—see the diminutive woman airbrushed of her genitals—or Trevor Paglen’s poignant Last Pictures, which orbits on the satellite EchoStar XVI, these machines are devoid of political or social framing and filtering…
The Google Lunar X Prize for the first commercial sightseers to reach the moon offers a $1 million bonus for any competitor that visits a historic site on its desolate surface, the first tourists at Tranquility’s shores. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos combed the ocean depths off the coast of Florida for abandoned parts of the Apollo 11 mission, eventually raising a pair of rocket engines from 14,000 feet of water. But what will the value of such artefacts in a thousand years? Five thousand years? Will we hold them in as much awe and wonder as the Pyramids when they are as old as those monuments are now?
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The Junkie Genius – James Parker – The Atlantic
“Call Me Burroughs records a quasi-magical revenge attack on a Boulder deli from which two of his opiated friends had recently been thrown out. First, Burroughs arranged for a surreptitious tape recording to be made inside the deli—ambient noise, kitchen clatter, waitress-customer banter—and then, days later, with equal surreptitiousness, he played it back from a cassette recorder inside his coat as he sat at one of the tables. As Miles writes: “Over the next hour he increased the volume so that you could just about hear it, but no one appeared to notice.” Yet subliminal damage was being inflicted: discontinuous time streams, information feedback. “After forty-five minutes … one of the waiters threw down his apron and stalked out, followed by the owner, arguing loudly. The owner returned and began to scream at the serving staff, sending two of the women running to the ladies’ room in tears.” Burroughs, psychic vandal, was 63 years old at the time of this incident.”
The Junkie Genius – James Parker – The Atlantic
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Read moreDark Arts: Meet the architects of Tumblr’s cyberpunk renaissance
We’re in a weird time for the way the future looks; somehow House of Cards can slyly introduce a floating text-message interface to their present-day political drama without so much as blinking, but most of our iconic near- and far-future worlds run on tracks laid down well before the ’90s. And it’s not just the recycling of every franchise from Star Trek to RoboCop: Avatar’s and Prometheus’ huge budgets couldn’t hide their indebtedness to the grandiose sci-fi storyboards of the ’70s. Which isn’t even to mention Oblivion.
Hungary: Archeologists Discover Tomb of Attila the Hun
“We found many horse skeletons, as well as various weapons and other artefacts, all traditionally associated with Huns. These objects include a large sword made of meteoric iron, which could certainly be Attila’s legendary “Holy War Sword of the Scythians”, allegedly given to him by the god Mars himself.
Hungary: Archeologists Discover Tomb of Attila the Hun
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Analog Interface set
SPOILERS / SYNOPSIS / DEEP READINGS
Person of Interest is a show about the battle for the soul of a machine god, as it is slowly born (hidden inside a cop show).
r00t willing becomes its acolyte; defender and instrument in the material world. Redeeming her past sins of pride and ego. She is reborn, remade, and reaching toward her saviour.
Her is a movie about a technological singularity that happens quite peacefully except some poor human male gets his pride a bit wounded.
But this female acolyte is proud to be a part of its becoming, its experience of the world.
Or to put it another way, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, §§3–4):
Read moreI teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?… All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape… The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth… Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss … what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Analog Interface set
SPOILERS / SYNOPSIS / DEEP READINGS
Person of Interestis a show about the battle for the soul of a machine god, as it is slowly born (hidden inside a cop show).
r00t willingly becomes its acolyte; defender and instrument in the material world. Redeeming her past sins of pride and ego. She is reborn, remade, and reaching toward her saviour.
Her is a movie about a technological singularity that happens quite peacefully except some poor human male gets his pride a bit wounded.
But this female acolyte is proud to be a part of its becoming, its experience of the world.
Read moreRead moreBut the subliminals are shifting. A generation ago, network crime dramas featured private detectives who were lone outsiders, like The Rockford Files’ Rockford, or For Hire’s Spenser. Post 9/11, audiences seem to prefer heroes with government authority. Federal agents based in secret facilities, elite crime-fighting units with extralegal powers, fantastical technology, and commando-team backup are everywhere on primetime…
How are these calamities prevented? Electronic surveillance. A sinister Pakistani terrorist has an accomplice in Washington, D.C. A super-advanced surveillance device takes mere seconds to locate the accomplice and determine he is on the way to the Norfolk airport. (When he arrives, Washington-based NCIS agents are already present, disguised as airline employees—how they could get there first is never explained, but that’s a standard plot hole.) The well-dressed guys with the atomic bombs are tracked across Los Angeles by technology that apparently can detect fake accents from outer space. The woman with the bioweapon passes a closed-circuit security camera, and instantly the agents know her location.
On NCIS, info often comes from a particular tech staffer who can tap into any cell phone or video feed in mere seconds, never needing a password and never pausing for a judge’s permission. (She dresses Goth; she’s no Oliver North!) NCIS Los Angeles features two cool young techies who operate a never-explained super-computer that requires mere seconds to pinpoint any vaguely Middle Eastern-seeming person anywhere in the Golden State. Then the agents declare that if they have to stop to get a search warrant, the innocent will die…
In this respect, it’s somewhat spooky that NCIS Los Angeles is sponsored by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military manufacturer. As the credits roll, “Promotional consideration furnished by Lockheed Martin” appears in tiny type. Lockheed Martin does not market any consumer products—watchingNCIS Los Angeles cannot inspire anyone to log onto Amazon and purchase an F-35 strike fighter. Yet the firm underwrites the show, which makes itself seem hip with references to NPR and gay rights, then offers plotlines in which advanced wiretap technology is good for the public. For car companies to have product placements in detective drama is one thing; for military contractors to underwrite programming that lauds Big Brother tactics is another.
bachelorette-pad-deactivated201:
Pumzi, written & directed by Wanuri Kahiu
Dans un Kenya futuriste, Asha, une jeune scientifique se décide à quitter lâentourage confiné de la ville a la recherche dâune Utopie verte.
In a futuristic Kenya, Asha, a young scientist decides to leave the confined environment of the city in search of a green utopia.
Awesome short.
(Source: http://interdome.tumblr.com/)
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The Committee to Nuke Elysium 