Archives for June 2011
круги на воде
30 June 2011 | Google | 1 Comment
надо бы, кстати, написать что-то умное про Google+ (хоть и без инвайта все еще, зато есть прекрасные обзоры), но совершенно вот не хочется.
оно и понятно, все эти новые their own theme parks with blackjack and hookers напоминают мне только одну позабытую историю — то есть, конечно, с помощью имеющихся у Google ресурсов можно построить этот самый парк хоть и на Луне, однако и пользоваться им в итоге будут разве что окончательные лунатики (пусть и демо-версия, и прилагающиеся ролики смотрятся очень хорошо).
иными словами, проблема-то не в этом, не в ограниченности сил, но в ограниченности кругозора:
The thing that makes Facebook great is that it incubated in the market with real users. It was made by real users. It was formed by actual use. One day at a time, one feature at a time, in public, every home run visible, and every mis-step.
Products like the one Google just announced are hatched at off-sites at resorts near Monterey or in the Sierra, and were designed to meet the needs of the corporation that created it. A huge scared angry corporation. What little is left of the spark that created it in the first place is now used to being Number One, and wants to feel that again. It’s being created to make that person feel better.
как активный пользователь гуглопродуктов, я и сам, в первую очередь, был бы исключительно рад удаче и окончательной интеграции всего во все. но отчего-то (отчего же?) просто не верю: достаточно подумать, где находится сейчас Google Latitude по сравнению с foursquare или с Facebook Places — а ведь для того, чтобы не утонуть, захлебнувшися великой мыслью в собственной купальне, именно на таких составляющих и прийдется строить будущее единство. строить, укладывать воедино все кирпичики, приводить к одному знаменателю и — увеличивать user base данных приложений.
единственное, как мне видится, что сегодня может изменить ситуацию в пользу Google+ — это Android и его пользователи. но даже и если и так, то почему и как они захотят выбрать что-то новое вместо отлично работающих и уже существующих сервисов?
в остальном же, суммируя, подвести итоги социальным гуглопровалам можно буквально в двух словах:
Fundamentally, Google is a utility. No one wants to hang out at their power company.
именно, no one.
на пальцах
29 June 2011 | Music | No Comments
а вот замечательный диск “Kind of Bloop”, трибьют в честь прекрасного альбома Майлза Дэвиса, “Kind of Blue”.
искра
28 June 2011 | Copyright, Media, Technology | No Comments
и продолжая разговор о dead media — книги в самом деле отживают свое:
We are in a special moment that will not last beyond the end of this century: Paper books are plentiful. They are cheap and everywhere, from airports to drug stores to libraries to bookstores to the shelves of millions of homes. There has never been a better time to be a lover of paper books. But very rapidly the production of paper books will essentially cease, and the collections in homes will dwindle, and even local libraries will not be supported to house books — particularly popular titles. Rare books will collect in a few rare book libraries, and for the most part common paper books archives will become uncommon. It seems hard to believe now, but within a few generations, seeing a actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion.
там же, конечно, и рецепт:
<...> The same guy who has been backing up the internet (yes the entire web!), and is racing Google to scan all books into digital files, has recently become concerned about the lack of a physical archive for all these digitized books. That guy is Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive. Brewster noticed that Google and Amazon and other countries scanning books would cut non-rare books open to scan them, or toss them out after scanning. He felt this destruction was dangerous for the culture.
<...>
Brewster decided that he should keep a copy of every book they scan so that somewhere in the world there was at least one physical copy to represent the millions of digital copies. That safeguarded random book would become the type specimen of that work. If anyone ever wondered if the digital book’s text had become corrupted or altered, they could refer back to the physical type that was archived somewhere safe.
но я хочу обратить ваше внимание на другое: бумажные книги, samizdat — это то, что никакими копирайт-акциями нельзя запретить к распространению. потому что, кто знает, может в знаменитой антиутопии Брэдбери и жгли-то бумажные книги именно потому, что их наличие не согласовывалось с программой от какого-нибудь Amazon?
и только Столлман все давным-давно знал.
фанерный танк
27 June 2011 | Architecture, Copyright, Lifeform | 1 Comment
китайцы, между прочим, собираются украсть целую деревню:
Residents of the Austrian mountain town of Hallstatt, population 800, are scandalized. A Chinese firm has plans to replicate the village — including its famous lake — in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, Austrian media reported this week.
да и что там деревня, в конце концов:
This isn’t the first time a Chinese firm has used a European place as inspiration. The Chinese city of Anting, some 30 kilometers from Shanghai, created a district designed to accommodate 20,000 residents called “German Town Anting.” Modelled after a typical mid-size German city by architecture firm Albert Speer & Partner, it includes Bauhaus style architecture and a fountain with statues of Goethe and Schiller.
In 2005 Chengdu British Town was modelled on the English town of Dorchester. One year later Thames Town was finished near Shanghai, complete with a 66-meter tall church that bears a striking resemblance to a cathedral in Bristol. Also near Shanghai are mini versions of Barcelona, Venice and the Scandinavian-inspired Nordic Town. The architectural plagiarisms are popular destinations among middle-class Chinese, even serving as backdrops for wedding photos.
и как тут без копирайта, можно спросить? а легко:
While a 1:1 copy may not be entirely legal, the building of structures based off of photographs is, says UNESCO.
кстати, недавно Китай так же выкупил у США кусочек земли размером в 50 квадратных миль и собираются теперь построить там городок. а что мелочиться, я думаю? давайте сразу копию Белого дома. и небольшого азиатского Барака Обаму во дворе с ромашками.
музейный экспонат
26 June 2011 | Art, Literature | No Comments
и в самом деле голубое сало.
курятник
25 June 2011 | Culturology, Internet, Photo | No Comments
или вот еще один культурный феномен, сообщество ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
odin_moy_den, где унылые барышни выставляют на обозрение свои унылые дни, и дружно потом щебечут друг другу вслед заученное “ах-какие-вы-милые”.
меня всегда интересовало одно, почему именно барышни в таких необозримых количествах? какой именно гендерный мостик должен пересохнуть вдруг между левым и правым полушариями, дабы искрой зажглась мысль о том, что эта мышинная серость может показаться интересной хоть кому-нибудь? от внутренней неуверенности это, от полнейшей нереализованности, отчего? где вообще, на каком острове, и, самое главное, зачем растят этих эгоцентричных слепых наседок?
the perfections are sharpened
24 June 2011 | Literature | 3 Comments
замечательная Анастасия 
nastik Грызунова переводит стихи Уильяма Карлоса Уильямса (плюс, вот ссылки и на другие его переводы: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4).
Уильямс, если что, потрясающий без меры, и те кусочки “Патерсона”, что довелось мне когда-то случайно встретить, очаровали меня раз и навсегда:
—Say it, no ideas but in things—
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident—
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—
secret—into the body of the light!
огромный коллаж, поэтический шаг, соединяющий мир каждодневности и поэтики — вот, что писал об этом он сам:
Like the newspaper that takes things as it finds them, — mutilated and deform, but drops what it finds as it was, unchanged in all its deformity and mutilation — the poet, challenging the event recreates it as of when it sprang from among men and women, and makes a new world of it.
и дальше, в полном соответствии, он брал картины настоящего и расписывал их в поэзию событий:
The truth is that news offers the precise incentive to epic poetry, the poetry of events; and now is precisely the time for it since never by any chance is the character of a single fact ever truthfully represented today. If ever we are to have any understanding of what is going on about us we shall need some other means for discobvering it. The epic poem would be our newspaper.
вот так (или здесь, благодаря Насте, по-русски):
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformlyby a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—all the exciting detail
of the chaseand the escape, the error
the flash of genius—all to no end save beauty
the eternal—So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautifulfor this
to be warned againstsaluted and defied—
It is alive, venomousit smiles grimly
its words cut—The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—It is the Inquisition, the
RevolutionIt is beauty itself
that livesday by day in them
idly—This is
the power of their facesIt is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd ischeering, the crowd is laughing
in detailpermanently, seriously
without thought
или так, полный журналистской лаконичности, точно заметка где-нибудь на 9 странице:
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to itin the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.
доброе утро.
but what if I’m dead?
23 June 2011 | Cinematograph | No Comments
а еще посмотрел “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”, который очень хороший. эдакий таиландский “Солярис” Тарковского? быть может. по-крайней мере, оба автора разными голосами показывают одно и то же — не поверите, говорит Вирасетакун, но за все в жизни приходится платить:
Boonmee: You know, this is a result of my karma.
Jen: What is?
Boonmee: This illness. I’ve killed too many communists.
Jen: But you killed with good intentions.
Boonmee: And I’ve killed a lot of bugs on my farm.
а еще было бы очень хорошо, если и в самом деле где-нибудь в Таиланде граница между живыми и мертвыми вдруг исчезала в ничто, и, свободные, мы могли бы напропалую разгуливать из одного мира в другой — да, в самом деле хотел бы.
но вообще там[1] много хорошего, не верьте моей иронии:
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is the final installment in a multi-platform art project called Primitive. The project deals with the region Isan in Thailand’s northeast, and in particular the village Nabua in Nakhon Phanom, just by the border to Laos. Previous installments include a seven-part video installation and the two short films A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms of Nabua, all of which premiered in 2009.
вот, что говорит сам Вирасетакун:
When you watch a film, it’s something that’s already happened. It already has a past life. <...> Uncle Boonmee is really about cinema to me. [I was inspired] by old television shows that were shot on 16mm camera, as well as by one-baht Thai graphic novels that show a different landscape of ghosts. I’m fascinated by that and try to put it in the movie.
Uncle Boonmee has six reels [that are combined to become a 115-minute movie]. Each reel has a different acting style, lighting and reference on cinema. When you make a film about recollection and death, you realise that cinema is also facing death. Uncle Boonmee is one of the last pictures shot on film _ now everybody shoots digital. It’s my own little lamentation, this thing about dividing the six reels into six styles. In the first reel, it’s my kind of film when you see long takes of animals and people driving. The second reel is like old cinema with stiff acting and classical staging, then it’s a documentary style in the third reel. The fourth reel is a costume drama… [and so on].
и еще:
It echoes other works in the ‘Primitive’ installation, which is about this land in Isaan with a brutal history. But I’m not making a political film – it’s more like a personal diary.
мне часто кажется, что именно таким и должен быть кинематограф — где-то на грани между личным дневником и подслушанной историей, которую обязательно — и с этим ничего не сделать — обязательно надо показать всем другим:
The film is about a dying uncle, Boonmee. It’s also about a lovelorn princess and her encounter with an erotic catfish. Then it’s about a lost buffalo, monkey ghosts, a swarm of bees and their sweet honeycombs, dead communism, photography, immigrants of the land and of the soul, and of course, it’s about the possibility of past and future lives. With your eyes wide open it’s also a dream alchemy that fuses into the memory of a place where time and space fold into each other like the soft petals of an eccentric flower, or like proof of quantum physics, or – why not? – both.
—
[1] — там.
а потом я исчез
23 June 2011 | Lifeform, Media, Technology | 1 Comment
еще (1 + 2) немного о былых носителях:
“Along with being fascinating and often funny, looking deeply into the history of media can offer us insights into how things work and fail to work,” [New York University postdoctoral researcher Finn] Brunton said. “Media technologies offer narratives to us. When we build a media platform, we are offering stories of how we think the future should be, about how we conceive of thinking and communication.”
а вот, как все начиналось:
Science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling coined the term “dead media” in 1995 for a talk at a new media conference, as a way to remind technologists and marketers that their creations would not always endure.
<...>
“Much of the new media in Sterling’s time was an attempt to sell something and move on. Sterling came to speak against the new, new hotness, by pointing his audience to … the obsolete, the dysfunctional, the has-been and never-was,” Brunton said.
но было и прекрасное:
<...> people were thinking up ways to use the telephone to transmit music. One idea was the Telharmonium, a 200-ton electric organ located in a concert hall in New York City, with enormous tone wheels that produced loud sounds that could be used to recreate symphonies. In effect, Brunton said, it was the first synthesizer, and the service was an early example of music streaming.
The idea behind the Telharmonium was that people would subscribe to a service that would allow them to call a number and listen to Telharmonium music being played live. Users would hook up a horn to the phone to listen, and the music was piped into restaurants in lieu of live bands.
миллион туда, миллион сюда
22 June 2011 | Facebook, Internet, Privacy | No Comments
Facebook lost 5 million active users in the U.S. last month, according to a tracking service <...> There were also user declines in the United Kingdom, Norway and Russia, where Facebook has been around for a while [emphasis mine].