Lifeform Category Archives
идолопоклонники
12 February 2014 | Culturology, Lifeform | No Comments
меня всегда завораживало столкновение с коллекционерами of any sort. есть в этом что-то волшебное, разве нет? какой-то искаженный поиск, обязательное возвращение, безграничная страсть. неизменная попытка разыскать общий язык в запутанных лабиринтах коммуникаций? think so:
The whole tendency of modern communication whether in the press, in advertising or in the high arts is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.
Marshall McLuhan in a letter to Harold Innis, dated March 14, 1951
communication must become total
5 February 2014 | History, Lifeform, Literature | No Comments
кстати, Билли Берроузу сегодня исполнилось бы ровно 100 лет.
даже как-то и не верится сразу — настолько он и сегодня с нами, среди нас, и мы живем по его лекалам.
King Zuck’s Bible
1 February 2014 | Art, Internet, Lifeform | No Comments
как искусство совокупляет жизнь, например:
In summer 2012 the social network LinkedIn.com got hacked and lost its whole user database. A few months later parts of the decrypted password list surfaced on the Internet. These eight volumes contain 4.7 million LinkedIn clear text user passwords printed in alphabetical order. Visitors are invited to look up their own password.
как похищенные наборы символов, означающие доступ; как симулякры, симулирующие несуществующие тайны — и тщетные мечты о неприкосновенности — оказывются выпотрошены на всеобщее обозрение: hey, come and see! найди своего подкидыша, расскажи секрет, что лежит, среди прочих, так же наг и сир в этой новой прозекторской:
что есть искусство, как не ваши осколки?
конец детства
10 January 2014 | Lifeform, Literature, Religion | 1 Comment
говоря о божествах, вот рассказ Фредрика Брауна, где максимально точно и лаконично повествуется о наиболее интересующей меня точке зрения:
Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe — ninety-six billion planets — into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment’s silence he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”
“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”
He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
“Yes, now there is a God.”
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
сферический конь в вакууме
29 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform, Politics | 1 Comment
с другой же стороны, Чарли Стросс подводит итог максимально точно:
To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you’re a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).
он абсолютно прав, это прекрасный инструмент для идеального мира. но мы-то живем на Земле.
altcoins
29 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | 3 Comments
Брэд ДеЛонг о своих наблюдениях за биткойном:
Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know).
Placing a ceiling on the value of gold is mining technology, and the prospect that if its price gets out of whack for long on the upside a great deal more of it will be created. Placing a ceiling on the value of the dollar is the Federal Reserve’s role as actual dollar source, and its commitment not to allow deflation to happen.
Placing a ceiling on the value of bitcoins is computer technology and the form of the hash function… until the limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Placing a floor on the value of bitcoins is… what, exactly?
мне кажется, я могу ответить: это договоренность сторон о необходимости альтернативных денег, неподвластных государственому регулированию. и до тех пор, пока такая договоренность в силе, биткойн будет жить (падая и снова возрождаясь). проблема, однако, в том, что формализировать эти договаривающиеся стороны мы, на самом-то деле, не можем. и следовательно, поскольку намерения этих сторон нам неизвестны, сложно расценивать биткойн, как действенную инвестицию — условно говоря, если значимая часть игроков решит денонсировать свое участие, биткойн обесценится и накопления остальных, well, дольщиков элементарно сгорят[1].
поэтому можно говорить разве что об исключительно удачном эксперименте — но он еще не окончен, вот в чем дело. и несмотря на то, как математически прекрасна эта криптовалюта, сегодня она годится разве что для спекуляций в мире стальных нервов.
копи царя Соломона
18 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | No Comments
чудесный скринсейвер, веселье бьет ключом.
анамнез
10 December 2013 | Economics, Internet, Lifeform | No Comments
а вот, пожалуйста, анализ биткойн-экономики, подготовленный инвестиционным филиалом Bank of America. масса интересного, к слову сказать:
Is Bitcoin a bubble? Assuming Bitcoin becomes a major player in both ecommerce and money transfer and a significant store of value with a reputation close to silver, our fair value analysis implies a maximum market capitalization of Bitcoin of $15bn (1BTC = 1300 USD). This suggests that the 100 fold increase in Bitcoin prices this year is at risk of running ahead of its fundamentals.
так же об очевидных параллелях с рынком золота, о волатильности, о роли Китая, и многое другое.
ну, или обзор попроще от Wired. и немного технических подробностей.
heroes and models
2 December 2013 | Art, Lifeform, Photo | No Comments
вот, кстати, замечательный анонимный фотограф JR, что обнажает наши лица, убирает надуманные маски, знакомит с миром:
JR creates “Pervasive Art” that spreads uninvited on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle-East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil. People who often live with the bare minimum discover something absolutely unnecessary. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Some elderly women become models for a day; some kids turn artists for a week. In that Art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.
everybody should have some fake ID
25 November 2013 | Crime, Culturology, Humour, Lifeform | 2 Comments
а вот отличная статья Брюса Стерлинга о Россе Ульбрихте, Ужасном Пирате Россе:
Dread Pirate Roberts is the Napster of meth, he’s the Facebook of ‘shrooms. He’s also a man of almost 30, who, despite his degree in science, has apparently never been employed by anyone. Dread Pirate Roberts, through a cruel twist of history, is a Depression Millennial. Nemo 2.0 here, this pseudonymous, legendary, subaquatic figure, is scraping along in conditions of grave hardscrabble obscurity, very much like some period Jules Verne Parisian bohemian. Basically, he’s a failure-to-launch. He can’t get his foot on the ever-narrowing ladder of America’s stricken capitalism.
Dread Pirate Roberts, he of the dashing cloak and cutlass, is also a gray-man survivor. He is covert, invisible, zero-history. Quiet as a mouse in his out-of-state den in San Francisco, he roars like a lion to a gathering network army of deeply impressed potheads. He’s “Josh,” a clean-skin with no distinguishing marks. He’s a no-hoper from an oppressed and neglected generation, quietly waiting for his fake ID from Canada. While he waits to change his name, fantastic heaps of Bitcoin funny money sift into his cypherpunk wallet. He’s a thriving multimillionaire, but never in possession of actual dough.
Dread Pirate Roberts is one of the new ones, folks. I mean those strange guys who are colossal on the Internet, while simultaneously crammed and repressed into tiny physical niches.
плюс, еще немного интриги:
Two Israeli computer scientists say they may have uncovered a puzzling financial link between Ross William Ulbricht, the recently arrested operator of the Internet black market known as the Silk Road, and [Satoshi Nakamoto] the secretive inventor of bitcoin, the anonymous online currency, used to make Silk Road purchases.
есть над чем задуматься[1].
-
необходимость легализации, впрочем, сомнений у меня не вызывает. ↩