This one should have more staying power. We used large storage container blocks for the first two tiers, then medium-sized blocks on the next few tiers, then went to the smaller blocks as we created the conical cupola. The big block on the top is a keystone, I hope, forcing everything to hold shape. It was a workout, and a lot of fun!
Here’s a 30-second video slideshow I made with Animoto.
Apparently there is more snow coming tonight!
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
Preamble
About 15 years ago I spent a couple years writing a thesis about the emergence of multimedia representation from the 18th to the 20th centuries as a force of cultural change. Put simply – the fact that when creators mixed imagery with language, meaning became more accessible to the educated and (importantly) the illiterate, and opened new avenues of thought to create more opportunity – or in many cases, to fight oppression. I didn’t know it would be that relevant to whatever I did next as I left academia, but fate led me to creating the next generation of connected products on the web, and as I have recently learned, representational theory and case studies from former centuries demonstrating the effect of representational technique on society, is more relevant to what we are experiencing today, than I ever would have expected. Much like the “Human Condition” – it doesn’t change, it just repeats and adapts itself to present conditions…
At this point I’m hung up on two things that would seem dichotomous: the future, and the immediate now.
The “immediate now” is more than the concept of moments fleeting every moment. At this point, the concept of “NOW” has been popularized by connected devices to mean access to immediate information, as it happens. This access is not ubiquitous, but the principle is demonstrated, and more and more, culture is adapting to wanting “nowness” in many contexts.
On the other side of the dichotomy I am focused on the future because I want to predict how these dynamics will trend into future opportunity. I’d like to create a business in providing the vehicles wherein businesses flourish in the future economies of data exchange, spanning many dimensions of relevance, whether they be semantic, geospatial, social, temporal, or some other dimension I haven’t thought of yet.
The Global Brain
At this point, the people of Earth are sufficiently connected and communicating in real-time that the Earth begins to resemble a global brain, creating new inferences by the pulses of information we pass to each other, actively and passively, and the results that ensue in real life. Each person a neuron, each connection, a synapse.
We can see that in the past centuries certain tools and technologies have activated communication patterns, let’s call them “thought patterns”, when they enabled connections or synapses between motivated peoples, communities. concepts or prospects. This has increased in velocity, at orders of magnitude, from the 18th century to the 19th, and from the 19th, to the 20th. This adaptation/corruption of Moore’s law, or the approximation toward vertical asymptote, looks probable also in this case, for the 21st. At some point on reaching vertical, profound change may happen (this is where I go scifi, the rest is all logical).
What have we been doing to actuate this increased pace of development & capability? Regardless of the century, we have been using available toolsets to iterate on the current extensible connections, which can further grow, branch, and reconnect. As human brains grow and develop, so do cultures eventually follow at one order greater, and where cultures and empirical forces prevail, organisms also adapt. At various degrees of magnification, the rebranching and growth of possibility happens in child development, in community growth, in cultural development, and it happens ultimately in the evolution of species.
If you haven’t seen this video, it illustrates the concept, somewhat spiritual, of our place in a spatial cosmos, and infinitely extensible, even without reference to the time dimension necessarily. It’s 70s Nova stuff, never gets old, just like The Miracle of Life, which moved me in the Expecting Parents class 7 years ago.
Powers of Ten http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY
Let’s try to get practical, if possible.
So, we are now at a place where the availability of connected data makes a global brain, or a semantic web, an actual and tangible prospect. However, many, in fact I would guess most, areas of global consciousness (datasets) are willfully disconnected – they are “dark”. Those dark areas are not subconscious, they are just unconnected, unharnessed regions. Why are they dark? In most cases, I think, because owners of connectable data are not ready to connect them. They fear the loss of advantage by making their advantagous data available for connection. These are dark, but high-potential areas of the global brain.
My thesis is that creating an environment wherein owners of tight-held data become encouraged to open up their data with some, perhaps flexible, assurance of reciprocity, will yield a greater benefit to all via a larger potential in the global brain.
My suggestion to accomplish such willingness to open up datasets, is to create an open specification and platform for data exchange, which rationalizes all contributing datasets where possible, and allows undefined data elements to be added and where possible subsequently rationalized as well, against the specification. It would then create a controlled marketplace for exchange of proprietary data, which would be metered not on a one-to-one basis, but on a one-to-many, creating a mutually-beneficial collective.
Have you ever heard a song in a dream? I did, last week. And it had the best sound I’d ever heard. I’ve asked a few people who remember dreams, if they ever remembered hearing music in their dream. I didn’t get anyone who remembered.
Dreamtime. I was a hundred feet or so above a far-spreading ocean panorama as the day neared sunset, and I was riding some sort of combination flying-saucer / jetski. I was on the right side of the craft, and a flight partner was on the left. We held on with some kind of synthetic tether, and flew through the air. It was warm.
Suddenly, music started playing everywhere. It was “Dakota” by the Stereophonics, and the sound surrounded me. I was consciously quizzical about it. I had not consciously identified that this was a dream, but it still seemed very unusual, much more unusual to me than flying a saucer jetski.
I looked over at my flight partner and he smiled and nodded his head, and we turned our nose down toward the ocean. We dove and dove and dove as the music played on, in better sound than Dolby or THX or Dick Burwen ever dreamed of.
Then we hit the water, and our craft continued to dozens of feet beneath the surface. We could breathe, and the water was clear, although dark in the increasingly setting sun. Dolphins sported around us. We were exploring a new world, and the Stereophonics played on the best stereo ever heard.
>> Play “Dakota” by the Stereophonics. (Note: this song is also in my Streampad playlist, but you can play it immediately (and once only for free) with the Lala player here.
Lest anyone think Streampad was only available on Wordpress – NO! – Streampad has broken out like wildfire on Tumblr already. And support for more blog platforms is coming!
A great example of Streampad + Tumblr magic: http://www.fredwilson.fm
So I went to the gym today, against all odds, and mounted the Expresso Cycle again, to complete my last uncompleted tour in the “Advanced” section, called “Oh Mama”. It had me riding up 60 degree inclines and shooting down 60 degree inclines reaching over 40 MPH on a bike. Pretty thrilling considering that I was on a stationary bike in a YMCA. Oh, and by the way, last weekend I biked through an asteroid belt.
For those connected to me on Facebook I have probably chewed your ear off already about the Expresso Cycle. It sounds like a coffee-making-routine when I write it like that but it’s really a very engaging fitness machine which has a computer screen to show you competing on tours and adjusts the tension according to the degree of incline at any given point on any given tour. Add to that, a “Chase” video game where you collect coins and matching dragons and try to beat your best score by getting various speed and point boosters that expire in 30 seconds (read: interval training, ssssh).
As you can tell I am fanatic about the Expresso Cycle. I recommend anyone to check it out (www.expresso.net) and if your gym doesn’t have it, tell them to get it. I am at a YMCA. If you’re at a NYSC or Equinox or Lifetime Fitness or equivalent, they have no excuse not to match up to the YMCA.
Back to the point of this post. Last time I was at the gym I chased dragons on the Expresso Cycle and achieved my current goal – Double Century, i.e. I had rode the bike for 200 miles.
Today, I got on the bike and found that my next goal was… 500 miles.
OK… I have got a lot of riding to do.
Soulwax – I believe they are Belgian. I haven’t ever seen them but I love their beats.
About a year ago I was in a meeting in a conference room – very nondescript stuff – and then heard a heavy bass and a really great rhythm – and realized it was coming from our studio that shared a wall with the conference room.
Later that week I saw Rafael (our sound engineer) and asked him who it was. He said “Soulwax! And they told us to throw out that mix, because they thought they were off.”
Even though I had only heard it through a wall, I told Rafe that I thought it was awesome. He agreed. But there is no arguing with artists.
Anyway, this one is part of the weekend I never lived. But fun to think about.
Paul Oakenfold, Essential Mix, Live in Havana
I used to listen to the Essential Mix on Radio One FM when I lived in Oxford and spent hours in the darkroom rockin out and making latest photo prints. That’s how I got introduced to Paul Oakenfold – whom I’d like to actually meet some day if circumstances conspire.
This set – Live in Havana, is over an hour long I think – I got it off of Napster in 1999 and over the course of the next two years listened to it about 500 times while working out and driving and then… somewhere in the early 2000s…. lost it in the flotsam and jetsam of digital media management.
So a month ago, it occurs to me “I’m sure Oakie would love to have this set on the web for his fans” and I do a simple web search. Easy! but I’m confident that Oakie would want it this way. You can’t find this stuff to buy, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, enjoy!
To start the blog off right, how about a favorite anthem – AC-DC, \”T.N.T.\”
I’m not actually sure what a Power Load is, but I’m pretty sure that I want to be able to confidently bellow “I’m the Power Load! Watch me exploooooooooode!”
oy! oy! oy!
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