Yet another awesome comedy vid inspired by the world of social networking.
If nothing else, the popularity of vids like this is a clear indication that the social net. phenomenon has reached critical mass, and that we're all trying to figure out what it means.
'cause it's gonna get sloppy!
1992 was amazing.
I love this line in particular:
By the time you add up all the people who are involved in creating an application, you'll end up with as many as 20 or 30 people.
Idiots of Ants are a UK based comedy troupe. These particular ones are based on the premise of Facebook-style interaction in the real world. Enjoy the LOL's.
It's funny to watch, as obviously Facebook communication is stilted and strange when done in person. The hundred or so comments added since the video was uploaded four days ago are quick to crow about how it
This is great, now I can send this to my friends when they ask why I'm not on Facebook.
brilliant.. i dont understand why anyone would want the world to see what the frick they are doing...frikin hate facebook...
Great...that's why a Removed my account from Facebook lol
HA thats so funny i guess its realy like that when u think about it'
You wish, Microsoft.
Memories of this video, which I blogged about earlier, but which definitely deserves a second look. The video was pulled for a while, but it's back, and.... uh... wow.
You likely know David Armano's exemplary blog 'Logic + Emotion', which is most definitely a go-to site for business and user interface design and all things 2.0.
The cowboy-hatted one grates my nerves a little sometimes, mainly due to his inability to take off his cowboy hat. I know, however, that the mark of a successful brand is often the nausea due to over-exposure I feel when I think of that hat, so go David.
In any case, the graphic above is a reminder that we need to be thoughtful and insightful in generating marketing programs in the digital space, and not just throw some buzzwords in a happy meal bag.
Okay now seriously.
How am I not supposed to feel like a techno-prescient oracle, considering the following:
1. I have long said that I would only get a cell-phone when a device was developed that met all of my portable digital needs:
- Phone
- Music
- PDA
- Web Browser/Email
- Nintendo Hand-held Gaming System
- long-lasting in highly-competitive tech industries, without majority market share
- highly entrepreneurial/innovative development model - track record of inventing revolutionary products (iPod, Wii, Macintosh 128K, GameBoy etc.)
- some high profile failures (GameCube, Macintosh TV)
- clean, minimalist design aesthetic, with tendencies toward 'cute' imagery
- etc. etc.
So you're a town in England. You've got a problem with massive, freakish, bloated pigeons ranking up your streets with shit, and generally making a hideous nuisance of themselves.
You have a choice.
You can either:
a) Do nothing, and let your city degenerate into a vile, festering pigeon paradise (Venice anyone?)
b) Contnue spending $320,000 a year on employing 8 full-time workers solely dedicated to washing pigeon shit off your streets
or...
c) INSTALL TEN ROBOTIC PEREGRINE FALCONS TO SCARE THOSE PARASITES THE FUCK AWAY (into the neighbouring towns presumably, but let's keep that to ourselves).
Fear the falcon's robot gaze! FEAR IT!!!
Yes, Liverpool is doing exactly that, and it couldn't happen soon enough, considering their status next year as European Capital of Culture.
These little birdbots, titled strangely as Robops by the company that invented them, sit in static locations (which will change to ensure that the birds don't get used to their presence) and engage in a series of behaviours that imitate Peregrine Falcons - one of the species that preys on pigeons.
The range of motion/behaviour of the Robop.
The website for the Robops is as inexplicable as their names, and is a labrynthian garbage pile twelve-thousand bytes deep, but let's ignore that and give mad props to a great idea.
Y'all know the Beckstar loves to see robots helping their organic earthmates. Just another harbinger of an awesome, awesome future, where robots help man, man builds more robots, and we realize that the Raelians were right all along. I for one am looking forward to it.
Alice Wang is from Taipei, Taiwan. She recently graduated with a First Class degree from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design BA (hons) Product Design and is now studying MA Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art.
She often uses products to illustrate various human behaviours, social taboos and social trends. Her products question why people do what they do and how it will evolve over time leading onto other possible behaviours.
- alice-wang.com
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a fantastic storehouse of all kinds of awesome.
But let's skip the handshakes and get right to the robot exhibit!
Robots Like Us is a fantastic collection of twentieth century toy robots, mainly retrofuturistic ones from Japan in the 1960's!
Way more amazing photos in my album. I don't know why it's okay to take photographs in museums but not galleries, but hey - don't mind if I do!
I'll post more on this amazing robot, designed for non-verbal interaction and play with infants and children, later.
In the meantime... I can't stop watching this incredible, wonderful video:
I can't think of any better way to explain Web 2.0 than this video. Made by Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State, it is a fantastic piece.
Atari to Beckstar: Honey, you wouldn't know what to do with me if you had me. Un huh!
Beckstar to Atari: Drooooooooool. Attempt to touch joysticks.
In what seems like the ultimate in fantastic invention is the true story of the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000 year old Greek astronomical computer capable of computing the position of the sun and moon, and possibly planets, and predicting eclipses.
No earlier geared mechanism of any sort has ever been found. Nothing close to its technological sophistication appears again for well over a millennium, when astronomical clocks appear in medieval Europe. It stands as a strange exception, stripped of context, of ancestry, of descendants. [2]
Clockwise from top left - one part of the ruin as discovered; rendering of assembled mechanism; x-ray of one piece - hot gears!; 3D rendering of gear system.
Discovered in 1902, in the remains of a Roman shipwreck, the mechanism is potentially one of several, as mentioned by Cicero:
"And when Gallus moved the globe, it was actually true that the moon was always as many turns behind the sun on the bronze contrivance as would agree with the number of days it was behind in the sky. Thus the same eclipse of the sun happened on the globe as would actually happen"
Archeoastronomy is so, so, so very cool. Read more in the Nature magazine feature.
Kitáb al-Hiyal: The Book of Ingenious Devices, an illustrated book of mechanical devices and automata, published in 850 by three Persian brothers. It contains the first mention of a robot.
published in the 1200's and retailing for around $60. So... if anyone wants to borrow this second book, let me know in 10 - 14 business days.
