Practical city magic

Matt Jones has posted the slides from his talk at Webstock entitled The Demon-Haunted World. It's about technology and the city. Or if you'd like, the city as technology.

The car changed the development of the city irreversibly in the 20th century. I'd claim that mobiles will do the same in the 21st.

Remembering machines

Matt Jones: mobile devices are a super power.

He sees mobile as something of a super power device and described something he calls "bionic noticing" -- obsessively recording curious things he sees around him, driven by this multi-capable device in his pocket.

Short looping videos

Matt Jones argues that short looping videos are the real long photographs.

A loop would be a captured action or situation rather than a narrative, where the duration of the loop is set but the loop goes on forever so you can study the layers, the detail, the figure and the ground in the same way you can a photo. A bottled system not a short story. Think about all the tiny clips you've played again and again on the internet just to see one aspect, one moment, act out -- a goal or a dramatic chipmunk. Not stories, but toy moments.

A golden oldie from Matt Jones in 2001:

A golden oldie from Matt Jones in 2001: WebDogme.

Two Danish filmmakers, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in 1995 responded to what they saw as the increasing inhumanity and formulaic commerciality of effects-heavy, franchise-friendly feature films. They created a vow of chastity that placed the stylistic presentation and formal tricks of film subservient to the narrative and characterisation.

WebDogme is an attempt to outline a similar approach for the web. kottke.org is doing pretty well on the rules...I've unwittingly followed 5 or 6 of them at least. I'd link to the original Dogme 95 manifesto, but the official web site does not adhere to WebDogme rule #3 ("The browser must not be violated"); the manifesto is hidden within a frame. (via preoccupations)

The Internet is going to be switched

The Internet is going to be switched off tomorrow. What five things are you going to print out?

When dealing with information sent to them

When dealing with information sent to them on mobile devices like the Blackberry, people tend to not read anything that closely and seem to take the information less seriously. Like Matt and Foe, I've noticed this...but with blogs and (especially) newsreaders. Having 1000s of unread items to deal with per day would tend to diminish the value of individual blog posts, n'est pas? I wonder if this is partially what Gladwell is getting at with his upcoming NYer festival talk, The American Obsession with Precociousness, Learning quickly versus learning well...