Emergent Digital Practices

laughingsquid: MakerBot Announces Merger With Stratasys

rafaelfajardo — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:25:17 -0600

MakerBot Announces Merger With Stratasys

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

rafaelfajardo — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:21:51 -0600

Richard Brautigan, 1967

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

cinoh: We Need a Fixer (Not Just a Maker) Movement echoes of...

rafaelfajardo — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:48:27 -0600

cinoh:

We Need a Fixer (Not Just a Maker) Movement

echoes of the owners’ bill of rights

prostheticknowledge: Anti Facial Recognition Visor Interesting...

rafaelfajardo — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:25:56 -0600

prostheticknowledge:

Anti Facial Recognition Visor

Interesting approach to avoid identification from cameras by lighting key areas of the face (video embedded below, via the great DigInfo):

This is the world’s first pair of glasses which prevent facial recognition by cameras. They are currently under development by Japan’s National Institute of Informatics.

Photos taken without people’s knowledge can violate privacy. For example, photos may be posted online, along with metadata including the time and location. But by wearing this device, you can stop your privacy from being infringed in such ways.

“You can try wearing sunglasses. But sunglasses alone can’t prevent face detection. Because face detection uses features like the eyes and nose, it’s hard to prevent just by concealing your eyes. This is the privacy visor I have developed, which uses 11 near-infrared LEDs. I’m switching it on now. It prevents face detection, like this.”

“Light from these near-infrared LEDs can’t be seen by the human eye, but when it passes through a camera’s imaging device, it appears bright. The LEDs are installed in these locations because, a feature of face detection is, the eyes and part of the nose appear dark, while another part of the nose appears bright. So, by placing light sources mostly near dark parts of the face, we’ve succeeded in canceling face detection characteristics, making face detection fail.”

Compared with previous ways of physically hiding the face, this technology can protect privacy without obstructing communication, as all users need to do is wear a pair of glasses.

More Here

Reader mail: on self-censorship

rafaelfajardo — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:09:10 -0600

claytoncubitt:

Q: I like your photos, but why are you censoring nudity?

Short answer: because this.

Medium answer: Nudity is only incidental to my larger artistic belief that all aspects of our lives should be equally depicted as legitimate subjects.

But honestly, there’s very little incentive for an artist to publish even modestly sexual visual work online. This is specially true when an artist also does work that requires patronage from often-skittish and culturally conservative corporations. Sexual images become extremely popular with rebloggers, and begin to crowd out more mainstream images, leading to an inaccurate survey of an artist’s oeuvre. While it might be superficially satisfying to have many thousand reblogs on a sexual/nude image, these many thousand reblogs are not worth even a single tiny poorly-paid ad campaign, which they might cost by scaring clients away when those clients do Google Image searches.

It used to be you could publish some content appropriately in one venue, and other content appropriately in other venues. As Google’s reach becomes more complete and permanent, publishing content anywhere means that content is published everywhere.

I estimate that I’ve lost six-figures worth of income over the years due to “edgy” content, like nudity or sexuality. I’ve only earned four-figures of income due to it. And while I don’t make artistic decisions based solely on what hypothetical future clients might be scared by (if I did I’d just quit and become a banker,) they have some factor in the equation, as does the censorship inherent to the “Community Guidelines” of publishing platforms like Instagram and Tumblr. Whereas lost reblogs? No factor at all.

Reblogs are worth approximately zero point zero zero dollars. It does me no good when a thousand fetish tumblrs reblog a single sub-genre of my work, but a single ad campaign can buy my mom a house. The math does itself. Sex doesn’t sell. This sells.

Long answer: This would involve a larger exploration of the economics of attention and the disparity between what an audience craves and what an artist needs from that audience. It would explore how self-censorship and obfuscation of detail can actually be an expressive art in itself. It would probably also touch on metaphors involving pornography, astrometry, and stellar wobbles, and it’d be way too wordy for Tumblr. Maybe I’ll explore it someday over on my essay site, Always On.

Love, Clayton

prostheticknowledge: Dynamic Target Tracking Camera System Fast...

rafaelfajardo — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:56:03 -0600

prostheticknowledge:

Dynamic Target Tracking Camera System

Fast object tracking camera demonstration, capturing and focusing at 1/1000th of a second - very impressive - video embedded below:

Via DigInfo:

This camera system can track very fast moving objects, keeping them in the center of the screen at all times. Currently under development by the Ishikawa Oku Lab. at the University of Tokyo, this latest version captures Full HD video and can be used outdoors.

“Ordinarily, to change the direction a camera faces, you move the camera mechanically. But in this system, it’s not the camera that moves, it’s the mirrors. This makes it possible to change where you’re looking really quickly. In this demonstration, we’re tracking a table tennis ball. The ball moves extremely fast, but this system can keep compensating for the ball’s motion, so the ball stays in the middle of the image.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of music video made with this to arrive soon …

More Here

Related - another camera tracking system from Japan

"Power no longer resides in a central tower (physical or cognitive) or in the ignorance of the..."

rafaelfajardo — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:39:37 -0600

“Power no longer resides in a central tower (physical or cognitive) or in the ignorance of the masses, but in the deliberately opaque, countless and unremarkable black boxes that make up the physical, digital, and cognitive landscape of the network society. Watching must be so pervasive that to point out that one has internalized its gaze is a prosaic–almost naïve–concept that scares no one. The cultural shift is startlingly fast. Just 20 years after their creation the X-Files’ famous dual taglines The Truth is Out There and Government Denies Knowledge are absolutely quaint.”

- David Banks at Cyborgology. Boundless Informant: Augmented State Surveillance (via protoslacker)

notational: “A present overwhelmed by the not-always-intended effects of the technological world...

rafaelfajardo — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:24:47 -0600

notational:

“A present overwhelmed by the not-always-intended effects of the technological world we’d created.”

—

Andrew Blum, ‘Children of the Drone’ (2013)

Very similar to this:

Late modernity is a period of social change prompted by the need to cope with the risks generated by modernity itself.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization

Or in this case, the postnormal is a period of social re-equilibration instigated by the chaotic risks posed by the postmodern.

We are catching with postnormal hands what the machinery of control pitched in the postmodern, like drones.

When they start flinging postnormal inventions at us — like autonomous battle robots, or semi-intelligent buildings grown from nano slime, or genetically engineered yogurt yeasts that make us more nationalistic — then we will be all the way into the postnormal, and past the fringes where we are today.

(via stoweboyd)

Digging that last paragraph on the “postnormal” inventions. What was a normal invention anyway? Just spent the day reading time travel stories by Ray Bradbury. The inventions that really matter all were postnormal at some point. This reminds me that I should re-read Bruce Sterling’s Shaper-Mechanist stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaper/Mechanist_universe

text-mode: By Marwa Boukarim, 2009. This book deals with the...

rafaelfajardo — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 08:54:08 -0600

text-mode:

By Marwa Boukarim, 2009.

This book deals with the overwhelming accumulation of correspondences in a digital age. Its goal is to make sense of my huge collection of letters, text messages, Facebook messages, emails, and chats by organizing them and finding new ways of visually representing the data at hand.

suicideblonde: Hey everyone! It’s Bo! Here are some quick facts...

rafaelfajardo — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 17:48:13 -0600

suicideblonde:

Hey everyone! It’s Bo! Here are some quick facts to clear up a couple issues. I’ll post more details soon.

Bohemea was deleted as the result of a DMCA notice.

Bohemea has never received a DMCA before.

There was an issue with PLQ a few months ago that may have contributed to the deletion.

This is happening to other blogs, some are being deleted with no notice or reason.

The post that resulted in the deletion had a credited source.

Tumblr has not responded to my replies except with form notices about how to contest a DMCA. I don’t expect anything further.

I will not be returning to Tumblr, not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.

Suicide Blonde isn’t sure if she’ll continue on Tumblr. She’s having trouble imagining being here without me, which is adorable.

I miss so many of my Tumblr loves already! Please everyone follow me on Twitter or Facebook. E-mail me too if you want to send love/keep in touch! bohemea.tumblr@gmail.com

I have lots more to say, I just wanted to clear up a couple notes. Thank you so much for all the love everyone has sent on the #bohemea tag here & on twitter. It means so so much. I want to KISS HIM/HER! you all!

suicideblonde: lauramcphee: mudwerks: suicideblonde: tumblr decided to delete bohemea’s tumblr...

rafaelfajardo — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 09:20:43 -0600

suicideblonde:

lauramcphee:

mudwerks:

suicideblonde:

tumblr decided to delete bohemea’s tumblr without notice because she got a DCMA take down notice. So, yeah.

what the?!!?!?!

Here’s a lengthy but good explanation of DMCA take down notices by Ken Liu from www.sfwa.org including how to respond if you believe you have a right to publish the material (ie fight the DMCA). From how I read it, tumblr should have disabled the offending post, not the entire account, but my hunch is that as tumblr’s new owner, yahoo has more to lose if/when sued for copyright infrigment therefore they’ll be taking the notices very seriously and reacting way more aggressively than the previous ownership (see #3 below):

The DMCA Takedown Notice Demystified

Many writers have heard of the “DMCA takedown notice” but not everyone understands what it is. In this post, I’ll try to explain the basics and give you some ideas about how to use the tool to protect your rights and how to respond if you’re on the receiving end of one that you consider to be without merit.

As usual, note that although I am a lawyer, the following is offered for education and information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Always consult a copyright lawyer for your individual circumstances.

Also, in the following discussion, I refrain from commenting on whether the DMCA takedown notice process implements wise policy. I describe the law as it is, not as it ought to be (or I wish it to be).

What is it?

The so-called “DMCA take down notice” is a creature of Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). It added Section 512 to Title 17 of the United States Code (Copyright), which basically exempts certain online service providers (“OSPs” or sometimes “ISPs”) from liability for copyright infringing acts by its users, provided it meets certain conditions (such as being responsive to copyright holders when given notice of infringement on the network the OSP controls).

The definition of an OSP for purposes of the DMCA is quite broad: “a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor.” 17 USC §512(k)(1)(B). This would include most sites that offer user-generated content such as web hosting companies, blogging platforms (LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr), discussion forums, and so on.

Among the conditions that an OSP must meet to be exempt from liability are:

No actual or constructive knowledge of infringing behavior (this basically excludes any site that maintains editorial control over the posted content, such as a moderated fanfiction site);

No financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity;

When given a proper notice of infringing material being posted on its network, the OSP “responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing.”

Read More

thank you for this info!

mostlysignssomeportents: The Institute for the Future...

rafaelfajardo — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:00:37 -0600

mostlysignssomeportents:

The Institute for the Future commissioned me to write a story about the “Internet of Things,” and I wrote them a piece called By His Things Will You Know Him, about death, networks, and computers. It’s part of an anthology called “An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter,” which we’ll be publishing on Boing Boing in the following weeks. The stories to come are from great authors including Rudy Rucker, Ramez Naam, Bruce Sterling, Madeline Ashby, and Warren Ellis.

I read the story aloud for my podcast last week, and have been awaiting the chance to publish it — now that it’s live, here you are!

"The three gates, Sufi advice to filter data: “Is it true?”, “Is it necessary?”, “Is it kind?"

rafaelfajardo — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:30:19 -0600

“The three gates, Sufi advice to filter data: “Is it true?”, “Is it necessary?”, “Is it kind?”

- Santiago Ortiz (via brianlucid)

3D sports channel on ESPN to close

rafaelfajardo — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:30:21 -0600

3D sports channel on ESPN to close:

mostlysignssomeportents:

No one wants 3D TV.

drawing via cinoh: by anne-lise coste

rafaelfajardo — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:20:16 -0600

drawing via cinoh:

by anne-lise coste

sexpigeon: laughterkey: joshua: The entire internet circa...

rafaelfajardo — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:12:02 -0600

sexpigeon:

laughterkey:

joshua:

The entire internet circa 1969.

If you’ve never read Where The Wizards Stay Up Late, you should.

You put UCLA in Barstow.

ilovecharts: On “Geek” Versus “Nerd” accept, embrace,...

rafaelfajardo — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:00:51 -0600

ilovecharts:

On “Geek” Versus “Nerd”

accept, embrace, celebrate

futuresagency: The Power of Networks by Manuel Lima

rafaelfajardo — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:30:15 -0600

futuresagency:

The Power of Networks by Manuel Lima

uxrave: Atomic Design by @brad_frost. Atomic design is...

rafaelfajardo — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:48:40 -0600

uxrave:

Atomic Design by @brad_frost. Atomic design is a methodology for creating a web design system. See:

The blog post

The video

The Pattern Lab

I was lucky enough to work with Brad on a recent project using this system. I think it’s the future.

Games generate massive volumes of data, which is a boon to...

rafaelfajardo — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:46:29 -0600

Games generate massive volumes of data, which is a boon to marketing departments at gaming companies for two reasons. The first is that large volumes of data create the potential to extract value from robust, targeted monetization and re-engagement strategies. And the second is that large volumes of data are easier to extract value from using unsophisticated statistical techniques; the smaller the dataset, the more effort must be spent manipulating and normalizing it. But unsophisticated as they may be, these statistical techniques must be well understood by marketers in order to be used correctly. And given the sheer volumes of data created by instrumentation in games, the appropriate tools required to cultivate actionable insight from these data sets are programmatic.

All this is to say that a marketer can’t do anything useful with a large data set if she doesn’t know how to code. When I say “code”, I don’t mean write an operating system from scratch or compare the Big O values of a set of algorithms. When I use the term “code”, I’m talking about applying programmatic techniques to data retrieval and analysis – usually no more complicated than writing Javascript, executing commands in R, or querying a database using SQL.