Thorium Dirigible

[thoriumdirigible]

Parents wonder if cell phone use leads to Asperger’s syndrome. It is not necessary to settle this debate to state the obvious. If we don’t look at our children and engage them in conversation, it is not surprising if they grow up awkward and withdrawn." Not only is it alarming to read a licensed clinical psychologist conflate attitude with a developmental condition thereby reducing the latter to the former, it is uncited nonsense that runs counter to actual research. While there is still disagreement about what causes Asperger’s, genetics is largely determinative of the condition. Even if there was no evidence of a genetic cause, we could simply note that Asperger’s predates cell phones. (Side note: Turkle makes clever use of a citation style common in popular press books that hides which sentences are backed up by citations in the back of the book and which ones are not.)

https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/08/make-conversation-great-again/

[danismm]

Paris public toilets. 1865-1875

[syfycity]

[aliensufos]

♥

[mini-space-alien-blog]

i want to leave

[thoriumdirigible]

Star Trek was never progressive, it was utopian. It makes sense though that Fuller would characterize Star Trek as both “progressive” and “color blind” because that is, in a sense, what Gene Roddenberry had made in retrospect. But at the time it was not merely progressive, it was utopian. Utopias, like the Roddenberry Box, don’t just let us display the final result of a certain kind of politics, they let us interrogate the very foundations of our politics. They let us bring ideas to their logical and illogical conclusions and, in so doing, gives us a crucible in which to crush them up, mix them, and come up with brand new ideas. Utopic story telling should not be blind to anything: it should meet race, class, gender, and any other social structure head on and complicate it beyond comprehension. What comes out the other side should be a little unnerving, exciting, and dangerous. Exactly what the future should be.

https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/06/26/star-trek-has-never-been-progressive-its-utopian/

[focustaiwan-blog-deactivated202]

Cleaning Taiwan’s bullet train

A high-speed rail locomotive is being washed at an automatic facility in Kaohsiung on Thursday. CNA photo April 7, 2016

[theorizingtheweb]

Cool Story

This is the fourth of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule. See also Virality of Evil, Chill Theory, and Automated Personality.

Stories are one of our first technologies. They are a means of collective memory storage that propel ideas forward in time and outward to new communities. Stories not only tell us what has been, they also help us imagine what could be. On the web, the scope of that collective memory increases and the relationships among stories, their tellers, and audiences are redefined. A complex social life plays out on our little screens, refracting and feeding into the stories told on the big screen. How will compelling, timeless narratives be told through timelines, threads, and selfies, and videos? Are algorithms already our best authors and editors? Rather than focus solely on perennial questions about the always imminent death of media forms and institutions, this panel explores how the web changes the stories we tell and how we tell them.

This keynote panel happens during TtW on Saturday April 16th and features,

Alexandra Kleeman

Ales Kot

Laurie Penny

Jenna Wortham

Natasha Lennard

David A. Banks (moderator)

[thoriumdirigible]

I’m gonna moderate a really cool panel!

[theorizingtheweb]

~~soon~~

[theorizingtheweb]

Cool Story

This is the fourth of four Theorizing the Web keynote panels we are announcing ahead of posting the full schedule. See also Virality of Evil, Chill Theory, and Automated Personality.

Stories are one of our first technologies. They are a means of collective memory storage that propel ideas forward in time and outward to new communities. Stories not only tell us what has been, they also help us imagine what could be. On the web, the scope of that collective memory increases and the relationships among stories, their tellers, and audiences are redefined. A complex social life plays out on our little screens, refracting and feeding into the stories told on the big screen. How will compelling, timeless narratives be told through timelines, threads, and selfies, and videos? Are algorithms already our best authors and editors? Rather than focus solely on perennial questions about the always imminent death of media forms and institutions, this panel explores how the web changes the stories we tell and how we tell them.

This keynote panel happens during TtW on Saturday April 16th and features,

Alexandra Kleeman

Ales Kot

Laurie Penny

Jenna Wortham

Natasha Lennard

David A. Banks (moderator)

[archatlas]

Babel Tower Shirin Abedinirad

Check out this tumblr!

Hello Archatlas,

Thanks for sharing my mirror installation (Heaven on Earth). I just wanted to share my last mirrored installation with you. Hope you will like it. Here is the link: 

http://www.shirinabedinirad.com/#/babel-tower/

http://shirinabedinirad.tumblr.com/post/133800700685/babel-tower-interactive-installation-by-shirin

Best regards, Shirin

Babel Tower is an interactive installation, in collaboration with Gugo Torelli, that re-contextualizes the spiritual architecture of the Babel Tower with modern materials, creating a union between ancient history and our present world; it is combing the past, present and offering a union for future.

The top view of installation by reflecting the sky is connecting it to the earth, symbolizing the aim of Babel tower to reach for the heaven; The structural use of mirrors, serve as a reflective vessel for light, an integral feature of paradise.

[archatlas]

Light Rose Garden

Hong Kong is looking a little brighter these days with 25,000 LED roses “planted” along its waterfront. The art installation marks the first overseas stop of a world tour of Light Rose Garden, by South Korean creative agency Pancom. The exhibition runs from Valentine’s Day (Feb 14) to the Chinese Lantern Festival (Feb 22) at the Central Waterfront Promenade and Tamar Park. More information available on Light Rose Garden’s website.

Images and text via + via

[mymodernmet]

Interview: Stunning Vertical Panoramas of Churches by Richard Silver

[thoriumdirigible]

"The last democratic debate was mostly good. Two people, who represent very different visions for the future and strategies for how to arrive at that future, had just about as fair and faithful of a debate as one could expect from a cable news-hosted event. Orbiting this central debate is a swirling mass of half-arguments that has more energy than thought-out direction, made up of a cadre of writers who are lining up against the most tattered and boring of banners: Brocialism versus Lean In Feminism. The corporatized feminism that advocates for equal terms in boardroom competition and the smarmy machismo of socialism made for mansplaining both come out of several bad ideological compromises. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not attempt to move beyond these camps into a more honest discussion."

[thoriumdirigible]

(via GIPHY)

[resplandorsinrecuerdos]

[archatlas]

Microcities Matteo Procaccioli

Microcities is Matteo Procaccioli’s most recent project, and it completely changes perspective by choosing what’s known as the bird’s eye view. Observed from above, the cities take on a different aspect in which the buildings dominate, enabling the viewer to understand the rational geometry that characterizes them, their relationship with the surrounding countryside, and to see the wide streets or the rivers running through them. It is not important that we should recognize the places, as each of them represents a type that could be attributed to many other ones. Instead, the photography here is a means to let our eyes wander at will as if they had wings, but also to give full rein to our imagination, as we naturally try to envisage the life happening down there, in the labyrinth of streets, in those squares and those parks where we are unable to make out the details.

Images and text via Matteo Procaccioli

[artoftheglitch]

skeletons: protopeople (19), 2016 artoftheglitch.com

[marmarinou]

C&NW 614 scrap line by boilerbob7 on Flickr.