Sunday Shuffle
October 11th, 2009 | people I know, researchmaterial
Clearing the decks for tomorrow, let’s see what’s in the pipes tonight:
Remember when I said WIRED UK’S subeditors were having some kind of epileptic fit this month? Apparently they fell on Adam Greenfield’s piece for the mag quite heavily, and so he is moved to present the unedited version of "Words On The Street" online:
Without necessarily considering the matter with any particular care, as individuals or societies, we have installed devices in our clothing, our buildings, our vehicles and our tools which register, collect and transmit extraordinary volumes of data, and which share this data with the global network in real time. If some of us once – and recently! – thought of this as the domain of “ubiquitous computing,” the words are already starting to sound obsolescent, as clunky as “horseless carriage.” This is simply the way we do things now.
A terrific term cropped up at Coming Anarchy: Deviant Globalisation. "The unsanctioned global flows of goods and services that violate bourgeois ethical sensibilities." The Afghan poppy trade as "deviant pharma." Really just a way to imagine the criminal economy riding globalisation, I suspect, but a fun term nonetheless. (It’s all research material to me, a springboard for a story element one day.) More explanation, slides and and video at the link.
Here’s another good one: genomic architecture.
Genomic architecture, based on the layered genome, encompasses an integrated world of “artificial architecture” (used in the same sense as “artificial intelligence” and “artificial life”), a world of complexity evolving in parallel with the natural world. It is a morphologically structured network of information that determines architectural taxonomies and phylogenies, permits digital manipulation of form in the design process, and enables mass-customization in digital manufacturing.
Katelan Foisy’s got her new site up.
Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, has got the cover for his forthcoming book up. I remember talking to him about cover design at the hauntology gig in London, which I think was over a year ago now… Really looking forward to this one, it’s a subject I’ve been interested in since the late 80s…
And finally, via the good offices of Futurismic: charming robot pet, future sex toy for the mentally doomed, or simply the pulsing fodder for tonight’s nightmares?
Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
[...] re-found via Ellis’s blog, incidentally. This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 7:41 PMand is filed under [...]
A hug pillow that breathes and moves – just the thing for the hikkomori crowd. Just print a selection of anime girls on the cover and you have a saleable product.
[...] (via warrenellis) (No Ratings Yet) Loading … [...]
Thanks for the mention as always, good sir.
As I said in my post, I think the key concept for deviant globalization is professionalization under a crackdown regime. Illicit entrepreneurs get good under pressure, and the globalization infrastructure allows them to take their business elsewhere very easily if they can no longer operate in their own culture. This is a trend which people still used to the State don’t have a sense of. If a problem goes overseas, it is no longer our problem.
Now, mix this trend with an emergent internet culture and you have the leaderless crime syndicates of the future. Sounds like good stuff for a story, except I am sure it is happening already somewhere.