When the Chinese government blocks everything from Twitter to Blogspot from the public in the days up to the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, there’s obviously knowledge floating around the internet they don’t want the broader public of China to be aware of. Knowledge that’s dangerous because people might realize what the mischievous fuckers have been up to. If they’re aware that their system can’t stand the toll against truth and knowledge, how can they believe in it themselves? It’s obviously not capitalism they’re fighting anymore, so I figure it’s knowledge they’re afraid of, knowledge that will diminish their power. And it’s China’s leaders’ unscrupulous hunger for power, and the siren song of western capital that has lured them off of their thoroughly beaten red track, to let in capitalism.
But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. When the money starts trickling down to the pockets of the average man, chances are the pressure cooker will blow, and people will demand openness and true democracy. And the dirty scoundrels leading the country today will only have their greediness to thank.
Check out The Big Picture’s thought provoking image series on the 20th anniversary here.
Image credits NASA. Taken from the wonderful The Big Picture.
So, I just learned that Microsoft have earmarked USD$ 100,000,000.00 so far for marketing their recently rebranded search engine; now called Bing. Which apparently is short for But It’s Not Google. I know it’s not Google, I figured that out when I saw the ham handed approach of their video here, it looks like local TV ads from the start 90’s. And what’s the deal with that logo? It makes the whole thing look like a basement endeavor run by someone aesthetically handicapped. I bet it’s not run from a basement though, with the USD$ 100,000,000.00 and all.
Anyway, if the engine is amazing, most people probably wouldn’t mind they made commercials that look like local TV ads, and have a logo that makes you think it was done by a foot-painting blind guy. But My experience with Microsoft products so far tell me it’s probably not quite so. On top of that they’d have to keep at least the same pace as Google in product development, and the last time I checked, PowerPoint – which Mick Jagger infamously sang about in You Make a Grown Man Cry – still measures its gnarly workspace in bloody centimeters. It’s for entirely screen-based presentations, the world of pixels for fucks sake. They might as well measure the distances in strawberries. Or tears of despair from using the damn thing.
To me, it’s looking like they’d be better off using the USD$ 100,000,000.00 on product development – and a new logo – and let the engine sell it self.
I recently read about the new erotic magazine; Jacques, and it made me think about a quote by Peter Saville regarding the subject of erotic magazines:
“I’d like to redo Playboy magazine. I find it lamentable that there isn’t an intelligent, erotic magazine. There isn’t a magazine that was like Playboy was 30 years ago, and I find that’s dumb. Why isn’t there any intelligent, abstract eroticism?”
Whether Jacques is the new Playboy of the old 70’s I don’t know, because – unfortunately – I haven’t had a chance to study it yet. But what I do know from studying magazines with a similar focus is that erotic magazines are in a malign state. Their main competitor offers a better product, and free of charge that is. On top of that the covers of most magazines in the genre are so vulgar that I personally would find it embarrassing to purchase one without a trench-coat and a fake beard.
When examined closer on the inside it becomes obvious that they’re written by illiterate barbarians. Editions of Playboy from the 70’s had writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur C. Clarke, but now you have to come to terms with a guy that has a struggle trying to spell out c-u-m-s-h-o-t. It’s obvious that many erotic magazines are trying to deliver a fast product, in that they don’t go deep – literally speaking – but instead focus on poorly styled images and an expected quick read. I think they’ll have a hard time getting people to pay for that, as it’s available in moving format for free online, saving you that embarrassing – and expensive – purchase as well. And you don’t have to hide that hideous looking magazine either. You can simply clear your cache.
With the old playboys it’s something else. People put those in frames for god’s sake. One of my colleagues has a bunch of them on his desk at work for inspiration. With normal magazines in the genre you’d have them in the toilet for a different kind of inspiration. Now, I think the way to go for people with the chutzpah to take on the web competitors is to do like Jacques and S-Magazine, and focus more on intelligence – with interviews and articles – and on eroticism and not porn – with stylish images, and a cover that you’d feel comfortable having on your coffee table. A slowed down approach unlike what most erotic publishers take, where you’ll be considered a playboy because of your reading habits, instead of a perverted teenager.
“…otherwise we could go to Christiania and buy a joint?”
– two girls sitting by the canals, Christianshavn, Copenhagen, 05.30.2009.
I wonder whether there exists such a thing as a naughty banknote. Currency circulates, taking a trip around the bank after each transaction – only to be recirculated – continuing this loop for 1-2 years depending on the note’s origin. It would be interesting to track their journey, through varying pockets, cash registers and hands. Maybe some would have an overweight of transactions with a more questionable character, only trading for skin flicks and cigarettes. Naughty banknotes – 15.3cm x 7.8 cm sized devils with a bad influence, controlling your limbic system from the safe haven that is your back-pocket, until you slide it in between the folds of those fishnets and the swinging thighs that carry them. It might feel better there, like a fish in water – without the fishnets. If you knew that the fiver you were about to squeeze through the gap in that little boy scout’s collection box had previously been rolled up and used for snorting coke, bought a gun, three shots of tequila and a blow job – would you feel bad?
Here & There is a wonderful project from Schulze and Webb, exploring the workings of modern maps. Here’s the project in their own words:
Imagine a person standing at a street corner. The projection begins with a three-dimensional representation of the immediate environment. Close buildings are represented normally, and the viewer himself is shown in the third person, exactly where she stands.
As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. The projection connects the viewer’s local environment to remote destinations normally out of sight.
What’s so damn beautiful about this project is the way this map gives you superpowers, extended beyond the levitated overview of traditional maps. Now, I wouldn’t go as far as calling maps new technology (according to Wikipedia maps have been a part of human history for a possible 8.000 years), but it’s a typical trait for new technology to mimic characteristics of the area it’s evolving. Such as webpages designed like printed media.
I believe that new technology (whether digital or analog) gets really interesting when it stops mimicking, and – like Schulze and Webb – truly upgrades previous possibilities.
Read more and buy the maps here.
Working on the back-end of this beast, fiddling with small lines of code to make big errors occur – and eventually succeeding despite my complete lack of coding skills – I came to think how it would affect us if we could go into our own back-end (more on a psychic level than in a navigational sense) and tinker about to optimize small flaws. Then it dawned on me that boosting of the mere physical presence could be adjusted as well, and somehow my thoughts drifted off to places of less nobility. End of thought.