Shit like this makes it all worthwhile.
Category: teh internets
The Elephant in the Room
Right, I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible.
Last night, inspired by the latest ‘foreign pirates are killing anime’ outburst from the Japanese industry, I fell into one of my usual rants on Twitter:
“The anime industry avoiding the same elephant in the room as music industry did 10 yrs ago: consumers know worthless product when they see it.
And who wants to pay for worthless, disposable product when you can get it for free?
Gamification – do we need to make common sense fun?
The Guardian has some interesting coverage of SXSW this last week. Contrary to popular geek belief I frequently find mainstream reaction to events and ideas just as fascinating as specialist coverage – although that may be due to my science fiction projects, which deal with the public and cultural acceptance of bleeding edge technology.
In particular, this bit on ‘gamification’ caught my eye:
Don’t forget the 1st Annual Global Shinkai Day…
…which is on 28th February, apparently. At least according to Makoto Shinkai fansite Cherry Blossoms Falling, who are organising this (probably less than official) event. According to this post:
In order to celebrate the works of Makoto Shinkai we’ve decided to throw a Global Shinkai Day. We’ll spend 24 hours watching Shinkai’s films, chatting during the movies and having discussions and contests along the way. We hope you will be able to drop in and join the party/conversation 🙂
The rapture for geeks
Whilst surfing over the weekend, I stumbled over a quote from sci-fi author Ken MacLeod. Now, I haven’t read any of MacLeod’s stuff for a couple of years, but this quote (apparently from his novel ‘The Cassini Division’) hit a chord with me.
(The technological singularity)…is the rapture for nerds.
Genius. I’ve been searching for a way of summing up my discontent with contemporary singularity theory, and all the time MacLeod had hit the nail right bang on the head.
Early 21st Century rubbish
I was procrastinating preparing to do some work today by clearing out my office/studio/spare room, when I found myself taking the above photo. I was emptying a drawer of the usual flotsam of modern life, when I realised it was subtly different. Maybe it’s because I’m weird, but instead of the usual collection of random badges, elastic bands, paperclips and the tops off lost biros, this little pile included:
- An old 3rd party Playstation memory card