Friday, February 10, 2006

Waking dream

And he woke up thinking he was a psychologist, a savant in the research of computer-mediated interactions and virtual selves. He dabbled in online addiction therapy, but made a name for himself a year ago when, while finishing his Ph.D. at the age of 30, he joined a covert group of grad students who reverse-engineered an in-game plague that was wiping out thousands in the world's largest MMORPG, not only curing the players but generating the first known case of gaming "antibodies." Months after, he became the world's first licensed in-game therapist.

The shirts are still in Hodgkins. Must like the weather there or something.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

If it's Thursday, it must be...

According to UPS, my shirts are in beautiful Hodgkins, Illinois, a small town southwest of Chicago^.



Fun facts about Hodgkins:

*It turned 100 in 1996.
*It was originally known as Gary, an anglo version "derived 'Garibaldi' in honor of the great number of Italian laborers working in a grain mill in the area."
*Its population (as of 2000) is 2,134.
*It has a UPS hub there, obviously.
*It has three mobile home parks.
*It currently has the t-shirts I ordered.

^Note: I lived in Chicago for 20 years, and I never heard of the place. Then again, the small town I grew up in outside Chicago was something like 25,000 in population, and I learned that you only hung out in towns with population larger than yours, deriding the smaller towns as some hick burg you didn't want to get near. Ah, childhood.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Kigalidotblog

Frankly, we're a lot more tolerant society than our own intolerant right would like to believe.

Which makes me wonder who the real hate-mongers are: those who are cut off from modern communications technology and are more easily subject to the machinations of ignorant clerics — or those that should know better and who claim to be morally superior.


That's the punch line to Antonia Zerbisias' recent Toronto Star article about how the blogs on the right have gone into supernova with hatred over the Muslim cartoon riots.

Yesterday, I poked at the concept that our words aren't cotton-candy strands floating in the wind without weight. What prominent blogger A writes about gets picked up by A's audience, which filters it to their own blogs. Another tier of readers comes along and carries the message to their blogs or message boards. It's a new game of telephone, this cut-n-paste publishing with some new invective spliced in along the way. For now, the commentary is circuiting through the blogs, zipping around the bandwidth until something new comes along, when Prominent Blogger A replaces Outrage X with Issue Y. And the circle of life continues.

For now, the outrage and rants and name-calling all stays on the Web. The blogs themselves are great at communicating with each other and their makeshift communities, but they don't have the grassroots, only individual readers. There's nothing to continue the blog in meatspace, no get-togethers, no local meetings, no face-to-face (minus the minor phenom of "Drinking Liberally," where lefties gather and drink, and that's about it). Luckily, when it comes to the angry blogs, there's no street-level violence to back up the words. Angry bloggers are happy to get it out online rather than throw bricks at the groups they don't like.

And yet, I'm reminded abut Rwanda, when in one spring, when nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by extremist Hutus militias. The murderers were urged on by voices on the radio, telling them to slaughter the Tutsis and sympathetic Hutus, and one month later, at least 500,000 were estimated dead. All very low tech. Radio, machetes, killers moving by truck or by foot. Just fueled by crude booze and the dual intoxicant of being the righteous cleanser of an ill society.

And that is, I admit, a simplistic retelling of genocide that was decades in the making through slow and cruel events. However, I'm taken with the idea of a broadcast medium uses to transmit messages of rage and violence coupled with the speed of the information snowballing on bogs. Eventually, we are going to hit a point where a message is going to get out of control, and someone (driven by blograge) is going to take matters into their own hands. After that, who knows. Retribution? Escalation? A combination of viral warfare over the networks mixed with guns and knives on the street?

I hope I'm wrong. I hope I just have a case of the neo-Victorian prudeness that makes lawmakers think videogames are going to make kids into soulless killing machines. Yet, I see how much emotion can get generated by poliblogs. And I see that there is no middle ground paved on the Web for the right and left to get together to ease tensions. We're a very factionalized culture in post-9/11 America. We're also packed with pockets of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Add to that our fame-driven culture. Hinckley supposedly shot Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. What if there's some overwhelmed blogreader who wants to be famous for taking down some top blogger on the left or the right? We have culture wars a-ragin' in the country, from what I keep hearing. Eventually, with all the heat and noise coming off the bandwidth, I'm not going to be shocked if there's going to be a casualty.
Skin

Spring's coming, and that means warmer weather. It's also when the hibernating beasts rise from slumber, or when animals shed winter coats for something sleeker, thinner. Something new, something to catch the eye.

As for me, I'll be shedding my winter skin for some more seasonal fare soon. Wife and I placed an order for new skins, specifically as another Valentine's Day present to each other. Should get here by Feb. 14. Ah, kismet.

Here's what we are ordering.



In case you don't remember chemistry, that's the chemical make-up for caffeine.



Because I'm just one of six billion humans walking around.



My wife wanted this one. She's a Totoro-head through and through. She'd so love to go to work on the Neko Bus.

And thanks to this order of new skins, I'm rediscovering my little fetish for tracking my orders through the Web. I can spy my little wares, moving from point to point, inching ever closer on my mental map. It's a sort of Christmas, where a dislocated gift from the North Pole is making its way to the good little girl or boy. I imagine this is what it's like for authors to track their Amazon rankings.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Sobriety

Mrs. P has a very chilling article about recent TV-inspired riots over in Manila, all of which reads like something out of late 70s pre-cyberpunk apoco fiction.

I have this naivety that somehow America is only blessed with maniacal reality TV, forgetting that it's hideously cheap to make and gives the masses a gossamer thread of hope of escaping their negative-branded lives and into some Technicolor Awesome of a better reality. And being that we are in a globalized culture, we exchange carrion as well as gold. As I write, some Kenyan student is probably listening to Coltrane on an iPod while Jerry Springer plays over a satellite connection in a nearby room. I'm reminded of a line from Gibson's most recent novel where one of the characters ruminates about a rapidly emerging shared world where everyone gets to experience the same thing. Taken a little further, the world switches from porno to freak show to riot party in the blink of bandwidth. Share and enjoy, indeed.

All of which makes me wonder about an Internet diet, voluntarily curbing some material in order to prevent a pollution of the incendiary, or the mindless. It's hard to think about this without becoming a Ministry of Truth censor. I have no idea how to police the Web. Yet, I look at something like Wikipedia and can't help but be in awe of this open-source undertaking, building a free resource of all things everything. It's approaching its one-millionth entry, and here's a Tower of Babel that got it right. Intelligently built, easy to use, fair and thorough. People think about what they are contributing because it will be used as gospel. It matters, and it shows as entries emerge and grow into length pages. Compare that with the average snipe bullshittery going on around blogs and message boards. There's an inclusive air about them, especially poliblogs. With us. Against us. Red. Blue. Words thrown around without much regard. We find it terribly easy to blow off steam on the Web, taking it to be the corner bar. We forget this whole Internet was designed to share information. What we say echoes longer than we know in these digital canyons, and we have no idea where it goes. We type it and the words go out to be read. We move on to the next flame or in-tribe compliment for our flame. Self-reflection? Bah, if the Web would have wanted us to think about what we wrote, there'd be a 15-minute delay on blog comments. Right?

I had an editor who, in fits of anger, would shout "Words Mean Things" in a way to defuse anger before kicking us cub reporters in the butt. I flash back to that when I read about the latest blogwars or partisan huffery. The Web is a great thing, maybe the best communication tool since the Gutenberg press, but even a good press requires an editor to smooth out lumpy text, to ask "Is this what you really mean?". We have the ability to say anything, so why not push to inspire rather than defame, elevate rather than trash? It comes down to a choice. Do we want to sound like MLK or Howard Stern?

Monday, February 06, 2006

Superbland

Didn't really watch. Apparently all my co-workers are pissy about bad calls. All this morning, the complaining and harping of middle-aged men who believed their proxy identity was slighted. The half-life has started though, with the talk dampening into the afternoon. By Friday, it'll be a distant memory.

Spend the weekend getting my bearing with my wife, and with assorted friends who popped in and out on Saturday. Tea was had, curry was consumed, tiny handheld games were bought. My wife and her childhood friend, both in their 30s, playing Nintendogs on the couch. Sunday, the "Puppy Bowl," where adorable little doggies (real one, not N-pups) froliced in what could only be described as rugby but without the politeness. Half time: kittens playing, and yes that was the cutest thing ever broadcast.

Switched back and forth to "the big game" only to see the most important part: That the upcoming "V for Vendetta" movie (which once was slated to have music by Massive Attack) will be shown in Imax. Oh great comic book god (Will Eisner, if you have to know), please let this comic-to-film adaptation not suck, which is asking a lot since the other Alan Moore material (From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) were worthy of MST3K treatment.

A Shapely Tool

My wife has been recruited by the Powers-At-Be who run the American TV show "Veronica Mars" to go down to San Diego (where the show is shot) to be a part of Bloggers Day, where the show thanks people who spread the word (and fanbase) of the show through that new-fangled InterWeb doo-hickery. Needless to say, she's excited, I'm jealous-turned-proud of her, and the cats slept through it all, as cats are wont to do during big news.

In return, the PR people will send my siren of a wife tidbits aboit the show so she can netroots the e-faithful into getting excited. Lo, she is their tool, and she hath no problem with it.

In all fairness, VM is one of the best things on TV here in the states. Sharply written, good characters, and a subtle skewering of race and class....all packed together in a neo-noir MexiCali wrapping. It deserves some hype. And since it's on one of the smaller networks, the show seems happy to take any press it can get.

Live With Me

Is the name of Massive Attack single from its upcoming album.* Street date looks like March 7. Will check iTunes tonight. Happy Happy Joy Joy.

*Some confusion here. There's a greatest hits 2-CD coming March 27, titled "Collected." This is not the upcoming album. However, "Live With Me" will be on the new release and the greatest hits one.