I’ve noticed that recent iPod posters bear a resemblance to a certain memorable movie:
Exhibit A:
iPod posters, Maccentric Chatswood, 2007
Exhibit B:
Imagery from Battle Royale, 2000 (left-hand image as featured on Airside’s Battle Royale t-shirts)
Some pictures and news stories I collected in 2003/4:
(2004-02-24): “Dr Hoffman believes pain contains a significant psychological element which is why distracting thoughts by virtual reality lends itself so well to pain control.
‘Pain requires conscious attention. Humans have a limited amount of this and it’s hard to do two things at once,’ he said.”
(2004-05-11): I love this pic, but unfortunately I’ve lost the source for it. I saved it as “Seoul student training 040511″, but I must leave any further interpretation to your imaginations…
(2003-03-25): “Iraqi television broadcast these pictures of a coalition drone aircraft shot down and then paraded through the streets of Basra.”
I heard this song on FBI Radio a year or so ago. It’s the inspiration/basis for the Black Eyed Peas’ Don’t Phunk with my Heart - and it turns out it has an awesome, Orientalism-confounding, James-Bond-esque video/dance-routine as well:
Aye Naujawan Hai Sab Kuchch Yahan
It’s from Apradh, an Indian movie from 1972.
Mostly grim stories of cyberpunk interest that I’ve collected, from the last year or so:
“Technology such as cloned part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police, along with online scamming, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Mick Keelty says.”
“The machines, which are flown by remote control or using pre-programmed GPS navigation systems, are silent and can be fitted with night-vision cameras.
The images they record are sent back to a police support vehicle or control room.”
“Police say the Cylon camera will be used mainly while officers patrol potential hotspots such as Union Street, Mutley and the city centre … The message to the public is to enjoy yourselves but don’t misbehave because you don’t know when you may be caught on camera.”
“The robotic suit, which slips over a person’s upper body and arms, weighs only 1.8 kilograms (four pounds).
It was developed jointly by Activelink Co. — a venture of Matsushita Electric Industrial which is best known for the Panasonic brand — and Kobe Gakuin University.”
“If the subject tries to grab or disconnect the XREP projectile, the reflex engagement electrodes complete a circuit allowing TASER NMI to discharge from the Nose Electrodes, through the subject’s body, out to the hand that grabbed the XREP. … To maximize incapacitation, the XREP engine incorporates a microprocessor controlled optimal electrode selection technology.”
This Guardian article talks about Oscar Pistorius, a Paralympic sprinter with speeds that would currently place him 8th-fastest among able-bodied sprinters in Britain. He runs with Össur custom sprint feet (pictured). He’s asking to be allowed to compete in the Olympics, and there’s some debate over whether the feet constitute an unfair advantage. But I think the more interesting question is: As prosthetic technology improves, will we start seeing the best times coming from the Paralympics instead of the Olympics? Is it not at least theoretically possible that we could design a better sprinting leg than the human leg?
The article immediately reminded me of a great makes-you-think hidden detail from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a sci-fi story where many of the characters are cybernetically enhanced, having had various muscles and joints replaced with stronger artificial ones:
One of these characters mentions he’s a former boxing medallist; but if you look closely, you discover that his medal is a Paralympic one. It took me a few moments to work this out (”but he isn’t disabled!”): One possible future for the Paralympics is as the competition where humans with elective (and superior) prosthetics are allowed to compete; in such a scenario, they could become the most interesting competition, with the Olympics relegated to special-interest for the purists…
It makes me sad to think that there might be a computing device out there incapable of running fortune. Since the iPhone doesn’t run real (local) 3rd-party apps, Apple wants you to write “Web 2.0 applications” for it instead. After an evening’s work (largely on the logo you see to the left - I’m very proud of it), I give you Fortune, the web app - a wrapper for the fortune-mod package from Debian.
