Loosely Assembled

Truman Show Disorder: “Montreal psychiatrists Joel and Ian Gold are studying the Truman Show Delusion, a mental illness they’ve identified where individuals are convinced that they are the stars of imaginary reality TV shows. By the way some people act on Flickr and YouTube, I’d say that this disorder, with varying severity, may be more common than we realize. From Canada.com:

While (Joel) Gold says they could have easily called their new disorder the EDtv Delusion or the Matrix Delusion — both films that refer to an unreal existence– three of the five patients he treated at the storied mental health hospital directly likened their plight to The Truman Show, the 1998 film about Truman Burbank, an affable suburbanite who slowly becomes aware that his every movement is broadcast 24/7 to voyeuristic viewers around the world.

The five patients Dr. Gold treated were white men between the ages of 25 and 34, the majority of whom held university degrees. ‘I realized that I was and am the centre, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people,’ explained one patient, an army veteran who came from an upper-middle-class upbringing.

‘My family and everyone I knew were and are actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world’s attention….’

‘The wish for fame is a form of grandiosity, and the fear of threats such as surveillance can bring about paranoia,’ said the Montreal-based (Ian) Gold, 46, who specializes in delusion.



‘New media is opening up vast social spaces that might be interacting with psychological processes.’

Truman Show Delusion (Canada.com, thanks Lyn Jeffery!)

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(Via Boing Boing.)

Andrew Keen:: ”

Rescuing ‘Luddite’ from the Luddites

‘[…] A Luddite argument is one in which some broadly useful technology is opposed on the grounds that it will discomfit the people who benefit from the inefficiency the technology destroys. An argument is especially Luddite if the discomfort of the newly challenged professionals is presented as a general social crisis, rather than as trouble for a special interest. (“How will we know what to listen to without record store clerks!”) When the music industry suggests that the prices of music should continue to be inflated, to preserve the industry as we have known it, that is a Luddite argument, as is the suggestion that Google pay reparations to newspapers or the phone company’s opposition to VoIP undermining their ability to profit from older ways of making phone calls.

This is what makes Keen’s argument a Luddite one — he doesn’t oppose all uses of technology, just ones that destroy older ways of doing things. In his view, the internet does not need to undermine the primacy of the copy as the anchor for both filtering and profitability.

But Keen is wrong. What the internet does is move data from point A to B, but what it is for is empowerment. Using the internet without putting new capabilities into the hands of its users (who are, by definition, amateurs in most things they can now do) would be like using a mechanical loom and not lowering the cost of buying a coat — possible, but utterly beside the point.

The internet’s output is data, but its product is freedom, lots and lots of freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, the freedom of an unprecedented number of people to say absolutely anything they like at any time, with the reasonable expectation that those utterances will be globally available, broadly discoverable at no cost, and preserved for far longer than most utterances are, and possibly forever.

Keen is right in understanding that this massive supply-side shock to freedom will destabilize and in some cases destroy a number of older social institutions. He is wrong in believing that there is some third way — lets deploy the internet, but not use it to increase the freedom of amateurs to do as they like.

It is possible to want a society in which new technology doesn’t demolish traditional ways of doing things. It is not possible to hold this view without being a Luddite, however. That view — incumbents should wield veto-power over adoption of tools they dislike, no matter the positive effects for the citizenry — is the core of Luddism, then and now.’ From Andrew Keen: Rescuing ‘Luddite’ from the Luddites [posted by Clay Shirky on Many-to-Many]. Also see ‘The internet’s output is data, but its product is freedom’.

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(Via networked_performance.)

For some reason, my jailbroken iPhone has never played nice with iPhoto or iView Media Pro for downloading photos from the camera, I have just relied on command line scp or finder based afp sharing to get the images off my phone, and to delete them.

But today, I crossed a new threshold, I have shot more than 1000 photos with my iPhone, so a new directory appeared in my /var/mobile/Media/DCIM/ directory, it is 101APPLE/ which just starts the IMG_0001.jpg counting over again. I didn’t want the camera to become confused, so I deleted both 100APPLE & 101APPLE hoping the phone would just create a new directory. Well, it wasn’t so smooth, a new directory didn’t appear, and adding my own, and doing some chmod experiments also failed (new photos simply went off into space, not saved, not accessible).

I was almost ready to freak out. Then success!: just rm -r the whole DCIM/ directory, the phone will then handle the creation of a new structure just fine. phew!

also, just look at this cute thing:

The question persists and indeed
grows whether the computer will make
it easier or harder for human beings to
know who they really are, to identify
their real problems, to respond more
fully to beauty, to place adequate value
on life, and to make their world safer
than it now is.

Norman Cousins – The Poet and the Computer, 1966

While reading the following, think about bees, pollinating the natural world.

The Pirate's Dilemma And Opportunism: ”

I just finished watching a video of Matt Mason - author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’ - giving a talk that more or less covered the topic of his book.

First of all, Matt really gets it. He really does. He is looking a piracy as reflective not of a failure in the legal structure, but failure in companies’ approach in their own market. I hate to put too much of a commercial/free-market spin on this, for what I’m going to connect it with is at times orthogonal to that perspective, but he’s right when he says that pirates:

• identify gaps within and outside the existing marketplace
• may do damage, but carry valuable information in their actions
• can often harness the collective consciousness of their audience and turn that into social change

He primarily draws on pirate radio in Europe, but connects it with the record industry, fashion, etc. The solution he proposes to combat piracy is to either (1) fight it when appropriate, or (2) compete with it and treating it as a real (if illegitimate) force. To compete, companies should learn from where pirates are adding value to their product, where they are increasing a products recognition or brand value, and identifying advantages in selling convenience and experience.

As with many things, I couldn’t help but start comparing some of his talk to things I’ve read by Paolo Virno - specifically about opportunism an virtuosity. Firstly - and I’ve covered this in the blog before - competing with piracy in many sectors is a matter of recognizing that main players must begin to locate value in non-physical products, the product of immaterial labor. As Virno points out, McDonalds has this down with their ’service with a smile.’ You aren’t going there for the burgers, but for the service (quick, friendly, etc).

More interestingly, it seems that what Matt is pointing out is the opportunism of the pirates. Virno would probably say that this is a natural result of the shift to a post-fordist world. Opportunism is a virtue, if not necessity, rather than something to be frowned upon. In an interview with Archipelago in 2002 he said:

‘…if it is certain that postfordist labor has at its center communication - culture in the most full sense of the term - then, it is necessary to commence analysis starting from certain emotions, but not emotions in the psychological sense, but rather emotions understood as forms of being, forms of being in the world, and we began to discuss the negative feelings: before all others, opportunism, later cynicism and finally fear. We believed that opportunism understood as mass emotion, signified that each individual worked in contact with many distinct opportunities, opportunites understood in a technical sense.’

It seems very clear that contemporary labor’s very core is communication. No need to look further than sales of the Blackberry to prove that. So it is a natural result that participants in this new era should take advantage of opportunities they see - this is what Matt calls ‘gaps’.

So to blend these two sources, ultimately Matt Mason is suggesting that companies take a hint from the pirates and wake up to their post-fordist existence. It will not be an easy task to theorize the role of a company acting as a post-fordist subject, but perhaps that is where we are headed.

“

(Via Swarming Media.)

Well, this article isn’t talking about that kind of network, but it is talking about a communication and relationship network between cars to help detect and alert authorities about thefts, collisions, and more.

Most ideas related to interconnected clusters of objects/entities usually trigger (at least) my passing interest. What I find most interesting about networked cars is the social and p2p possibilities, sending text messages to “the car in front of you”, browsing their music, etc. I hate being in cars, but the sci-fi aspects can be fun to imagine.

The European Union’s Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project uses a camera in every passenger’s seat, with six wide-angle cameras to survey the aisles. Software then analyses the footage to detect developing terrorist activity or “air-rage” incidents, by tracking passengers’ facial expressions.

learn more

Watch as a captive monkey uses brain waves to control a robotic arm to strangle his captors.

I guess this is the best place to watch for news about how it all goes down: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html.

The fascinating part to me is really the offset between actuation and radio feedback from the mission. The lander will have already landed (or crashed) several minutes before NASA even hears back that the descent has begun. Imagine a video game with 10 minutes of latency. I also enjoy being reminded that we all operate under similar (although much shorter) latency conditions in our everyday lives.

So, let’s keep fingers crossed, are there any betting pools out there on this event?