cityofsound

The Emergent Internet Operating System

Fabulous article by Tim O'Reilly: Inventing the Future. He describes an "Emergent Internet Operating System" i.e. emergent both in the sense that the features of cutting-edge internet he describes are emerging out of numerous nodes/projects/people, but that many of those technologies/offerings are based around notions of emergent information organisation.

Check his bullets for a handy checklist on what to be developing right now:

Wireless

"Community 802.11b networks are springing up everywhere as hackers realize they can share their high-speed, high-cost Internet connections, turning them into high-speed, low- or no-cost connections for a larger group of people"

Next generation search engines

"New search engines are taking this even farther, basing searches on the implicit webs of trust and interest reflected not only by link counts (a la Google) but by who specifically links to whom."

Weblogs

"intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, they are creating a new set of synapses for the global brain ... a platform for experimentation with the way the Web works: collective bookmarking, virtual communities, tools for syndication, referral, and Web services."

Instant messaging

"collaboration, "presence management," and instant communication ... messaging (as) the paradigm for a new class of applications."

File sharing

"When everyone is connected, all that needs to be centralized is the knowledge of who has what ... exposing the local file-system via distributed-content management systems. This is fundamental infrastructure for a next generation global operating system."

Grid computing

"use the idle computing power of millions of interconnected PCs to work on problems that were previously intractable because of the cost of dedicated supercomputers ... a computing utility much like the power grid--will have an enormous impact on both science and business in the years to come."

Web spidering

"hackers realize they can build "unauthorized interfaces" to the huge Web-facing databases behind large sites, and give themselves and their friends a new and useful set of tools."

Having outlined a blueprint of the next steps, O'Reilly launches into an fascinating little piece on web spidering and developing internet APIs. Includes this great aside:

"One of the beauties of the Internet is that it has an architecture that promotes unintended consequences. You don't have to get someone else's permission to build a new service. No business negotiation. Just do it. And if people like what you've done, they can find it and build on it."

Inventing the Future, at oreilly.net
[via Interconnected]

I >heart< iPod

Please excuse:

On a day of great national sorrow and mourning, I went for my first urban walk with my new iPod, and very wonderful it was too. Some suitably Nordic introspection accompanied me for a late-night stroll around Fitzrovia - great sweeps of Arve Henrikson barely lifted my mood, but did provide some kind of perspective. Burnt Friedman and Jaki Liebezeit brightened things up somewhat, but only when Peter Cusack's Your Favourite London Sounds caused some severe visual/aural/cognitive dissonance was I suitably distracted (the sounds of Brixton station echoing in my ears as I trudged upstairs to my flat 5 miles away is entertaining enough to slow you right down). I'm looking forward to messing things up more like this, iPod-walking, overlaying different London noises onto the street sounds my body's in. I spent many hours last summer enjoying the sounds of Bombay roadsides merge with those of the Bethnal Green streets wafting in through my open window.

The iPod's killer features are undoubtedly the interface (physical and digital), which is so simple and usable as to only require a 3-step 'getting started' guide (I know I'll have built the perfect website when it doesn't require a 'Help' page - this is approaching a holy grail of product design); and the Firewire connectivity - you can shift a whole album to the iPod in about 5 seconds. Oh and it's a 10gig hard drive at the same time, which will be dashed useful.

Of course, Apple's legendary ability to take their eye off the ball just at the wrong moment (marketing, product delivery, etc.) means that the left earphone doesn't work properly - this did give me a (barely needed) excuse to go get a better replacement though. Why didn't Apple get Harmonn Kardon or B&O to make the earphones for them? Know thy limitations ... Apple's digital hub ideas are really coming to fruition now, even more than Sony's, but these momentary lapses - like the inability to meet the new iMac demand - could cost them. Anyway ...

OK so it's the first flushes of infatuation, but it does feel like one of those 'threshold products' - you know it changes everything from now on.

Acid Mothers Temple vs. Urotsukidji - Legend of the Overfiend

Bearing in mind the potential issues with personal music recommendations on your weblog, I can't resist this (of course, I'll always try to link to or recommended music and sound as it applies to either the city and/or information - this just about sneaks in). Oh, and it's today. I can't go but you should. Not for the faint-hearted.

APRIL 5
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE - scoring "Legend of the Overfiend"

"Japan's psychedelic earth worshippers Acid Mothers Temple perform live a score to the cult, X certificate Japanese Manga classic "Urotsukidji - Legend of the Overfiend".  The perfect  accompaniment to Hideki Takayama's 18 certificate 108 minute long animated classic.  Acid Mothers Temple unleash a lethal concoction of guitar solos, Jazz inspired improvisation and Krautrock-like noise to one of cinema's darkest fantasies.  Graphic sex, demon-induced gore and supernatural  shenanigans make for a night of deliciously uncensored hardcore horror. Take your warning.  Adults only!"

2002:  A Space Ordinance Tour (�6 advance / �8 door)
7:30P, Queen Elizabeth Hall (�12.50 / �15), London, ENGLAND
More information

Shadow Traffic, NYC

This sounds fantastic:
PHIL KLINE - "Shadow Traffic"
April 8

"'Shadow Traffic' is a piece for an infinite number of boomboxes playing coordinated tapes to be carried through the streets of the lower east side, the walk ending approximately a half an hour later at the Angel Orensanz Center on Norfolk Street. The composer will make available 30 boomboxes and tapes, but participants are strongly encouraged to bring their own boomboxes, for which extra tapes will be provided, and arrive at the 8th Street at Avenue A entrance to the park by 7:45.  Anyone wishing to take part and carry a boombox can email boombox@mindspring.com or call 212 227 6255.

Shadow Traffic will be part of the MATA (Music at the Anthology) Festival, taking place at the Orensanz Center.  While admission won't be charged in the park, those arriving at Orensanz and who wish to stay for the remainder of the evening's program will be asked for voluntary donations to benefit radio station WNYC's rebuilding effort."

8P, Tomkins Square Park
New York City, NEW YORK
boombox@mindspring.com  for information

[The Angel Orensanz Centre is one of the most beautiful places I've been to in NYC - I saw John Zorn's chamber music quartet there a couple of years ago, after walking across the city on a searing hot New York day - an evening that'll stick with me forever]

Also in NYC, on April 10:
JOHN CARLUCCIO - scoring
Live turntablism over "The Prodigal Son" (1970s martial arts film).
VIDUO, Baktun ($5 / $10), 418 West 14th Street, New York City, NEW YORK
klapidus@aecom.yu.edu  for information
[via Actions]

Biospheres: Secrets Of The City, Brisbane

I/O & SCANNER - exhibition APRIL 5 - 6

"Exploring the hidden resonances and meanings of sound and image that lie beneath our everyday surroundings.  Taking the urban environment, architecture, streets and the neighbourhoods that map the framework of the city itself as the inspirational focal point, this work attempts to re-assemble Brisbane and its surrounding spaces through its fringes. Focusing on the sounds that have become invisible through familiarity, "Biospheres: Secrets Of The City" also explores the neglected architecture that dominates the urban environment."

also features OREN AMBARCHI, LAWRENCE ENGLISH, PIMMON, DAVID TOOP
Fabrique Festival, Spark Bar, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
More information

Culture, Business and the City, Manchester

fwd:
CULTURE, BUSINESS AND THE CITY
THURSDAY 11 APRIL 2002
LT3, Geoffrey Manton Building, MMU

The evening will be chaired by Jonathan Scholfield and the speakers will include:

Phil Wood
partner in COMEDIA, culture and urban policy consultancy

Hans Mommaas
European expert on cultural policy and urban regeneration.

Third speaker to be confirmed.

In this sixth debate of the series, the subject will be the contribution of culture to the 'business of the city' - whether tourism, positive external image, urban regeneration or cultural economy. Once again the presentations will be followed by an open debate with the audience.

The seminar commence at 6pm (on this occasion refreshments will not be available before the event).

Further details: Sarah Rowland, 0161 832 8818

Chicago Signs and Type

Another entrant in the urban vernacular typography mapping project (like the human genome project but bigger) - this time it's Chicago (here's an earlier collection of signs and type).

[via xBlog]

Interview with Martin Dodge / Maps

"A lot of the current examples don't really work. They're glorious failures�just eye candy. You look at them and say, "Oh yeah, that's quite interesting, but I wouldn't ever want to really use it." Despite all those fancy maps and experimental 3-D stuff, I'm still surfing the Web using Netscape. I think and hope it's just a matter of time before some smart grad student at MIT or Stanford comes up with a killer map of cyberspace that changes the way people view the Web. One niche for innovation is in the design of search engines. The typical search engine still looks pretty much like it did five years ago, when Lycos and WebCrawler first started. You have a box, you type a bunch of keywords, and you get a long list of items back. I'm constantly amazed that somebody hasn't come up with something better. It's a lack of imagination. But I think it can be done."

From Charting The Virtual World, in which Darwinmag talks to Martin Dodge, co-author of 'The Atlas of Cyberspace'. Some nice images from the sidebar link, but I'm not convinced about Dodge's desire to see some killer-app mapping of search engine interfaces or email clients. Sure, spatialisation etc. can throw extra light on navigation, but perhaps there's an equal and opposite case for ever more focused renditions of todays text-based search/organisation interfaces. Sometimes our desire to map may just be the desire to make the eye-candy he mentioned earlier. They're not mutually exclusive solutions of course, but I keep thinking of dreadful VRML 'worlds of data', and comparing that to how efficiently the average punter now parses a list of search results. Would those simple text relationships be improved by spatial/visual metaphors?

Todd Gitlin on The Torrent

"The media saturates, drenches, overflows our lives: an endless torrent of words, images, sounds. This is not the "information age", a mere channel to life, says openDemocracy's North Americas editor, but life itself. How do people make sense of the onrush without being submerged by it?"

Well, how do they? Todd Gitlin (for it is he) begins to address the texture of media saturation, the essence of its omnipresence ... but ultimately stops short of concluding, well, much at all. Perhaps he's too busy promoting his upcoming book, 'Media Unlimited: How The Torrent Of Images And Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives' - who says Americans have no sense of irony? ;) There's little here that Steven Johnson hasn't already dealt with, but there is some good stuff. His idea of unity could be useful -  to see media as one (in)coherent universe, rather than trying to separate out different channels within the media, and further separate those from 'real life', whatever that is ... as well as noting the sensorial nature of all this experience:

"Through all the confusion we sense something like a unity at work. The torrent is seamless: a collage of back-to-back stories, talk-show banter, fragments of ads, soundtracks of musical snippets. Even as we click around, something feels uniform - a relentless pace, a pattern of interruption, a seriousness about unseriousness, a readiness for sensation, an anticipation of the next new thing. Whatever the diversity of texts, the media largely share a texture, even if it is maddeningly difficult to describe - real and unreal, present and absent, disposable and essential, distracting and absorbing, sensational and tedious, emotional and numbing."

[at OpenDemocracy]