One of the projects I'm working on next year is a research project about cyberpunk as a body of intellectual work. I'll also be look at cyberpunk as a design aesthetic. As part of this research I will be looking at a number of specific businesses that have embodied cyberpunk values. The 3 big businesses that I want to look at are Microsoft, Google and IBM. So I was interested to see a number of advertisements for Google and Microsoft products that still seem to be tied into a very specific cyberpunk style. The android advertisement below very blatantly references Tron, one of the first cyberpunk films. The second references Minority Report. A number of writers have contrasted the cold, machinelike cyberpunk aesthetic in these ads with the human-focused connectivity, 'invisible interface' of Apple products, and the earthy, imperfect future described by Berg. The UX folks at Google seem to...
I'm trying to consolidate some of my online writings, so I'm reposting this here. I'm working on a piece that references danah boyd's writing about shared language as privacy control and Kate Crawford and Catharine Lumby's research that includes a granular, user-empowered approach to privacy control in social networks (pdf), and this post feels relevant. ----- In the 50s and 60s, there are five people at the centre working very hard, miserably trying to write a book and around them there are 95 people more or less having fun," Greif explains. "In the hipster culture the people at that centre aren't necessarily producing art, they're actually working in advertising, marketing and product placement. These were once embarrassing jobs. Now it's meaningful in this world to say that you sell sneakers, at a high level. Why do people hate hipsters? I've just finished Zero History and I'm still coming to terms...
I've always had a thing for detective fiction. As a 7 year old I wanted to grow up to be Sherlock Holmes (not *a detective* but specifically Sherlock Holmes). I ended up becoming a researcher at various places, but never really followed that urge to be a detective. I've been struck recently by the way the that the fantasy of the investigative journalist has been played out in science fiction and noir. The investigative journalist and the private detective do have quite a bit in common. The autonomy to follow one's nose, to find out secrets that will embarrass someone, to have a hands-off benefactor who funds your jaunts with only a directive to find the truth are all part of the fantasy. The reality of the roles are very similar too - lots of boring work going through reams of data searching for that elusive bit of telling information,...