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documenting your (web) persona

MIT labs and Aaron Zinman created a digital installation that creates your online genome, a visual representation of how the web sees you. Part art installation, part critique, Personas | Metropath(ologies) exploits the fact that there are likely several people in the world, living or dead, who share your name. A simple search of websites, however, cannot distinguish between you and your name.

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity.

Try your own at http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

decline of western Europe

A visualization of the decline of western European empires. Things get interesting around the 1960s.

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

recumbent or upright?

Hmmm. Should I get a recumbent or an upright bike? If the ZWEISTIL makes it into production, you won’t have to choose. The bike demonstrated in the following video is an entrant in this year’s James Dyson award competition.

From the website…

The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. It’s run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to inspire young people about design engineering.

The winner of the James Dyson Award 2008 was Michael Chen, from Middlesex University in the UK, who designed Reactiv, a cycling jacket that communicates a cyclist’s intentions to other road users.

Durham bike patrol officer trained as a bike mechanic

Who knows, “protect and serve” might mean changing your tire the next time you flat.

h/t to Dale McKeel who pointed this out on the durhambikeandped listserv.

Standing Start, a brief review

Standing Start, a 12-minute documentary short-film on track bicycle racing, uses narration adapted from Homer’s The Odyssey to frame the significance of training, pursuit, and competition.

Like Douglas Gordon’s Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, this riveting film from the Scottish Documentary Institute looks at the some of life’s larger questions through an intimate and aesthetic portrayal of sport. One man stands for all men through most of the film, and only in the sparse scenes of a multi-person race are we reminded that this struggle for strength, explosive strength, has meaning because of the community of others whose training is just as steadfast.

Track racing is a beautiful marriage of the human and the machine. In contrast to the stories of judgment and salvation told in the Terminator films, Standing Start presents a story about the very human use of machines to realize full human potentiality. Instead of humans-vs.machines, it is a story of humans with machines.

I was able to view the film, which is still on the festival circuit, last summer at the Los Angeles Bicycle Film festival. If you get a chance, check it out. It’s among the most carefully measured 12 minutes of film you’ll ever watch.

YooouuuTuuube

Makes any video look cool… (click the image to see what I’m talking about)

U.N. launches World Digital Library

Last week, the United Nations launched the World Digital Library, featuring historic books, maps, recordings and other artifacts from many of the great institutions around the globe. The WDL draws on the resources of the Library of Congress, UNESCO, and other cultural institutions.

For example, below is a digitized film from 1899, shot by Thomas Edison (yes, that Thomas Edison), of the NYPD bike patrol.

Description
The film shows members of “New York’s Finest” parading at a crowded Union Square. Seen are members of the Bicycle Squad, mounted horses, and two regimental marching bands. At the time of filming, the New York City Police Department was still recovering from the corruption scandals of the early 1890’s that had severely tarnished the reputation of the department. A State-Senate-appointed group known as the Lexow Committee investigated the department and issued a scathing report that detailed serious criminal activity within the department. In 1895, public opinion was so low that the annual parade was not held. That same year, Theodore Roosevelt was appointed president of the Police Board, and he is credited with initiating strict and effective reform measures that helped restore the public’s confidence in the police.
Date Created
June 1, 1899

Full Frame

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Flying Shepherd
Salt
Owning the Weather
Art & Copy
Sons of Cuba
The Yes Men Fix the World
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
La Chirola
Unit 25
Objectified
Oil Blue
Sweet Crude
Burma VJ

All in one weekend… I’ll be bleary-eyed tomorrow.

a digital manifesto

http://www.eletrocooperativa.org

Tomorrow is Digital Humanities Project day

On March 18th, 2009, digital humanists from around the world are planning to collectively document their day, and we are looking for interested participants!

A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities (ADLDH) is a community project that will bring together digital humanists to document what they do on one day, March 18th. It is an autoethnography project by digital humanists about the digital humanities. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together the journals of the participants into a picture that answers the question, “Just what do computing humanists really do?” Participants will document their day through photographs and commentary in a blog-like journal. The collection of these journals with links, tags, and comments will make up the final work online.

More information can be found here.

English subtitles for the video
A DIGITAL MANIFESTO

A digital manifesto

image through image / tapeless / filmless / cinefull

Is this your recorder? It´s recording me already, it´s modulating right?

Image through image / and Who is making it? Me? Or the computer?

These images / this life / and Who is editing it? Me? Or the machine?

Created with no brush / only pixels / pixelated paintings / pixelized

here goes my manifesto

pandora´s box

the past is a myth // a system that lives from the past / this is na echo -
system

Love / oh Love / why isn´t the planet moved by love

it should / true love

*“another proof: music that comes from new times. It is the civilization of
leisure not business / it is a new man / a new time a new era…”*

that´s it / after Love / water a lot of water // the holy drink / not this
dead drink

*“radioart / water*

*Lord forgive them they do not know what they´re doing…*

Listen / hear / hear us

The muse//

the primitive future is being lapidated by digital craftsmen / those that
through self-sustainability / deconstruct shapes / in order to find meaning

the past is a myth // human salvation lives in the internet

TRIBES

television never more /// gone is the industrial age // long gone industrial
age

technology has not been completely understood yet // it´s messianic function
in this planet

we are the 1 and technology is the 0

maybe everything seems exact / extract /maybe

Society / liquid society // why not?

*Liquids, differently from solids, do not maintain their form with ease /
they´re fluid / don´t fixate space and don´t tie time // it´s time to
liquefy patterns of dependency and interaction / they are now malleable / to
the point in which past generations did not experience and could not
conceive of*

*there´s a new tribe in town and that´s the hybrid tribe*

*this is the post-concept*

*a cool insight in the Word post / doesn´t mean necessarily posterior but
re-evaluated / self-aware / from a psychoanalytical perspective *

*we all come from the same echo echo-system*

*digital being*

*why not share life is all live the same life*

*at the same time at the same age*

*the future is now*

the digital being liquid celebrates

digital being

do it yourself

by fabricio jabar, from eletrocooperativa
–
renata lemos
http://www.eletrocooperativa.org
http://liquidoespaco.wordpress.com/

New passenger rail welcome in North Carolina

With Durham’s new Amtrak station set to be on line this summer* and its new bus station opening next week, timing couldn’t be better for local governments to engage in a little self-reflection focused on our urban transit systems.

PBS takes a look at the politics and success of Charlotte’s new light rail line (see below). Through self-puffery, McCrory comes off sounding like he doesn’t think other cities can do something as successful as Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line, but the fact of the matter is there is a lot of money designated for mass transit in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The video includes an interview with one of my favorite NC transportation “experts,” David Hartgen.

This may be North Carolina’s — and the Triange’s — best chance in years to move out of the fossil age and into the 21st century. Hopefully the Southeast High Speed Rail corridor, the Macon-Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte Rail Corridor, and the Western North Carolina Rail project, as well as municipal/interlocal light rail systems will all get a boost from the stimulus package.

This is not a time to think small, and in the coming year we’ll see just how broad thinking our local leadership really is.

*Note: Durham once had a great train station; let’s see if we can keep this one.

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