Since the late 1980s, computer scientists and engineers have been researching ways of embedding computational intelligence into the built environment. Looking beyond the model of personal computing, which placed the computer in the foreground of our attention, “ubiquitous” computing takes into account the social dimension of human environments and allows computers themselves to vanish into the background. No longer solely virtual, human interaction with and through computers becomes socially integrated and spatially contingent, as everyday objects and spaces are linked through networked computing.

Conversation between Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard.

Go read, this is important.

Via Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond.

A chest strap (corset) with high torque servo motors and a WIFI-enabled game-console are worn as fetish object. The higher the wireless signal strength of close encrypted networks, the tighter the corset becomes. Closed network points improve the pleasurable play of tight lacing the performer‘s bustier. Thus, constituting the aether as a space of possible pregnancy, filled with potential access-points to the networks of communication. Everyday walks between home, work and leisure are recompiled into a schizogeographic pain-map which is fetched from GoogleMaps servers with automated scripts. By wearing the straight-jacket, the artist not only writes, but is at once also able to read the city code.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Flash website :argh: so I won’t quote from it, but the gist is:

The skulls belong all to us. I wanted to bring a catacomb from the near future to the present, to show people that the tragedy of pollution is happening right now. I try to remind people of things they are trying to forget.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Some excerpts from "When I Sold My Soul to the Machine" a documentary on the dutch electro/techno scene around Bunker Records in The Hague during the 90's

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5

See also Slices dvdmag on Legowelt and Guy Tavares:
part 1
part 2

Via Leyburn at someplace special.

Tobias Battenberg, from Germany, made a nice experiment with video projections in several buildings and structures in the city, about the font “akzidenz grotesk”.
Akzidenz grotesk is known as a font that tolerates a lot, that holds out a lot - my plan was to get a proof by the font herself. the font demonstrated her character at its best.

His website

Via Type for you via Monoscope.

Found via Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond.

Why Chicks Don’t Dig The Singularity - 10 Zen Monkeys (a webzine).

I’m at Burning Man, and I’m riding my bike around. [… O]ver my left shoulder I hear the word “gene;” I hear the word “memes,” and I stop. And there’s this very unassuming white tent with a bunch of people sitting around on chairs as if they were at a lecture hall. And there’s this good-looking guy in a woman’s nightie. […] I listened to the lecture and thought, “That’s a fascinating guy!” It turned out he was doing a lecture every day, so I kept coming back. The third time I came back, I was on a hallucinogen.

So Ray Kurzweil got up there and Moira Gunn was interviewing him, and everybody got to submit a question. And Moira would pick her three favorite questions. So there were all these technical questions about how will the singularity do this, how will the singularity do that. And my question was, “How will the Singularity get laid… err help me get laid?” So she picked my question as an extra one as a way of dismissing it. She said, “Somebody put a joke question in here, and can you believe that there are people here who would write something like this? It’s ‘how will the Singularity help me get laid?’” And then she throws it aside and tries to move on to another question. But Kurzweil says, “Hang on. Hang on. I want to answer that.” And then he goes into this long technical description…