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From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Author: Fred Turner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006
Review 1: Lonny J Avi Brooks
Review 2: William Bryant
Review 3: Merav Katz-Kimchi
Review 4: Linda Levitt
Review 5: Alan Razee
Author Response: Fred Turner
Tom Mueller, on The New Yorker, reports:
"As Paul Ginsborg, a historian at the University of Florence and an expert on postwar Italian history, explained, “The public administration, both local and national, never developed a culture of its own, an esprit de corps, as in the great French ministries or in Whitehall. You have parties invading the state, occupying banks, ministries, all the way down to who’s running opera houses, who’s the head of the local firemen, who’s running the public water authority. Party loyalty, not honesty or ability, becomes the first criterion, and the foremost goal of all parties is occupation at all costs, with loyal and servile members of the party.”
[...] Italian legislators, realizing that a docile press is insufficient to protect them from Grillo’s Web-based activism, have begun to retaliate. In October, Prodi’s cabinet proposed a law to subject Internet sites and blogs to the same libel rules as newspapers, and to compel them to hire both a publisher and a licensed journalist. “If this law passes, it will be the end of the Web in Italy,” Grillo wrote on his blog a few days later. “My blog won’t close. If necessary, I’ll move lock, stock, and server to a democratic nation.” (The law is pending passage in parliament.) In November, the Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella, announced that he was suing Grillo for libel over a speech he had made that month to the European Parliament. (Grillo, referring to a corruption investigation that Mastella had blocked—and in which Mastella himself was a suspect—had said that whereas dynamite was once necessary to stop magistrates from investigating powerful people, nowadays the Minister of Justice simply stopped them himself.) When Grillo learned that he was being sued, he invited readers of his blog to sign a statement saying that they agreed with his remarks, after which he would award them the honorary title of “Mastellated.” To date, nearly seventy thousand people have been Mastellated."
When asked about Italy by friends and fellows in the US and elsewhere, I usually shrug and quickly change the subject. Italy's perennial crisis is reaching new lows. Mass mobilization is the only way out of this nightmarish situation. Or maybe it's too late. Fact is: The schism between the people and those in power - at all levels - has never been so wide. I wonder how long it is going to take before a real civil war erupts.
"Oh, my God," says the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer...
"BART became the first transit agency in the country Tuesday to test a system-wide cell phone payment program that allows riders to pass through the gates with a wave of their handset. The $200,000 pilot project, which will be tested by about 230 riders for the next four months, utilizes a wireless chip that lets people pay by passing their phone over a wireless reader. BART has been using the contact-free technology in its EZ Rider pilot program, which allows riders to pay at the turnstiles by waving a plastic card that has a wireless chip." (Ryan Kim, San Francisco Chronicle)
- Games: Sony, Activision Doubt the Potential of In-Game Ads (GameDaily)
- Games: Coming of Age: Sex, Lies & Videogames (Next Generation)
- Games: Game Review: Rez HD (Xbox 360) Perfection? (Ars Technica)
- Games: "30-year-olds: 'drop the pad and grow up'" (CVG) - damn!
- Games: Half-Life: Full Life Consequences, fan created movie (via Kotaku)
Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime
Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi, editor (University of Minnesota Press)
"Connecting Japan’s vibrant science fiction tradition to the global phenomenon of anime. Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the past decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture. Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre."
Games: ErotiSims: Sex and The Sims (Rock, Paper, Gun)
Games: The Future of RTS (Gamasutra)
Games: Engaging Tangos. In vegas. Again. (EDGE)
Game Art: Brody Condon's Performance Modification (Nauman) - previous video here
What's new at videoludica?
First, we're still on the old server.
- Essay: "Geometrie della Visione" by Gaetano Longo (Italian) - Longo compares-and-contrasts the perspectives of Renaissance paintings with those of contemporary videogames. A must read.
- Event: on Jan 31 Marc Prensky is in Rome to discuss his latest book (Italian)
- Event: Virtual Moves - a series of art events in Copenhagen focusing on Second Life (Italian)
- Author's Response: Domenico Quaranta discusses GameScenes (English)
- Essay: Don't Mess With The Warriors by Matteo Bittanti (English) - a two part essay
- Article: The latest issue of Queer magazine features a special report on videogames, including my piece on Games vs./and Cinema (Italian)
"A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday. The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, when asked about the situation after it was disclosed by other officials. "Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause." He would not comment on whether it is possible for the satellite to be perhaps shot down by a missile." (Eileen Sullivan, San Francisco Chronicle)
"Blogging at its freest is like going to a masked ball. You can say all the spiteful, infantile things you wouldn't dream of saying if you were in print or face to face with another human being. You can flirt with anyone, or try to. You can tell the President exactly what you think of him. You can have political opinions your friends would despise you for. You can even libel people you don't like and hide behind an alias. (It's very hard to get back at anonymous bloggers who defame you because, by an act of Congress, Web site administrators aren't liable for what's written on their sites. [...] And erasing anything on the Web is almost impossible.) You can assume a new identity and see how it flies—no strings attached." (Sarah Boxer, The New York Review of Books)
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