Greg Brown on Mountain Stage … and Seed Savers
Listen to more of Greg Brown on Mountain Stage at NPR Music. The show includes some sweet tunes from Sin, Salvation and Saving Seeds, is a fundraiser disc for Seed Savers, an Iowa-based organization that is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States, with more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties.
Computers don’t understand real world space
John Underkoffler says that “Computers don’t understand real world space” … until now. At 5:20, things start to get pretty crazy. These systems are already deployed, and he thinks we’re just 5 years away from mass consumer access to this.
via TED via Real-world Minority Report computer interface from kottke.org:
John Underkoffler was one of the science advisors for Minority Report. After doing that, he helped build a computer with an interface very much like the ones in the movie … you know, where Tom Cruise flings stuff around on a screen with his hands. In this TED talk, Underkoffler demonstrates the system.
Double Life
Gary Howe, publisher of the excellent blog My Wheels are Turning posted this video and writes…
A bit tangential to the purpose of MyWHaT this morning and by no means a cartoon. However, this short film by Gavin Kelly is intriguing.
It depicts 4 MMORPG players as they describe their online persona’s while the viewer watches them navigate their everyday routine, as their avatars.
The connection is the persona we present in the physical public space, as well as the commons of the internet. For example, what sort of creature are we expressing during a fit of road-rage? Or, who are we when we feel unencumbered by social norms when commenting on an online forum.
More simply, there’s the connection to the act of people-watching. The times when we allow ourselves to wonder what a passerby is thinking as they walk down a street or wait at a stop light.
There probably are warlocks among us, if not zombies.
Bill, a frequent contributor to MyWhAT, mused to me the other day that when he gets in a car he feels a tangible anger settle over him and becomes as impatient as the impatient drivers he shakes his head at when he’s riding. I know that when I get on my bike in town, I turn into a cross between a bike messenger and the Green Lantern, making a point to get in people’s faces (or windshields) who blast across crosswalks and generally ignore non-motorized traffic.
Heady stuff … must be the helmets.
