the economical relevance of cyberanthropology Sooner or later the time may well come that I have to advertise me—read: sell myself ;-) If so, I’d advertise ‘cyberanthropology’ to the suits’n’ties like that: A television show which is produced on virtually no budget at all, but has an audience of millions worldwide, neither gets public or commercial funding, nor is the industry interested in placing advertisement. A company tries to lure an audience of several hundred into buying music online by offering three songs for free, while said audience’s members are right in the act of exchanging terabytes of music for … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2007
In a 1994 television interview with ↑Alexander Kluge, ↑Niklas Luhmann warned: “Vorsicht vor zu raschem Verstehen!” [Attention if something is understood too quickly.] 70 years earlier, Hercule Poirot said: “If a thing is clear as daylight—eh bien, mistrust it! Someone has made it so.”—from Agatha Christie’s “The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim” (1924). … Continue reading
the day ↑DRM went down on its knees again As far as I understand the matter, it now is possible to decrypt the contents of ↑HD DVD and ↑Blu-ray Discs, because for both the same root/master key is used. For all about the processing key and the technicalities, go to the ↑according thread at ↑Doom9. For German-only passers-by, ↑Heise has a story. The whole matter is not only a current one, work and discussion are still going on right now, but is very interesting as well. The contents of said thread, the interaction taking place there, already is a premium … Continue reading
Gaming is the most vital artform of the age, a field that has burgeoned from virtually nothing to one of the world’s most popular forms in no time flat, a field that has seen and continues to see an enormous ferment of creativity, a field that may well become the predominant artform of the 21st century, as film was of the 20th, as the novel was of the 19th. By God, we’re privileged to be here at the birth of this great form, of the creation of a democratic artform for a democratic age, the creation of structures of desire, … Continue reading
This is a late follow-up to 2005’s ↵zelda vans: ↑Thrilling Wonder features a phantastic ↑series of dekotora truck pictures. See also, if you like, ↑Dekotora at the Wikipedia, and compare to ↵bedford’s appropriation and ↵bedford’s metamorphosis. And for those ↑deep into Japanese trash—(one of the rare clips to which YouTube’s system doesn’t find related ones … ;-) via entry at Kevin Kelly’s street use … Continue reading
*blink* via entry at mosaikum … Continue reading
or, pride and prejudice Director ↑Geoff Lapaire, playing the character ‘↑Kyle‘ in the “↑Pure Pwnage“ Internet television series, finally revealing his face to the audience at the end of ↑Episode 12 “Game Over” [46:08min | .avi | 342.5MB], closing the series’ first season. ‘Kyle’ (Geoff Lapaire), director of the “Pure Pwnage” series, has written a short but ↑insightful essay on the nexus between gaming- and online-culture, independent film making, the television industry, and public funding. He starts by relating the development of the download numbers, which mean the minimum of viewers of each show. Lapaire and ↑Jarett Cale (playing … Continue reading
More than a year ago I ↵added a tidbit to the entry ↑Pure Pwnage at Wikipedia. My addition, which—in the wake of Wikipedia’s ↑Project Internet Culture—meanwhile was moved to the ↑easter eggs section of the now existing entry ↑List of Pure Pwnage episodes, read like that: In Episode 8, when Doug is competing against 7 other CS:S players, one of his victims is under the alias “f4tality”. This is a nod to ↑Johnathan Wendel, a professional FPS-gamer who goes by the name “Fatal1ty”. Early in his career, Wendel played “↑Counter-Strike“ before he resorted to single-player games such as “↑Quake III … Continue reading
Ten years ago on December 10th, 1993, ↑id Software released the ↑Doom shareware, forever changing the world of PC games. Doom pretty much defined the very young ↑first person shooter genre, and set the bar for future games to come. With immersive, colorful levels, deadly enemies and some of the greatest gameplay any game has ever seen, Doom can be best described as nothing short of a masterpiece. Even to this day it is still cited as one of the best and most significant games made. Well, I am more than three years late with this “news”, but still “↑10 … Continue reading
Ladies and Gentlemen, hold your breath, just some hours ago we founded our very own gaming clan: “Teh Original Affluent Society” (TOAS—and, yes, it’s “Teh” ;-) The best thing is the members roster. At the moment there are four of us: Firstly an individual who can’t play any decent computer game at all and doesn’t yet own an acceptable machine, secondly a genuinely bad player posing with a godbox (guess who), then a quite good Quake player who recently defected to BF2, and finally a speedrunning legend. That’s by far the most diverse gamer spectrum ever united in a clan, … Continue reading