colossus
But—and it was a very large but—his had been the guiding brain, the one with the big overall concept, the vision. And that was the one that counted. (Jones 1966: chpt. 1) Briefly he considered his future, but … Continue reading →
Tag Archives: computing
plug & pray
Computer experts around the world, like Raymond Kurzweil and Hiroshi Ishiguro, strive towards the development of intelligent robots. Will man and machine merge as a single unity? Rejecting evolution’s biological shackles dangles the promise of eternal life for those bold … Continue reading →
brains ain’t computers
When, ↵like recently, I am talking about the historical significance of cybernetics for contemporary culture and society I more often than not mention that in the process of marking itself off from mechanistic visions (Ashby 1957 [1956]: 1-6), cybernetics quite … Continue reading →
barefoot into cyberspace
↓Barefoot into Cyberspace is an inside account of radical hacker culture and the forces that shape it, told in the year WikiLeaks took subversive geek politics into the mainstream. Including some of the earliest on-record material with Julian Assange you … Continue reading →
behind closed doors
That one came timely—just two days after ↵telegeography, my rant on the other side of information technology, the Internet’s hardware aspect, and its importance for anthropology, ↑boingboing posted on ↑Ben Mendelsohn‘s documentary ↑Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors: I want … Continue reading →
telegeography
Amazing, how associations creep up involuntarily. When ↑Mark McGuire ↵asked if ↑Cyberanthropology was available in English, I had to answer ‘I’m afraid, but, no,’ and at the same time thought, ‘but there is a book-length unpublished manuscript in English on … Continue reading →
billion dollar brain
“↑Billion Dollar Brain” (Russell 1967) is a cold war spy thriller movie based on the ↑novel of the same name by British writer ↑Len Deighton (1966). Said novel is one of a series starring an unnamed secret agent, working for … Continue reading →
anthropology meets technology
The BBC carries a short piece by ↑Genevieve Bell, corporate anthropologist at Intel, on what a corporate anthropologist does: ↑Viewpoint: Anthropology meets technology. And ↑anthropologies has the essay ↑Anthropology in High Tech by John Sherry, yet another anthropologist at Intel. … Continue reading →
parts
↵They‘re here since some days already, but I didn’t yet come around to celebrate them as they deserve it. This is because I’m a bit knocked down by some nasty infection in the throat—but meanwhile I’m comfortably high on a … Continue reading →
marco tempest
… get to the poetry faster This is way overdue. It must have been in the late 1980s or early ’90s that for the first time I saw ↑Marco Tempest perform live. It was at one of those bigger magicians’ … Continue reading →