This is truly profound: “‘I don’t think aging is a random process – it’s a program, an anti-cancer program,’ said Dr. Norman E. Sharpless of the University of North Carolina.”
I’ve never been a life-extension guy - actually, the prospect of an indefinitely-prolonged lifespan strikes me as thoroughly revolting - but in this announcement I do hear the sound of tumblers turning in ancient, enigmatic locks.
I can feel it out there, boiling, out past the horizon but still gathering strength: the inevitable fusion of travel guides, high-style lifestyle journalism, locative media, and the ubiquitous mobile device. (Probably, if someone clever is behind it, all packaged in a bespoke, branded handset with an immaculate UI.)
Take what wallpaper* used to be, what modo tried to be, what Gridskipper can’t seem to become no matter how hard it tries, what Superfuture was for a moment (and still could be, if only it was updated with some frequency) - an ultrahip, tightly-curated guide to experiencing the world’s great cities. Furnish it with real-time locational information, collaborative-filtering and light social-networking functionality. And push it to people at the time and place they need it most. How can this not be a high-demand, high-margin proposition?
In fact, it seems like such a gimme, such self-evidently low-hanging fruit, that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone or -ones is already putting together an effort along these lines. That’s certainly what Tyler Brûlé was alluding to at Aula in June, and I can’t imagine anyone better positioned to put together the necessary pieces.
All the necessary pieces, that is, but UI. Doing good content experience for mobile devices is so very difficult, in fact, that I haven’t seen anyone get it quite right yet. And that means that there is still an opportunity in this space, just waiting for someone to come along who combines the technical ability to devise (or specify) an appropriate interface with the aesthetic sense to understand just what this market segment demands.
Shaolin Ulysses is a documentary for which John Zorn composed the soundtrack - which is all I know of it, not having seen the actual film.
But that name! I love it, I guess, because it suggests to me what Kung Fu could have been: tales relating the wandering, the lengthy trials, and the eventual return home of one rooted not in the Greek or Western tradition at all, but in the 5,000-year legacy of Chinese culture. For Scylla and Charybdis, read “anti-coolie laws” and “railroad work,” for Circe read “opium addiction.” (Maybe that was the intent all along?)
It turns out, of course, that this is not at all what the film is about…but oh well. It was all worth it to hear Min Xiao-Fen going toe-to-toe with Marc Ribot.
Try as I might, I just can’t get excited over the news that Lockheed Martin’s been awarded the contract to build the (cynically named?) Orion moonship.
For one thing, why should I care that a mammoth defense contractor has managed to land yet another oversight-free trip to the taxpayer-underwritten feeding trough? But beyond that, even beyond my suspicion of the uses to which the space program is being put by the current Administration, I wonder if manned spaceflight is still capable of returning anything meaningful to those of us left behind here on Earth.
It would be painful to admit that there is no part left of me capable of ascending with every launch, but that’s what I’m up against. And if they’ve lost me, they’re in a fair degree of trouble it terms of their ability to mobilize public approval, because I’m the guy that’s reasonably sympathetic to the pro-space program arguments. As of now, I feel a big nullity at the thought of what NASA is contemplating, or has been ordered to contemplate.
I might, of course, feel differently if the craft weren’t so cravenly a scaled-up Apollo. But that’s a discussion for a different day.
