Greenvertising
Brain Kane proposes to fund the re-foresting of clearcut areas, with Greenvertising.
See also: Branded butterfly wing, Plantvertising, Information Decoration, Dataplant, Artvertising, Crop Circles.
What is Next Nature?
With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Posts Tagged ‘The-map-is-the-territory’
-
-
Green Roofs for Living
This impression shows the ambitions of the city of Rotterdam for the coming decade. The city is supposed to have an image problem concerning its greenlife; as a big industrial harbour city in The Netherlands, there are almost no parks in the center. So where space in citycenters is generally built to the max, the roofs should be taking the city’s ecology to the next level. According to environmental psychologist Sjerp de Vries, it is a proven fact that the more green people see, the less stress they experience. Hence they will feel more at home, social contacts improve as well as the air quality. Green roofs improve the quality of life.
-
Wear Your Social Network
Get Wickd (props for the name boys – totally wicked!) is a tech-fashion brand that sells basic clothes with barcodes that can link your mobile phone to any page on the web, from a Myspace profile to a Youtube movie. This technique makes it possible to literally wear your virtual identity, where ever you go.
Read more » -
Super cities
A series of slides dealing with the ongoing urbanization of the world. 192021.org
-
Lego Towers
-
French USB wine
Remember the article N is for Nature, describing the Californian company Enologix, which creates software to predict how wine critics will rate a wine, so that it can be produced accordingly? No, I would not expect the French to appreciate this wine making as information science. After all they are the inventors of wine, carefully guarding their traditions. Some might say they are just old fashioned and tastes differ, but don’t dare to say the French don’t have a sense of humor.
-
Fake for Real: Sim City
At right is a picture of the city of Toronto seen from a 45-degree angle. At left is a screen shot from the computer game Sim City, in which the player’s objective is to develop and maintain a city, including traffic streams, utilities, population and so on. Yes, it’s just a game, but remember, the young gamers of today will grow up to be the urban planners of tomorrow.
From our Fake for Real series.
-
Google 2084
Tongue in cheek speculation on what Google’s home page may look like in 2084, created by Randy Siegel for NY Times. Frankly, I don’t think this is very realistic: We don’t have to wait that long for most of this.
-
Fake for Real: The Money Matrix
It’s fascinating how stock traders can get so excited about a few abstract numbers on an electronic display. These numbers represent real money, and every small fluctuation can mean the difference between being rich or poor.
What we usually don’t realize is that money itself is already a virtual phenomenon: a representation of value constructed to replace the awkward, imprecise trading of physical goods. Indeed, paying $50 for a pair of sneakers is much easier than trading two chicken or a basket of apples for them. As long as we all believe in its value, money works fine. But once we start making money with money, the system feeds back on itself, and things start to get peculiar. Money is just a representation, but nevertheless it makes the world go round. What started as a symbolic representation has now become a kind of reality. It’s almost Platonic; almost like in the movie The Matrix.
From our Fake for Real series.
-
Brainbow Mice
In the 1960s, scientists found that a particular jellyfish makes a protein that glows, known as green fluorescent protein. In the 1990s, using genetic engineering, researchers found that they could take the gene that makes GFP and insert it into the DNA of other cells. This makes different parts of the cell glow – and thus easier to see in a microscope – depending on where the gene is placed.
To go short, Jean Livet, Jeff Lichtman and their collaborators at Harvard University were able to genetically alter mice so their neurons produce fluorescent proteins, and each cell produces a random combination of the colors yellow, red, and cyan. These colors mix, the way the basic colors of a television screen mix to produce a range of hues. Images can be taken in living mice, and the genetic engineering does not harm them. To celebrate this, the scientists decided to appropriately name the species: Brainbow Mice.
guardian.co.uk/science | technologyreview.com | boston.com | www.rsc.org/chemistryworld | nature.com
Related posts: Supermouse experiment | No Transparent Frog | Brain Biometric Key | Brain-computer Interface for Second Life -
Big Ass Browser
First we had the internet. We stored all our texts and images in databases. Then came search engines to locate the data. Now is the time to interconnect it all; to share knowledge and make deep content accessible in blinks of an eye. Even your daily weblog and flickr-photoalbum will not be safe from this monster of content. It is said to be screen-independent, without pop-ups, just zooms.
“Metaverse” is one database of collective memory. It is made possible in the M*soft project: Seadragon, combining Photosynth-technology and Deepfish-zoom. Seadragon is to be launched in February 2008.
My guess: When this exploring-software becomes integrated with live experience, all it takes is one Timeline to browse the Metaverse history. And when that happens, predicting the future should be piece of pie! (the url already seems to be incorporated)
TED Talk by Blaise Aguera | labs.live.com | Related posts: Surface Computing Parody | The world is not a desktop
-
Summit of the Mount Everest on Tour
Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, as measured by the height of its summit above sea level. In May 2005, artist Xu Zhen led an ascent on Everest, and succeeded in removing the summit of the mountain, reducing its height by 186cm, Xu Zhen’s own height. The summit of the Mount Everest has been touring art exhibits throughout the world ever since.
-
To boldly Google…
…where no one has googled before! Of course this would be possible one day: browsing the universe from your desktop. Google did it again and unlocks space, the final frontier for us mortals. What to do with this, I don’t know but if the map is the territory, I terribly need to take a leak.
Download the newest version of Google Earth here. See also Beyond the Beyond, Google Maps Mars and Surfing the Marble
-
Periodic table of the internet
A periodic table of the most popular websites on the internet. websites are categorized according to search engines, internet tools, site ranking, aggregators, web comics, productivity & so on. For those interested, Internet has already been drawn as a world map, a metro map, a mindmap, a network map & a logo map. even an alternative periodic table exists.
Somehow there is a certain kind of luster in visualizing the internet world as a natural world. I guess it gives us some comfort, makes us feel less insecure. Is this the start of a realization that the internet is in fact nature? I mean, how far do we want to take the metaphor? How long do we plan to continue making corny internet-as-natural-phenomenon jokes? I’d say lets get some real work done and start reorganizing some university physics departments today!
Via Infosthetics. Related: Real Nature is not Green.
-
The Metaverse Roadmap
In ancient times heroes like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus explored the unknown territories of the globe. Today world traveling has become a teenage tourist activity, but luckily there are always other spheres to be conquered. No, I don’t mean space traveling that used to be so fashionable in the sixties. Forget about the Universe boys, here is the Metaverse! Some daring discoverers already made a Metaverse Roadmap (PDF) with all the stuff we should know about this culturally emerged nature.
“What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? What happens is the metaverse.”
An interesting overview article, although I find it strange they missed out on the Noosphere. Via AmiBlog.
-
Crop Circles
In the UK farmers recall simple circles appearing on their land for generations. The British media first reported on the circles in the early 1980s. By 1990 crop circles had exploded into the public mind as the new phenomenon changed from simple circular patterns into huge and complex, geometric formations. Crop circles are a world-wide phenomenon, however, the main concentration of events are to be found in Southern England, around ancient sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill. Although there are many theories as to their creation, none have been able to explain satisfactorily exactly how the circles are made. Alien spaceship landings or flying light-bulbs? The obvious assumption would be that all the circles and shapes are man-made, but even amongst scientists there are some who reject this theory.
-
Map of Online Communities
Just in case you hadn’t seen this one. Informational spaces define physical spaces, rather than the other way around. The map is the territory? Let’s just hope the territory can support the map.
-
Warp your room
Remember the e-paper brainstorm we had on this blog? Here’s a nice example on that wallpaper-wish, though these “warps” are customly printed on fleece that can be papered the usual way.
surrealien.de | Related posts: A4 color e-paper | Walls with ears
