Well I lagged on getting my Radiohead remix up in time for the first contest. So I’ve cheated and uploaded it to the new contest for Reckoner. I’ll eventually do a remix of the new one too but who knows if it’ll be in time for the current contest.

I’m really stoked about this mix. It took me a long time (I did _a lot_ of chopping and re-timed the entire piece) but it’s finally done and has gotten some very heartwarming feedback.

Nude (Dressed Up Mix) - Radiohead

(I need to find a fancy embed music player…)

[vid]

From Mark Pesce’s recent presentation at Personal Democracy Forum 2008::

Hyperpolitics: American Style
It is as though we have all been shoved into the same room, a post-modern Panopticon, where everyone watches everyone else, can speak with everyone else, can work with everyone else. We can send out a call to “find the others,” for any cause, and watch in wonder as millions raise their hands. Any fringe (noble or diabolical) multiplied across three and a half billion adds up to substantial numbers. Amplified by the Human Network, the bonds of affinity have delivered us over to a new kind of mob rule.

…These newly disproportionate returns on the investment in altruism now trump the ‘virtue of selfishness.’

…Sharing is the threat. Not just a threat. It is the whole of the thing.

A photo snapped on my mobile becomes instantaneously and pervasively visible. No wonder she’s nervous: in my simple, honest and entirely human act of sharing, it becomes immediately apparent that any pretensions to control, or limitation, or the exercise of power have already collapsed into shell-shocked impotence.

This is simply awesome. I love it! I hope it gets mirrored everywhere before The Mouse buries it.

Srsly, Diznee: this is exactly what you want kids doing with your content. Make it hip and cool. Give to the commons so we want to give back. Seeing this makes me want to rent/buy the animated classic.

Just testing the new Real World Remixed embed player. This is the remix I did for Little Axe:

n détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. The term “détournement”, borrowed from the French, originated with the Situationist International; a similar term more familiar to English speakers would be “turnabout” or “derailment”, although these terms are not used in academia and the arts world as they are inherently ‘anti-art’ as they are often blatant theft and sabotage of existing elements. Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original works rather than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted with recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.

[insane-o vids must be seen] This will totally melt your brain.

Part 1:

Part 2:

I’ve been enjoying the playful edge of the bleeding digital arts scene vicariously through we make money not art for some time now, but I have to give them renewed props for their site design. Love the aesthetic!

This was a great conference and the most consistent collection of speakers and topics I’ve ever experienced. Very fun and inspiring. Lots of hip 30-somethings trying to dream up tomorrow and make it real. It was a a very balanced, yet cutting-edge talk aimed at an eager (and surprisingly mixed-gender)crowd. I noticed that most folks were using Mac laptops - this part of the edge seems to prefer Apple - and it was fascinating to watch many who were blogging the talks while pulling up references dropped by the speakers, tweeting out to Twitter, and snapping/downloading/posting photos in real-time. As speakers dropped references I was pulling them up on my laptop and dropping links into my blog notes.

In the lobby a team was showing off a data viz video mapping real-time communications connecting NYC to the rest of the world. Andrea noticed that a surprising number were with an Italian city called Perugia. Maybe next year they could map the live feed of all web traffic from ETech. Imagine the bitstreams rising off such a gathering of digiterati.

Maybe it was just the Sudafed coursing through our virus-ridden veins (thank you Portland) but ETech was a total intellectual turn-on, from ambient objects, Asian mobile media, green policy and sustainability, hardware hacking & drone building, Austrian post-Situationists, neuroengineering, and the digital salvation of Democracy itself.

I hope I can go back next year!

Introduced by Tim O’Reilly: “The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think… Internet architecture is a system in which we think.”

Lessig: Government engages in something called policy making. Very challenging but it works hard for the hard cases.

Unfortunately it often gets the easy cases wrong. Ex: Copyright. Gowers: never makes sense to extend the term of existing copyrights. But gov always extends it. Ex: junk food. The WHO tried to set standards. Recommended we only consume 10% sugars. Sugar industry went ballistic and lobbied WHO and FDA to give up the recommendation. FDA/FNB decided 25% is better. Gov has set public policy based on business interests. Ex: Global warming. Nobody in sci community disagreed with Al Gore. So the gov surveyed popular media and 53% disagreed. Junk science funded by oil industry resulting in a 10yr delay in policy. Now we’re pretty screwed. Why does Gov get simple policy wrong?

Founding fathers - Independence. Public policy makers should not be dependent on special interests. Governors should not be dependent on private and public money. Constitutions were to protect against dependency. Unfortunately, there was money dependence. Ex: Daniel Webster.

But this story is about good people. Integrity does not produce a world of independence. There is a system of inappropriate dependence on money. There is a core dynamic of an economy of influence. Money is playing a role where it shouldn’t be. Not just congress.

Ex: Pharmaceutical industry. Spends billions of dollars lobbying doctors to use a certain type of drug. “Detailing”. Now about 2.5 detailers for every doctor. “Bribes that aren’t considered bribes.” A job to constantly sway the doctors. A world of spinning drugs to benefit drug companies, not patients. Studies funded by drug companies and overwhelming bias towards the sponsor’s drugs is found, when it is not found in independent studies.

Ex: Lawyers acting as scholars. Net neutrality. Cable companies giving large amounts of money to lawyer/scholars to argue against net neutrality. Improper dependence upon money.

Ex: Congress. Problem isn’t quid pro quo bribery. Congress is better about this kind of corruption. Problem is institutional corruption. Money diverts access of congressman to particular problems. Donors get more access. There is an ingrained behavior of congressfolk to orient their behavior to support the money they get from donors. The system drives for an ever-expanding scope of regulation. Al Gore tried to de-regulate DSL & Cable. Congress disapproved because it limited their ability to get money from telecomms. Getting elected to Congress is a business model, a step towards making more money as a lobbyist.

This leads to a fundamental loss of faith in the system. The constant appearance of corruption and idiotic mistakes in simple cases. Can we afford this anymore? As long as there is a system of raising money to run elections, the failings will continue.

Many alternatives to campaign finance will not work if they are pushed inside the beltway. Congress is an incumbency machine. They influence the system to protect themselves. Ex: earmarks. Members of congress say how money will be spent in their district. Gives an extraordinary advantage to the incumbent. People give earmarks to protect re-election and benefit personal wealth.

System is designed to make the world safe for insiders. To reformers, insiders are the enemy. Reform only happens on the outside.

Technology can affect change. 1) Peer production of activism, ala Wikipedia. Ex: Sunlight Foundation - tracks earmarks; MapLight.org - track campaign donations; 2) Signaling: finding ways of identifying support for reform. Ex: Change Congress - like Creative Commons, provides a simple way for candidates to signal the level of reform they’re willing to commit to in their campaign. They can mark publicly (pledge) what type of reformer they are. Identify reform candidates and identify supporters who will commit money to them. Fond a way to tax people who don’t support reform. Encouraging prominent citizens to run against candidates who won’t take the pledge of reform, not to win but to cost the non-reformers more money to run (spin) their campaign. Attempt to change the inside political dynamic from the outside.

Alcoholism. Watching the alcoholic fall apart. The problems they face are extraordinarily bad. He (she) must solve the alcoholism before the rest of the problems can be solved. We must realize & solve the first and most immediate problem: the presence of money in the democratic process.

Different times require different heroes. Founding - lawyers. WW2 - soldiers. Now? Geeks. Talent to enable the balance of power. We need a commitment from the geeks to help leverage the rest of our society, to believe in a simple idea that government might work.

[Ed Note: What a cool guy! If Obama wins, there is a major opportunity to refrom the US political system both from the top-down (insiders) and bottom-up (outsiders).]

[Note from Q&A: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. 6 people in each district contributing heavily to a Wikipedia-style site tracking activity of their congresscritters.]

Hacking brains & iPhones, building DIY aerial drones, ambient data streaming, data viz and crowd movements, ARGs, Vegas, and the Self awakened to it’s own tech. Oh baby!

With the help of my special lady friend (who got work to sport for the hotel, pass, and air) and the help of my employer (I’m doing some booth shifts on the floor in exchange for a pass - I get to rep Adobe AIR), I’m leaving tomorrow morning for sunny San Diego and a week at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference! I’m psyched. I’ve wanted to go for the last few years but couldn’t afford it. All this time, I should have just told my corporate overlords they needed to send me on the company ticket!

I’ll be sending photos to the urbeingrecorded portal via tumblr, and I’ll likely post some keen bits here. Otherwise I’ll be fast hacking my iPhone to control a robotic crowd-sourcing drone I will use to track the culinary habits of tech luminaries and international political dissidents whose footpaths I’ll be datastreaming to various dynamic art installations and ambient devices.

From their site:

How does technology help you perceive things that you never noticed before? How does it help you be found, or draw attention to issues, objects, ideas, and projects that are important, no matter their size or location?

At the 2008 version of ETech, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, we’ll take a wide-eyed look at the brand new tech that’s tweaking how we are seen as individuals, how we choose to channel and divert our energy and attention, and what influences our perspective on the world around us:

Body Hacking. Genomics Hacking. Brain Hacking. Sex Hacking. Food Hacking. iPhone Hacking.
DIY Aerial Drones. DIY Talking Things. DIY Spectrum. DIY Apocalypse Survival.
Emerging Tech of India, Cuba, and Africa. International Political Dissidents.
Visualize Data and Crowds. Ambient Data Streaming.
Good Policy. Energy Policy. Defense Policy. Genetic Policy. Corruption.
Alternate Reality Games. Emotions of Games. Sensor Games.

ETech 2008 will cover all of these topics and more. We put on stage the speakers and the ideas that help our attendees prepare for and create the future, whatever it might be. Great speakers are going to pull us forward with them to see what technology can do… and sometimes shouldn’t do. From robotics and gaming to defense and geolocation, we’ll explore promising technologies that are just that–still promises–and renew our sense of wonder at the way technology is influencing and altering our everyday lives.

w00t!

Continuously evolving the edge of electronic music, dance stalwarts Phil Smart, Jimmy Polar, Dave Basek and Ed Function keep putting out great music that sounds unlike anything you’ve heard. With the help of friends, they’ve put up a new Junkbeats site flush with wonderful tracks for stream or download purchase. Drop by and have a look and listen to what they’ve have been up to.

This is a really great resource that finally brings together a lot of Australian talent.

I’ve been rebuilding the playlists from my early days as a yout’ listening to KROQ in SoCal. Lot’s of great esoteric new wave classics that are now available online. It’s a really neat bit of time travel but it got me thinking: why doesn’t iTunes sell all of the old music videos as well? They have a lot of new ones but surely the canon is ripe for the pillaging. Maybe the Musik Biz could pull in a bit of spare change in the process and let people rebuild the entertainment archives of their formative years…

I’ve recently finished a couple of remixes using some of the generously-offered vocal samples from MC Chris. MC is a nerdcore hero, was a writer for Sealab 2021 (one of my all-time favorite shows), voiced Hesh in Sealab, and voiced MC PeePants for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He’s also smart enough to see the value of his music and understand that it’s a good thing that his fans want to remix his work.

Fette’s Vett (Imperial Mix)
Tractor Beam (Hard Phunk Mix)

All available over at N8UR… (I’ve also nudged the mixes on some of the other tracks I have up).