The future is already here, I'm just trying to aggregate it.

The obfuscation of culture (how to hide your shit online)

kenyatta:

One of my favorite bits from Jacob’s post on “seapunk” was this bit about keeping subcultures “sub”:

It is an impossibility for a subcultural style to be “owned”. Sub-culture exists when gazed at by mass-culture. The only way to ensure that your aesthetic is not going to become used by others is to never share it with anyone. Another approach is to protect your aesthetic with physical violence (see: gang colors). Otherwise, once you allow your presence to be seen, it can be consumed.

Most communities protect their culture through some form of obfuscation: hiding the meaning of their communication by making it hard to interpret.

This is a practice I’ve been studying for some time and some of it is incredible.

If you want your subculture to go undetected, all of these techniques are moderately effective at keeping your activity away from people and their machines. Until they *want* to find you. Then they’ll find ways around the gates you throw up.

update #1:

rickwebb replied to your link: The obfuscation of culture (how to hide your shit online)
We see a lot of people posting whole posts in tags, so that they’re only visible in the dashboard and not their external-facing blogs, too.

Brilliant.

update #2: Alex Leavitt points me to this First Monday piece by Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum, ‘Vernacular Resistance to Data Collection & Analysis: A Political Theory of Obfuscation’

This reminds me of the old text and l33t speak. But culture has been doing this forever. Jamaican’s adapted their speech to the heavily accent dialect they have today so they could speak freely around the plantation owners. 

(via hautepop)

Han Shot First! This was an easy win really. 

Han Shot First! This was an easy win really. 

Do you prefer your science fiction more “realistic” or a little more absurd?

Samsung Preparing Wristwatch

When was the last time a company making a wristwatch made news? I mean seriously, there’s no acknowledgement that this is even a smart-watch. Hee just calls it a watch. But it’s a safe bet it’s a smartwatch not a competitor to the Casio line of watches. 

“We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long,” Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said during an interview in Seoul. “We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”

Please. Like this is even a competition.  BTW, I’m calling a Solo vs Chewy and Vader vs Boba in the final four and a Solo vs Vader final* (read the brackets wrong), I think it’ll be a Boba vs Vader final.  UPDATE: Star Wars changed the brackets to guarantee that the light side meets the dark side in the finals. So I’m back to a Solo vs Vader final 

Please. Like this is even a competition. 

BTW, I’m calling a Solo vs Chewy and Vader vs Boba in the final four and a Solo vs Vader final* (read the brackets wrong), I think it’ll be a Boba vs Vader final. 

UPDATE: Star Wars changed the brackets to guarantee that the light side meets the dark side in the finals. So I’m back to a Solo vs Vader final 

I’m calling it now. Future hipsters will be raising dodo birds, not chickens. 

(via Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | Video on TED.com)

What’s most interesting is how one prediction can come so close to being right, yet be completely misguided on an important detail. For example, in the imaginary 2013, computers compile “the family’s personalized newspaper, featuring articles on the subjects that interest them”… but then they print it out on a laser-jet printer to read it. Or how they predicted that the roads of L.A. would be full of “‘sports-utility’ vehicles” but defined that as a car “that can go from being a two-seat sports car to a beachbuggy—thanks to a plug-in module.” Or how they correctly surmised that banks would starting charging people to talk to tellers, forcing customers to do their banking online… where they video chat with a teller remotely. The whole issue is a fascinating read, even though it contains a lot of Los Angeles-specific, predictions that won’t mean as much to people who aren’t from the Southland. But here are what we found to be some of their better and not-so-better prophecies.

What Did 1988 Los Angeles Think 2013 Los Angeles Would Look Like? - Dashiell Bennett - The Atlantic Wire

I wonder, however, if this isn’t just a case of misdirected body horror. We don’t like cyborg modification, generally. We might wax emphatically about the benefits of cochlear and retinal implants, pacemakers and insulin pumps, and praise the recent breakthroughs in prosthetic limbs. But we are still uncomfortable by them. Apotemnophilia is considered a disease. “Cyber addiction” is considered a disease. Lepht Anonym is denied health insurance, and castigated by medical professionals. We might allow the possibility of a modification as a fix for a debilitating condition, but that is because we consider it to be a debilitating condition itself. One is still “disabled”, if one must be constantly plugged into a machine. But this is not simply me stumping for the rights of grinders and bio-hackers. My concern is that while there are real issues involved with placing cameras everywhere, our discomfort with Google Glass is drawn by body horror, not fear of surveillance institutions. It is difficult to turn down necessary skepticism, but if it is not driven by the right motivations, it is more akin to fear. In the same way that the outrage against drones is, in some ways, driven by a fear of “evil flying robots” more than a political reaction to technological imperialism, it is more important than ever to think about how cameras and data actually work, whether they are strapped to an aircraft or our faces, our architecture or our appliances. (via looking through glass, into mirrors | THE STATE) I’m very optimistic on the future of wearable computing, even if I’m not as excited about this first iteration of Glass, but I also think it’s important that we stop and ask ourselves about the implications of tech on society. Even if we still (and likely will) move forward; we should do so with our eyes wide open - so to speak. 

I wonder, however, if this isn’t just a case of misdirected body horror. We don’t like cyborg modification, generally. We might wax emphatically about the benefits of cochlear and retinal implants, pacemakers and insulin pumps, and praise the recent breakthroughs in prosthetic limbs. But we are still uncomfortable by them. Apotemnophilia is considered a disease. “Cyber addiction” is considered a disease. Lepht Anonym is denied health insurance, and castigated by medical professionals. We might allow the possibility of a modification as a fix for a debilitating condition, but that is because we consider it to be a debilitating condition itself. One is still “disabled”, if one must be constantly plugged into a machine.

But this is not simply me stumping for the rights of grinders and bio-hackers. My concern is that while there are real issues involved with placing cameras everywhere, our discomfort with Google Glass is drawn by body horror, not fear of surveillance institutions. It is difficult to turn down necessary skepticism, but if it is not driven by the right motivations, it is more akin to fear. In the same way that the outrage against drones is, in some ways, driven by a fear of “evil flying robots” more than a political reaction to technological imperialism, it is more important than ever to think about how cameras and data actually work, whether they are strapped to an aircraft or our faces, our architecture or our appliances.

(via looking through glass, into mirrors | THE STATE)

I’m very optimistic on the future of wearable computing, even if I’m not as excited about this first iteration of Glass, but I also think it’s important that we stop and ask ourselves about the implications of tech on society. Even if we still (and likely will) move forward; we should do so with our eyes wide open - so to speak. 

How I Stopped Eating Food : Mostly Harmless

A very interesting experiment. I’ll be interested in watching how this goes long term, because this is something I could see myself doing. 

A Jesuit priest in the late 17th century is credited with early experiments in an “aerial ship,” but it was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who, on this day in 1899, received a U.S. patent for the “Navigable Balloon.” March 14: Ferdinand von Zeppelin Patents the Airship

A Jesuit priest in the late 17th century is credited with early experiments in an “aerial ship,” but it was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who, on this day in 1899, received a U.S. patent for the “Navigable Balloon.”

March 14: Ferdinand von Zeppelin Patents the Airship