Category: communication

Eine Art U Zentrum für Anspruchsvolle

communication history media

Was auch immer das Internet mit der Menschheit macht, es ist auch eine Plattform, auf der viele historische Kulturformen weiter existieren können.

Radio-Hörspiele zum Beispiel. Als der Massenkonsum schon längst zum Kino und dann zum Fernsehen umgezogen war, entwickelte das Radio seine vielleicht spannendsten Inhalte. Wie einige Podcaster gerade wieder neu entdecken, erlaubt eine Audioproduktion mit relativ einfachen Mitteln die Erzeugung von interessanten Szenarien.

1969 ist lange her. Hermann Ebelings Hörspiel Der Konzern hat auch 2024 inhaltlich noch Relevanz.

 

master and slave, director and perfomer

communication technology

It seems that the general public has discovered code and how people call things in there. Now we no longer can create master and slave processes, and have to call them director and performer instead.

Reflecting on how culture is using words is a worthwhile process.

This however is BS. A process is master, another is a slave. That analogy from ancient history makes perfect sense and the concept clear. If I find somewhere a reference to a performer I am not looking right away for a director. And what about ‘agent’, is that one related?

This change is well intended, but will backfire: If somebody uses classical nomenclature in code, does that now signal secret admiration for white supremacy?

Also: mainstream culture please stay out of our code. Your very absence is the reason why that darn stuff eventually works in the very end. Meetings have never solved anything …

Next stop: stop calling physical connectors male and female.

the valley is behind us

communication history technology

The first realistic rendering of a human in a computer I even laid eyes on got created by Chris Jones in Australia. If Intel would have any sense then they would give him everything he needs so that he can make a super bowl spot.

It is much easier for a director to dial in some emotions on an “Eckman board” rather than trying to coax them out of a drugged up little twat being full of itself. CAA better get their sh*t and required legislation together.

It will take a little while, but this WILL be a big deal: Completely artificial movies that just look like reality.

“Fight Club” in 2013

communication daily life economy history internet marketing media politics

Watching “Fight Club” again today is a strange and very interesting experience.

So much has changed since the book / film came out. It is clearly set in a different epoch.

Its character ‘Tyler Durden’ says:

God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables;
slaves with white collars.  Advertising has us chasing cars
and clothes, working jobs  we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

…

We've all been raised on television to believe
that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods,
and rock stars.

But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact.
And we're very, very pissed off.

It seemed fitting at the time. What happened since then?

Many of those jobs are gone. People in that slice of society
make less money today. Sometimes even in absolute dollars.
Certainly corrected for inflation. In the same time the share
of the upper sliver of society on the other end of the wealth
distribution has nothing but exploded.

So why seems the portrayed unrest even further removed
from reality than less than a score years ago?

The answer might lie in the proliferation of computer games and the Internet
during that time.

Both soak up all that extra male testosterone and time that would
otherwise find not much constructive application in the world of 2013.

Oh, and it looked absolutely awesome. I miss movies shot on film.

branding and 1 5 year old

communication

I could do without the background music, and the maker probably waited for the climax of a stuffy nose of his kid to record this, but it is still interesting to see just how much logo-sign-language kids pick up and

can identify.

From my own kids I remember that they knew the location of the nearest McDonnalds at a very very early age. They also made the fries / M connection.

medical imaging

communication history internet technology

So glad I found this great introduction and overview of medical imaging.

I liked the article since it gives a great overview of different techniques together with their genesis. Stuff like a PET scanner does not rain down on humanity. Lots of people needed to work hard to realize it. Ideas, Patents and -as it turns out- the Beatles were needed and involved.

I personally found it fascinating how much ample computation power has enabled. Nothing that mattered in the last 40 years would have been conceivable without massive numerical processing. Even 99.999% of computing power is wasted on Facebook and games it is just awesome that we people deviced instruments to compute so cheaply.

It is probably impossible to estimate the impact that technologies like DfMRI will have on our knowledge and picture of ourselves. The microscope changed the world and each of our lives in the most radical ways. Which might only have dawned on people in the 17th century.

Of course the link was found in Wikipedia. After having set up a monthly donation to them and knowing how good it feels now and will do in the future I wonder why I did not do so earlier. Specially learning new things most Wikipedia pages allow a quick overview about the topic. What I personally really love is how detailed yet concise even very specialized topics are being documented. Quiet brilliant.

what do you do after you invented gmail …

communication internet technology

… and a couple of other things? Whatever it is that Paul Buchheit is doing today, luckily blogging is among it. Specially since he seems to think about what he writes.

1 sided communication

communication history technology

Leo Laporte realized that he was communicating into /dev/null. It is not surprising that nobody noticed it.

In the pre Internet age dentists with a literary ambition not no corresponding talent could ‘publish’ the book themselves. They dropped a nice amount of cash on a couple of palette of dead trees. Now, in the digital age they just can blog, tweet, update their facebook page. The googlebot might care.

Social media always has been a Ponzi scheme. Much like you run out of fresh suckers in the money ‘making’ enterprises you run out of audience. The difference is that the internet is able to give you the illusion of an audience. It seem that things are working. Everybody in the world COULD find that tweet you just made that is so brilliant.

People and companies alike often fail to look clearly at the actual effort and time that they put into the creation of the content and put it into relation of the size of the actual audience. Luckily failed virals have the built in effect that nobody notices them. But they still exist, and so do millions of tweets that nobody cares about.

The signal to noise ratio of the overall Internet keeps collapsing. People complained about the “Summer of AOL” last century. It is a blessing that we had no idea what was coming our way …

corporate communications

communication marketing

The other day I rented a car since mine was in the shop. The rate was reasonable. Actually a Chevy whatever it’s called is pretty quiet for what it is. National was just accross the street from the shop that my car was in. They really wanted my phone number. I should have known why: They called twice wanted to know how the service was. Thanks for caring. Service had been good, until they started to ask about it. Same with GoDaddy. Their SSL certificates cost 40 while others want 150. It’s still a rip off since it is just a simple script and a tiny little bit of administration to weed out the evil people. Of course they called. And then called again. At 7am. Made me feel real good about filling out the form where you indicate when you like to get called.

And then on the other side of the spectrum there is AT&T. Or actually what appears to be a rather obscure business division of theirs. I picked AT&t as a vendor for my 800 number, thinking that they would be a bit more expensive but easy to deal with. The 800 number is just a little aspect of what I am doing, so why waste much time on it. So I thought. The division provides the service. But is otherwise basically unreachable. They don’t even have a phone number. Nor can I reach them via the internet: Their web forms stopped working. And there is no way that feedback would get to them. Amazing.

paid to blog

Apple communication internet marketing media

Matt Cutts , the google quality czsar, explains why they reduced the importance of weblogs participating in pay per post programs. I feel the same way and block them since May in BlogsNow.

Interestingly, and extremely simplified, I admit, it seems to be the business model of Google to sell the truth. Which makes it valuable. They steer most of the internet traffic. But if they would fail, people would notice. As long as Yahoo and MSN still exist and could in theory kinda half ass a hypothetical un-ethical google if it came to it, it’s good busyness for for Google to stick to the truth.

Which is not what usually is going on:

A question asked, and no answer:

Same pattern here:

So, my simple reaction is, if people like politicians and Apple-PR are not answering questions, then I will not listen to what they are trying to say. Why should I?