The Betacantrips Travelogue

Saw this image while reading about Punk Rock Mathematics:

Apparently this was part of a project called Superstruct, which is apparently now quite defunct, but at the time was some kind of experimental game, aiming to (as far as I can tell) brainstorm solutions to the world’s problems in some form of social networking/alternate reality schema.

Q: How do I play Superstruct?

A: Superstruct is played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces. We show you the world as it might look in 2019. You show us what it’s like to live there. Bring what you know and who you know, and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.

It’s really interesting to look at some of the entrails of this particular beast. They put up a wikia, with a page called Superstruct Powers, which begins:

Note: By necessity this page will start out with crackpot theories, wrong ideas, and untested hypotheses. The goal is to identify the difference between theories that should be tested, and case studies of actual superstructing that can be evaluated. It’s fine to theorize, but try to protovate your theories as much as possible. Remember your scientific method: 1) Observe, 2) Make a hypothesis, 3) Make a prediction, 4) Test, and back to 1) Observe.

I personally love this kind of future-dialect that assumes you know more than you can know. Also interesting are the Plot Updates, which reflect the above image:

Under pressure from its largest client, Google, the leaders of the energy haven of SeaStar, which offers a combination of abundant clean energy (from wave, wind, and solar power), year-round aquaculture, and high-bandwidth connections to the global Internet, voted today to end efforts to declare SeaStar an autonomous national entity, accepting instead a status of protectorate of the United Kingdom.

The wiki has another page called Screaming 3D Bootstrappers, apparently an in-game clan.

All of this makes for utterly wonderful flavor text — but it isn’t clear what the game mechanics, if any, are. Sure, we can brainstorm solutions. But to see which solutions are the easiest to implement, or the most effective, or the most cost-effective? There’s a video, but right now my bandwidth is not sufficient to watch it. Anyone want to clue me in?

Also, be aware that there’s a "sequel", called Evoke, which is a little easier to grok.

The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems….Players who successfully complete ten game challenges in ten weeks will be able to claim their honors: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.

The missions (here’s one) tend to encourage exploration of problems and a focus on "innovation".

Your objective: Describe the biggest challenge to food security in your own local community or country — and an innovative solution that is already underway.

Document your local insight with a blog post, video, or photo.

Your objective: Take action to increase someone’s food security near you.

Document your effort with a blog post, video, or photo.

But it’s hard for me to feel like this would be 1. fun (since it feels like a junior-high-school homework assignment) or 2. impactful (since solutions and ingenuity do not seem to be in short supply in the world). Nevertheless, it’s better than underage drinking.

Seen via JWZ: this story, called "Raj, Bohemian".

"Is someone paying you to say that stuff?"

She giggled. "Sorry, babe, it just pops out sometimes. I didn’t mean to pitch you. I’m supposed only to do it to my girlfriends."

"What?"

"Ignore me. You know how hard it is to keep track of one’s placements."

"Placements?"

"Placements. Why are you making that face? You’re looking at me like I’m some kind of freak."

"You have a lot of — placements?"

"Oh, don’t get on your high horse. You don’t work, either. What do you do for cash? If a girl doesn’t want a straight job, she has to monetize her social network."

This sounds a little reminiscent of a piece that aired once on Wemmick’s Temporary Sanity (beware: aggressive ads that got spidered by archive.org; you’re gonna need to stop your browser from completely loading the page).

After kissing the wife and kids, I headed off to work. Ninety percent of the population now shares my job, but I can proudly say I was one of the first viewers. Viewers are people who are paid to watch enormous video walls that run commercials all day long. We are allowed to eat, work out, and even play games while we watch, but we must pass a comprehension test before we are allowed to leave at the end of the day.

Is this a real problem as we move into the post-scarcity economy? I’m not sure.

Via Suzanne, an article on Boing Boing about journalism as we know it.

A study in Australia found that more than half of stories in mainstream newspapers were fed to them by PR entities: "Many journalists and editors were defensive … Most refused to respond, others who initially granted an interview then asked for their comments to be withdrawn out of fear they’d be reprimanded, or worse, fired."

Regardless of whether this was an effect of the Internet, or whether newspapers have been dead for a long time, this sure does have an impact on the idea that the blogosphere cannot replace quality investigative journalism. What’s there to replace?

And closing out this Intellectual Impropriety hat trick, an article on Pitchfork called "What’s the Matter With Sweden?", seen here via JWZ. The article starts with covering the Swedish Arts Council, which grants public funds to musical artists, and goes from there into a survey of other countries with public funding for music and how they interact with the concept of a "social democracy".

The article doesn’t have a strong message and is about a half-hour to read, but does make some interesting points:

• Lots of countries have programs like this to subsidize their own "homegrown" culture "in the face of American cultural dominance".
• A major stumbling block for professional musicians is health care.
• "Dave Hickey, in his 1997 book Air Guitar, argues that art truly worthy of public patronage would most likely be unworthy as art." One commenter on JWZ’s post, however, mentions that lots of funding distributed by arts councils tends to go, rather predictably, to "uncomfortable and edgy impotent commentary on society".

Via Chiz, an article on Boy Genius Report about a Warner Bros. UK job posting.

During the 12 month internship, duties will include: monitoring local Internet forums and IRC for pirated WB and NBCU content and in order to gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities; finding new and maintaining existing accounts on private sites; scanning for links to hosted pirated WB and NBCU content and using tools to issue takedown requests; maintaining and developing bots for Internet link scanning system (training provided); preparing sending of infringement notices and logging feedback; performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results; inputting pirate hard goods data and other intelligence into the forensics database; selecting local keywords and submitting local filenames for monitoring and countermeasure campaigns and periodically producing research documents on piracy related technological developments. Various training will be provided.

Relatedly, this story about lawsuits against 20,000 BitTorrenting downloaders on Slashdot. The referenced article says that this action was taken "on behalf of an ad hoc coalition of independent film producers and with the encouragement of the Independent Film & Television Alliance", but then they cite Uwe Boll as one of the plaintiffs, so who knows?

"We’re creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel," says Weaver…

The difference between the MPAA’s past approach and the new one being offered by the US Copyright Group could come down to numbers. Weaver says the MPAA took a less targeted approach going after a smaller sampling of infringers in a single suit for multiple films, to send a message that would hopefully resonate to a much larger crowd.

Via Suzanne and Slashdot, this story on a judge nullifying gene patents. Interesting to see the evolution of patents as part of the "intellectual property" meme.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet agreed with the civil rights group that the patents were invalid because they covered the most basic element of every person’s individuality. “Products of nature do not constitute patentable subject matter absent a change that results in the creation of a fundamentally new product,” Sweet wrote in a 152-page opinion.

I realized recently that my impression of the sanctity of marriage has been damaged most by anti-gay activists attempting to limit marriage to heterosexual couples. The message seems to be, "Marriage isn’t for EVERYBODY who is in love, since some people who are obviously in love can’t be married. Ergo, what else can it be besides a legal mechanism, a tax break/health insurance arrangement we give to some couples but not others?" Of course, as the child of an open marriage maybe I’m predisposed to think something like that.

So then what to make of this story about a man marrying his body pillow in Korea, via Suzanne? One commentator writes, "As long as the guy and the pillow are happy together who cares? I suspect that this is just another ‘look at stupid johnny foreigner’ photo opportunity. If the pillow had a Ph. D. they never would have published it."

Or how about the related stories I found when I was digging up that one: man marries a Barbie doll to appease the spirit of his dead wife, man in Japan weds video game character?

This story on Wired is pretty cool: with regard to the evolution of political parties, it’s interesting to see the Pirate Party rise to the party of personal liberty and trust.

The underwear bomber’s Christmas Day attack has prompted calls for the increased use of full-body scanners at airports that would strip-search passengers down to their naked bodies.

So to protest the use of the so-called Nacktscanner (naked scanner), members of the Pirate Party in Germany organized a "fleshmob" of people who stripped down to their skivvies last Sunday and converged on the Berlin-Tegel airport. They posted a video of their protest to YouTube, with soundtrack provided by Muse’s song "Uprising." The lyrics articulated their protest: "They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious!"…

The protesters marked their bodies with a number of messages such as, "Something to hide?" and "Be a good citizen — drop your pants."

An interesting post a few weeks ago on Slashdot due to more Facebook changes. What’s the deal with privacy, anyhow?

"Privacy is no longer a social norm, according to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Speaking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco, the entrepreneur said that expectations had changed, and people now default to sharing online, not privacy. It’s all right for him, but does he mean it’s ok for bodies like the UK government to monitor all citizens’ Internet use?"

Of course, subsequently, Google Buzz has botched the privacy thing entirely, and suffered a huge public backlash. So it’s pretty clear that in fact, people do expect privacy in some of their interactions.

Some coverage of the recent announcement: Nokia, Intel merge Maemo, Moblin into Meego on Slashdot, Moblin and Maemo to merge on LWN, Maemo + Moblin = MeeGo = Failure on Planet Debian. Some quotes:

A stupid name is a prerequisite for being a successful FOSS product. Nokia and Intel have clearly done their homework.

Also indicating huge potential, MeeGo has already ignited a flamewar between RPM and DEB supporters. Welcome to the community!

—EvilTNUser (here)

And:

Today, Nokia and Intel announced the merge of Maemo and Moblin into the MeeGo project. This is sad, because it will end the era of the Debian-based mobile operating system Maemo and replace it with a system using RPM and probably some other evil stuff as well. In fact, dpkg & apt-get where two of my main reasons to buy the N900.

And another question is why yet another name. Moblin was already a well-known name and they shouldn’t have changed the name just because they switch the servers and add some Nokia developers.

Furthermore, does this all mean that there will be no Maemo 6? What will happen to the Maemo users on the N900, will it be possible for them to use MeeGo?

I recently bought an N900 (very recently — like, using it four three or four days now. Review forthcoming) and I have to admit to a few moments of shock and terror. But having thought things over, I’m giving in to "cautious optimism". Here’s my take on it:

1. Like Julian Klode, my getting an N900 was prompted by my extremely positive experience on the Nokia N810. And it’s true that part of that experience was the discovery you can apt-get pretty much anything in the Debian repository. But the mechanism whereby this occurs is a little subtle: although apt-get is the application-installation mechanism for Maemo apps, the Maemo repositories aren’t really compatible with Debian. You can’t just open a terminal and sudo apt-get install emacs. Cross-compiling Debian packages is possible but (in my experience) a really bad idea; I broke APT on my N810 this way.

   The preferred mechanism for getting access to the Debian repository is a package, installable by default, called easy-deb-chroot. As you might guess, what this does is to set up a Debian chroot, wherein you have free range of whatever you want to do. In other words — the mechanism by which applications are installed by default on the device is completely independent of having access to the Debian universe. This is important: it means they can switch to RPM for installing packages, and still give us our easy-deb-chroot, which is what we really want anyhow.

2. I’m surprised that they chose a new name — I think both Maemo and Moblin have great brand recognition in the community.

Nokia is the only hardware company in the mobile space that I think really "gets it" (some examples occur to me). Intel has been making strides towards getting it. And best of all, there are no telecoms involved in MeeGo yet. For these reasons, I’m going to take a wait-and-see approach. After all: there’s lots of work ahead of us if we’re going to build a better mobile stack than Google and Apple.