Small Streams

Swamp Thing

Have been thinking. Haven't been writing. Today's NY Times has a story about television screens big and small, which causes me to think about Jerry Mander. Mander's fourth argument for the elimination of television is information loss. Television, according to Mander, makes the world coarse, fuzzy, and turned off. Television's a telescope pointed to one part of the world. Television's a filter that divides things up into impoverished pixels, creates irritating flickers, low-fidelity sound, and high-pitched whines.

We're getting better screens, higher audio-fidelity, and more information fit into the box. But television's still a box, a lossy box:

Images and words about a marsh do not convey what a marsh is. You must actually sense and feel what a strange, rich, unique, and unhuman environment it is. The ground is very odd, soft, sticky, wet, and smelly. It is not attractive to most humans. The odor emanates from an interaction between sometimes stagnant pools and the plants that live in the mud in varying stages of growth and decay. If the wind is hot and strong, there can be a nearly maddening mixture of sweet and rotting odors.

Then again, there's something to be said for the withholding of information. Yesterday, Radio Nine's Jay Thurber played a recording of "Chilly" Bill Cardille reciting a scary story. As hokey as it was, it made me think that Halloween and radio were made for each other. The mind is always busy filling in the blanks.

So maybe television can't recreate a swamp, but television is not the same box-at-the-other-end-of-the-living room that Jerry Mander wrote about. Television is not just one size, and frequently there are more than one in a room. Sports bars are a laboratory of the social use of multiple screens. I myself have watched television while browsing sites and playing videos on my computer screen.

What I'm really looking forward to is tele-theater. Some multiple location scripted thing with some people participating and some not. Maybe a game of long distance "Simon Says" or an interactive multi-location tai chi class. How about a scary story round robin, where you have VJs adding special effects as different people narrate and act out a classic horror story. "Something rises. You can't quite see it, but you stand transfixed by the pond. Your feet are stuck and you need to take your shoes off. You see two glowing points in the distance. They must be eyes . . . "

Make up your own. Things might just get messy.

Flocking

Just checking to see if I can send something to my blog through flock.

Three Degrees of Separation

In light of working on the Magic Hour photo blitz, I was interested in the point/counterpoint interviews in Time magazine excerpted by Boing Boing. Networks may make us more social or less social. Mark Dery points out the new media phenomenon of the iPod is making us less social. Of course, someone walking along with an iPod is much more social to me than someone cruising along in a two-ton metal box, something I'm sure that Mark Dery does.

This Byron Spice item in the P-Gexplores some of the mathematics behind connectedness, and I can see how more people will be studying the effect on collective intelligence efforts on the internet — Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, etc.

OK, so you want to send a message to somebody in Pittsburgh.

Now, let's say that all 2.4 million people in the metropolitan area are listed in the phone book. And let's say every person selects three names at random from the book and calls each of those people, exchanging numbers.

The result, according to mathematician Alan Frieze, would be a complete phone-pal ring -- every person in the metro area could be contacted through this ring. It would be possible to send a message through this ring and, by one person calling the next person on their contact list and then that person calling the next person and so on, have the message reach everybody once before circling back to you.

Sunset on Mt. Washington

Larry Rippel took this for the Pittsburgh Magic Hour Photo Blitz. About ten of us plus kids showed up at the Beehive. A few others couldn't come but took pictures anyway. Keep checking at the Pittsburgh Magic Hour Pool.

The Magic Hour

This wonderful photo from Renee Rosensteel shows how breath-taking Pittsburgh can be. Prospects like this have a tonic effect on the endocrine system at the hours of dawn and dusk. I think that we need more such pictures. This picture was taken after sunrise. I figure it's easier to get out around sunset, so some other people and I are trying to organize people to take Pittsburgh shots around sunset and twilight.

I'm hoping the Flickr folk will rally and we can collect many of pictures of sunset and twilight on Monday, October 17.

The plan is to have a photo blitz during the magic hour. In this case the magic hour takes place from 6:30 to 7:30. Sunset is 6:37. The moonrise takes place a few minutes later. The weather is supposed to be sunny and mild. We're all going to get together at the Beehive afterwards.

Please e-mail me if you want information: mstroup@gmail.com

The Future Will Have a Plastic Lining

The Future will have a plastic lining. The plastic lining will make the Future easy to clean.

My mind has been relatively fallow lately. But here's a boost: a bunch of Flickr people will be convening to take photos on Monday evening -- weather permitting. You can find out more here. If the weather is good we hope to get lots of sunset, twilight, and moonrise shots.

All I Want is Everything

Blogs are good and everything, but the idea of posting something to the internet on a regular basis and having that something hyperlinked and tagged and having it connected to videos, audios, photographs, and maps gets a blogger into a different territory. "And what territory is that?" you may ask.

I think it has something to do with Ning, an online service that helps to build social software applications. Any idea, any image, any action can be linked to similar ideas, images, and actions.