| Bruce Sterling on Tue, 9 Mar 1999 02:43:35 +0100 (CET) |
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| <nettime> Viridian Note 00051: Viridian Commentary |
[orig to Viridian List <[email protected]>]
Key concepts: pedal-powered buses, hurricane names, wind-
up browsers, table-of-contents Viridian Notes 00025-00050,
party invitation to Bruce Sterling's house
Attention Conservation Notice: It rambles a lot, but you
get invited to a nice party with free beer.
Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest:
http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/teakettl.html
http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm
http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/
This contest ends March 20, 01999.
From: [email protected]^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^*
Subject: Pedal-powered bus
Subj: All ABOARD THE PEDALBUS -WORLDWIDE COLLABORATION
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 10:26:49 AM
Bagelhole1 (http://bagelhole.hypermart.net/), under
construction, calls for collaborators, globally, to share
ideas as to the best ways (design, mediums, etc) we can
think of to build a bus for about 50 people, that is a
hybrid, run both by pedal power and electrical (generated
by the pedal power and the turbine on top), equipped with
sail. There would be a driver who steers, changes gears,
and brakes. Music, perhaps, to inspire the
pedal/passengers, maybe made from bamboo partially. All
passengers ride/pedal for free, of course. Electric kicks
in, when there are not enough pedal/riders.
Every city could have such a bus to bring attention to
people to aid in soliciting low-tech, homemade style ideas
for self-sustainability, thinking in terms of small
neighborhoods, in mutual co-operation with each other, as
a way to really kick off community contingency
preparation, globally. This needs to be done very
quickly. So please heed, if you hear the call.
[email protected]
(((bruces remarks: I rather like this nutty, innocent
scheme, as long as we can make sure that these giant urban
rickshaws are restricted to highly-developed countries,
and powered exclusively by rich, well-educated, overweight
people.)))
From: [email protected]^^ (Jamais Cascio)
Subject: Weather Violence Terminology
>From the Rachel (rachel.org) newsletter #634:
"We favor the idea, floated early last year, to stop
naming hurricanes after individual humans and start naming
them after oil companies. In place of Hurricane Alice or
Hurricane Hugo, we would have Hurricane Mobil and
Hurricane Exxon. A headline like 'Exxon Kills 10,000,
Leaves 50,000 Homeless' would have a certain salutary ring
of truth to it."
(((bruces remarks: Yes, of course, but.... "Shell" would
get off lightly due to the alphabetical listings, while
the new "Amoco/British Petroleum" hybrid would catch more
than its fair share of abuse.)))
>From [email protected]^^^^^^^^^** (Dr. Alan Wexelblat)
Subject: Wind-Up Browsers for Ten Dollars
These people don't know it, but they are Viridian...
To: [email protected]
From: Joe Jacobson <[email protected]>
Subject: Windup Browsers Seminar
Seminar - MAS 968 (H level)
Fridays 10-12, E15-468H
Design of Information Appliances for the Third World:
Windup Browsers
The WIND-UP Browser seminar will be geared towards
designing and building an information appliance for
developing nations. The sole constraints are that 1] It
must change the world 2] It must have a manufacturing cost
of $10.
Week 1: Introduction to the Problem
Assignment: Map of literacy and access to information
around the globe
Week 2: Introduction to low cost information technologies
Full survey of everything in existence from displays to
radio receivers to hand-crank generators that could be
cobbled together to make a $10 device.
Week 3: In class design session of self contained reader
Week 4: presentation of self contained reader.
Week 5: Economic models - how can third world peoples
supplement their income: Contract programming, inventing
etc. over the web.
Week 6: In class design and presentation of an economic
model for supplemental income. Brainstorm on how to build
1 Billion wind-up browsers.
Week 7: In class design of linked information device
Week 8: Presentation of linked information device
Week 9: Final project.
(((bruces remarks: Here's another stirring step-forward
for the philosophy that wants every Saharan Tuareg to
carry his own solar-powered satdish and boombox. A ten-
dollar browser will change the world, all right == it'll
change the world to a place that will gladly pay ten
*million* dollars for any device that will *eliminate* web
browsers, in say, a five-mile radius.)))
From: [email protected]^* (Paul D. Ouderkirk)
Subject: Re: Correction to Viridian Note 00045
Bruce Sterling wrote: " The US Armed Forces can no longer
fully command their own dedicated industrial base ==
they're forced to use common off-the-shelf stuff now, the
poor wretches even have to run battleships on Windows
95...."
If you're referring to that Navy ship that "crashed"
during testing several months ago, it was running a mix of
Unix and NT systems. NT at least pretends (and pretends
is the operative word here) to be a mission-critical OS,
where Windows 95 certainly has no place anywhere that
lives are on the line. Later, Paul.
(((bruces remarks: I should cure myself of this
freewheeling poetic license when I know that there are
programmers reading this list. Okay, I formally retract
that sad blunder: "the poor wretches even have to run
their various weapons platforms on a mission-critical OS
mix of UNIX and Windows NT"....)))
***********************
Table of Contents 25-50
***********************
Viridian Notes
00026: Viridian Aphorisms
00027: Viridian Graphics
00028: Viridian Gardening
00029: The Interfund
00030: The View From Ecotopia
00031: Self-destructive Jungles
00032: The Viridian Refueling Project
00033: Viridian Aesthetics: Andy Goldsworthy
00034: Researching Andy Goldsworthy
00035: Viridian Aesthetics: Landscape Transformation
00036: Offshore Wind Power
00037: Viridian Commentary
00038: Viridian Aphorisms
00039: Starck's New Catalog
00040: German Politics
00041: The Viridian Product Catalog
00042: the Viridian Alcohol Cellphone
00043: the Viridian Electrical Meter
00044: The Viridian Service Station
00045: Twentieth-century Thinking
00046: German Bankers Love German Greens
00047: Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibition
00048: Viridian Aphorisms
00049: Submerging Carbon
00050: Wired Urban Forests
*****************
PARTY INVITATION.
*****************
In totally informal conjunction with the annual South By
SouthWest Multimedia Festival, my wife Nancy and I are
throwing another Open House Party on the evening of March
16th, Tuesday, starting, say, 7:30 pm or so. If you're
on the Viridian List, please consider this your formal
invitation to attend. Bring anybody you trust. There
will be cold beer. And (even more astonishing and
provocative) there will be cigarettes.
If you've never been to my house before (once memorably
described by TIME magazine as "the leafy tranquillity of
Sterling's well-appointed Austin, Texas home"), send email
and I'll ship you the directions and a phone number.
Mind you, the SXSW Multimedia Party we threw last time was
not half shabby. These digital-arts people are
definitely a self-starting crowd. No Charades or Twister
was required to break the ice, and a good time was had
by all.
Bruce Sterling ([email protected])
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