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How does Web 2.0 respond to death? What happens to our social media after we die? This post from the Mashable blog does a fine job describing the many services now available to see us beyond the pale.
(thanks to Todd Bryant and Steve Burnett)
QR-Kill is a mobile game, played using phones and signs with QR codes on them. The object is to pick other players out of a big crowd (downtown Madrid), capture their QR codes, then text them, which knocks them out of the game.
This would make a fun platform for augmented reality storytelling. People can be actors, with information on their QR cards. Cards with story bits can be placed on buildings, park benches, etc.
(via Roger Kaywa)
Message Labs has published has splendid visualizations of malware. What fine images of the fearsome net, created by Alex Dragulescu:
(via Information Aesthetics)
This blog post and this Flickr set document and reflect on a wasted Detroit building. The images are published with a note prohibiting unauthorized use, so I won't copy one here, but instead urge you to look and read. Excellent meditation on a longstanding American tragedy.
Previous Detroit Gothic here at Infocult: eBaying a mummy, Detroit imitates Fargo, Detroit as urban wonder, modeling the grim city.
Dracula Twins is a cute game, where you play a young vampire adventuring through a cemetary stocked with monsters. Reminds me a bit of The Hobbit (Inevitable, 2003).
This University of Washington story about contact lenses carrying lights and circuitry is making the rounds. One key point to make here: this sort of thing is already present in a great deal of science fiction, as a device for experiencing augmented reality. Separate appliances (glasses) haven't caught on, either in the world or in sf.
A second point: will we think of such eye-capping devices as more than Web browsers? Imagine some period of development, at the end of which the contact lens is as powerful as a smartphone. It can hold text, images, music, short videos. And it's networked wirelessly, of course, so people can connect with each other through their lenses. P2P trading in an eyeblink, as it were.
Declaration of war, manifesto of semiotic campaigning, net.art, or provocation to what? The "Message to Scientology" YouTube clip reminds one of all of those, but glimpsed at 3 am on a rogue tv station. A robotic voice chants out its warnings to the Scientologists, sketching out some plans before a cloud-scudded background:
Is there a rabbit hole opening up here? Should we check for codes in the clouds or windows?
I filed this under "gaming and narrative" because that's precisely what the clip invites, playing games of identification, the multiplicity of which lead to stories.
Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind--for the laughs--we shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form.
(via Warren Ellis)
A Liberian preacher admitted to ritual cannibalism in his former career as a general in that country's long civil war, according to the BBC. The Beeb explains:
Milton Blahyi... admitted to taking part in human sacrifices as part of traditional ceremonies intended to ensure victory in battle...
He said the sacrifices "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat."
Hence the frantic headline: "I ate children's hearts, ex-rebel says"!
Moreover, the general has an unrelated epithet:
Mr Blahyi, 37, is better known in Liberia as "General Butt Naked" because he went into combat with no clothes on, to scare the enemy.
And, in a quiet coda:
He is now an Evangelist preacher, who prefers to use the name Joshua.
Appropriate name, that.
(via Warren Ellis)
The American program Frontline is about to publish a story about kids online. I haven't seen it yet, but the site's design and trailer for the film look like it's dipping into fearsome cyberspace territory. The latter is narrated by a grim, sober voice, and describes notoriety, semiliteracy, dubious identities, and some vague threats. The former is dark and cheerless, unusually so for a cultural artifact describing kids.
In this video a man plays a video game, passes out, then wakes up within the game itself. Fun exploration of the boundaries of games. It's from British mentalist Derren Brown.
(via Alan Levine via Twitter)
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Nick Montfort: Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
Daniel J. Solove: The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
David Weinberger: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
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