Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

One lampshade with human skin, cheap

This Gothic-in-real-life story starts off with a human-skin lampshade, then probes around the horror.  Psychics, Katrina, urban legends - quite a broil.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

The New Digital Storytelling

Here's the Table of Contents for my forthcoming book: 

Part 1: Storytelling: a Tale of Two Generations

1.    Storytelling for the 21st Century. A survey of different meanings and uses of storytelling, noting the different roles of different technologies.

2.    The First Wave of Digital Storytelling. (Or “the old digital storytelling”) The 20th-century background: interactive fiction, MUDs and MOOs, and hypertext. Followed by the Center for Digital Storytelling (Joe Lambert’s movement), the computer gaming resurgence. 

3.    The Next Wave of Digital Storytelling. A quick summary of major technological shifts, 2001-present. Principles of storytelling which have since emerged.

Part 2: New Platforms for Tales and Telling

4.    Web 2.0 Storytelling. Using wikis, blogs, Twitter, and social image sites to create settings, characters, worlds, and stories.

5.    Social Media Storytelling. Podcasts and Web video. The uniqueness of audio; taking video past television and movies. User participation and user-generated content, inter-media conversation.

6.    Gaming: Storytelling on a Small Scale. How gamers use Web 2.0 to build a second, distributed, accessible layer to play. Microstories from casual games, the world’s leading game form.

7.    Gaming: Storytelling on a Large Scale. How massively multiplayer online games tell stories. 

Part 3: Combinatorial Storytelling, or the Dawn of New Narrative Forms

8.    No Story is a Single Thing, or The Networked Book. How creators and consumers spread stories across platforms. Transmedia storytelling, fanfiction, remixes. 

9.    Mobile Devices. The birth of new designs for small screens.

10.    Alternate Reality Games, or Chaotic Fictions. Survey of nearly a decade of ARGs as innovative multimedia mysteries. New techniques for engaging audiences and collaboration.

11.    Augmented Reality: Telling Stories on the Worldboard. Survey of augmented reality, from initial 1990s steps through the present. Light AR: geolocating stories. Heavy AR: mapping digital content onto the real world through mobile devices.

Part 4: Building Your Story 

12.    Storyflow. Practical lessons on brainstorming, planning, and development. Building in feedback and the social effect.

13.    Communities, Resources, and Challenges. Where to find new digital stories and storytellers. Problems: copyright, the dissolving author, and the never-ceasing future.

14.    Digital storytelling in education.  Curriculum and pedagogy, students and support.

15.    Coda: Towards the Next Wave of Digital Storytelling. Lessons from the old digital storytelling. Using futures methods to think about the next narrative forms. Stories about the new digital storytelling. 

  

This may be a fine illustration of our homesteading philosophy:

(thanks to Owain!) 

Gothic crime: Collarbomb is now a trend

Wild Gothic crime: a Florida bank teller was kidnapped, then ordered to withdraw a pile of cash from his bank, while the kidnappers threatened to detonate the bomb they'd strapped to his back.

Yes, it's a lot like the classic Erie collar bomb case.  There, too, robbers came up with a pulp crime plot, getting a victim to do their dirty work.  That victim turned out to be a co-plotter, and that angle is probably one the Coral Gables police are working. 

(thanks to Ladi!)

Human head found in burger

Today in cannibalism, the Onion presents a stray human head:

Human Head Found In Hamburger

(via Yago Colas via Facebook)

A virus for someone else to fear

The Stuxnet worm is working its way through computers in the Middle East, and it's not a fearsome thing.  At least, not for those who dislike Iran's government.

Apparently the thing is aimed at a very specific target, a program used to oversee a very specific kind of hardware.  It's possible that the Iranian nuclear factory at Busheir relies on this Siemens program, and therefore Stuxnet is aimed at destroying it.  Israel and the United States are the most likely culprits, if this is the case.

And therefore Americans, Israelis, and others who feel threatened by Iranian atomics do not feel the classic wormy, viral fear these weapons usually elicit.  Instead, this is a worm we might feel proud of, thankful for, or confident in.

Iranians might feel the fear.  That's the classic worm fear, but mutated into anxiety about a specific international cyberwar attack, rather than terror about a generally destructive thing.

Fear the implants: cyborgs' revenge

Here's an unusual aspect to technofear, dreading body implants.  "Metalosis Maligna" (Floris Kaayk, 2006) is a short sf film about an imaginary plague, one which causes artificial implants to grow.  

It's a fake documentary, and rapidly becomes disturbing to watch:

The sound-making part might be my favorite.

(via Julian Bleeker)

The true face of tv news

It's like looking into the sub-basement under tv news.  Two images superimposed, speed slowed down, eerie music track laid on top, for tonight's nightmares:

(via Coilhouse)

Murder in the air

Aerial Gothic: one parachutist kills another during a plummet, with evidence captured on the victim's helmetcam.

First, the crime.

The three were holding hands in formation seconds before Ms Van Doren found her parachute cords had been cut...  .Els Van Doren, then 38, died on 18 November 2006, crashing into a garden in the village of Opglabbeek after both of her parachutes failed to open.

Allegedly it was a crime of passion, with the accused (also named Els) sabotaging her rival's chute.  Both were in love with the same man and fellow skydiver, apparently.

Next, the fearsome media bit:

Her horrific death was captured by her own helmet video camera.

I wonder how much longer than kind of live/posthumous media capture will be shocking, before it becomes normal.

(via GirlFuturist over Twitter; photo from RTL video)

Dark patterns on the Web

Dark patterns are Web site strategies which persuade users into actions they might not normally take.  This includes designs that make starting a subscription service very easy, but leaving it quite difficult; surreptitious additions to a purchase order; sneaky small print arrangements.

It's a fine site, doing the good work of airing out such strategies.

It's also a good example of using fearsome media language in a productive way.  The sites using dark patterns tend to be bright, shiny things, hard to be suspicious of.  Dark patterns summons up our skepticism and points it their way. 

I also like the language used by the Dark Patterns site: Roach Motel, Privacy Zuckering, Sneak into basket.  Not to mention the use of pattern language.

(via Bruce Sterling)