Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Warbloggers hit by DoS

DoS attacks on warbloggers: here's one sketch, and a theory about attackers. Purportedly, the attack was aimed at Internet Haganah, but also hit a variety of sites hosted by Hosting Matters.


Bloggers in question were on the blogosphere's right and left, although it's a righty that won the Blogdex prize (#5, a minute ago).

Stovepiping information towards war

A new New Yorker article makes a case for information ecologies and the US war on Iraq.  Rather than ascribing simple malice to a set of actors, Hersh describes their reconfiguration of information flows and the outcomes.

Matrix game: progress this week

The Matrix game, that ARG, continues.

I'll write up a longer, updated introduction to it, if there's a demand.

News from the world of the Aquapolis: according to the MetaCortechs news site, a flooding transpired, but was handled well by the security system. Water got into only two areas of the Beta module. A simulation out of hand, or an instrusion? Read on...

Our protagonists: Elizabeth McConnell is increasingly frightened, based on the darkening tenor of her reflective posts on her site, along with the song found therein ("What has gone wrong"). But she's excited about her new CEO, or says she is. Phil Gairden has been quiet, but does have a new file on his 'dex, an annotated copy of Leo Kane's c.v, suggesting Kane's a fraud, or at least a shameless self-promoter. Marcus Ormond has been quiet, but should be out of town starting tomorrow.

A character emerges: Katherine Cunningham. Her MetaDex site (katgirl, notrespassing) casts her as a spy on McConnell. For example:

# McConnell distracted by "plagues" +
# Mother no longer an issue
# Need to get rid of that dog
...
# Obsessed with Anomalies
# No real life outside of work, hobby
# Overly trusting +
# Questioning Ormond -

That last line suggests she's working for Ormond. Interestingly, for someone whose hobby is purportedly photography, her bio quote's from the supremely grim Ambrose Bierce, and is fairly harsh. (Thanks, Conspiracy)

Paintover has a new image, already being analyzed. The drill picture (autolycus, scale) led the discussion to find other goodies: a discussion of hackers and nukes, a reference to Caesar and (presumably the hacker) Scratch, and some server logs discussion loads and directions (same id/pw). On the hacker front, there's a directory mirroring the carelessly files, which seems to point to a hacking and security plot. There's also a steganographic doc, at last (thanks, Rabbit Hole).

From the Underscore-hosted sites: I finally caught USH's cute legalese: "USH, its employees, agents, officers, directors, agents, successors and assigns (collectively "USH Control Matrix")". I'm listening to Wongmo's music samples. Those, combined with the leading parts of his writings, describe neatly the world of Aquapolis. His letters page has some fun bits, like a reference to the first movie's deja vu trick. Wongmo's retreat should be over by now (scheduled to end on the 18th); note that Leiphe's appearance there was cancelled. Nothing new from Leiphe, after the discovery of those new pages last week (most recent content appeared, formally, on the 18th). Nothing new at Kane's (although he has "wongmo.org" in his metadata; either a shameless attempt to ride searches, or Kane's just a Wongmo stooge). Nothing new at the Vortex.

Today's creepy image from Wongmo:

Observations: the public domain nature of McConnell's image works several ways. It reflects the current and rising interest in the public domain, reminding me of that open source comic heroine project. It blends the game and nongame world.

Webradioplay: Dark House

BBC4 hosted an experiment in Web-based radio drama, Dark House.  The story appears in lexia, and with a console allowing some user selection of character and sequence:

In classic mystery radio tradition, the show plays with conventions of radio drama, including the call-in and live reporting.

Quicksilver, a new Neal Stephenson

I've started Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Quicksilver, and will post some notes on my progress here.

First of such notes - generally, the book's an historical novel, laced with an imagination we can recognize from all sorts of counterfactuals, from sf to alternate history. We could think of others hacking the 18th century, such as Peter Greenaway's Draughtsman's Contract, Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary. or John Fowles' A Maggot; some steampunk sf fits this theme. If Stephenson was trying for Pynchon in his previous novel, Cryptonomicon, he's aiming at the hidden master's Mason & Dixon in this one, riffing on the dix-huitieme to hack at our time.

The tone's a bemused mix of styles, occasionally taking a short at the long eighteenth century, sometimes reaching for puns from our age. I won't summarize the plot so far (see the below reviews, or here, later, when I'm done, if it's a good idea at the time).

High points, by around p 240: the sheer love for Restoration Britain, feeling like the copia affairs of Gormenghast or Perdido Street Station. The often patient exploration of science. A steady stream of quiet puns (Captain Hoek, ahem). A wandering, brooding structure, refusing to race ahead (so far). The pirate charades. Newtown's eyeball scene.
Disliked elements: the lack of female characters. The bizarre gaps in religious discourse, for an age conerned with religion.

Related Webbery: the wiki!
Reviews and articles: Glenn Reynolds has a short interview. Slate has a review (very grumpy about the net and cyberpunk, too), as does /..

EDITED to add the Lempriere note

Wirelessness: no such thing as spectrum

In a recent article in The Feature, Kevin Werbach offers the intriguing idea that spectrum is an outmoded concept. New technologies allow more communication in shared frequencies, instead of what used to be thought of as interference.

Other novel forms of wireless sharing include angle-of-arrival (for example, distinguishing a satellite transmission coming from overhead and a terrestrial wireless signal moving horizontally); mesh networking (relaying signals from other users); and cognitive radio (sensing the environment to find temporarily open "holes," and moving out of the way once another signal appears).

How to deal with accidental or deliberate interference, when it happens? Werbach: some version of tort, treating frequency less like property and more like a place where people intersect.

Knowledge ecology and library paradigms: new from Denham Gray

Denham has a new discussion on the knowledge ecology paradigm. Many fine thoughts, and more at a wiki for the topic, such as:

Individuals and organizations can intentionally craft developing and evolving webs of relationship in which to embed and preserve the evanescent knowledge that is always inherent (and has always been inherent) in our conscious cooperation together. The preservation of evanescent knowledge is recognized as learning. Organizations that successfully exhibit this behavior are "learning organizations."

This makes sense to me, from the focus on learning as dynamic construction to the emphasis on systems.

I would distinguish the KE from an information ecology in several ways:
-IE is larger (can be a culture), KE is smaller (enterprise, community, CoP)
-IEs are looser, and members can be more distant from each other

Spooked: October is "journalists find the Gothic" month

"Spooked" is above-average for this season's usual journalistic rediscovery of the horror genre. Miller avoids some cliches, and wins points for remembering both Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House, and Robert Wise's film. She also avoids making errors of fact, or dismissive interpretations.

I have comments for each paragraph, and problems with the approach, which is still too much "look at this strange phenom". For example, the opposition of gross-out and suspense, better known as horror/terror, goes back to the 1790s (Radcliffe vs Lewis). There are other, well-known functions of horror besides causing fear (the reader may begin with Joanna Russ' essay on the female gothic). And the genre is a genre, which means it references other and earlier works. And James' classic tale is the best known because horror's traditionally marginalized, and he was (and remains) canonical; indeed, Miller seems to sidestep horror's pop/marginal role, if not just reinforce it by exceptionalism. I'd also add more, perhaps better examples of fine contemporary work, like Thomas Ligotti's and Caitlin Kiernan's. Last hit: stories "told, ''Lovely Bones''-style, by the ghosts themselves" aren't new (cf above note about marginalization of horror).

(Thanks to Jack Kolb!)

Matrix game, continued

The Matrix game continues.
Discussion at the Unfiction forum is lively.

A new, cryptic image. (Thanks to Lisa Game!)

And a new site, The Nekodas - lovely pic, no way forward yet. And email from Beth McConnell, copied and discussed here.

The Conspiracy points to some public domain fun, as images of Beth McConnell appear on the Web on non-game-related sites: here and here.

Matrix game: increments

Incremental progress in the Matrix game (collaborative, distributive, etc.):

Just learned how to get into Marcus Ormond's MetaDex - spoilerized in white: MLO, TUxP.
And it yields today's ominous reading:

October: / * Sat 4 Harvest Dinner, Redland Game Club

(evil Ceredwyn reminds me of the line: "whole harvests were lost")

Some more from Leiphe: Mapping, Lessons, and Lessons Learned. Some more on prophecy, which we've noted earlier, in the paranormal journal's recent issue.
Thank you, Conspiracy.

And McConnell's in a bad headspace, between memories of another conspiracy? paranormal buff, and a return to same:

I've learned that living a lie can be quite difficult. One lie leads to another and that to yet another. Before you know it, you are left choking in the very web you wove. That's how it was with us, the secret meetings, the cryptic phone calls, the emails that said volumes by saying nothing at all. We were choking ourselves, we were choking each other. One day we just let go. We went our own ways. It wasn't our choice but it was the only way. I just never heard from him again and it was done. As the emotion faded, the situation became clear. It was the only way and I see that now. Yet suddenly it's back. I wonder, am I the spider making the web or am I the bug trapped in it.

Her work and hobby-research are also getting bleak, intense.