Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Indian Ocean catastrophe media response, continued

Following up on yesterday's post about new media diet in the case of the Indian Ocean catastrophe: first, the blogosphere via a fine MIT tool from Cameron.  Blogdex is generous, pointing us to widely-used Web documents.  For example, Kenji Satake is an earthquake fault researcher, and has webbed up a very well-done animated gif of the seaquake's spread.  Blogdex also reveals that a new and victims' aid blog is the leading web page this morning, a better proof of world concern than anything a single mainsteam media organ could show.  The Wikipedia page on the event has similarly ascended in the rankings (second place, as of this blogging).  As with any fine old media account, that page is informative; it differs, however, in its open peer editing, allowing organic, rapid, and quickly-checked accretion of information.  We can compare the 'pedia's entry with the Wikinews entry; which is more useful, for what purposes?  Also up in the Blogdexsphere is warblog Command Post's relief information entry.  Notice how the blog post structure locates that initial writing in time, while also supporting subsequent accretion of information through revisions, comments, and trackbacks.  All of these use mainstream media for resources, but aggregate them, update them, and admit global participation.  Korea's OhMyNews! seems to be a prototype of this.  Lastly, I noticed the homepage for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières up there.  A quick run of clicks revealed that that was a leading resource being indicated, which tells me more about the contours of international aid in this event. Added: BoingBoing points to a blogger's survey of relief agencies. Is this the kind of thing one would find on CNN or BBC?

Second, a splendid friend tells me (out loud, as we're using two machines in the same room) about updates from Arthur C. Clarke.  Both of us are lifelong readers of Sir Arthur, and could not find anything about him in our traditional sources (he's lived in Sri Lanka for a long time).  My friend logged into a private discussion forum and found this reference.  This media activity is different and separate from the blogosphere, in that it's social yet composed of private connections.

Added after posting: greetings, linkers.  A question for discussion - how much of this reading and interaction depending on metadata?

News media in microcosm: following the Indian Ocean earthquake

I just finished catching up on the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, and, amidst my horror and sympathy, wanted to jot down how I did it.  It seems like a useful microcosm of news media in late 2004.

A friend we're staying with alerted us to the event out loud, as she checks CNN.com first thing in the morning.  I peered over her shoulder, and grew frustrated with the coverage right away - it was too distant, no local voices, and had that stupid restriction on their video.

So I put down the dishes I was doing, picked up my laptop, and went to Google News, which was by far the richer experience.  That's where I got to stories in regional media.

At the same time, in the next browser tab, I fired up the blogosphere via Blogdex which lists the most linked stories in blogland.  This led me right to a blog entry with links to many blog accounts which offered the personal voices I wanted.  This also led me to an astonishing photo archive of the event, already Webbed up.

I also checked with some friends in online fora, including several who are in the Indian Ocean region.  Thankfully none are hurt,although Thomas lost some stuff and has his work cut out for him. Individuals are posting and forwarding items to me as well.

At no time have I checked radio, tv, or print news, and miss them not a whit.

PS: that media sf Flash animation which everyone's been pointing me towards seems even further off, in this light.

Added a few minutes later: the Wikipedia entry is very good, too, and growing.

Zeitgeist 2004

Google has released the 2004 edition of its Zeitgeist, an ever-impressive summary sketch of what people of have searching for this past year.

This week's cannibalism story

Yes, we can't stop posting about cannibalism. Maybe I need a new category - cannibalblog?  In the meantime, blame Warren Ellis for this story:

"He was preparing stews. There was a grill where he was cooking part of the heart and bits he had cut off the body. It was terrible, terrible," said local police chief Martin Estrada...

(and note Yahoo's cutesy titling, which draws on a long horror tradition)

Google and Microsoft: a consideration

This article on Google and Microsoft does a good job of exploring the territory for the likely struggle between these two for world dominance.  Er, control of the search market, and related fields.

Blue Chamber: a short narrative space

The Blue Chamber is a new release from the demonic entity behind the Crimson and Viridian Rooms.  Blue is comparatively brief, a short-short story, and not hard to solve.  One nice feature is somewhat time-sensitive, a pneumatic tube.  The interface is slightly cleaner, with navigational aids and none of the insanely pixel-focused hotspots of Crimson.  Geneally, despite its brevity, it's nowhere near as frustrating as its progenitors, and might serve as a good, quick intro to the genre.

China turns to metadata

A new article in the current D-Lib describes recent Chinese metadata efforts.  Some resemble American and European projects.  One effort is integrated into the national five-year plans.

Anothe one of these includes a national learning objects standard, which might suggest movement towards a Chinese learning objects registry, like the American CORDRA.  This could appear within the Chinese Digital Library.

On bishōjo gaming

Doug points me to yet another gaming genre, bishōjo games.  These are interactive sex adventures, to those few readers who haven't seen or played one before.

Bishōjo seem to have a connected to the forbidden internet.  Beyond the blatant depictions of nudity and sex, which would stir offense in some world cultures, there are other tabu issues, as exemplified by this blog entry as being

sometimes based around taboo sexual themes such as lolicon (roricon)/Shota-con (girl/boy child porn respectively), incest, or even robo-porn.

Again, part of the internet appears as the dark yet desired mirror of normative culture.  The wikipedia entry notes that the women are nearly always "perfect" and "feminine" - a backlash reaction to rising Japanese feminism, hm?

Last week's question would have been: would Microsoft let you set up a blog on this topic?

Haunted spaces conference to be held in Sweden

The Space, Haunting, Discourse conference will be held in Karlstad University in 2006.  Topics are to be various and interdisciplinary, centering on "space related to haunting and/or different discourses." (thanks to Patrik)

Putting bones to cartoon flesh

What would the skeletons of cartoon characters look like?  Consider Michael Paulus' project: