Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

DIY doppelgangers

Make your own doppelganger: that's the premise of MyTwinn.  This business will hand-craft a doll double for you, at a reasonable price.  Their website is very cheery, promising years of fun for childrenn, but even the least Gothically inclined viewer must feel a twinge of fear and recognition at images like this:

What captions come to mind?  I want to voice the doll, not the girl.  "Soon, soon, she will be mine."  "Each night I grow, while she dwindles."   And yet, at the same time, the doll's expression looks so sad - anticipating a future abandonment, perhaps.

What happens with age?  What sadness as the doll preserves childhood, while the child becomes a tweener, then teen, like some Dorian Gray crossed with My Pretty Pony.  Or, like the recent and horrific Flat Daddy item, what happens after death, when this denizen of the uncanny valley is all that remains of the beloved original?  How terrifying, how sad its persistence.

The doll-minded may refer to our January post on Elmo, Kleist, etc.  Or this most recent doppelganger story.

Hints of Halo in film

Hints about the upcoming Halo movie were aggregated at MetaFilter.  The director, Neill Blomkamp, was interviewed by Ain't It Cool.  Better still, you can see some of Blomkamp's work on the Web, primarily shorts: "Tetra Vaal", "Yellow" and "Alive in Joburg". 

You can see the logic in selecting this guy to helm Halo, given the fine mixing of special effects with narrative, as well as a certain military action flair.  I'm also interested in the political sensibility these short films demonstrate.

Craft against the sun

This is a breathtaking image - the space station and space shuttle, positioned against the face of the sun, and photographed from earth's surface (Normandy, to be precise):
This is only a detail.  Check out Legault's page for the vast, full image.

(via MetaFilter)

Jenkins on homeschooling

Henry Jenkins mentions a popular assessment of homeschooling in a recent post:

I know that I make some people nervous when I talk here about the values of home schooling. Many people assume that home schooling is mostly used today by the religious right to escape secular education.

We ran into this almost ten years ago, when we decided to homeschool Gwynneth.  Local school options were horrendous - public schools awful, no alternative schools, an academy priced way beyond my assistant professor's salary.  Homeschooling had large opportunity costs, but Gwynneth learned a lot.  Unschooling had enormous benefits for her, including not teaching her fear, er, undue respect for authority.  I remember her telling a local classicist about hoplites and the Roman empire - when she was six.

At the same time, we caught flack from many people, especially educators.  None offered a solution to the local school problem, but were quite happy to wonder why we were withdrawing from the community (despite our involvement through the homeschooling networks), or if we homeschooled for religious reasons (nope).  Fascinating to see how deeply the culture wars run, even trumping pedagogical considerations among educators.

I say "we", but it was Ceredwyn who really did the work.  Gwynneth and I owe her a lot!

Back to Second Life, despite Second Life

"Bryan Zelmanov," or, I give.

I gave up.  I made a new Second Life character, Bryan Zelmanov. After more than a week of Linden Labs' inability to perform basic customer service, I ponied up for another avatar.  I hate, hate, hate rewarding them for a failure to do due diligence.  But, like Sara*, I'm researching this topic.  And I'm teaching a workshop next week which includes a Second Life unit, so I can't wait for these guys to do their jobs properly.

Yes, I know they're dealing with a security intrusion.  Welcome to the internet, guys.  This was a surprise?  SL didn't prepare contingency plans?  I feel even better about entrusting time, money, and creative work to them. 

Enough fuming and griping.  I am and remain, in SL, Bryan Zelmanov.

*Sara's point, being worried about missing an important development, helps explain the durality of SL, despite everything.  It's a curious loop: we hear that SL is important, so we invest time and money in it, which adds to our sense of its importance.  Other people see that, so they want to participate, and so the circle continues.

Hacking the opposition's radio: Lebanon 2006

Information warfare: Hezbollah hacked into the Israel army's radio net during this summer's fighting.  Just how extensively the IDA's communications were compromised is impossible to say from the outside, especially this close to the battles, but it definitely does sound like classic hacking bragging. 

It's also a good example of assymetrical warfare, a low-cost approach to exploiting the opponent's weaknesses, what John Robb describes as a hybrid method, combining human interception with signals warfare and modern rockets.  Result: a series of destroyed Israeli tanks.  Question: how far did Israel get into Hezbollah's net?

"The information collected by signals intercepts was being used to help direct fighters on the battlefield," [Nizar Qader, a retired Lebanese army general] said. "These are tactics of a modern army."

This war has demonstrated several aspecs of information operations.  We noted Hezbollah's media narrative strategy during the conflict.

Texting her way out of the pit of horror

Real life imitates Gothic: a South Carolina man dug a series of underground holes and bunkers, then imprisoned a teenager in one in order to rape her.

"He dug this pit, and this child was in this pit," McCaskill said.

There's a technology aspect, too.  The poor kid txted her way out.  She contacted her mother, then "[i]nvestigators used cell towers to determine a general location of the phone."  Hm, a networked technology way out of a low-tech problem - I wonder how often we'll see this mentioned.

Reminds one of Silence of the Lambs.

(thanks, Ladi)

MySpace at the center of crimes

Or so reports the Associated Press:

The controversial Web site MySpace.com was at the center of arrests in Connecticut and Arizona this week - one involving the alleged sexual assault of a minor and the other a contract killing.

One might think the alleged criminals were at the center of arrests.

The AP article also adds some alarmist subheaders, like "Watch your back" and "Web of deception?" (apparently the answer is "yes")

This is further evidence that MySpace has moved to the center of today's feasome media discussions.  That had become evident to many people in February, has perhaps risen to mainstream status as of now, and should be ripe for parody any day.

(thanks to Frank Hanlan)

"I Found A Camera" reappears

"I Found A Camera In The Woods", a spooky story told with digital images, and nice example of Web 2.0 storytelling, has reappeared on another forum.  This is interesting for two reasons.  First, it's a handy backup, since the original forum site no longer hosts that content.  Second, the comments on the new forum are somewhat different.  Several purport to be from first-time readers, much like earlier instances; others now reflect a historical awareness.

We first noted the story in 2004.  Then we found "I Found" again nearly a year ago.

Gwynneth has a blog

Gwynneth, my daughter, now has a blog.  Check out City of Whispers.

It's fascinating, and utterly unsurprising, to see how easily she takes to the medium.