Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Ghost Sites

Ghost Sites tracks web pages that have decayed, been abandoned, unupdated, or otherwise left to wither in the howling cruelty of cyberspace.  Sometimes these are single pages.  Sometimes entire sites.

Alas, that's where I learn that Daypop and Blogdex are no more.

Canadian shooting: first steps in blaming cyberspace

Less than a day after a Montreal shooting spree, blaming cyberculture has begun.  My Way News and Forbes, among others, are carrying an AP story, which notes the alleged shooter's "favorite game", which is, unsurprisingly, a Columbine-themed one.  And where is this information found?  A Gothic-themed online forum, of course*.  Columbine, Goths, the Web - the mix is heady, after only a few hours.  For bonus points, the alleged shooter maintained a blog:

Gill also maintained an online blog, similar to Klebold and Harris, devoted to gothic culture, heavy metal music such as Marilyn Manson, guns and journal entries expressing hatred against authority figures and "society."

Blogs, heavy metal, antiauthoritatianism - this is beyond trifecta.  However, I wonder if this is too Canadian for American politicians to notice?

*A forum, hm - since participants can create profiles, and VampireFreaks asks for money, wouldn't this make for a fine DOPA test case?

Fifty years ago, the hard drive

Today the hard drive turns fifty, according to Yahoo! News.  Fascinating discussion of how the enormous thing worked, and why is was needed.

Random Access Method of Accounting and Control, dubbed the RAMAC for expediency. The device's name is a direct reflection of the need for such capabilities in the enterprise. Led by project leader Rey Johnson, IBM's San Jose lab brought the RAMAC 305 to market.

(via Slashdot)

Web 2.0 storytelling and Lonelygirl15

More updates on the Lonelygirl15 story:

1. A new video clip.  Bree's grounded, but the wicker girl, er, ceremony is going ahead.  Notice the patch on her arm?
2. One site broke the identity of the acress playing Bree.
3. Big media caught on: the LA Times and the New York Times.  The latter continues its theme of geek-bashing, with a snide note about the actress preferring parties over Richard Feynmann.

So this has developed into a fine example of Web 2.0 storytelling.  We have microcontent in the form of video clips, primarily.  But there's also the growing social content in the form of comments, fora, blog posts, and so on.  And it's in perpetual release, between the serial release of microcontent chunks, and the overall development of content on the fly, in interaction with the audience.

[creator] Beckett hatched the idea of creating a mystery story online, one that could roll out small mock-confessional bites in real time.

"Our goal was to tell a very realistic fictional story in this medium," Beckett said. He dreamed of using the various technologies of the Web, from comment boards to social networking sites, to both build a rich identity for a character and to let fans influence the story's direction....

The intent was to allow fan response posted in the comment section of lonelygirl15's YouTube and MySpace pages to determine the direction of each subsequent episode.

As an example of the fans' influence over the story line, what the team calls "collaborative storytelling," they pointed to an episode in which Daniel reveals his romantic feelings to Bree. "In the 'Hiking' video," Beckett said, "where Daniel filmed her, there were a ton of comments saying, 'Daniel likes you. It's obvious that the cameraman was completely in love with you.' We saw the comments and said this is the perfect opportunity to address this."

The NYTimes catches the social content aspect:

When Mr. Steinfeld’s dummy site, which had been set up before the first Lonelygirl15 video was even posted, struck users as suspicious and unsupervised — Mr. Steinfeld says he grew tired of running it, and dropped out of the project — fans set up their own site devoted to Lonelygirl15, which soon attracted more than a thousand members.

Both sites drew contributions from novelists, journalists, academics, day traders, lawyers, bloggers, filmmakers, video game designers, students, housewives, bored youngsters and experts on religion and botany. In the cacophony of conjecture, analysis, close-readings, jokes, insults, and distractions, good information sometimes surfaced.

Second Life pleasures and frustrations

My Second Life experience has been very uneven so far.  Which is to say that some fine things have been mixed with very annoying frustrations.

Fine things: a rush of nostalia, as SL reminds me of the years I spent exploring, presenting, and teaching with Activeworlds.  SL also showcases some fine creative work.  For example, my friend Mia Wåhlström Bäcke showed me some superb work she's done. excellent buildings combining vivid imagination with sophisticated design.  There's also the goofy and pleasant surrealism of watching avatars type, as their owners do so offline.  And I stumbled across a very weird, fun thing, a TIE fighter stashed in someone's back yard.

Frustration1: the way SL has handled the recent security intrusion.  This has booted me out of my account.  There is an odd security question, but LindenLabs has neglected to provide support for people who can't get through that way - i.e., customer relations 101.  For two days I've been calling the number they deigned to offer, after a few days, but can only win through to information-free voicemail.  Needless to say, I've neither been called nor emailed.

Frustration2: I spent several hours staggering through SL with many avatar functions mysteriously turned off.  One help person thought it had to do with the island I was on, so restarted the island.  Eventually the functions came back, but random island malfunctions are not much of an excuse, especially as the problems were not identified in any way, besides what I wrung out of multiple help people.  And there was no way of knowing if that's what solved it, because another explanation appeared.  A friend thought I still needed to complete the welcome tutorial with this avatar.  Fine, I thought, that sounds good.  Scaffolding is a good learning principle - except

1. There is no way of telling that you have or have not completed that tutorial.  No icon, message, flag, reminder.
2. When you find a tutorial island, there's no sign of how far you've come through the multiple steps.  So, to be prudent, you can restart.  Linden Labs lets us play for free, but has apparently decided to levy a random tax... on users' time.

Overall, this experience suggests that SL is not about the casual or first-time user.  Instead it rewards patient learning and work in the form of built environments.  Such artifacts are what most users experience, after all, since the population density is so low. 

This structure, combined with the awful support I've experienced, helps explain the relatively low user base SL apparently has.

My enthusiasm for investing my personal and research time in SL is cooling.  So is my desire to teach the thing. 

Any thoughts from users? or from Linden Labs?

September 11th lit

Open Source Radio has a good podcast about September 11th literature.

And hey, they included my suggestion, Pattern Recognition. Thanks, guys!

Five years ago: a blogosphere is born

Five years ago - the birth of the blog?  Wired thinks that the desire to write was so strong, then, and so well matched to this emerging tool, that that's when the blogosphere took off.
I'm glad the article mentions my friend Dan's September 11th Archive.

(via Instapundit)

Footage Gibson Footage

William Gibson has found lonelygirl15's footage to be like his Pattern Recognition's Footage.

Updates on lonelygirl15

Back to our current Web 2.0 storytelling example, the lonelygirl15 video story: Apophenia weighs in, noting the transmedia storytelling aspect.  A Wikipedia entry grows, after a deletion and argument.  ARGN broods.  The LA Times outlines theories.  One suspect:

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) spokesman Michael Mand said he "could neither confirm nor deny" that the agency is representing whoever is behind the 27 video posts.

CAA also represents ARGmeisters 42Entertainment.
To help clarify and muddy things further, some puppetmasters came out from behind the curtain.  Maybe.  http://www.lonelygirl15.com/ seems to be turned off.

What about that mysterious religion?  Looks like Crowley.  Sounds like a plot device - the wicker teen!  And we have a date to look forward to, in fine ARG/marketing fashion: 10-12-06. 

Meanwhile, let Infocult leave you with this bizarre screencap:

Underground spaces in Turkey

Adam Franco is a fine programmer.  He also has a keen eye for underground spaces - check out these images from a fascinating subterranean city in Anatolia.