Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Infocult in 2007: Web 2.0 and fearsome stuff

It's time for a glance backwards at Infocult in 2007.  We can use trackback pings (real ones) and comments (good stuff) to pick out themes which garnered the most attention.

Web 2.0, whatever we think of the term, is the leading business, be it one case study across several services or Controversies over Wikipedia (Citizendium and blogs, hoaxing Conservapedia).  Twitter blossomed into a leading topic  (first look, overview and reflections, fear of Twitter).

Second Life continues to get attention, especially from my brooding Third Life post (sequel coming in '08). 

The fearsome internet is our signature theme, and has been since the start.  Some examples: American parents' technology fears, fear of Twitter.

Mobile computing, ubicomp: I continue to place posts at Smartmobs.  Some posts live here, for example grousing about the lameness of American wifi, especially in hotels.

elearning: the overwhelming majority of my blog work on this score is at NITLE's blog, of course. Here at Infocult we reserve some subtopics, such as the case of Blackboard as silo, or serving silage.

How does this match up with your sense of Infocult, as 2008 looms ahead?

It's not dark matter, it's time itself slowing down

Maybe dark matter isn't to blame for cosmological anomalies.  Perhaps it's not space, but time that's the problem.  One physicist thinks time itself is slowing down, which fools us into looking elsewhere for explanation.

How tantatlizing!  What a Phil Dick-like theory.  But the rest of the article is behind a paywall, so we must leave it there, mid-twirl on string theory.

(thanks to Chronos-eyed Steven Kaye)

New music from the 4am

The latest 4am new music podcast from Warren Ellis is very good, definitely worth the download.  Some solid industrial work from Otto Defaye, gentler brooding from Holoscene and 60 Watt Kid. For the new year's spirit, there's an awesome, manic drinking song from these guys.

Hello Kitty demonic possession

The mysterious horror that is Hello Kitty continues to spread, with Hello Kitty contact lenses:

As the poor fellow who discovered this writes,

While it is fairly obvious that Sanrio has figured out a way to possess Hello Kitty fanatics, these contacts give that possession much too much reality.

Twittering Bhutto's assassination

Twitter was used for information and responses around Benazir Bhutto's assassination this week.  There's a classic mix of journalism sites using Twitter (Breaking News) with individuals tweeting to point towards more information, confirm reports, or react.

Dennis Howlett argues that the tweet cycle is faster than the blog one, with implications for business.  I'm with Doc Searls on this, who sees it as "proving useful for getting some live information out to some people.".

(via Doc Searls)

Edison's Frankenstein

Thomas Edison's Frankenstein movie (1910) is now on YouTube (part 1, part 2).  Always worth a watch for Frankenstein readers and Gothic folks.

(via Reason, which also offers a good reflection from Jesse Walker)

Bookstore in a church

A nifty idea for a bookstore: build it within a church.  This is the Selexyz Dominicanen, Maastricht.  It used to be a Dominican church.

Architects are Merkx+Girod.

(via MetaFilter)

Vatican denies world exorcism squad plans

The Vatican is denying a report that it plans to assemble exorcism-conducting squads, ready to be sent around the world to meet rising demand.  A Vatican University priest, Paolo Scarafoni (Gabriele Amorth in one account), has spoken to the press:

Vatican chiefs... have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."
Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.
The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcistinchief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus.
"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.

In a rapid response, the Vatican demurs:

"Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of ordering local bishops to bring in garrisons of exorcists to fight demonic possession,'' Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters in Rome Friday.

"garrisons"?  Interesting word choice, suggesting defense, rather than offense.  Conjures up images of priests behind walls, protecting cities from demonic hordes.

This is apparently the same Vatican University where one campus launched a "defense against the dark arts" class in 2005.

EDITED TO ADD: wifey points out that father Arnoth described the previous pope performing an exorcism at St. Peter's.

Evil from the House of Butterlies, or brain damage by auto fuel

This story about insidious car fuel continues our theme of airborne brain damage.  Starting in the 1920s, one American fuel product wafted lead traces into the atmosphere via exhaust plumes.  The history at times resembles a nightmarish pulp fiction, as a money-making poison spreads around the world, ultimately contributing to sickness and crime.

Ethyl was the brand name of a gasoline mixed with tetra-ethyl lead.  It was designed to reduce engine knock and improve performance, but also contained enough lead to eventually damage human nervous tissue.

Just making the stuff killed some workers, sickened more, and gave others hallucinations: "the larger facility in Deepwater came to be known as the 'House of Butterflies' owing to the insect hallucinations."  At one Ohio plant, starting

[o]n October 26, 1924, the first of five workers who would die in quick succession at Standard Oil's Bayway TEL works perished, after wrenching fits of violent insanity; thirty-five other workers would experience tremors, hallucinations, severe palsies and other serious neurological symptoms of organic lead poisoning. In total, more than 80 percent of the Bayway staff would die or suffer severe poisoning.

The effects on the rest of the human race were initially set aside, as the fuel became something of a global standard.  One generation later (!) a scientist proved that lead had permeated the total world environment so thoroughly as to contaminate Greenland.  Patterson's work lead to the 1970 United States Clean Air Act.

After that, phase II of the Ethyl Gothic appeared, as research suggests phasing out Ethyl and allied fuels has reduced the amount of lead in human exposure.  At least one study correlates the drop to the reduction in American and British crime rates during the 1990s.

"We have found the stairs of this, much older pyramid": Gothic history scene in Mexico City

Archaeologists discovered an ancient Aztec pyramid in Mexico City, delighting horror fans everywhere.

Setting aside the historical impact of this find, the details are right out of a Gothic film or novel:

"We have found the stairs of this, much older pyramid. The (Aztec) timeline is going to need to be revised," archaeologist Patricia Ledesma said at the site on Thursday....
The archeologists also have detected a sculpture that could be of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or of the god of the sky and earth Tezcatlipoca. In addition, the dig has turned up five skulls and a series of rooms near the pyramid that could date from 1431.

(thanks to my eagle-eyed wife)