Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Wikipedia meets the severed feet

This Wikipedia discussion explores various mechanisms by which severed feet could be drifting onto Canada's western shore.  Note the drift (ahem) to William Gibson.

Our previous posts on the issue here and here.

(thanks to Tom Burkdall via Twitter)

Peter Pan of cruelty

This description of a Peter Pan performance gone wrong is deliciously surreal.  And harsh.

the crocodile that chases Captain Hook, seemed to be a real crocodile, it wasn't an actor. And at one point it fell off the stage and crushed a couple of kids in the front row. And then some of the understudies came and took their places in the audience. And from scene to scene, Wendy just seemed to get fatter and fatter until finally by the end of act one she was completely immobile and they had to move her off stage with a cart.

(thanks to Jesse "Tinkerbell" Walker)

Viva Carterfone

This article rightly celebrates the Carterfone story.  This is the successful mix of technological innovation and policy transition, which established the idea of adding applications to someone else's network.

See also the Hush-a-Phone decision (1956) and Betamax case (1984), for crucial technology policy wins, without which the Web's existence would have been unlikely at best.

Nice final paragraph:

It was June 26, 1968 when the FCC acted on Carterfone. Robert F. Kennedy had been buried two weeks earlier. In Czechoslovakia, followers of the "Prague Spring" fought against Communist rule. Students revolted against mindless bureaucracies at Columbia University, in Paris, in Seoul, in Mexico City. In these stormy times almost no one noticed as the FCC's Commissioners quietly rebelled against the world's biggest telco, unleashing the future.

Will children inherit cyberfear?

Normally it's adult culture which fears children online.  But in Sweden it's also children who now worry about their parents' internet behavior.  This article focuses on two major concerns: fathers using the net for sex (porn and dates), and parents of both genders having their time consumed by gaming.

And yet cyberfear might end with the rising generation.  This commentator translates the original Swedish report, and notes that worries about parents online are far less significant than other concerns:

of 1895 IT related calls from children, the breakdown was:

Relations with other children - 47%
Handling and Use of IT - 39%
Bullying, threats 15 %
Physical Health 12%
Sexual related 10%
Parent's IT use 5,5%
Other 6,5%
Related to violence 4,0%
Picutes and films 7,7%
Anonymity 8,4%
Security and protection 7,1%

(thanks to Saramin the human theremin)

Cannibalism, torture, flaying, murder: another central European family Gothic

Today's "Real life imitates Gothic horror" comes from the central Europe, with the story of a boy killed, skinned, and eaten.  It's actually much worse than that.  It starts with accidental surveillance:

[A] man in Brno in the Czech Republic installed a TV baby monitor to keep watch on his newborn child.

But it picked up a signal from an identical monitor next door showing one of the victims beaten, naked and chained in a cellar.

The whole thing reads like horror fiction.  There is a mysterious religious sect:

All three of them [adult torturers] had been part of a cult called the Grail Movement which claims to have hundreds of followers in Britain as well as tens of thousands of others worldwide.

And a mysterious villain:

The court has also heard claims that the abuse of the boys was co-ordinated by a man known only as the "Doctor" who sent mobile phone text messages to the Mauerova sisters telling them how to abuse the two boys.

Not to mention another villain, whose identity apparently blurs and shifts:

Anicka, a teddy-bear-clutching, shy 13-year-old, fled the care home. Before long Mauerova family acquaintances acknowledged that the girl is actually a 33-year-old woman, a music composer named Barbora Skrlova.

She emerged eight months later in Norway, where she had posed as another 13-year-old - this time as a Czech boy named Adam.

Then there are sinister family dynamics, starting with the Oedipal horror of mother killing her son and feeding the body to others, then heading into other areas:

Mauerova has admitted abusing her children but she said she had been manipulated by her sister Katerina and Skrlova.

There's much more, including caging and beating, not to mention the possibility that the boy was alive when cannibalism began.  But that's enough for now.

As the trial progresses, look for this to enter urban legend quickly, like the recent Austrian story.  It should also appear in fiction.

And no, there is no trace of internet involvement.  Not yet.

(typo corrected)

Podcasting and blogging a novel: Mur Lafferty's Zombies

This morning's Web 2.0 storytelling example comes from podcasting maven Mur Lafferty.  It's Zombinc, the story of a temp agency built on zombies ("they don't need breaks! they don't need Social Security!").

There are several episodes so far.  The blog format means categories, comments, and tag cloud (displayed in this post).  It will be interesting to see how this unfolds as podcast storytelling.  We could compare it with Lafferty's previous project, the superhero podcast novel Playing for Keeps and the Pseudopod horror short story podcast.

(thanks to Thomas Beckett)

Dance, my uncanny puppet, dance!

One denizen of the uncanny valley sings to another in this daft Daft Punk video.  Thrill to the evil robot overlord and his hypnotic technologic.  Weep to the final, Videodrome-like poignancy.  Stare into the cold, childlike, somehow moist eyes of:

(thanks to ever-vigilant Jesse Walker)

He saw the robot beneath the skin

What lurks beneath the loveable, plush exterior of a stuffed animal which talks?  This art project offers cuddly Befores alongside disemboweled Afters.  Two of the more disturbing hidden robots below. 
My wife can vouch for the horror of what lies within talking Elmo.


Top one is Barney.  Don't know the bottom one.

(thanks, Jesse Walker)

Life is like a box of Persians; or, still in Gumpville

This brilliant mashup uses 300 to rip holes in Forrest Gump, which is always a good cause:

Subterranean Cold War: the Berlin spy tunnel

This account of building a surveillance tunnel under Berlin during the 1950s is fascinating on many levels, from the engineering challenges to the allied politics.

I'm fond of the bizarre possibilities of detection.  For instance, at once point the tunnel was dug so well that the ground above it might have dropped a half-inch.  In another case the tunnel became a little too warm in summer - which meant not discomfort at the time, but the possibility of creating a narrow line of no-snow through snow cover in winter.  There's a delightful surrealism to this, not to mention the delusions one could have ("the ground is different! it must be spies tunneling under our feet!").

In terms of real like Gothic, this is simply delicious.  Underground structures of surveillance and power, hidden for decades...