Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Recession Gothic, fine British version

Some Great Recession Gothic came from Phil Pullman this week.  He was defending libraries from cuts driven by budget crises and politics (read it for more), then turned on this riff on the invisible hand:

Market fundamentalism, this madness that’s infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days...

Publishers are run by money people now, not book people. The greedy ghost whispers into their ears: Why are you publishing that man? He doesn’t sell enough. Stop publishing him...

The greedy ghost is everywhere. That office block isn’t making enough money: tear it down and put up a block of flats. The flats aren’t making enough money: rip them apart and put up a hotel. The hotel isn’t making enough money: smash it to the ground and put up a multiplex cinema. The cinema isn’t making enough money: demolish it and put up a shopping mall...

It's a canny move, partly because of the invisible hand joke.  It also de-rationalizes the language of rationalizing budgets.  The language mocks strategies of openness, too.

(via MetaFilter)

The specter of Bluetoothing e-Qaeda

Some jihadis have developed software to share content via Bluetooth.  At first glance it seems to be about being able to broadcast al Qaeda etc materials to any device within Bluetooth range.

If that's so, perhaps we'll see Bluetooth added to the decade-old e-Qaeda meme.  As in:

Bluetooths Beam Terror Propaganda to Your Eardrums

For those new to the story, that's the discourse of fearing a kind of "digital caliphate", any use of digital media for jihadist organizing.  

Some interesting technical details in the write-up.  MS Word!

(via Danger Room)

Everything can be a marketing ploy

It was only a matter of time before fearsome digital media became a marketing tactic.  The new game Dead Space 2 has a supporting Website aimed at family fear, to wit: http://yourmomhatesthis.com/. 

It's an interesting anthology of fearsome media tropes.

ITEM: parents being concerned about children's behavior.  Even though the median age of players is in the 30s, this is positioned as mom->child.

ITEM: the note about mental problems ("I think it would make a person insane").

ITEM: emphasis on social deviance.

Naturally there's video:

 

(thanks to Todd Bryant!)

Blaming game for Moscow explosion

Fearsome digital media became an explanation for this week's Moscow airport bombing.  At least one observer made this claim, based on similarities between Domodedovo and Call of Duty: Modern War 2's famous airport terror level.  "The report asserts that the suicide bombing on Monday “mirrors” the video game’s scenario."

Let's break this down in terms of fearsome media.  First, there's the remix approach:

Russia Today, a government-financed satellite channel, broadcast a report that mixed footage of the aftermath of the attack with gory scenes from a video game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,”

That formal remix strategy is a way of suggesting causal blending.  It avoids establishing direct casuality, much like American arguments about links between violence and media.

Second, a national angle: "Russia Today’s report... emphasized that the video game was made by Americans".  The scary media object is an invader, corrupting or otherwise hurting us.

Third, a link to "e-Qaeda":

Walid Phares, a Fox News terrorism analyst... suggested that terrorists might be using virtual games like this one to train for real attacks. “I think those who have been radicalized already — let’s suppose in this case jihadists, Al Qaeda or [some] other kind — they look at the games and say these games will serve them to train,” Mr. Phares said.

So in many ways this is a typical remix, drawing on decades of fearsome digital media discourse.  It's more political than most, drawing on Russian nationalism.

The New York Times blogger offers this nice counterargument: "In fact, the game dramatizes a commando raid on a Moscow airport that much more closely resembles the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008."  Or the attack on India's legislature.

(video clip via Reason's blog)

Here's a new twist on vampirism: albino, parasitical, redwood trees.  Weird mutations, they lack chlorophyll (!).  Instead, "[t]hey are pale (everwhite instead of evergreen), and they survive by sucking the life from other trees."

These things are enormously rare.  "Only about 25 of these trees are known to exist around the world..."

Even more Gothic:

When times get tough, the parent tree withdraws all support and the seedlings perish, turning brown. In times of abundant rain, they sprout again, flourishing. “They come and go, like ghosts,” Kuty said. “They starve to death and shrink back. Then they reappear.”

(thanks to Justin Beckham)

Have you heard the news?

Excellent idea: Chick tracts for Darkseid.  

Be liberated from chaos and confusion.  Report to the anti-life factory now!

(thanks to Jesse Walker, who refuses to share his boom tube)

CNN finds more monstrosity

Frankenhouses: CNN raises the specter of terror-ridden, monstrous... home renovation.

"Houses of horrors!" shrieks our biggest purveyor of nonfiction Gothic.  C'mon, CNN, you can do better than this.  What about the recession, and wars, and crime?

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

The terror of cats, revisited

The connection between cats and terror is an ancient one. The Oatmeal offers your example for this week:

End of the Poe toasting

No Poe graveyard toast for the second year in a row.

four toaster wannabes showed up at the gravesite with the requisite cognac and red roses. But all, he said, were pretenders to the tradition, not the real thing.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

When mountains unfurl hidden human disasters

Global warming Gothic?  Buried disasters are revealed, as mountain glaciers dwindle.  Melting ice is exposing all kinds of wrecked planes and mummified bodies in Bolivia, Switzerland, California, and elsewhere.

The climbers found no treasure at the crash site of the Avro Lancastrian plane flown by British South American Airways. But they did discover a preserved torso and a hand with pointed, manicured fingernails, an eerie fashion relic of 1940s London that served as testament to the fate of the plane’s passengers and crew. 

Here's a bit of Andean folklore for future stories:

some climbing guides here respectfully refer to the mountains as “achachila,” a word from the indigenous Aymara language that roughly translates as “earth spirit” or “uncle.” Before each ascent, they make offerings of coca leaves to the peaks they depend on for their livelihood.
“The uncles guard many secrets,” said Mr. González, who found the body of Mr. Pabón, “just like the graveyards in their shadow.” 

Think of Frankenstein and his monster, confronting each other in the Swiss Alps, on glaciers:

I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution...

(thanks to Ed Webb; photo from Szeke)