Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Castle of Shadows

It's either an ancestor of virtual reality, a long-lost inspiration for augmented reality, a Gothic nightmare space waiting to happen, or some combination thereof:

In a book published nearly 600 years ago, in the year 1420, Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana proposed a mechanical construction called the Castellum Umbrarum, or "castle of shadows." 

Philippe Codognet describes the 15th-century machine as "a room with walls made of folded translucent parchments lighted from behind, creating therefore an environment of moving images. Fontana also designed some kind of magic lantern to project on walls life-size images of devils or beasts." 

Your moment of Price

Vincent Price, that is.  Eat up!

LA Gothic

Gothic spaces: this abandoned California hospital offers gloriously gloomy vistas.

(thanks to Captain Black)

Medieval fearsome media

Here's an interesting case of hating the printing press. Johannes Trithemius, perhaps better known as the author of Steganographia, also wrote in praise of handwriting, as opposed to print.

There's the religious corruption argument:

He who ceases from zeal for writing because of printing is no true lover of the Scriptures.

There's the conviction that the old ways are better for thinking and learning, the old Socratic argument:

[The writer,] while he is writing on good subjects, is by the very act of writing introduced in a certain measure into the knowledge of the mysteries and greatly illuminated in his innermost soul; for those things which we write we more firmly impress upon the mind...

In addition, in the works of one blogger, Trithemius finds 

practical reasons that printed books weren't anything to get bothered about: their paper wasn't as permanent as the parchment the monks used (he even advocates the hand-copying of "useful" printed works for their preservation); there weren't very many books in print, and they were hard to find; they were constrained by the limitations of type, and were therefore ugly.

Those last ones are classic examples of dislike.  But it's the first two which lead to actual fear: reading printed books instead of hand-copying manuscripts sapping religion and knowledge.

(via Techdirt)

The cycles of fearsome media

Does technofear come in cycles?  Tech Liberation Front explores this idea.

First, an emphasis on fears as active things, movements which want to change behavior:

an effort to control the particular content or technology in question is what really defines a true “panic.” 

Second, an interesting thought about sequences:

New techno-panics simply crowd-out old techno-panics

Following up on that, "it seems like these cycles are now accelerating somewhat.  They peak and fizzle out faster, that is."  If so, "this could mean we experience more “mini-panics” and fewer of those sweeping “the-world-is-going-to-hell” type panics."

I like the way this connects political action to media panic.  Perhaps exhaustion of the former leads to a recharge for the latter?

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Mystery tech for the feds

One computer program is becoming something of a mystery object for the United States government.  It's a bit of terrorism analysis software, written for the feds back in 2003.  But, according to ProPublica, the tool didn't work, and the government is out several million dollars.

But what is the application?  There's the mystery.  The US is trying to hide the damned thing, "fighting in court to keep information about the technology secret, arguing that the details could compromise national security."

In 2008, the government spent three days “scrubbing” the home computers of Mr. Montgomery’s lawyer of all references to the technology. And this past fall, federal judges in Montana and Nevada who are overseeing several of the lawsuits issued protective orders shielding certain classified material.

The feds won't talk to the New York Times.  And the programmer took the Fifth.

What is it?  Perhaps it's something to do with travel, and mistakes were made, as they say:

Use of the technology led to several false starts and dead ends over the years, including a 2003 scare that prompted U.S. officials to order that several international flights be turned around or grounded. It even led to discussion of shooting the planes down [!]

Children make up the best horror stories

How to scare the heck out of a sibling: "The Scariest Story" is the latest from Hyperbole and a Half.  

I spent the entire day concocting the most horrifying story I could think of - an amalgamation of every single scary thing I'd ever heard. It was a masterpiece.  It was the scariest story in the world. There was no possible way that my sister would walk away unscathed.

The infinite hallway, and the death cycle - those are pretty good tricks.

Facebook a killer

Another Facebook murder story concerns a man using Facebook to seek a killer for hire.

"I got 500 on a girls head who wants that bread? Hit me up anyway possible," the budding criminal mastermind wrote on his Facebook page. His accuser saw the message and called police, telling them about the rape and the contract...

Rape?  Yes, this attempted murder, or solicitation, was the sequel to an earlier crime.  It's a complete short horror story.

The would-be solicitor got impatient:

Adams agreed to meet with Billie at the police station for more chit-chat but ten minutes later he posted another Facebook update saying he "needed this girl knocked off right now."

(thanks to Todd Bryant; photo by Omarukai)

Ghostly evolution

The evolution of American ghosts, through the late twentieth century:

(via Ladi via Twitter)

New Facebook horror: drug mule solicitation

Another week, another Facebook horror story: this time people claim drug dealers are using Facebook to turn Malaysian women into drug mules.  Yes, innocent women turned into unwilling criminals, or dupes thereby:

"It has been happening for quite some time, these girls are being lured by these men on Facebook, these men chat with them, become friends, gain the girls' trust, then use them as drug mules to smuggle narcotics," [Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Riot] told the AFP news agency.

"They even offer to pay for holidays to Japan, China and South America, asking the girls to carry packages, bags or gifts that contain drugs," he added.

This draws together several fear strands: tech corrupting "youth" (teens); tech enabling foreigners to do Bad Things; war on drugs.

"Richard Riot": my heart goes out to the guy, with an awesome name like that.

(thanks to Glen Engel-Cox via Twitter)