Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Bryan in public, in Burlington

Tomorrow I'm speaking on digital storytelling in Burlington, alongside some fine practitioners.

what is a story in the digital age? Are digital stories true innovations in the ancient craft of storytelling or merely technological variations on time-honored themes? Panelists at this discussion will broach such questions by presenting original digital stories created with a range of digital tools.

Please stop by.

(picture of the Fletcher Free Library, where things will be)

The zombie-cyberpunk connection

Zombies and cyberpunk have a long, intertwined history, argues xirdalium.  It's a fun, useful linkage, letting us link together Frankenstein and The Last Man, viruses and corporations, dystopia and cyborgs.

Mysterious voices from the forest

reports have been pouring in of strange voices chattering high in the treetops — mysterious, nonsensical conversations in English-

An eerie, surreal scene this is, in Australia. It could be the start of a Gothic tale, or an element of unsettling unease within one.  Imagine walking through a forest, and gradually realizing that those treetop sounds are discernable as human voices.  Or listening keenly, sifting for sense.

The explanation is Scooby-doo realistic, without the music.  Apparently it has to do with pets, and not entirely in an alligators-in-the-sewer way:

escaped pet birds, namely parrots and cockatoos, have begun teaching their wild bird counterparts a bit of the language they picked up from their time in captivity

We can imagine the vocabulary.  And expect certain subsets:

according to witnesses, that includes more than a few expletives. 

It all sounds fun now, doesn't it?  Until the birds' voices start sounding organized, and the vocabulary becomes hostile.  Daphne Dumaurier knew.

(via Wendy Farmer, who suggests the coinage "tropical Gothic"; photos from jamesblah and the splendidly named bunnicula)

Creepy Facebook Timeline

It will be interesting to see how people react to this - I suspect that this time it may be less a question of privacy and more a question of creepy.

Perhaps the new Facebook interface will become lifelike enough to enter the uncanny valley.  So wonders Marshall Kirkpatrick, brooding upon the forthcoming Timeline format.

The most likely worst-case scenario though is that people will be creeped out by all this. I think there's a risk that the new Facebook Timelines are going to look a lot like our real lives - almost exactly like them, but not quite. Far enough off to be frustrating but close enough to be creepy....

It's an interesting thought, as the uncanny valley usually applies to visual imagery, not information architecture. Still, we've been feeling anxieties about that for a while, too.

The Timeline feature will roll out in the coming weeks and then we'll see if it feels empowering, like a new way to articulate the epic meaning of all our individual social lives, or if it feels like a too-nearly-human panopticon's picture-book of more memories than our own brains are capable of retaining.

Alternatively, people will create Timelines which look like murderous bragging:

"Yes, drowning is actually quite easy to accomplish.  The glass tank's walls were quite thick enough.  And the alibi went right on Facebook!"

(thanks to Derek Bruff)

Blaming the internet for other media

Critics have seen the Web as degrading public discourse since the mid-1990s.  Sometimes they get confused, as in this CNN pundit discussion.

Talking heads were talking about a new Sarah Palin book, and complaining of some tawdriness.  A journalism prof sees the hidden hand of the internet at work, using familiar language:

ROBERTS: ...in this Web culture is that there are no filters, there are no editors. Now, many people say this is great because it's the Wild West, and there are more voices. But what has been almost entirely eliminated in many ways is this notion of accountability and verification in a lot of the Web publications. 
COTTLE: But we're not talking about Web. We're talking about a book. 

CNN's moderator tries desperately to save his guest:

KURTZ: We're talking about a book that is then covered by the Web. 

COTTLE: But it's covered by everything. 

Prof goes on to see the internet as fomenting celebrity culture, apparently by itself.

This is a classic pattern, which I really need to write up at length: older media become naturalized in the presence of the new.

Roberts is "Steve Roberts, professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at The George Washington University"; Cottle is Michelle Cottle, Washington correspondent for "Newsweek" and "The Daily Beast".

(via Lead and Gold)

New ARG: MyDadsTapes

MyDadsTapes is a new digital story, probably an alternate reality game (ARG).

The conceit:

My dad passed away. He left very little behind. Clothes, a couple of junker cars, a trailer home with a lien on it, and a box of video tapes. This is the mystery footage I'm finding left behind.

The footage is disturbing stuff, seemingly documentation of a Zodiac-style killer.  It's all very fragmentary and sketchy.

ARG-like: the hoax aspect, at least one serious cryptogram.  Very Marble Hornets-ish.

Most of the content appears as cryptic videos on this YouTube channel.  There is also a Twitter feed and a set of stills on Imgur.

UnFiction is on the case.

(via MetaFilter)

American political cannibalism, thwarted

A would-be American cannibal is now subsisting on prison food.

It was supposed to be a multi-course meal, starting with:

According to court papers, in his missive postmarked Jan. 19, 2010, from a Chester prison, he also described how he would precede his meal with the sexual assault of first lady Michelle Obama and then "skin her alive."

Next, 

after killing the president, he planned to "cut his meat from his bones and put them in the oven," then "sit down at the table and start eating."

Interestingly, it's a political cuisine:

In an interview with Secret Service agents a few weeks later, Brockman admitted writing the letter to calm himself down. According to court papers, he told the agents he was upset about the war in Afghanistan, marijuana prohibition, and underfunding of public schools.

And a copycat crime, sort of:

Brockman also mentioned how he was fascinated by renowned cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed 17 people and consumed several of the victims.

Infocult: your eye on anthropophagy, imagined and otherwise.

(thanks to Jesse "Baltimore Foodie" Walker)

Cold War Gothic meets Porn Alley

Bunkers from the atomic war age meet the porn industry in a desperate mashup.  Or postmodern update, if you prefer:

“Our goal is nothing less than to survive the apocalypse to come in comfort and luxury,” said Pink Visual spokesman Quentin Boyer, “whether that catastrophe takes the form of fireballs flung earthward by an all-seeing deity, extended torrential rainfall, Biblical rapture, an earthquake-driven mega-tsunami, radioactive flesh-eating zombies, or some combination of the above.”

Porn shaft, underground cinema, "Debbie Does End of Days": the puns and other jokes just make themselves.

"extractment"?

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Ancient Irish zombie hunting

Medieval Irish folk suspected neighbors of being monsters, according to one archaeological crew at work in Loch Key.

Very interesting story.  First, note the grim details of the site:

The two men were laid side by side and each had a baseball-sized rock shoved in his mouth.

"One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth," Chris Read, head of Applied Archaeology at IT Sligo, said.

"The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated," he added.

Next, observe that zombification wasn't the researchers' first thought.  No, really, it was third.  First, "Read and colleagues thought they had found a Black Death-related burial ground."  Second,

Remains of individuals buried at the end of the Middle Ages with stones stuck in their mouths have hinted at vampire-slaying rituals.

It was believed that these "vampire" individuals spread the plague by chewing on their shrouds after dying. In a time before germ theory, the stone in the mouth was then used as a disease-blocking trick.

Kudos to the brave writer for reporting still another theory:

The two Irish men could have been considered potentially dangerous people, such as enemies, murderers, rapists or they could have been ordinary individuals who died suddenly from a strange illness or murder.

Ireland under stress, duelling vampires and zombies: 2011 or 711?

Zombie economists

One economist gets Gothic on some financial policymakers:

my guess as to how to understand what Trichet and Company are now saying: they are reputationally-bankrupt zombies gambling for resurrection.

The modern zombie meme won't die, no matter how many years it's been shambling along.  Perhaps it'll attach itself to our time through its eventual naming - the Zombie Years?  The Zombie Recession?