An amazing/creepy visualization of what life might be like when we are “jacked in” to a virtual overlay 24/7. Lots of great little details in the animation. Note the sea of advertising that can be controlled, paying you more money per second depending on your environmental saturation.
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
Okay, so maybe referring to The Obama as specious is a bit of a stretch, but, dammit, I wanted that pun! And, really, it was just a setup for this awesome graphic by artist Mike Rosulek:
In one of their prophetic conversations McLuhan made the following prediction: ‘You’re going to win the war, Timothy. Eventually. But you’re going to lose some major battles on the way. You’re not going to overthrow the Protestant Ethic in a couple of years. This culture knows how to sell fear and pain. Drugs that accelerate the brain won’t be accepted until the population is geared to computers. You’re ahead of your time. They’ll attempt to destroy your credibility.’ Leary replied with typical Irish blarney: ‘It’s incredibility I’m after’, declaring himself a true futurist once and for all.
“Just Say Noel!” Posted on December 14th, 2009 at 5:26 pm by Steve
It’s that time of year once again. Posting Nina Paley’s excellent sticker(h/t to lulutsg!) sent me scurrying to the far corners of the web, and I found this little Christmas tidbit courtesy of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities:
in 1659, a law was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony requiring a five-shilling fine from anyone caught “observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way.” Christmas Day was deemed by the Puritans to be a time of seasonal excess with no Biblical authority. The law was repealed in 1681 along with several other laws, under pressure from the government in London. It was not until 1856 that Christmas Day became a state holiday in Massachusetts. For two centuries preceding that date, the observance of Christmas — or lack thereof — represented a cultural tug of war between Puritan ideals and British tradition.
The law makes for strange bedfellows. In this case… I expect I’ll be waking up next to the younger Reverend Mather. And, perhaps, I’ll finally learn why they called him “Increase!”
No, that’s not a green grocer chanting… that’s friend of the blog MK, in an earlier incarnation as high school TV production teacher. This photo’s for him:
(For the record, that’s a billboard takeover in the UK by mob ster.)