Category: Blog

“Some people seem to think that getting acquired should be the highest aspiration for an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. I disagree vehemently.”

Vinod Khosla recently complained that the current crop of startups in Silicon Valley seems to be obesssed with getting accquired and cashing out – which used to not be the highest aspiration. As he says in the article “You are missionaries NOT mercenaries” – precisely because missionaries are the only people that can attract the best employees – the primary challenge of any creative business.

Sometimes I dispair when reading Hacker News that this is all that the current crop care about – but I guess this is selection bias, on my and their parts.

Which ones have the vision at the moment? IMHO:

Github – organising all the worlds code.
Dropbox – organising all the worlds media.
Vicarious – helping computers think like humans.
D-Wave – harnessing quantum computing for real world applications.
Planetary Resources – gathering resources from outside our gravity well.

And no discussion of Silicon Valley would be complete without a link to Steve Blank’s comprehensive Secret History.

Bishop seems to be saying that Digital Art hasn’t happened, that digital technologies have been used, but the areas explored were already considered during the previous, analogue age. Harger writes in “Why Contemporary Art Fails to come to grips with digital – a response to Claire Bishop” – states early on that she will ignore “New Media” art from artists like Lozano Hemmer, Trevor Paglen and Cory Archangel, which seems a little bizarre to say the least. Bishop also states that code is “alien to human perception” – but humans write it! Watz, in his his comments on 2/10/2012 makes several points, 1) mainstream art hates media art (a horrible name) 2) commercial art market is nostalgic 3) contemporary art is wilfully anachronistic 3) Bishop isn’t ignorant, but doesn’t know the area.

Kris Paulsen sets out to review SFMOMA’s recent retrospective on participatory art, of particular interest to me after Hellicar&Lewis’s recent project for the AND Festival – “Caravideo”. In chronological order, the first project which caught my attention was “Media Van” (1971) by Ant Farm, and their remixing/updating of the project “Media Van V.08 (Time Capsule)”. Other projects of interest were Hans Haacke’s “News” (1969/2005), Matthias Gomel “Delayed” (2002) and finally the portal like “Hole In Space” (1980) by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz.

Scott Hanselmann recently wrote persuasively on the dangers of confining ones thoughts to such walled gardens as Twitter and Facebook. The re-purposing of joelgethinlewis.com as more than a a forwarding station to other ends of the internet is part of my response to his warning.

Such a beautiful film – full of insight and grace. Personal, daring and unflinching in the face of death, birth and what matters about existence.

A deserving impossible project. I wonder how much the equipment cost to “acquire”.

An astounding title sequence.

I love how clouds are made. And the rest.

A nation not worth fighting for?

“And it does!”. We still haven’t got to the same level of flexibility.

A amazing resource: Folk Streams.

The secret Russian space station program. “Diamond“.

100 million times better.

TV-B-Gone is one of the best inventions of the past decade – Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced it.

The Thief and the Cobbler, a never completed gem by Richard Williams, the man behind “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”.

From my ex. Selecting is where it has always been. Coxsone Dodd and King Tubby would tell you that.

Finally, what might happen when we finally build one.

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

I actually made a costume like this for Comic Relief back in the day.

This made me think of the infamous JWZ rant on Netscape source swearing.

Getting meta. Meta is one my favourite words of the moment. Along with Tek. Reminds me of the classic, “Musican enters look a like content of themselves and comes second” meme.

The idea of a light cone is amazing, I am sure you could build a new religion around it. You can even track your own. It’s always useful to know your local area.

Finally, someone has done Augmented Reality right. The use of an Anglepoise– one of my British design classics, is lovely.