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Posts from the ‘welcome to the future’ Category

Jun 1

2 Comments

Comics and the Digital Ecosystem

I thought this was a big hit?

Hey all – I’ve been working on a bold Blogfox experiment for this month, which I was hoping to roll out this week – but that’s been back-burnered for a few days… so I’ve given myself ten minutes to jot down a couple of things I *have* to get down regarding “ye olde funnybooks” before they become too dated: One is about the value of a “hit” in any media, and the other is how to really look at “profit margins” when comics publishers move into digital distribtuion. Napkin calculations ahoy! Read more

Jul 27

Shameless Canadian Comedy Award Campaigning

Spam as blogpost. I think this is a new low. Hooray for living in the future!

As I’m neck deep in production, the twitter box to your right might be a little more active than the site over the next few weeks – but probably not very. Hope everyone’s having a great Summer!

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I am so sorry for the spam groupmail, but it completely escaped my notice that the deadline for public Canadian Comedy Award voting is coming up at the end of the week. Read more

Aug 28

+1 for Truth / +1 for Nightmarefuel

First, brilliant insight:

someone saying they’re going to look at YouTube comments is like watching a secondary character in a slasher film decide to wander off into a darkened hallway. You can’t help but think “no, you idiot, don’t do it!” – Mike Sterling

I’ll post the third part of my copyright overview this weekend – In the meantime please amuse yourself with the amazing/creepy/amazingly creepy WAHHA GO GO:

(WAHHA GO GO H/T Gizmodo via Adam Savage)

Jun 23

You’ve come a long way baby…

commodore_64_box

One of the editing suites I’ve been working in lately has a great poster on the wall – it’s a photocopy of a flyer for a local computer store sale around 1992 or so. It’s always great to remind yourself how far technology has come in price alone (A handheld Logitec Scan-Man 256 shade greyscale scanner for $500? What a STEAL). It’s the same reason I keep a couple of carefully selected copies from my old subscriptions to Compute! and PC Gaming & CD-ROM Review around (I love that it split into two magazines so as not to taunt those without CD-ROM drives).

Every once in a while though you get a real tangible example of how far computing has come, and how quickly (I had a realization last year that three or four old-ass pentiums I had kept around for various server grunt-work at home could be collectively replaced (and improved substantially) with one $50 five year old used HP desktop off-lease office system… that also used only a fraction of the electricity of it’s predecessors).

This is all just set up to link to this fun piece from Technologizer, where Harry McCracken compares the venerable Commodore 64 with the new iPhone 3GS. Not a lot of deep insight to be gained – but a couple of good “gee-whiz” moments when looking at specs and a nice trip down technology memory lane.

Lots of network neutrality thoughts likely to come up this week with the big CRTC hearings set to begin July 6th.

Apr 3

2009: The year we discovered 2001 was eerily prescient in 1968.

Just a quick little space/cinema mash-up today, starting with a cool video from over at New Scientist; Andrew Hamilton and Gavin Polhemus from the University of Colorado, Boulder, took Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and built a computer simulation of what it would look like if you fell into a black hole roughly the size of the one at the center of our galaxy:

Cool stuff on its own, but does it remind you of anything? Specifically the part after you’ve passed the Black Hole’s event horizon and are heading towards the singularity? Perhaps some particularly iconic bit of cinema? Like, say, this sequence:

I’m really not a particularly good scholar of “2001” (I’m on the record as being a bigger fan of Clarks “Childhood’s End”) but it wouldn’t suprise me one whit if the similarities between these two sequences are simply due to trying to graphically represent the same math, just with technology 50 years apart.

My apologies if that’s a little dense for a Friday (BLACK HOLE HUMOUR – HAR HAR HAR), if so – I cordially direct you to “The adorable leopard cubs who are best friends with a baby orangutan”.

Mar 3

Welcome TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (echo)

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&#038;showPlaylist=true&#038;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

Gizmodo pointed me to this Microsoft video envisioning a possible “state of technology” in 2019. It being Microsoft’s vision, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that 2019 will be full of Microsoft Surface and ePaper.

What did surprise me was a lot of the “yeah, right” comments after the article along this ilk:

…2019 is VERY optimistic. This video looks more like it might be from 2059. -gerrylum

I’m sure it’s just a confluence of re-reading “Microserfs” this week, and realizing how dated a ten year old “advanced technology outlook” it really is, and hearing a group of University Students from my own alma matter talk today, but for whatever reason I’m accutely aware at how fast technology can change in a relatively short period of time.

To try and figure out where we might be ten years from now – it’s helpful to look at where we *were* ten years ago.

Pismo

This was a state-of-the-art Apple PowerBook ten years ago.

nokia5110

This was a state-of-the-art cell phone ten years ago.

This was what Google looked like ten years ago (even better is what Google looked like eleven years ago.

Ten years ago Sony made waves by introducing an (almost) High Definition camcorder that only cost $82,000!

Ten years ago this was the next generation of video gaming.

Ten years ago this television series was just beginning.

My point being if something like the Microsoft video is the *best* we can do, given another ten years… we’re not trying hard enough.

Jan 30

Newspapers on the Internet? Aww… that will never work!

A little Friday filler, via TechCrunch

Jan 2

Happy New FUTURE!

I had new-years news all lined up, but I’m still ironing some kinks out of the new design (now with unnerving levels of GIANT FLOATING HEAD) – so I’ll be breif instead:

Happiest of New Years to everyone who joined me here since the sites relaunch last Spring, and remember – it may not be perfect, we may have a lot of work to do yet, but every once in a while it’s good to sit back and take a moment to give thanks that we’re lucky enough to be living IN THE FUTURE!

(Century 21 Calling, and other marvels of futurisim can be found at the always-awesome Prelinger Archives)