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Here’s another link from Kevin Kelly’s blog - about his thoughts on a term that appears to be of his own creation: zillionics. Basically, the term summarizes Kelly’s thoughts on the qualitative changes that occur in relation to any one scientific or cultural thing or process when the number of parts and pieces that make it up begin increasing exponentially towards the trillions (and on!).

It’s a interesting, if slightly raw in its scientificity, post on the whole…but the little tidbit that caught my eye reads as follows:

The social web runs in the land of zillionics. Artificial intelligence, data mining, and virtual realities all require mastery of zillionics. As we ramp up the number of things we create, especially the ones we create collectively, we are also raising our media and culture into the realm of zillionics. The number of choices we have for music, art, images, words — anything! — is reaching the level of zillionics.

Reminds me a little of The Computerization of Your Human Brain.

Anyway, if you ask me (or if I ask me in your stead), that may be too many choices. Too much of even a good thing too often ends up making that thing bad - or at least less bright. Anyone else have an opinion? How about you, Stinko?

Here are several links that I saved to share on the site in the past several weeks, all rolled into one big post. Big Project is keeping me busy, so for today let’s just catch up on anything and everything a furious reader might want or need. It’s better than not sharing at all, and besides, two of the links actually come from sources outside of the NY Times!

An op-ed article about the dumbification of America.

Why do I feel as if I have been reading different and worsening versions of this same article since I was a senior in high school? Anyway, this latest version contains everything you might hope for from the “liberal” media: 1) Bush and Cheney bashing, 2) New data to support obvious information that we already know, and 3) A subtly snooty tone.

Between the three of these, a reader can be sure to receive exactly what we don’t need…more argument. I completely agree that Americans are getting dumber. It’d be a real surprise though, to run into an article (from either side of this bi-partisan struggle) that focuses more on the issue and less on the blame game. As for my contribution to the solution…oh…time for the next link… Read more

I promise to someday do more with this space than link to various articles from The New York Times, but until that day comes, take your rehashed news and like it. Bitch.

Meant to send this along a week or more ago. It’s an article about one man’s attempt to spend at least one day a week in technological darkness - no computer, no television, no celly. His description of the experience is worth a look. I empathize with his difficulties. Stop reading my blog and go for a walk.

Do not use your walk as an excuse to buy a latte. Bust up that Starbucks!

There are a lot of good things about HBO’s new series In Treatment. I won’t be sharing my thoughts on any of them, however, because HBO has pissed me off.

Having watched the very first episode of In Treatment while visiting family (I cannot afford cable at home, a result of “the artist’s life”), and having enjoyed it enough to want to watch more of the show, I did some research when I got home and was surprised to find that HBO was offering the show online, for free, via an iTunes podcast. This seemed too good to be true, but I tried downloading the episodes from the podcast, and it worked, so I shrugged and decided to just not worry about it. This was a pleasant feeling, and I privately congratulated HBO on the marketing move. I was still convinced that something fishy was going on, but my naive prediction was that I would be allowed to watch the first season of the show online, in this manner, before then being cut off.

This prospect did not bother me. I understand that even when your total production budget has been dramatically reduced - due to the fact that you shoot 90% of your show in one room, and that the majority of your cinematography consists of filming two actors sitting across from one another, at only a few different camera angles and under the same lighting arrangement - that these things cost money.

So on my merry way to therapy I went, for approximately three weeks. Due to the different sort of format they use for the show (each week features five different original episodes, but I am not going to go into any more detail, because I’m pissed off) I was able to watch fifteen half hour episodes, online, for free. That’s seven and a half hours of free premium entertainment. More than just a taste, this represents several separate meals. They might have been good meals, too. Actually, I can’t remember. I’m pissed off. Read more

I wrote the first sentence of this post three times before I gave up. You are now reading a sentence about a sentence. You are now reading a post about a post - no, not even that - you are reading a post about a post that never was and never will be. And the saddest part of the whole thing isn’t that you’re going to keep reading or that I’m going to keep writing. No. The saddest part is that, beyond this, neither of us have much choice in the matter. This never-post now does exist, despite being comprised of essentially nothing.

There are three reasons for this - why it exists in spite of its non-existence. Bang they come:

• It really has all been done before, and then some, so what else is there to do but dispense with the lie and just make something out of nothing? If you don’t understand what I mean by this, or if you disagree, consider yourself lucky. Then go out and slowly educate yourself. Misery loves company. I’ll see you later.
• You’re bored. You need something to do or to read, because at this moment, for some reason, you are either incapable of “watching” or have decided to take a break from “watching.” Like me, you sometimes fly towards a piece of news, writing, or entertainment, not so much for the thing itself but because you’ve just become accustomed to the process. You’ve grown up along with media bombardment. The television and the advertisements and the movies and the music have promised you a full, exciting, glamorous life, shared in the company of beauty, and the newspapers and the television anchors and the tabloids have provided you with enough proof to support the claim that life tends more towards the opposite. So, hey, if you can’t quite live life to it’s fullest, and, further, if everything sucks, you might as well keep yourself comfortable and occupied.
• It is what The Man wants. I don’t know who exactly The Man is anymore, I think maybe we’re all The Man (guilty by association) but, regardless, I think He wants us to pay attention to nothing, to discuss nothing, to dissect nothing, and dress nothing up in new clothes each year, so that he can continue to do what he does best. What does he do best? You may be surprised to hear see me skip over the usual answers of “control you,” or “control your money,” or “control your soul” - but, really, I don’t think he puts much effort into any of these things anymore. The Man, now, wants something simpler…something more essential and basic.

He wants victory over movement. This is the ultimate definition of control. Having gotten things to a point where even the poor can get by in terms of the bare essentials - see this absolutely ridiculous article about why “the poor are doing just fine” for a sound bite from one of The Man’s top henchmen (careful, don’t be fooled, it’s written with authority, puts forward its ugly opinion without using any exact ugly words, and contains charts!) - The Man now wants to take things one step further. He has control over the system, but the system isn’t always as dependable as he’d like it to be, and he knows that.

Read more

Second Skin is a documentary playing at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

To quote a quote (from this page), the film provides “an intimate look at people whose lives have become transformed by the virtual worlds in online games such as World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life.”

Needless to say, I will be checking it out ASAP. Why did I just say that?

Visit this page, and scroll down to the green postcard that reads: “I spend a lot of time making my boring life look exciting on Facebook.”

Please also read what’s written below, a reply to the postcard that just might manage to shine a positive light on the situation.

In case you’ve never visited the site that I just linked to, it’s called Post Secret. It’s a blog slash (/!) community art project where people anonymously write a private and/or personal secret onto an actual postcard and send the card to a guy named Frank (the originator/creator of the project). Frank reads the secrets, scans them into digital images, and puts them on the site. Secrets range from the hilarious to the downright unnerving. Here’s more information. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing.

The point: don’t spend too much time trying to make something look like something else. Especially when that thing is your life, and especially when, deep down, you know better.

End fortune cookie.

Following is a list of links that you may find interesting. I emailed them to myself over the course of the week, because I had been planning to discuss each one of them separately, but that ain’t going to happen so here they are.

• The Sad Fact Link: This article from The New York Times is about vanishing blue collar jobs. The topic of vanishing blue collar jobs is certainly nothing new, and I’m sure that there are plenty of economists and sociologists and politicians and historians who will tell you that such phenomena are just a natural consequence of business. And that could very well be true. But truth won’t provide the people covered in the article with the traction they’ll need to keep from slipping into poverty. Neither will $800, Mr. President. Again, reader(s), read The Conscience of A Liberal.
• The Gleefully Relevant to This Site Link: The value of this article, as far as I am concerned, isn’t illustrated so much by the article itself as it is by the comments that the article inspired (almost 250). The main topic of the conversation is narcissism among young Americans. Unfortunately, the article itself isn’t as insightful or as thought provoking as it could be, however it did spur some conversation (again: see the comments section). Some very interesting ideas are tossed about in those comments, by both the old and the young. Check it out. And forward the link to ten of your friends or you’ll have (purple) diarrhea tonight.
• The Not A Huge Deal But Still Sort of Pathetic Link: This story is about the recent addition of Stephen Colbert’s portrait to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. The situation itself is funny. The painting is only going to hang for a short while - between the bathrooms. But when you learn that twenty year olds “…might look at the rest of the museum, but really came for Colbert,” it gets less funny. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe no one cares about portraits - except this guy with his bobble head rhinoceros.
• The Other Blog Worth Reading Link: I started reading Patrick Walsh’s personal blog when he started writing for Cinematical.com. He’s a good, funny, intelligent writer. More importantly, he’s a readable writer. It really blows my mind (and cups my mind’s balls) when I see how many mediocre writers are out there getting their work read - when that work is hardly readable (as in, incompletely conceived and poorly constructed.) A good writer should be able to conceive and construct almost on the fly. Anyway, Patrick Walsh claims he is not a pedophile.
• The Good Example of Something Positive That Can Be Done to Offset American Technological Waste Link: Recycle that (mobile) shit.

Happy Weekend. Check out those links. After all, Saturdays are for catching up on what’s going on in your world.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ll soon be working on producing some web video episodes (webisodes!) for the site. They will hopefully be both entertaining and thought-provoking. Look for the first one to arrive in three or four weeks.

For now, though, please watch (or re-watch) the only other online video(s) I can offer for the time being, which come from my first directing effort, Over Easy. Originally released as a standalone short film, I have split it into three parts for the internet.

A friend sent me a link to this YouTube video the other day with a note that said that it reminded him of me. Unfortunately, I think he’s talking about the narrator:

Happy Tuesday Wednesday Animals.

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