Freyburg

Of all the things I’ve taken away from the sometimes frustrating and occassionaly mystifying iPad keynote this week, it’s the massive potential to create a new form of “print” media. Of course, it isn’t really print, but “digi-” or “e-” anything sounds stupid, and as the iPad gains acceptance the electronic nature of publications will fade into the background.

But what may emerge from this strange new platform is a new form of magazine that updates dynamically, contains video, audio, game demos or links to further detail…really, anything you can put on the internet, but in a different, strangely familiar form. As someone who writes and creates video for a living (as well as cranking out a podcast every week), this is an exciting new development. A completely new form of media might be on the cusp of emergence…and despite how nonplussed many (including myself) are about the current iPad, I think that might be the nascent device’s lasting legacy.

In addition to coddling a dead language and being pretty damned bitter about their lost colonial empire and handy defeat at the hands of the Nazis, France can now add “hatred of the future” to their long list of missteps. French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tax Google and other new media giants in order to help struggling print and other media companies. Well, pleut moi un rivoire, Nicolai, if those businesses are failing there’s likely a very good reason for their downward spiral, such as lack of a 21st century business model.

The Irish government recently enacted a new law which makes statements of what it deems blasphemy punishable by a fine of up to 25,000 pounds (about $50,000). Atheist Ireland isn’t about to take this nonsense lying down, and have published 25 blasphemous statements on their website. They’ve also stated that “medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas.” I couldn’t agree more.

Way back in 1984, William Gibson took the then new phenomenon of the Japanese capsule hotel, a place for salarymen to rest their head when they’d missed the last train home, and turned it on its ear as a last chance saloon for his criminal protagonist. While the capsule hotel hasn’t yet become a den of villainy, it is a new alternative for the many otherwise homeless Japanese desperately looking for work. While the Japanese economy continues to tank, many are turning to the tiny self-contained bunks as their last resort before hitting the streets.

I’ve never been to a capsule hotel, but I have been to Tokyo several times, most recently this October, and the homeless problem is definitely getting worse. What was at first an anomaly is now if not common place than certainly more noticeable. With an aging population and a seemingly intractable economic mess, it’s hard to see how this problem will get solved anytime soon.

China’s rise to rival the United States as a world power has led some to assume the insular giant plays by the same rulebook as the Western World. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether its the fact that the country is run by committee or the general distrust the Chinese have for Western intentions, the time is soon at hand that the West will have to deal with China on China’s terms, according to this interesting editorial in the Guardian.

Ever wondered what computing will be like once we have a trillion devices hooked up and interacting with each other? Stand by for neat-o!

Rogers, one of the rarified members of Canada’s cable and wireless oligopoly, has rolled out Rogers on Demand Online, a rather tepid answer to Hulu, the American service that allows U.S internet users to watch television shows on their computers and mobile devices (international users can’t access the service).

But where Hulu offers tons of choices, Rogers on Demand Online has precious little to watch, and what’s there isn’t worth seeing in the first place. If that were the worst of it, Rogers offering would be just another Canadian also-ran digital service, but RODO increases the suck by region-locking almost everything if you aren’t in an area serviced by Rogers cable. As a Rogers Wireless subscriber, I can get onto the site, but since the Rogers hegemon goes from Ontario eastward, I can watch very few of the available shows. That’s right, Rogers region-locks people IN CANADA.

Much as I love living in Canada (socialized medicine, gay marriage being A-OK and opting out of the Iraq war being but three highlights) we’re utterly pathetic when it comes to digital media. I was able to attend the Banff TV Fest this year as part of my scribe duties for Techvibes, and if I ever had any doubt that the TV industry in Canada is headed straight down the toilet, three days of listening to TV execs being utterly clueless about the internet sealed the deal. Here’s hoping Canadians, who have oodles of talent and technical skill, stop chasing the futility of a place in old media, pick up some camcorders, and route around broadcasting straight to the internet.

Back in the mid-60’s Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock all about how change is accelerating so fast that it’s creating anxiety, strife and conflict and that maybe we should just slow down.

As a kid in the 70’s I was shown the film below by concerned social studies teachers who were terrified down to their hippie bones by the evil that was “COMPUTERS.” At the time I thought all the stuff they described in the movie was cool as hell, and I haven’t changed my opinion more than 30-odd years later. The more change the better, I sez, and make it snappy.

Besides the film’s near-panic about technological developments we now find quaint, it also features Orson Welles in an airport, smoking a cigar on a movator. Really, what more do you need in visual entertainment?

I was recently in Japan, and did indeed see plenty of homeless people, most notably attending a rally put on in Ueno park by Christian missionaries and sleeping in the early morning on the stairs at Shinjuku station. I never went into an internet cafe, but if I had I imagine I would have run into the cyber-homeless detailed in this report.

I’ve always been interested in the coming convergence of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotech, and one of the best places to read about the latest developments in those fields is H+ Magazine, published by R.U. Sirius of Mondo 2000 fame. I’m pleased to announce that the first of my articles for H+ about a personal supercomputing company in Calgary has now gone live on their website. A couple more articles are still to come, and I encourage everyone who has an interest in where science is taking us in the next few decades to check out H+.