My Thoughts Exactly:
Fifty years already of that weird Citroën

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The Citroën DS (pronounced in French day-ess, like déesse, or goddess) is about to celebrate its 50th birthday! Hard to believe.

Check it out :

(article in Le Monde)

Here are two fun links,in English:



http://vintagecars.about.com/od/historygreatmoments/a/citroen_ds.htm



http://www.id-ds.com/Pages/Citroen/DS.Barthes.html

The latter is an appreciation by Roland Barthes. Sample quote: “There are in the D.S. the beginnings of a new phenomenology of assembling, as if one progressed from a world where elements are welded to a world where they are juxtaposed and hold together by sole virtue of their wondrous shape, which of course is meant to prepare one for the idea of a more benign Nature.”

I assure you, without having read the original, that the translator was faithful to it.

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Neutrino:
Anti-public wifi astroturfing uncovered

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This story at Slashdot should be interesting to “Tales of the Sausage Factory” fans. It seems that the “New Millennium Research Council (NMRC)” and “The Heartland Institute” claim that municipal wifi would be a Very Bad Thing Indeed. There’s only one little snag with this slam-dunk against public wifi… NMRC is funded by the telecommunications industry, and the Heartland Institute won’t reveal who pays their bills and holds their leash. Shock! Suprise!

Personally, I always love the names that these “institutes” and “think tanks” come up with. Nice, wholesome names, aren’t they? Who could possibly argue with the Heartland? Who wants to be a luddite against the new Millenium? (yes, yes, John, I mean besides you.)

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: Rescue Orphan Works!

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The Copyright Office has begun an important proceeding on ways to allow works where copyright status cannot be determined (called “orphan works”) to become accessible to the public. The good folks at Public Knowledge have this useful blurb and links. For my take, see below . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Tales of the Sausage Factory: CUWIN Makes Cool Device

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The good folks at the Champaign Urbana Wireless Network have just relased a very cool open source program that, when attached to a device built with components you cna buy in any electronic store, become a node in a mesh network. For less that a grand, you can “unwire” a whole neighborhood. Their press release is reprinted below.

The great significance of this from a Sausage Factory point of view is that federal policy in this area is completely unprepared for the ability of a few folks ona shoe string to develop a new, disruptive technology. Spectrum policy is usually about big companies or well financed start ups. The “two guys in the garage” model is not usual in spectrum, because it is so tightly regulated. That unlicensed spectrum and open source free people to do this sort of thing is yet another good argument for more unlicensed spectrum.

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Inventing the Future:
Inventing the Future: electronic discourse done right

Maybe we don’t have to choose between persistence and spontaneity, between synchronous and asynchronous.

Consider threaded blogs vs live chat. The former has a permanent record and structure, and people can collaborate asynchronously, but lacks spontaneous give and take. The latter is spontaneous, but lacks permanence (unless someone saves a transcript, and manages their collection of transcripts, and the sharing of same with others). But do these have to be different mechanisms? Maybe we can have everything with a single interface, so people don’t have to choose?

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My Thoughts Exactly:
No on Gonzales

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Wetmachine is a technocentric place. We talk about, mostly, science and technology and their relation to society. My own particular hobbyhorse is unforseen side effects of technology, especially negative side effects. I guess you would say I’m a dystopian, happiest whenever some new technopolistic horror happens and I can say “See! See! I told you we never should have angered the gods by making fire!”

I don’t generally post political rants here. (I have a diary at daily Kos for that.)

But I’m going to add my puny voice to the chorus opposing Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, because there are limits, after all, to my perverse delight in seeing technophilia run amok. Gonzales truly is an Orwellian character, a minion of Older Sibling and a cog in the machine that is hell-bent on turning my beloved United States of America into a high-tech Ociania–replete with a prole-filled gulag and a worldwide secret army of faceless enforcers brought up on videogames and armed to the teeth with gizmos, gadgets and all the latest in mind-fuck technology.

A vote for Gonzales is a vote not only for torture and the debasement of a proud American tradition that began, literally, with George Washington. A vote for Gonzales is a vote for the gulag, an the corruption of our republic that inveitably goes with it.

No on Gonzales.

Inventing the Future:
outsource top management

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This essay by Dick Gabriel is cute, short (one page), and worth reading. Dick has a long history of thought-provoking good-news bad news jokes: this one’s about outsourcing and executive compensation.

By the way, Dick was great Lisp programmer at Stanford who founded a great Lisp company and sold it to his competitor to go work in computer science labs. Then he dropped out of tech at to get an MFA in poetry at a relatively advanced age. He writes, talks to anyone who will listen, and is a great curmudgeon. Reminds me a lot of John. Check out the photo. Better yet, check out his other writings at his Dreamsongs site.