What hopefully will happen with podcasting is what's happening with blogs, Web sites, bands and writers -- millions exist and some survive. Hopefully, the ones that make it will do so because they're fresh and good, and the rest of us will try our best not to bore you.
Graffiti Bridge
Here's a project that has New York University written all over it. Check that... Maybe I should say "Here's a project that has written all over New York University." Wired.com reports today on Grafedia, a project that allows people to interact with graffiti artists through their art. "Created by John Geraci, a graduate student in New York University's interactive telecommunications program, grafedia is part public art, part advertisement and part subversion. It's also a newfangled take on old-fashioned graffiti," Wired reported. The idea is that people see the e-mail address or keywords written on a wall. They enter that into their computers or phones and retrieve virtual images created by the artists.
| ___About Random Access___ Random Access is a daily column by Robert MacMillan that explores the latest trends in technology and how they are changing daily life. Random Access won't tell you why a new gizmo will revolutionize your ad server. It will tell you about episodes from daily life -- exasperated waiters who use blogs to vent about their customers, whole runs of salmon injected with nanoparticles for individual tracking in Norwegian fjords and the growing number of DJs who are sick of being sidelined in favor of iPods. (Only one of these stories is fake.) Most of what you see will be culled from news sources and blogs from around the world, though we will supplement Random Access with original files on the novel, unusual, bizarre and reactionary happenings in the world of technology and society. E-mail: Send links and comments. | | |
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Why? you ask? "Today, companies with big advertising budgets are the main players in interactive media, engaging in activities like online ad campaigns or billboards encouraging some sort of viewer involvement. Geraci would like to change that. 'Grafedia is the option for the little guy to get involved in that dialogue,' he said." Geraci also offers other deep thoughts: "Like, graffiti is so self-centered. It's like a dog pissing on a pole or something -- 'I was here.' Grafedia, at least the stuff I was trying to do, people see something totally new that they hadn't noticed."
So far, Wired reported, examples have turned up in New York and San Francisco, as well as in Brazil, France and England. Yes, very subversive. Expect young Basquiats to pop up all over middle America by 2050.
Now Hear This: Shut up
Technology is getting us to pay dearly to experience something that most of us no longer have: silence. The New York Times reports today that yoga and tai chi retreats -- even Carmelite convents -- are seeing a larger influx of refugees who seek asylum from noise. "More people seem to be coming to the same conclusion. Maybe it's a reaction to the endless brrrrrings of cellphones and the relentless barrage of messages by e-mail, fax and BlackBerry, but silence, for many, is becoming the great escape," the Times reported.
"At Sky Lake Lodge, a Shambhala retreat center in Rosendale, N.Y., centered on a Western form of Tibetan Buddhism, there is often a waiting list for 'Resting the Mind,' a weeklong silent retreat held every July. The White House Retreat, a Jesuit-run retreat center in St. Louis, is averaging 600 new participants a year, 'and more calls than ever before because we're on the Internet,' said Genevieve Eiler, the office manager."
Note to readers: If you know of any monasteries, convents or other religious retreats where the visitors are luxuriating in silence but the holy orders are digging their iPods, you know where to reach me.
Konundrum in Kyrgyzstan
Opposition forces now reign supreme in Kyrgyzstan, the latest ex-Soviet republic to fall out of the grasp of former apparatchiks and toadies. Even though several online news services based in the country's capital, Bishkek, seem to be unreachable via Internet, the Times of Central Asia remains up and running.
The Times has a nice online quiz space on its homepage as well, but today that quiz is devoted to more pressing matters than instability in the streets: "Kyrgyz registered NGO Muslim Women of Kyrgyzstan would like to introduce polygamy and hijab (clothing covering the full body). Do you think Kyrgyz people and the Parliament will support such request?"
I'm not sure that the women who would vote for this would be allowed to take the quiz, but I'm no expert. I did see a fascinating article just below that on an Austrian chocolate maker's joint venture with an Arabic camel farm to create camel milk chocolate, but that's a bit off-topic. PS, you have to register to read the articles, but the site is free. And if anyone has samples of camel-milk chocolate, please let me know.
Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com.
