Hey kids, so we’re liveblogging here from the Short Hills Apple store covering the iPhone, it’s really sweet. Check it out
Archive for June, 2007
Things That Are Still Funny: Part 1
From the Dept. of Things That Are Still Funny
1) Fabio rides rollercoaster, gets hit in the face by a bird. Kills it. With his face.
2) Impossible is Nothing becomes douchiest video of 2006
Oh Boy
This study paper analyses the extent to which clandestine organizations embedded in the military andi ntelligence branches of government have been infiltrated by different ET factions, and the threat this poses to the sovereignty of humanity.
ET, of course, meaning aliens. AWESOME.
Situationist Activism and the Uncanny Valley
There’s a superbly cool hypothesis in robotics that I’ve been in info-fatuation about lately called Uncanny Valley, which discusses the comfort that humans feel in relation to the “humanness” of a machine. Essentially the argument goes something like this: human empathy and familiarity with a robot increases as it becomes more human-like until a vague point very close to a complete human likeness — during which there’s a sudden drop in a human comfort with the object. (a good example is fear of zombies, or clowns –thanks Xtina–, or mannequins)
This much seems intuitively true, but non-obvious. However, I feel that the Uncanny Valley hypothesis doesn’t go far enough. I think the insight isn’t limited to the way robots are constructed, but to the way environments exist more generally, and to the way situationist activist movements have worked in the past, and how they might work in the future.
