Activation Theme / Windowlicker

Windows 3.1, Microsoft Corp. 1992

Tomorrow it's two entire decades since Windows 3.11 was released. The anniversary of a service pack for Windows 3.1 is a poor excuse to launch into this post, I know. You'll have to forgive the nostalgia - my first computer was an IBM PS/2 running 3.1. A technician had to be called out several times at expense to reinstall Windows as a result of my exploring the system. That computer is long gone after being replaced with a new Aptiva in 1998 - itself twice succeeded. Something about the old system still lingers fondly in my memory. I recall the last times I used that old operating system.

We Broke Free

Still going strong, Jez Page, 2010

Jack: Well, we're here. We're sitting on the most perfect beach in the world, and all we can think about is-...
Angela: "Where I can hook up my modem?"
-The Net, 1995

I hate phones. I've long disliked taking phone calls, particularly from relatives in the US because of that slight audio delay stepping on everyone's cues. Around the turn of the millennium everyone in school started getting mobile phones. Call me a contrarian and, paradoxically, I'll agree. Amongst those age-groups and in that time, the phones were status symbols and displays of affluence. I've always eschewed those things - for example, I don't wear any type of jewellery. Just before I finished school I went out with friends for an entire day and didn't come home till 1am. My parents threatened to buy me a phone which I vehemently refused. There is nothing I find more annoying than having to drop what I'm doing to answer the home landline, except maybe people paying more attention to an incoming message on their phone than my half of the conversation. I like remaining un-contactable. Here comes the however. However, when I was down in London last year I was away from my desktop computer for four and a half days. I had to rely on that other thing I hate, television, to remain informed about events and it never asked 'Would you like to know more?'.

Heimcomputer

Commodore 64 startup screen

Back in April I mentioned that back in 1998 (this sounds recursive) I had stumbled on some VBScript examples on my old Aptiva. In much the same way any opportunity to learn French in school was quashed by the limited scope of phrasebook teaching and the absence of anyone to actually speak to in the language, my exposure to VBScript yielded nothing more than the usual surface familiarity. When the PlaySation 2 launched Sony tried to pass it off as a computer by bundling YABASIC and thereby secure certain tax advantages. I recall the official magazine had a programming column for a short time, but copying the text via controller was as tedious as filling out a form for tax relief. I only bothered trying it once with a program called RAINDROP - still on my memory card, 66KB last edited 13:57 April 7th 2002 - which rendered an effect that looked like raindrops in a puddle. A fairly underwhelming reward for the effort.

You Spin Me Right Round

Rear cover art (G, Garbage, 1995)

The final track of the album fades out. The laser assembly returns to its starting position with a whir and the disc slows to a halt. All that remains is the faint hum of the speakers. The disc ejects and you place it back in the case, glancing at the artwork before slotting it back into the rack.

The older generations oft pine for the crackle of vinyl and the large elaborate cover art, and I sympathise as someone who has undergone the rite of digging through parents' vinyl collection. Our attitudes to distribution media are more tied up with memory and nostalgia than any qualitative superiority as some audio enthusiasts are always attempting to prove. Whilst technological progress enables me to carry one and a half thousand songs on my old 8GB iPod Nano, which is a hell of a lot more than the 8 track decks my Dad remembers, my own musical experiences in the 90s bind me to the compact disc.

A Design For Life / The Messerschmitt Twins

Electron micrograph of Bacteriophages, Public Domain

Today is exactly a decade since I finished my first play of Metal Gear Solid 2. Or it would have been if I had finished this for the 17th of March.

To begin with, we're not quite what you'd call human.

Back in the 90s I had a lot of shareware and (unbeknownst to me) pirated games. When the PS/1 was replaced with an Aptiva in 1998, I set about porting my stuff via floppy disk. The instant A Drive engaged the screen cut to a blue and red DOS prompt warning me that a virus had been detected. To put it mildly, this was not the most encouraging thing to happen with the brand new computer, as I had a legacy of breaking the old one. This was my first experience with an anti-virus programme and I had never even considered that all those dodgy floppies might be riddled with anything other than the files I put on it. The particular viruses that were detected by Norton (of cross-armed fame) are long forgotten, but in the following years I was captivated by the idea that there's something almost alive in the digital world - unseen technological analogues to our organic processes.

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

Playstation 2 Collection, PseudoGil, 2007

When the PlayStation 2 was launched I had to wait a year before my parents could afford one for my birthday, and even then I had to go without a Christmas present that year because it was that expensive (around £250). Flash forward seven years and the old console had succumbed to drive failure. My parents bought me a replacement slim PS2 which cost only £80. With the release of the PS3 in 2006 I was hoping to follow a few series into the next generation: Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, et al. As always, the launch price was ridiculously expensive and none of the launch titles interested me, so I waited and saved - every year I put my Christmas tips into my 'PS3 fund' and every year there's a new reason not to buy one.

By last Christmas I made enough to afford one, not due to lack of tips over three seasons, but because the price has barely moved. At the time of writing it appears the cheapest model has finally dropped under £200. I imagine that won't last as Sony will employ the same trick they've been using for five years - halt production, swap out the hard drives for larger ones, restart production and slap the old price tag on them. Given how bloody long it has taken for the price point to decrease, adjusted for half a decade's inflation it probably hasn't at all.

Seen Enough?

Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me and we understood
-The Caves of Altamira, Steely Dan (1977)

Triplets 14th Street, heather, 2007

No-one is ever paid royalties for Robin Hood and the Monk - the oldest attested ballad of the titular archer. Look at the diverse productions derived from the folk tale of Robin Hood. Where would the modern entertainment industry be without the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm? Such public domain works preceded the shift from cultural to economic capital. The wealth of the developed nations is today largely composed of intangible assets, mainly concepts and ideas and their resultant products, which once known are easily reproducible. This is a problem as our wealth then lies in a naturally infinite source. In this context it's plain to see why copyright terms are continually extended; and if the industry lobbies are correct in their assertions of economic clout, then I can confidently predict that in twenty years a defrosted Cliff Richard and a waxwork Mick Jagger will once again be campaigning for the prolonging of terms for another generation. When these terms exceed the average lifetime they will in effect be infinite. The only ones around to observe the passing of a century-scale 'time limited monopoly' will be perpetual corporations.

Ready Let's Go

Beyond The Infinite, Prij, 2005 

Every year I forget to write something on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, and judging by the lack of material here this year was no different!

I remember when I was around nine, and hardly anyone in my class could name the first man on the moon, my dad had told me about the first man to go into space. He and the others that followed him were mortal men and women, but they have and will find themselves amongst the heroes in the sky. I'd rather kids want to be like Yuri Gagarin or Neil Armstrong than one of Simon Cowell's puppets because it's exactly what needs to happen in order to regain the future that should have been already.

One of the earliest releases from the original Human League was a tribute to Gagarin, but also a tribute to the people of the Soviet Union that made it possible. The Dignity of Labour chronicles the miners digging coal to make steel with which engineers construct the launch pad and craft that propel Vostok 1 and its occupant upward into the void.

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Hexadecimal Genome

Eye-Bee-M, Paul Rand, 1981

I mentioned in October that my first computer was an IBM PS/1. In fact, I also had a used Commodore 64 for a few years, though I can't remember which came first; plus, I never really thought of the C64 as a computer. Like a console it plugged into the tv and it had a tape deck which to my young mind was equivalent to a game cartridge but with excruciatingly long loading times.

The interface of the 64 made it difficult for me to accidentally break it - the command for loading a game was written down on a piece of paper, and that was as much as I knew. By comparison, a technician had to be called out at least three times to reinstall Windows 3.1 on the PC. This was the same OS that came with a tutorial for using a mouse, so it was simply a case of double clicking the wrong thing. I used to explore the System and Windows folders looking for interesting hidden stuff (ooh, regedit.exe), but I only remember one particular time now in which I went into the Control Panel and decided to change the theme settings to something more Christmas-y. Unfortunately when it was next booted, Windows failed to load because my Christmas theme exceeded the video card's colour limit. You live, you learn.

The Artist Pretending It's Art, The Question is: Where Do You Pay?

Penny Black Printing Press, takomabibelot, 2009

What separates entertainment from art? If "all art is quite useless" then the last blockbuster you saw in the cinema is probably more so. But it makes a hell of a lot of money for those who control the media, hence these quite useless products are copyrighted for nigh a century. Our culture is far from ours in possession. How can it be called culture if can't share it? Last month I asked Who will be the first to give it all away, and Who will be the first to take it all for nothing?

 The web was the first gift, it's architecture free from commercial claims. The second question has already been answered by the millions running torrents over the global network, and the unlucky few who have been subject to legal action (that often never goes to trial). The latter is a direct result of the disruptive innovation of the former. The buying and selling of music is a very recent development in the history of music (which is entangled with language and similarly as old) made possible by the invention of recording media in the late 19th century - only then forming a concrete object with value.

The Information Chase

Banksy Leake Street London, The_Magician, 2008

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. An object which would long ago have toppled to the ground, if it were not for all those counterbalanced lead weights and years of continual stabilisation work. When the Italian government requested help in saving the structure, it was seen to be more important to preserve the tilt for tourism than make it a naturally stable building as it was intended and like any other. The earth shifting beneath it put it on the cusp of collapse centuries ago. The tower is as much a symbol of man defying physics as it can be a metaphor for the copyright industries.

Reformat The Planet

8-Bit Art, ConvenienceStoreGourmet, 2010

I remember some of the first games I played when I got my first computer (an IBM PS/1) sixteen years ago. Thanks to shareware, and also rampant piracy in the local IBM factory, I had The Duel: Test Drive II, Crystal Caves, Keen Dreams, and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis (all seven floppies of it). Of course, looking back the graphics were pretty awful, Test Drive's level scenery was highly repetitive, Keen Dreams' audio wouldn't work for some reason, and the dialogue in FoA lacked voice acting. I also had Wolfenstein 3D  and Prince of Persia, but they don't count because the former would never load and the latter was lacking the manual, so I had no idea how to draw the sword and therefore get past the first level. Yet somehow I managed to get a number of years enjoyment out of those few games. I've grown up in the medium as I never say 'video games'

Pretending To See The Future

so happy there is INTERNET COVERAGE, irina slutsky, 2008

In a mobile multimedia multichannel world it's difficult to imagine just how centralised information and communications were in years gone by. I'm not quite old enough to have grown up with the web (online just short of a decade) but I do know from having limited access when abroad that disconnection from the hive mind is like suffocation. It's hard to understand the shared experience of millions of people listening to the radio as Chamberlain declared war on Germany in 1939.

I remember looking at the audience figures in What's On TV? in the 90s and the major soap operas would bring in a maximum of 9 million viewers. Only something like a Christmas Day special of Only Fools and Horses would break that and be able to claim the nation itself was focused on that channel in that hour. But to think of something with the same gravity as a declaration of war, that could only be 'September 11th'. The first global event of the modern era. I first heard it over the radio when I got in from school, then I went online to see it on every news site, and I turned the tv on to see every channel carrying US news feeds. There were probably instant messages and e-mails and phone calls all communicating the same thing to others.

Then Your Children Will Be Next

There are 58,789,194 people in the UK at the last census in 2001. Along with 92.1% of that number I have classified myself as white. Specifically, White British, and only because I'm not White Irish or White Other. I'm obviously white and since I live on this island called Great Britain I suppose British is a suitable enough adjective, so what is it I have in common with all those other white people? Some sort of racial heritage? Some sort of national identity?

Computerwelt

Lego Technic 2/2, MiikaS, 2008

The "mainstream-media" is always producing these pieces about internet addiction and challenging people to live without the internet for X amount of time. At no point have I seen the media challenge people to live without writing or the wheel - the preceding most important technical revolutions in history.

The greatest danger is viewing an innovation as a toy. The Classical Greeks had steam turbines, but elected to power spinning-tops instead of factories, or at least viewed it as a curiosity. The wheel was absent from the pre-Columbian Americas except for stone proto-wheels on children's toys. Despite how the internet/web has demonstrably revolutionised the dissemination of information, old media treats it like an amusing sideshow. Which is why they continue to flounder in the post-scarcity digital world, railing against progress and demanding someone stop the children.

[The web] is a full-duplex, two-way medium, more like the telephone than the television. Entertainment is experienced as doing, not just watching. Old Media types might think that the Web is filled with empty eyes and empty heads [...] There is no audience anymore: the Web's eyes are active and in search of actuality
-Steve Baldwin

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Quadrant 3

F-35 JSF Developmental Pilot Helmet, Image Editor, 2007

One of the more overdone tropes of Western cinema is the notion of the machine revolt. Most people are familiar with The Matrix and Terminator, but I highly recommend Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 as an early example of the genre. The final scene of Colossus is as poignant as John Connor's radio broadcast at the end of Terminator 3 (which was in all other respects a bad remake of T2).

In all these films the machine revolt is preceded by a common act - a computer is empowered by man to do what we are either unable or unwilling to do or think.

Live Forever

Public Domain, 2006

Death is an absurdity to the living. Those who say they do not fear death, do not believe in it - rather they believe in an afterlife. We have explored our planet, the solar system, and seen beyond the galaxy. Yet death remains terminal, and the experience itself remains open to conjecture.

At the moment, a member of some online forum might be killed by some random event, and that'll be that. But in the coming years, well into the internet's lifespan, the web will become increasingly cluttered with the deceased. That is, their online life will be preserved - MySpace, Facebook, Bebo filled with dormant accounts as shrines. In twenty years we might visit YouTube and see Peter Oakley alive and well, talking, sharing his memories and experiences long after the organic matter that stored them has decayed. Part of him will be preserved electronically, essentially forever.

Blue Light

The Gloaming (Awful Paintbrush Splice), Prij, 2007

I'm using my favourite little gadget to write this. The Padre uncovered it in an office spring-cleaning at IBM. It's a 1999 Palm III branded as an IBM WorkPad - very basic compared to any new PDA. Unfortunately I'm without the data cable and the PC doesn't have an IR sensor (which I was sure it it did). The WorkPad will be replacing the tonne of paper notes that are strewn throughout my room. It's also how I'll be writing whilst in Cyprus next week, and any time I'm away from the computer from now-on. Although I'm a little apprehensive about relying on AAAs and only a minute of backup power. Might turn out to be easier and less stressful to just use paper.

Alles Klar

Alles Klar bei die Mauer?, Prij, 30/06/06

The Padre bought me a small FM/AM-MW/SW portable radio back in April and I've got into DXing - probably because I listen to the shortwave samples on Dazzle Ships too much. I found Radio Prague pretty easily, but it's just a news magazine broadcast in a different language every 30 minutes.

I was listening to Voice of Russia this morning - bizzare to hear Soviet national anthem (broadcast without words, the Soviet/Russia anthems are identical). The programme was 'Moscow Mailbag' presented by Mikhail/Michael and Olga. Mike seemed to be a native English speaker, possibly Russian-American, whereas Olga had a very heavy Russian accent and somewhat stilted English - short, basic sentences; perhaps reading from notes. They read out and answered questions sent to the station from listeners around the world - about 90% of which came from the USA.

(Stares Blankley)

Marge: (after Lisa laughs at a cartoon disowning the Bill of Rights) Lisa, that's not funny! You believe in the Bill of Rights.
Lisa: (giggles) I don't know whether it's the lack of sleep, the sodium pentothal, or that it's the only cartoon I've seen in two months. (giggles) (seriously) But this is what I believe now.

Having had exactly 3 hours of sleep since Noon on Wednesday, I had to think fast and pretend my disk failed and therefore couldn't hand in the report today. However, having experienced that for real before, my acting got a little too real... I was ranting to the people sitting beside me about the fucking gale force winds and how whenever the weather is less that sunny, my disks seem to fail.

And then I realised tonight that I believed my disk really had failed. I completely forgot I was making it up. Now all I need to do is deprive my lecturers of sleep and convince them I handed all my work in.

NB: The quality of this and all pieces I have written today are reflective of the shattered, expressionless, non-blinking state of mind I'm currently in. Starts acting out the final scene of Taxi Driver... o_o

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