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Week 9

12.31.01

This is where they keep all the surveillance cameras in hipster Greenwich Village.

http://www.notbored.org/vf.fire$/
village-map.jpg

And how about Harlem? Hardly anybody's watching on Lexington Avenue.

http://www.notbored.org/vf.fire$/harlem.jpg

Boy, Times Square is crawlin' with 'em.

http://www.notbored.org/vf.fire$/
map-timessquare.jpg

Of course, that was over a year *before* they started blowing stuff up in NYC, and the people got all paranoid.

http://www.notbored.org/vf.fire$/notice.jpg

 

01.01.02

Those Linux boys in Norway are prepared for anything; they've even got it together to send Internet packets via carrier pigeon.

http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
vegard_bilder/

Forward, into the past!

http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
karlmag_bilder/18.html

 

01.02.02

Forget the Internet pigeons. These Italian guys in Bologna want to create a peer-to-peer computer network that behaves like a bed of ants.

http://www.cs.unibo.it/projects/anthill/

Much the same goes for these Belgian computer ant-fans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/
newsid_1537000/1537645.stm

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo/ACO/
about.html

All the cool cyber-ant guys hang out at gigs like "Ants 2000: The Second International Workshop on Ant Algorithms."

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~ants/ants2000/
index.html

 

01.03.02

But what if the artificially intelligent ants get loose outside the lab, and decide to wreak utter havoc with these tiny and unbearably cute steampunk Martian tripods?

http://www.tin-soldier.com/tripod.htm

Four little purple HG Wells Martians for five bucks? Man, that's a steal!

 

01.04.02

What if computer ant-trails get some kind of financial assistance from some Australian arts council? Then they kinda sit there on the Internet, doing weird, algorithmic, Shockwave-y things, with odd clicking sound effects!

http://www.paul-brown.com/GALLERY/
TIMEBASE/SANDLINE/SANDSND.HTM

Paul Brown does fine art prints, too. No Shockwave here. That one's kinda nice.

http://www.paul-brown.com/GALLERY/
GALL90/FLESH.HTM

You could paper the guest room in that print and it would subtly prey on their minds.

http://www.paul-brown.com/GALLERY/
GALL90/ORION2.HTM

Nice J G Ballard empty swimming-pool thing happening here.

http://www.paul-brown.com/GALLERY/
GALL90/SWIMPOOL.HTM

The people who read SCHISM MATRIX ought to dig into their wallets and pay real art-patron money for this kind of, uh, art.

http://www.paul-brown.com/GALLERY/
GALL90/DELUGE.HTM

 


Bruce Sterling writes books like Darwin watched animals. Find out more about him, and read tattered electronic copies of Cheap Truth, at the Bruce Sterling Online Index. He lives with his wife Nancy and their two daughters in Austin, Texas.

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