don’t explain

Our last discussion of the Waag Society was perhaps incomplete. We never did quite discover what the Waag Society is, in point of fact. So I did some more research.

And I still don’t know.

The Waag Society claims to many things, and yet seems to work on projects in a completely disjunct set of many things. On their Organisation information page, they claim that their founding goal from 1994 is to exist as a “Society for old en new Media.” Other mentions of the society around the web also allude to this goal. Their site continues:

The Society’s -soon to be called ‘Waag Society’- mission was to make new media available for groups of people that have little access to computers and internet, thus increasing their quality of living. After a complete restauration of the Waag building, a small group of enthousiastic idealists began their activities in 1996. [sic]

So really, it would appear that their goal was not to be so much a society for the study of old and new media, so much as the promotion and enablement of new media over old media. Now, however:

The medialab developed into an avant-gardistic thinktank whith a lot of freedom. But with an eye for commercial possibilities: attempts were made to bring Waag prototypes to the market. Waag Society grew into an institution that was active in the fields of networked art, healthcare, education and internet related issues like bandwidth and copyright.

And yet it seems like most of their projects don’t reflect this new goal either, as given by example from my previous post. So, here is a question we may want to answer:

What are the Waag Society’s goals, and how effectively are the methods they employ achieving those goals? What effect have they had on the media landscape in Amsterdam?

We can begin to answer this question by putting it to the Waag Society themselves - through a series of interviews with their employees as well as their customers, we should be able to develop a good understanding of the organization and its impacts. Of course, there are moral implications to this study. Most significantly, we need to ensure that we do not invade the privacy of interviewees, particularly those not directly associated with the Waag Society. This involves methods for obtaining interviews, as well as the extent of interview questions themselves. Also important is that we gain a full understanding of the Waag Society and what they do, so that we do not misrepresent them in our final research.

I have always been fascinated by the entirety of the news and media mechanism. Their implications on society are enormous - people need to be well-informed in order to make decisions, both personal and societal. Especially with politics, the agenda of the media is a key part of this informative process, and yet is nearly indivinable to the outsider, such as we are.

Of course, each outlet of the media has a different perspective, a different spin, a different agenda. Some are blatant, perhaps even revoltingly so, such as that of FOX “news,” while other outlets are less obvious, such as the conundrum that is the government-controlled yet somehow exceptional BBC. It’s hard to say with certainty about the specific agenda of most media forms and corporations. However, print, television, and radio news sources have all existed for long enough that a fair bit of analysis may be done on their archives and evolution.

One form of media that’s rapidly becoming a major news outlet, and which does not have a long history, however, is the Internet. Outside of websites maintained by the major news outlets, the Internet is an extremely odd news source - I have commented before on anonymity and the Internet, and the faceless, baseless form of web media are somewhat mysterious. In addition, nothing on the web is constant - corrections, modifications, and even wholesale deletions can occur in the blink of an eye without so much as a notice. This is, of course, irresponsible journalism, but such is the power that the Internet affords. The shortcomings of the Internet also rear their heads - entire sites can vanish over time due to neglect or budget cutbacks. Thus to study the news from the web properly, we need a comprehensive archive of work built in real-time - but this is not my arena, nor my current interest: please refer instead to the work of Kirsten Foot.

Instead, since studying the news media of the web directly is so difficult, I am instead interested in the habits of people in our society. In an age where a majority of peoples’ knowledge of the news comes either through the television set or through word of mouth, the transfer itself of news has become even more contextual. So, what happens when we remove that context? What happens when we take habitual people and transplant them into a foreign land, where they lack the means and mechanisms of getting news to which they are native?

Perhaps they fall back upon print media. Do they pick up a local newspaper? Do they pick up the New York Times? Or perhaps they resort to using the web. Do they read CNN.com, or something more esoteric such as The Huffington Post? How do these new habits compare to their old ones?

People like to gravitate toward the familiar, the native. The mediums and outlets to which people resort when they find themselves in a distant land says much about those mediums and outlets. If people do resort to using the web to obtain their news, then a comparison between their choices online and their choices offline at home is an effective and indirect way to study something as difficult to study as the Internet.

Photo credit: Birdfarm via flickr.

Hardware enthusiasts will remember the hubbub made out of the development and impending release of the Cell processor back in 2005 and 2006. A joint effort by sony, Toshiba, and IBM, the Cell processor was supposed to revolutionize the electronics industry, rock the core of it to its bone. The basis of the Cell ideology was to be that it produced high performance not by virtue of running necessarily fast, but instead through its networking capabilities with other Cell processors. The Cell itself was supposed to be tiny enough to put in everything - your TV, set-top box, radio receiver - even your refrigerator and microwave were supposed to be able to accommodate the Cell, it would be so cheap and tiny. And, when they all talked to each other, your home would become a veritable supercomputer. Of course, the fact that the first application of this mythical technology was to be a next-gen gaming console whose power would rival that of desktop computers at its launch should probably have been enough of a warning that this would not be the case, but nevertheless the Cell has yet to find its way into my alarm clock.

So the idea of desktop-class processors powering your everyday household appliances was lost to the ages - for a time. Apparently, and incredibly, Intel has been paying attention, and have given the concept try itself - and this time, it looks like they may be successful. Their strategy is to put a cheap implementation of x86 on a chip that is easy to manufacture in droves and runs cool enough that it does not require auxiliary cooling. “But wait,” you say, “the x86 is the architectural brain behind the Pentium and Athlon chips! That’s desktop class! Intel has already made its first folly and we haven’t yet begun.” And you would be right, of course, if Intel has approached this chip with the same mindset as it had with the Pentium (especially the miserable Pentium 4, which gave us the horrific NetBurst architecture). But there’s more.

The power of the x86 ISA isn’t necessarily in any particular design strength. In fact, it is an architecture with a number of marked flaws and weaknesses, particularly a slight dearth of available registers. Rather, the power of the x86 is in its popularity - everything these days is written for x86, and the resulting pre-existing libraries and optimization knowledge is a huge boon for any project that deems to use it. And of course, Intel itself has had substantial experience with the x86 set itself. So, they began there.

I will only cover the technical details of Intel’s entrant into this market, called the Atom (and codenamed Silverthorne) in brief. For significantly greater detail, you could peruse the Anandtech article on the subject. In short, the Atom is tiny, efficient, and reasonably fast. Its most interesting architectural feature is that rather than allowing out-of-order execution, the Atom is strictly in-order. This means that if the Atom runs across an instruction that it knows will require main memory access (an incredibly slow process in terms of the sheer speed at which processors run), it cannot take the liberties nearly every processor since the original Pentium has done, and choose other instructions to run first. The reason for this decision is due to the aspect of the Atom that I find much more interesting - the emphasis of efficiency in the development process.

The implications of the adoption of this particular mindset is a revolutionary one for Intel, and one that should be adopted across all projects, not just the Atom. Already on a solid path of recovering the CPU crown from AMD after the dark years, Intel had already begun to push efficiency with its various and successful Core architecture processors. However, Atom takes it a step farther. While the standard mantra in Intel right now is that if a feature will increase performance by 1%, it may increase power consumption (and this heat dissipation) by no more than 2%. With Atom, this latter statistic has been reduced to 1%, the result of which is that the Atom runs at incredibly fast speeds - up to 1.8Ghz - without need for any sort of external cooling whatsoever. This accomplishment is also due in part to Intel’s success with the 45nm fabrication process, and the size of the Atom - less than a quarter of a penny - means that Intel can manufacture these things for an estimated $10 $6 a pop.

Another interesting feature of the development process of the Atom was that the processor itself was designed in incredibly small chunks, or “modules”, of which each developer was in charge of several. This means that developers are able to work more freely from the constraints of the processor development process, with the various stages, especially layout, less locked together. In addition, this made locking the footprint of the die down much easier - if any developer wanted more space for one of their modules, they were required to convince a neighboring module to give up some room.

It remains to be seen whether the Atom processor will revolutionize the consumer electronics industry. I hope it does, as the machines people buy these days are in increasing need of such technology - Blu-ray and (hah) HD-DVD players are becoming increasingly slow, and televisions are having to deal with increasingly ridiculous resolutions, resulting already in a slight lag that any serious gamer would have noticed by now. It will also make Intel spades of money, which isn’t a good thing for the yet-again underdog AMD (which I still hope will make a comeback after the terrible Phenom), but the beauty of the decision to use x86 shines through again - AMD could easily manufacture competing chips. VIA has been in the low-power x86 business for years, with its nano- and pico-ITX classes of ridiculously tiny x86 computers.

What can be seen immediately, though, is the benefit the development process of the Atom can and hopefully will have on Intel’s general mindset. Efficiency and modular development are features that will benefit not only Intel, but consumers as well.

And now, without further ado, the top five albums from the year of 2007.

5. Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet

Steve Wilson had a good year on this list; previously listed for his side project Blackfield and its album Blackfield II, his perhaps more famous band Porcupine Tree is here as well. Porcupine Tree has had a long history of gradual transmutations, coming into existence as a fictional name for Wilson’s own musical experiments before becoming a real band comprised of multiple corporeal people, though the music itself is still very much Wilson’s alone. As well, while Wilson has always been preoccupied with creating lush productions with various experimental elements, he used to insist adamantly that Porcupine Tree is not progressive rock in nature. This certainly turned around with the release of the band’s most celebrated album, Deadwing, which was an absolutely beautiful piece of music ranging the gamut in musical styles and emotions. Fear of a Blank Planet, then, is up against an incredibly hard act to follow. Clearly it fared rather well, considering its position on this list, but while spectacular in every way, Fear falls short due to a shortcoming in its very nature: the album itself is a concept album focusing on the apparent and supposed growing disconnect between today’s youth and reality (itself a topic of discussion), and thus is comprised almost entirely of the angry, the haunting, or the brooding. While epic and remarkable in every way, this narrow spectrum of emotion leaves the album devoid of some of the more beautiful moments of Deadwing, and does seem a bit disappointing.
Key Tracks: My Ashes; Anesthetize; Sentimental

4. Shout Out Louds - Our Ill Wills

Very contrary to the title of the album, Our Ill Wills is entirely devoid of ill wills or unhappy music; indeed it is filled to the brim with happy indie pop. Perhaps very standard as far as the indie pop genre goes, it is the catchiest damn indie pop I have heard all year long, and it very much earns its spot on this list. With a long series of short tunes, Shout Out Louds have created an album that defies any sort of advanced description I may attempt to lay down here. With never-ending explosions of joyously arranged strings, guitars, and other more exotic instrumentation, the band lays down a framework that is hard to resist. The overall cheerful tone of the music does, however, clash somewhat with the lyrics, as all manner of moods, from the melancholy to the morose, are explored with the same upbeat writing as the appropriately joyous. Especially odd is the line "I lost all my friends in an accident," which is eerily set against a particularly major melody. Regardless, the album is worth it for its overflowing indie pop perfection.
Key Tracks: Blue Headlights; Normandie; Don’t Get Yourself Involved

3. Streetlight Manifesto - Somewhere in the Between

Streetlight Manifesto is truly one of the cornerstones of the modern ska landscape. Tomas Kalnoky’s departure from Catch-22 set that particular band on an entirely different course than he had set with Keasbey Nights, leaving something of a void where his considerable songwriting influence used to exist. His return with Streetlight Manifesto resulted in Everything Goes Numb, which has been about as heralded and beloved as, say, running water. Having pushed out such an amazing and perfect piece of music Streetlight took to touring for a number of years, and finally returned to the studio to record Somewhere in the Between, a process which was likely delayed somewhat by having been robbed of nearly all their equipment while touring. Faced with the monumental task of surpassing the already impeccable Everything Goes Numb, it should be a given that many will come to the conclusion that the band fell short. This is far from the truth. While Somewhere in the Between will never be as iconic as Everything Goes Numb, it is an incredibly strong album and stands on its own as a worthy sophomore effort (the Keasbey Nights re-recording doesn’t count). The most noticeable difference between this album and its predecessor is that the sound has been tightened up significantly - the horns sound more like a professional jazz band and less like a boisterous backup to a bar band. This isn’t to say that they played poorly before, they were in fact splendid, but the tighter playing creates a different kind of energy: focused and powerful rather than raw and powerful. For the purposes of a studio album, this is the right approach to take. Hopefully they resume the raw intensity for live performances. There isn’t much else to say about Somewhere in the Between; either you will enjoy it or you will not. Give it a shot, it’s a great album.
Key Tracks: We Will Fall Together; Down, Down, Down to Mephisto’s Cafe; Somewhere in the Between

2. Radiohead - In Rainbows

I am not necessarily a huge Radiohead fan; I stand more as a casual observer, having dabbled in their works before, but never having taken the plunge. However, this album is different.
This album is perfection.
From the first moments of arrhythmic electronic percussion in 15 Step to the final notes of Thom Yorke’s lonely crooning against a percussion line falling systematically apart in Videotape, this album is perfection. Nothing is here that shouldn’t be, and everything is here that needs to be. Atmospheric, moody, and poignant, the ten songs in the album are exactly where and what they were meant - nay - destined to be. The bass lines throughout the album perfectly complement the textures and chords laid down by the rest of the band, and Yorke’s vocals are appropriately lamentful throughout. Something must be said for the fact that upon the release of this album, every one of the ten songs on the album held the top ten spots on the most played tracks on last.fm by a healthy margin from any competition at number 11 for nearly four months in a row. There is nothing more to be said: this album is perfection. I did, however, just learn that I will miss their concert in Seattle by four days owing to being out of the country, which makes me rather unhappy.
Key Tracks: Weird Fishes/Arpeggi; House of Cards; Jigsaw Falling into Place

1. Symphony X - Paradise Lost

With perfection already reached, how does this album rank in first place? The answer is, of course, by being better perfection. With Paradise Lost, Symphony X have simply created an album so intense, so technically and musically proficient, and so poignant that it managed to beat out all of these albums. The band seems to have taken a slightly different direction with the new album. By contrast for example, my previously favorite Symphony X album, V: The New Mythology Suite, incorporated copious amounts of symphonic elements and influences, with an ever-present orchestra playing metal-ized versions of classic works by Bartók, Verdi, Bach, and Mozart forming the backdrop for a very classically Symphony X storyline involving mythology, magic, and fantastical battles. The reason V was my favorite album was due to the sheer volume of classical content in the writing: it was everpresent, overbearing, and thus made V a markedly different album. Instead this time, Symphony X focuses on the traditional progressive metal ensemble rather than the string section, perfecting the neo-classical elements of their music, without falling into the trap of following Yngwie Malmsteen’s path. Rather, the classical elements are so integrated into the heart of the decidedly metal songwriting that they don’t pop until you really listen for them. This subtlety of classical elements belies a foundation entirely based upon classical music of both song and line structure which the band seems to have completely mastered. Moreover, where it may be evident from the rest of this list that a variety of emotions and musical styles are extremely important to me when listening to music, Symphony X pushes their boundaries here just enough to satiate. Granted, were they to write an entire album consisting simply of Michael Romeo’s ridiculous shredding, I would probably be equally happy, but they resist from following that path, with a number of well-executed and well-placed ballads. In addition, Russell Allen continues to prove his incredible abilities as a vocalist with a decidedly harder, angrier vocal style without falling to angst. Paradise Lost is, simply put, the best album of 2007. Go buy it.
Key Tracks: Oculus ex Inferni; Paradise Lost; Revelation (Divus Pennae ex Tragoedia)

As part of an ongoing dual-use of this blog, I will be posting various musings in preparation of a study-abroad to Amsterdam. Eventually I am going to rework the backend guts of this blog such that all Amsterdam content falls into its own separate category and feed, but that is for later. For now, let us consider the revealing study of close-reading a perhaps common email:

The subject is “Deadline: Midnight tonight.” While email subjects are, by convention, supposed to inform the recipient of the specific contents enclosed within, such that the importance and relevance of the mail may be determined without actually reading it, this email deliberately eschews transparency for ambiguity, leaving me with no choice but to open it to discern its contents. The urgency and set timeframe magnifies this effect.

The email opens with “Friend.” These people have my first name on file given my previous donation, and have used it in mailings past, so it’s of importance that they chose not to use it for this mailing. Given the ease by which electronic mass-mailings today can insert your name into correspondences, the use of the greeting “Friend” seems almost more personal, against conventional wisdom — and given the soon-to-be-revealed nature of this email, a personal tone is important to these peoples’ cause. There is a space between the greeting “Friend” and the following punctuation “–” which draws attention to this word choice.

The first body line reveals all. Concise without being impersonal (referring directly in second person to the reader multiple times), the sentence remedies all the vagaries of the subject line by stating in a lone sentence comprising a lone paragraph the mission statement of this lengthy email. Its content is complete enough to persuade immediately those who understand its implications to do its bidding with no further questions or reading required, short enough to inform the disinterested to turn away, and intriguing enough to push the interested on. The second paragraph — also a single sentence — reinforces this last point.

The content of the email follows with several extremely short paragraphs, each drilling into further and further background and generality from the incredibly precise topic of the opening line, providing as the first line did progressively wider information for the curious and numerous jumping-off points for those who have decided whether to enact upon the call of the email to cease reading.

This series culminates with two final calls. The first addresses the direct implications of the donation you will be making to the campaign; the voice of the paragraph makes no question out of whether or not the reader will in fact enact upon the email, as if to project into the reader’s mind this call. The implications listed are all secondary to the potential donor, enumerating specifically benefits to the campaign in question given the hardships listed in the previous few paragraphs. The next paragraph appeals more directly to the reader if the previous incentives are in fact not sufficient cause to donate, revealing a prize that directly benefits the reader, pushing the donation as much as possible.

Then follows yet a single-line paragraph (”Will you make a donation of $25 now?”) followed by a link to donate, thus closing with a call to action and an easy way to do so. But if the addressee is still not convinced, the email continues! The remaining content is far more general, with the exception of a description of the prize to be had for donating, interleaved with several more instances of links to the donation page.

For the sake of brevity, this analysis ends here.