Connection Quanta

How to make U2 more newsworthy

2009-07-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

Watching the "news" permeate through various RSS feeds in Google Reader gives us an interesting insight into the workings of journalism today. It allows you to watch the press making things more and more "newsworthy" - for which, of course, read "sensational".

For example, compare this account of Dublin residents picketing the dismantling of a U2 gig yesterday:

"protesters were angry not so much at U2 but at the council, which approved the stage removal works"

with this much more exciting version today:

"the dismantling of the world's most expensive – and most preposterous – rock show... required almost two days of continual activity and the relentless rumble of juggernauts down narrow lanes"

See the writing skills on display as the article is honed. Marvel at the artful alliteration, exciting economy with the truth and noticeably reduced information content. Add a few spurious buzzwords about the tour's carbon footprint (*) and you're done.

Much more newsworthy.

Sigh.

(*) My bet is the carbon bill for the tour is being offset in some way - or, perhaps not. I hope so.

I Met The Walrus

2008-12-09T13:30:00.001-08:00

I just found this on Twitter, here.

It's quite the most amazing thing I expect to see this day/week/month and I'm posting it here so I can find it again easily in future.

And here are some other great things from Twitter today:

InstaPaper - offline web-page reading for iPhone / iPod Touch (via @gleonhard )

EMusic - need to look into this

Oliver Postgate 1925 - 2008 - Sad news but great memories

Free mp3s from 4AD

From The Basement

PeopleBrowsr - TweetDeck in a browser

Convinced, yet ?!

( I fully intend this blog will be more than a load of tweets - but there's plenty of time... )

The Pale Blue Dot

2008-12-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the larger version of that picture by clicking this link:

Saturn Panorama

Now look more closely, for a small pale blue dot. It's In the top left section of the picture, just outside the main section of Saturn's rings.

It's really small.

Got it ? So, what do you think it is ?

A comet ? Another planet ? A meteorite ? Space dust ? A flaw in the camera ?

It's Earth. Viewed by the space probe Cassini, from the other side of Saturn. It's an updated version of the original ¨pale blue dot¨ picture, with the added spectacle of the ringed planet in all it's glory.

It's us, looking back at ourselves, perhaps seeing ourselves for what we really are.

Cassini was launched in 1997 by NASA, and went into orbit around Saturn in 2005, from where it has been broadcasting information ever since. There's more information here and in many other places on the web, but I find the picture itself more than enough - my own personal Total Perspective Vortex ,which I can look into without fear, but with a tiny inkling of what Douglas Adams was getting at.

It was first shown to me by Don Airey, while mastering his cracking new space-rock extravaganza ¨A Light In The Sky¨ earlier this year, and it's stayed with me ever since.

Some people I've shown it to are competely underwhelmed by the picture, others are scared by it's demonstration of our insignificance, still others (like me) are simply awed.

What do you think ?

Acorn Dreaming

2008-11-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

the greatest achievments were at first, and for a time, dreams.

the oak sleeps in the acorn.

james allen

The time has come to start putting Project X into action.

A Load Of Tweets

2008-11-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

So why do I love Twitter ? Check out these tweets - all from my stream this evening, mostly music-related:

Musicians - Talk Back To Your Core Community ( Great advice )

iPhone / iPod Touch 2.2 update

( Complete with PodCast download built into iTunes ! )

Great Royksopp music video

Greg Hall's first Making A Film On No Money blog post

Twitter is radically changing the way musicians are building communities of supportive fans around them.

Robots Improvise Music Using Humans, Algorithms

and last but by no means least

Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing

- Plus lots of answers from my followers for a question about an upcoming Mastering Media blog post.

What's not to love !?

Twitter Haiku

2008-11-15T05:28:00.000-08:00

So, why a new blog, suddenly ?

Edit - or, "Pretentious, Moi ?"

The trigger was when I was prompted by Brian "CopyBlogger" Clark's Twitter Haiku competition to think up and post this:

Tweet, blog, stumble - digg
re-tweet, comment, trackback, link
Connection quanta

which tries to capture something I've been thinking about for a little while now - the mysterious nature of "Social Media" in general, but Twitter in particular. About the (potentially) unlimited connectivity between posts, people, comments and links in the so-called Web 2.0 world, and especially how posts on Twitter can be both tiny, indivisible units but also part of a massive, intimately connected "stream", or wave of interacting, overlapping, interrupting conversations.

I think of each tweet as a little quantum of connection - a tiny packet of social media energy, simultaneously a single unit and a part of the huge rippling wave of the global twitter stream. Each tweet or comment or reply is a little like one of Blake's grains of sand, a potential gem which just might contain the whole (web) world - an unfolding lattice of conversation and reaction and links out into countless blogs and their comments and trackbacks and links... or at the very least, a link to a funny video.

All of which reminds me of a different subject entirely.

So, I'm working on a post called "Social Media as Quantum Mechanics" - yes, really - exploring my fanciful notions of stream-tweet duality, tweet uncertainty principles and Schroedinger's twat. Sorry, tweet. Or maybe not.

Edit - oddly enough, this post has never materialised...

Meanwhile, here are a few random favourite tweets to keep you going - most contain links, so follow them:

In other words, this blog will just be all the stuff that's doesn't feel suitable for Mastering Media - random thoughts, posts, cool links, iPod Touch Apps, more haikus (unlikely!) and whatever else seems like a good idea at the time. No need to look cool, or knowledgeable, or SEO-ed, or even relevant or interesting. I can't promise this is the real me, but it's Even Closer.

So, I suggest you go outside and do something else less boring instead !