On Monday, May 21, we celebrate seven years since we first shared YouTube with the world. To commemorate this occasion, here’s an updated video with some of the crazy statistics and incredible things you’ve been a part of in that time. Thanks for the amazing things you watch, create, and share!

• City in the sky is a concept about a tranquil oasis above the mega developed and polluted city where one can escape from the everyday buzz, smog and dirt. The concept is inspired by the Lotus flower which is known for its ability to emerge above the murky waters pure and clean.
• Pushpin Mario is an 8-bit re-creation of Super Mario Bros

Comics

• Interview: Chip Kidd offers us a sneak peek of the new Batman graphic novel
• Peter Parker’s Penance, an essay on the psyche of everyone’s favorite superhero, Spider-Man, from the new Webslinger collection.

Cross-Media

• Interview: Nathan Fillion talks about Serenity, Firefly, and Joss.
• Comic Book Resources counts down The top ten cruelest thing Joss Whedon has done to his characters, starting with the finale of Angel.

Film

• Interview: Andrew Garfield talks about The Avengers: “Joss Whedon is a genius, and it’s an incredible cast. I was very, very jealous, and I wanted to jump on the screen and play with them. It killed me that I wasn’t in it, but I understand why, and I’m not insulted.”
• Interview: Ridley Scott talks Prometheus with Geoff Boucher
• 5 Weird Places Marvel Movies Won’t Dare Go
• Abandoned subway station turned into epic marketing stunt for Prometheus
• The Avengers defeated irony and cynicism: A great piece from BAD’s Devin Faraci, who argues that the tremendous success of The Avengers can be attributed to the optimism and old-fashioned heroism on display.
• ‘The Avengers’ makes Marvel a “good deal” for Disney, not a great one.
• How to Enjoy Going to the Movies Again
• The teaser trailer for the twenty-third James Bond feature, Skyfall has arrived. Temporarily derailed because of MGM’s bankruptcy, the movie will hit screens in November, just under the wire for the fiftieth anniversary of the Bond franchise on screen.

Literature

• Interview: A.J. Dalton of Empire of the Saviours chats with the Gollancz blog
• Interview: Neil Gaiman speaks with Buzzy Mag at the 2012 Nebula Awards.
• Interview: The New York Times profiles Philip K. Dick, Sci-Fi Philosopher
• Interview: Red Reviewer speaks with Sarah Zettel of Fool’s War and Bitter Angels
• Interview: SFSignal talks to Campbell nominee Brad R. Torgersen of Ray of Light
• 8 Things You Might Not Know About the New York Times Bestseller List
• “I want to know how I am a small press, if I am outselling Robin Hobb and Terry Goodkind and Tolkien?” Fantasy author M.R. Mathias has a disagreement with Fantasy-Faction.com.
• In “Why is Science Fiction Dying?,” Graham Storrs opines that “half … of what is being sold as sci-fi is actually fantasy with some sci-fi elements,” a complaint with which I tend to agree with, but Ian Sales take exception in “Science fiction is dead, long live science fiction.” Both make good points.
• Should College Students Be Forced to Buy Digital Textbooks?

Science

• Interview: Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene Thinks You Might Be a Hologram
• Avatar inspires scientists to plan brain transplants
• Is the Earth a Sentient Living Organism? New Study May Provide the Proof
• Why Can’t We See Evidence of Alien Life? Why do we seem to be alone in the universe? An animated look at the Fermi Paradox.

Technology

• Aging Japan evokes science fiction future
• How will we build an artificial human brain?

Television

• News: Australia is the top Game of Thrones Pirating Nation
• The Watercooler Is in the Cloud: Matt Zoller Seitz on the Shifting Boundaries of TV

Video Games

• 16-bit Time Capsule: SNES Emulator Makes a Case for Software Preservation. Similarly, check out developer Byuu’s 2011 piece on the matter at ars technica.

Writing

• Cassie Alexander, author of Nightshifted, shares with aspiring authors The Highs and the Lows of Becoming an Author

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.

The most important and paradoxical fact shaping the future of online learning is this: A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. If you think about how learning actually happens, you can discern many different processes. There is absorbing information. There is reflecting upon information as you reread it and think about it. There is scrambling information as you test it in discussion or try to mesh it with contradictory information. Finally there is synthesis, as you try to organize what you have learned into an argument or a paper. Online education mostly helps students with Step 1. As Richard A. DeMillo of Georgia Tech has argued, it turns transmitting knowledge into a commodity that is cheap and globally available. But it also compels colleges to focus on the rest of the learning process, which is where the real value lies.

- “The Campus Tsunami/a>” by David Brooks, May 3, 2012.
Originally published by The New York Times.

• Adam Savage tells the story of his Zorg Industries ZF-1 replica from The Fifth Element, which he’s been working on for over 13 years.
• Brit Lit Map
• Game of Thrones Cosplay cosplay

Comics

• Interview: USA Today has an interview with Richelle Mead, author of the Dark Swan comic series. ComicBooked chats with her, too, in their latest podcast.
• China Miéville’s “rejected pitch” for Scrap Iron Man, a comic book hero-by-committee dedicated to taking down Iron Man, the beacon of capitalist selfishness.

Film

• Copernicus On The Science Of THE AVENGERS (Part 2)
• Getting in on the secret of Pixar’s ‘hidden’ speakeasy: A Pixar animator opened a small access door in his office, got on his hands and knees, and crawled through the opening to discover a “secret” room. The rest, as they say, is history.
• Set construction photos from The Avengers and more.
• The Two Ways Science Fiction Is Slowly Destroying Itself

Internet

• News: .pirate Domain Created

Literature

• Interview: David Brin on Existence and the transformative power of science fiction
• Interview: The Qwillery interviews Jeff Salyards, author of Scourge of the Betrayer.
• Interview: The Qwillery interviews Trent Jamieson, author of Night’s Engines
• 30 Pieces Of Wisdom From Stephen King Novels

Science

• 10 Sci-Fi Faster-Than-Light Systems
• Science Fiction Barely Ahead of Space Reality

Television

• The 7 Most Intriguing TV Shows Coming This Fall
• The best and worst episodes of Torchwood according to Topless Robot.

Writing

• 20 Famous Rejection Letters We Can All Learn From
• So what the hell is Urban Fantasy, anyway?

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.

For Armstrong, the AI we should be afraid of is not the “beatable humanoid robot we see in the movies” but rather a computer program or even a digital avatar that has been freed from our “biological limitations” to demonstrate “skills and abilities beyond what is considered to be human”; whether the ability to plan centuries ahead, to see patterns that we cannot or to link instantly to the internet, or even the social skill of “being always able to say the right thing at the right time” to get what it wants without humans even realising the game play. “AI would be able to use its superpowers to accumulate vast fortunes on the stock exchange, or even ‘be Google’, as AI would be cheaper and more productive than the human workers currently employed. It could even be a Super Clinton or Super Goebbels, able to take over by persuading us to let it.” Or it may gain more powers that we have not even thought of, given that “the space beyond human intelligence is vast”.

Luke Muehlauser agrees that AI is a threat, but believes that a friendly AI can be built that would “be benign to humans”. “Any intelligence is dangerous, and any intelligence that doesn’t share your goals is doubly dangerous, and any constraint we could devise for the AI merely pits human intelligence against superhuman intelligence, and we should expect the latter to prevail. That’s why we need advanced AIs to want the same things we want.

“So friendly AI is an AI that has a positive rather than negative effect on human beings. To be a friendly AI, we think an AI must want what humans want. Once a superintelligent AI wants something different than we want, we’ve already lost.”

- “AI uprising: humans will be outsourced, not obliterated” by Mark Piesing, May 17, 2012.
Originally posted by Wired UK.

There are currently two major revolutions occurring: the enlightenment of man and the awakening of computers. What’s incredible is that they are intertwined in their quest for information and knowledge. The more powerful computers become, the easier it is for man to access information. The better information we have, the better computers we make, and so on.

We have no way of knowing precisely what will happen with our brains. We may lose all feelings, or we might gain extra-human senses that allow for beauty to be not only recognized, but lived within.

It’s looking ahead that allows us to create effective constructs for living. In a time where many things are uncertain, we must individually live with an openness to change in order to feel secure in our lives. Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

- “Zach Puchtel: The Future Is No Place for Fear” by Zach Puchtel, May 7, 2012.
Originally posted by The Huffington Post.

With Marvel’s new Avenger’s movie out, audiences are going blockbuster movie crazy, what with the dazzling shots and expensive special fx. For most no-budget independent moviemakers it would be an expensive feat to duplicate, but for Patrick A. Prejusa all he needs is a camera, a computer, some orange juice bottles, and a roll of duct tape.

Patrick is making his own blockbuster movie called REDD, an ambitious sci-fi / action / adventure project featuring what looks like expensive special fx. REDD uses no-budget tricks like building monsters out of cardboard and duct tape, space ships from orange juice bottles and coffee cans, and various other tricks to produce cinematic quality fx.

No stranger to no-budget filmmaking, Patrick was responsible for the 2006 movie Monster Cops: The Midnight Special, a film that B-Independent said was “An absolute blast!” and HorrorTalk spouted was “Laugh out loud funny!”. It was there he learned how to think outside the box and create affordable effects pieces on a shoestring budget. In addition to the movie, he has put numerous webisodes online and has produced ads and viral videos for some big name brands.

While the ultimate goal is to finish REDD, another goal is to raise money for various cancer charities. Patrick’s mother-in-law passed away from cancer in 2006. His mother is a cancer survivor. So combining the want to do something good with his passion for moviemaking only made sense, so a portion of every DVD sold will go to the American Cancer Society as well as other cancer charities that need support.

REDD is currently running a Kickstarter campaign and looks to finish filming in time for screenings this Fall.

The next wave of digital products won’t just be about archiving the web; they’ll be about destroying the archive.

- “Forget About It: Making the Internet More Like Our Brains” by Megan Garber, May 8 2012.
Originally published by The Atlantic.

Yeah, this is happening to a lot of people this week.

• 10 High-Risk Sci-Fi/Fantasy Careers

Cross-Media

• 10 Coolest Fictional Asteroids of All Time

Film

• Interview: The BBC meets the cast of Snow White and the Huntsman and learned how they were shrunk to fit the part.
• Interview: Damon Lindelof Talks LOST Homages, 3D, and Hints at Further Sequels During PROMETHEUS Twitter Q&A
• Interview: Idris Elba Confirms He’s Returning for THOR 2
• Interview: Joss Whedon talks Avengers sequel
• News: ‘The Avengers’ is officially the 9th biggest film of all time globally, passing ‘Alice In Wonderland’ and ‘Star Wars Episode 1′
• News: Robert Downey Jr. ‘Avengers’ pay set to hit $50 Million.
• The Avengers trailer as a Lego remake
• io9 picks the 10 Best Time Travel Movies of All Timelines
• Why the Avengers is the best TV show in movie theaters: The AV Club’s Todd VanDerWerff examines what t.v. lessons Joss carried into the film world.

Internet

• Interview: Each morning at 9am for the next two weeks, (Mefi’s Own) scifi and fantasy author John Scalzi will be chatting with musician Jonathan Coulton about one of his science fiction songs — a different song each morning, — in a daily podcast over at Tor.com called Journey to Planet JoCo. Series index. On May 29th, they’ll be premiering a brand new, previously unheard Coulton song.
• There’s a kickstarter running for a Steampunk RPG called The Terah Project: Steampunk for Pathfinder. If you’ve ever wanted to play a Girl Genius-style Spark, this is the game you’ve been waiting for.

Literature

• Interview: Dalal al-Mutairi, the senior book censor for the Kuwaiti government, sits down for a chat about her job and what it entails.
• Interview: Geek and Sundry interview Lev Grossman of The Magician King
• Interview: Helen Lowe answers questions on Reddit
• Interview: The Terrible Mind of Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds
• News: Scholars study literary merits of Harry Potter novels
• News: True Blood author can suck no more out of vampire series: Charlaine Harris has announced that the final novel in her Southern Vampire Mysteries series will be published next year. Novelist Charlaine Harris made the announcement on Facebook: “the final Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Ever After, will be on sale May 2, 2013!” In less than an hour, the post generated more than two thousand “likes” and three hundred comments.
• The 50 SF Books You Must Read, according to Forbidden Planet
• The Book Depository, the UK’s largest online bookseller, which is owned by Amazon, has created a mesmerizing live map that apparently tells viewers when a book is purchased through their system. [Via]
• The Evolution, Development, and the Magic of Harry Potter
• A Grade 11 student, with a summary of Sean Dixon’s novel The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal due in two days, gets help from the author. It does not go well.
• How Fast Do You Read? Compare yourself with national averages. Compare yourself with Anne Jones, a Champion Speed Reader who consumed the last Harry Potter book in 47 minutes, about 1 page every 3.75 seconds.
• How Reading Novels Can Make You A Better Person
• WSJ asked if YA novels today are too dark- with abuse, violence and depravity. A YA writer took it literally and researched the color distribution of YA novels.
• Worlds Beyond Your Ken: A Guide to the Nebula Awards

Science

• Space program’s future and landing on the moon: How nostalgia for the Apollo program doesn’t help.

Technology

• For the first time since she was paralyzed by a stroke 15 years ago, a woman in the BrainGate2 clinical trial served herself a drink of coffee … with a brain-controlled robot arm (with heartwarming video)
• Light-powered bionic eye invented to help restore sight
• Microsoft-backed HTML5 ‘Prometheus’ tie-in recruits you for Weyland Industries
• Paralysed patients use thoughts to control robotic arm

Television

• Interview: Jenna Busch and Stan Lee welcome Jane Espenson, whose writing and producing credits include Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Battlestar Galactica, and Once Upon A Time. Stan and Jane compare notes on the art of creating villains and heroes!
• 10 of the Most Profound Sentiments Ever Uttered on Community
• In a video uploaded by the BBC today, Karen Gillan, who recently wrapped up filming her final episodes of Doctor Who, asked the crew of Community to include her in an “Inspector Spacetime” episode. Last week’s season premire of Community featured a bumper crop of pop-culture parodies, including a Glee-style opening number, a 2001 homage (with excellent use of Old Chevy Chase) and most significantly, the Instant Meme of a 22-second take-off of Doctor Who*. In the few days since, the intersection of Community fans and Who fans have been reverse-engineering the 49 year run of “Inspector Spacetime” with a forum board, a TV Tropes page, and, of course, a tumblr.

Video Games

• News: Diablo 3 Beaten In 12 Hours

Writing

• Fourteen Ways To Spot A Bad Critic: Tarol Hunt, illustrator of the webcomic Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, weighs in on hate mail sent by his readers.

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.

The importance of learning to code isn’t so that everyone will write code, and bury the world under billions of lines of badly conceived Python, Java, and Ruby. The importance of code is that it’s a part of the world we live in. I’ve had enough of legislators who think the Internet is about tubes, who haven’t the slightest idea about legitimate uses for file transfer utilities, and no concept at all about what privacy (and the invasion of privacy) might mean in an online space. I’ve had enough of patent inspectors who approve patents for which prior art has existed for decades. And I’ve had enough of judges making rulings after listening to lawyers arguing about technologies they don’t understand. Learning to code won’t solve these problems, but coding does force engagement with technology on a level other than pure ignorance. Coding is a part of cultural competence, even if you never do it professionally. Alsup is a modern hero.

- “A federal judge learned to code” by Mike Loukides, May 16, 2012.
Originally posted to O’Reilly Radar.

The internet is a beast, uncivil by corporal standards, rudely honest in its capacity to include any idea the mind can think of — and any voice, no matter how small, can ring loud in the internet’s ear.

The internet is not a country; it is not a belief system; it is not a government. It belongs to everyone, and no one, and by virtue of its existence, the internet has broken the bond of routine social contracts, conditioning our prejudiced perception of evolution and God. We are now on the path to a new human, our more ethereal counterpart…the Electro Sapien or e-sapien.

How the future supremacy of the Electro Sapien will play out is speculative, at best. Competing themes on how we came to be homo sapien, “modern man,” are still lost in interpretation. What we can infer, by way of all theories on the origin of the homo sapien — from the Aquatic Ape theory to unknown breakaway members of some homo antecessor-group, or a Homo Heidelbergensis / Homo Sapien tryst — is that many possibilities existed, and one survived.
Likewise, with over seven billion human beings living today, it is rational to assume that small, pre-Electro Sapien groups or types, directed by the species’ self-organisation, have begun to break away from the whole.

To establish who these new electro-types are, and why they will survive to establish the next level of species’ expansion, involves the discomfort of disputing or questioning the future validity of traditional interpretations of human purpose.

- “The Internet Messiah Has Arrived” by Thomas Easley, May 11, 2012.
Originally posted to Big Think.

• Amazing homemade Star Trek Shuttlecraft Clubhouse
• Sweets: Dalek Wedding Cake

Film

• Interview: Alex Pappademas examines the increasingly complicated legacy of Stan Lee in light of the release of The Avengers movie.
• Interview: NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour discusses The Avengers, among other topics, and gives Andrew Wheeler’s “Gayness of Batman” piece a shout-out.
• Interview: Sense of Wonder interviews Gavin Rothery, VFX Supervisor on Moon
• The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb has a new Twitter account, which he’s so far used to tease images of Peter Parker chillin’ on a street light.
• The Ghostbusters Tour of New York
• Taken from the Studio Stories series included on the Blu-ray versions of Toy Story 1 & 2, here’s a short story about how Toy Story 2 was almost erased before the film could be rendered for theaters.
• “We stuck your girlfriend on an island” 22 main characters dismissed in sequels

Internet

• We’re all mutants now: There are a lot of us now, and most of us are a little bit off.

Literature

• Interview: Black Gate speaks with Kai Meyer of the Arabian fantasy The Stormkings.
• Interview: Here’s a Q&A with Alethea Kontis, author of Enchanted.
• Interview: Odyssey Workshop talks to this summer’s guest lecturer, Barbara Ashford, author of the upcoming fantasy novel Spellcrossed
• Interview: Samuel R. Delany talks about Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
• Interview: Stina Leicht discusses her novels, Of Blood & Honey and And Blue Skies From Pain, with the Civilian Reader.
• ‘Game of Thrones’: George R.R. Martin fights the genre wars
• Infographic: Paper Book vs. Digital Book. Who reads which, where and why?

Science

• New Planet Found in Our Solar System?

Technology

• One week ago, anonymous engineer “BTE Dan” put up a website called Build the Enterprise. He envisions a $1 trillion spaceship modeled on the USS Enterprise being built inside twenty years. There are highly detailed plans for constructing and funding it. It quickly spreads to GizMag, DailyMail and other places.
• Russian researchers want to replace your physical body with a holographic avatar
• Why The Scariest Sci-Fi Robot Uprising Has Already Begun

Television

• Interview: Jason Segel tells Jon Stewart his idea for a post-apocalyptic How I Met Your Mother ending. I’d watch it!
• Interview: Talking Game of Thrones: Interview with Amrita Acharia
• Check Out the Low-Budget Russian ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Remake
• ‘Game Of Thrones’ Running Out Of Unkempt Old Men To Cast
• More gossip on the upcoming season of Doctor Who. No spoilers, just guess work.
• On June 7th, the Disney XD channel will premiere a new, 10-part miniseries: Tron Uprising. The series will feature the voices of Elijah Wood, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Boxleitner and more. Combining 2D and CGI animation, it is set between the events of the first and second Tron movies. Trailers: 1, 2. 2011 ComicCon Preview. Disney released a full-length “prelude episode” yesterday evening (US Only): Beck’s Beginning.
• Watch the first trailer for Revolution, the new post-apocalyptic fantasy / science fiction show from J.J. Abrams and Supernatural’s Eric Kripke
• Why The Star Trek Universe is Secretly Horrifying

Writing

• The Rule of Threes: Expressive Character Design
• What 50 Famous Authors Want Us to Know About the Writing Process
• When do you give up or start over?

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.