Joshua & Gwendolyn at eTech this year

Posted on January 31, 2008 by Thomas Purves

UPDATE: Temporarily unposted while they were in Cuba, now reposted. If you are at Etech, don’t miss this one on Wednesday. From just what I’ve heard of their experience there so far, not to be missed!

Joshua and Gwen Lift07
I’m super excited that my friends Joshua Kauffman and Gwendolyn Floyd will be presenting presenting at ETech this year. And presenting something really cool too. They’ll be presenting their findings from their research mission to Cuba, a country isolated from our particular digital culture but, on the cusp of dramatic social and technological change if/when the American embargo finally drops with the passing of Castro.

etech logo…All the while, barely 1 in 1000 people have access to the Internet in a form recognizable to the average connected person. Mobile phones are nearly as absent from the technological mix. In Trinidad de Cuba, one hustler proudly showed off his mobile phone to us, though it didn’t even have a service provider…

… What will happen when a cultured, literate, hyper-social people get access to the Internet for the first time? How will their virgin experiences and experimentations impact the rest of the world? Cubans teach us to strip away layers of plastic, metal, and code to the root of what technology is, and what it has always been. From a people that have been greatly anticipating the future—any future—we’ll be left with clues for the promising technologies of our own near future by looking at recent progress and universal lessons in the Cuba of today. ”
Of Necessity and Humanity: What Cuba Can Teach Us About Ourselves and Our Own Technology.

Gwen and Joshua will also using the exposure from ETech to help launch their latest project REGIONAL, “an interdisciplinary design and research network that performs and applies original analysis of global society, culture and commerce, uncovering and developing opportunities for profitable innovation and meaningful cultural intervention.” neat stuff.

File under wonderfuly bright minds of our generation.

Pictured Gwendolyn and Joshua at Lift 07 (and Regine Debatty)

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Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Posted on January 27, 2008 by Thomas Purves

I’m really enjoying The New Sheltand Wet/Dry these days as an excellent distraction. Reminds me of the heyday of boingboing in it’s prime.

Recommended.

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Aside: There Will Be Blood. mini review

Posted on January 24, 2008 by Thomas Purves

there will be bloodThere’s actually not that much blood, in there will be blood. But it’s awfully menacing nonetheless. I came out with this feeling as to why people *really* want this to be a Great Movie, to win an Oscar if not all of them. To give the film meaning. If you’ve seen it, you desperately want it to have some real meaning because, the consequences, otherwise, are troubling.

On the surface, There Will be Blood is a movie about the evils of capitalism vs the evils of evangelicalism (no third options are presented). Great liberal hot buttons to be sure, but there’s no actual debate as to the actual merits/demerits of these ideas as this is a movie about characters (two monstrous, screen chewing characters) not about ideas. This is debating by critiquing the person rather than the idea. The notion of this movie as constructive social commentary falls through.

What’s more PT seems to be saying that should you fall in to one camp you may be pleasant on the surface but, fundamentally, you are creepy, maniacal and flawed human being. Should you fall in to the other camp, you may be pleasant on the surface but, fundamentally, you are creepy, maniacal and flawed human being. Not second option is presented.

There is only one character in this movie, Plainview and the preacher are the same. All other characters are little more than scenery in There Will be Blood, consistently represented with no effective free will of their own.

In PT’s world, all people are either evil, or inconsequential. Pick one.

This is why the movie cries out for validation on some/any other basis. Critics want it to represent a valid and relevant social allegory, or failing than to stand as solely a Great example of acting and film-making craft

Because if, in your mind, you can’t safely compartmentalize it as a Great Film then you’d have to consider this film, like the character of Plainview himself, as nothing more than an adept but otherwise sad –if not crazed- extended, bitter embodiment of the patheticism of you and me every other ordinary human.

And that could get under your skin.

For the record, I liked No Country for Old Men a little better.

Link: theatrical trailer

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