Boing Boing » Chris Arkenberg

Chris Arkenberg: Thanks and sayonara!

Chris Arkenberg — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:03:13 +0000

I've had a great week here at Boing Boing! It's been fun, educational, and a little bit nerve-wracking. And it's been a great opportunity to promote some of the minds & ideas that are inspiring me. Thanks to the staff for supporting me as a guest blogger, and special thanks to David Pescovitz who is just about as nice a guy as you could imagine.

Here's my own self promotion before I depart: I post all original content semi-regularly on my blog URBEINGRECORDED. I'm very active and trading a lot of sweat equity but I'm technically unemployed. Here's my LinkedIn.

I make music - mostly electronic but across diverse genres. My currently-posted works are at N8UR, including originals and a bunch of remixes. I'm very proud of my Radiohead remix so if Thom or Johnny are reading this (or anyone who knows them), please give it a listen. My most recent published work is an E.P. called Western Rains, embedded below.

Also, related, my friend Jamie Wyatt is a great singer & songwriter.

I live in Santa Cruz, Ca. - one of my favorite places in the world. For someone like me who's mostly city-phobic (though I love to travel to mega-cities) I thrive in this idyllic community of redwood mountains, beautiful farms, and some of the best surf in the world. It's a fantastic community fortunate to be both near the SF Bay Area and also geographically insulated from the hustle & bustle. Someday I imagine myself working more closely with the city in some capacity.

So, here are some local Santa Cruz promotions:

Route 1 Farms - Great peeps and regulars at our local Farmer's Markets. Architect Mark Primack - former city council member, commercial & residential architect with a fondness for concrete and steel, and a great speaker on urban planning & development. Also tender of the Tree Circus. Jeff Traugott Guitars - simply amazing high-end guitars that I'll never be able to afford. Players include John Mayer & Charlie Hunter. Santa Cruz Guitar Company - excellent luthiers and slightly more affordable. O'Neill surf - an iconic global brand, born and raised in Santa Cruz. The Cinematic Syndicate - local film group doing exceptional work. NextSpace Co-working & Innovation - great peeps and a great work space designed by Mark Primack. Also just opened a space in SF. The Santa Cruz Design & Innovation Center - an incubator & promoter of local Santa Cruz design. Quiddities - design & dev committed to building community communication platforms. The Tannery Arts Center - "a first-in-the-nation art community that provides a sustainable, accessible and vibrant home for the arts in Santa Cruz County" UCSC Biomolecular Engineering & Genomics - some of the best in the world. UCSC Astronomy & Astrophysics - also one of the best in the world.

I could blog all this stuff here for, like, the next month but here are a few of my current video entertainment faves before I go... Nothing too radical or underground - just stuff I love and quote relentlessly: Sealab 2021 Archer - From the Sealab folks, featuring H. Jon Benjamin (Coach McGurk in Home Movies) and Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development). The Mighty Boosh - I can not get enough! Thanks so much! I'll leave you all with this clip from The Boosh:

Jim Graham - Racing, tele-working, & battling multinationals

Chris Arkenberg — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:03:03 +0000

Jim Graham, AKA Ronjon, is Director of Marketing at The Satellite Telework Centers in Santa Cruz County, an avid Burning Man attendee who ran Media Mecca for several years, and Stock Bug class rally racer. He was one of the founders of the Felton Friends of Locally Owned Water (FLOW) movement that successfully re-claimed Felton water rights from the German multinational, RWE.

You were instrumental in your town's successful fight to recover its water rights from a major multinational. What happened with Felton and FLOW?

Our town water system had been privately owned since the late 1800s, but in 2001-2002 it was acquired by American Water, which was then acquired by the German multinational RWE. American Water immediately applied for a 78% rate hike with almost zero public notice. The town banded together to fight back and formed Felton Friends of Locally Owned Water (FLOW). We initially planned to fight the rate hike at the Public Utilities Commission, but quickly realized that it was so weighted in favor of big business that our only option was to take the water system back via eminent domain. We got a measure on the ballot to raise $11 million to buy the system. American Water fought dirty, as it has in other communities around the U.S. We were leaked a copy of their campaign strategy, which included using an ad agency to provide flyers that would go out under a co-opted community group and push polling to intimidate our local county Supervisor. We even had an astroturf group surface one month before the election that basically disappeared the day residents voted by 74.8% to raise the money. We eventually acquired the water system and now FLOW members consult with other community groups around the U.S. who are looking at acquiring their water systems from private utilities.

How long have you lived in Felton? What brought you there?

I've been in Felton since '91. I was born and raised in a small agricultural town, Hollister. After a stint as a reporter in Washington, D.C., I got tired of the snow and humidity and came back. Hollister had grown to something like 30,000 people. Too big! I eventually found a place in Felton and haven't looked back.

It always fascinates me how much energy is spent on online communities. Community to me is talking to someone at the grocery store, sitting in a meeting at the town hall or being involved in a community project. Maybe because I'm older, but the IRL stuff is a lot more interesting. That being said, I'm also mayor of pretty much every business in Felton.

As a co-working entrepreneur, how has the landscape of work changed with respect to location? Tell me a bit about co-working and The Satellite.

Some people are saying we'll all be freelancers within a decade. I don't buy that, but I am seeing a lot of people wanting more flexibility in where and when they work. Co-working facilities are opening everywhere and I think that's great, particularly for independent contractors and some start-ups. Where we're different is that we're going into small towns that surround large metropolitan areas, building professional office space in established commercial districts and renting it to telecommuters, home-based business owners and consultants. Where co-working spaces emphasize collaboration, we find our members do their collaboration with coworkers and clients somewhere else and come to us for the quiet, uninterrupted time they need to get their work done.

How did you end up involved in off-road racing? Would you talk a bit about Desert Dingo and your efforts in the Baja 1000?

Back in December 2006, I'd rented "Dust to Glory", a documentary on the 2003 Baja 1000. Ten minutes into it I turned to my wife and said, "I've got to do this." She said, "You don't know anything about cars." And I said, "I don't care." Eleven months later we went off the start line in a '69 VW Beetle. We lasted 144 miles. We were total n00bs.

The thing about the 1000, particularly for us in the Stock Bug class, is it's not about speed, but survival. I cold-called Eric Solorzano, who has 42 Baja wins, including nine Baja 1000s and said "You don't know me from Adam, but I want to race, you're the best at it and I want to meet you." He ended up building our engine and helping us tune the suspension, which is key. Now I'm working on convincing him to retire, because I think it's the only way we can beat him.

The greatest challenge racing Baja is communications. Race radios are pretty much useless unless you've got line-of-sight. Everyone has satellite phones and it can take half an hour or more to get a call through. One of our sponsors, EMS Sky Connect, loans us communications and tracking system called Rugged Text and Track, that allows my wife, sitting in front of several laptops back in California, to track the car and our three chase trucks - and communicate with them - in real time. It came in handy when I broke my leg getting out of the car during the race in 2009.

We were one of two teams (the other being Robby Gordon) using Twitter during the race in 2008. Last year was our first with the satcomm system. This year, I want a UAV.

Two guys on the team have Type 2 diabetes and many of the rest of us, myself included, have a history of the disease in our families. We partnered with the International Diabetes Federation to raise money for their education and awareness programs. We're the official World Diabetes Day race car of the 1000. We also hand out thousands of hero cards that have a photo of the car on the front and the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back in English or Spanish.

We're first in Class in the VORRA series and are racing this coming weekend in Reno. This will be our fourth attempt at the Baja 1000 in November and our goal this year is to finish.

What is your relationship with Burning Man. Are you still a passionate attendee? Do you maintain a Burning Man storage shed?

The joke has always been if you ever want to go camping, borrow gear from a burner because they've got everything and it's only used once a year. My first year was '96 when I got to shoot a fully automatic machine gun and toss homemade hand grenades. I ran Media Mecca for seven years when we'd have 300+ media outlets at the event. Now I head out with a Camelbak and a sleeping bag and mooch off of friends. Sure the event has changed, but I still recommend folks go out at least once. If you want to go to something that never changes, there's always Disneyland. I have tremendous respect for the artists and everyone who volunteers to make it happen each year. I still volunteer on the fringes, but for the most part, I'm your consummate spectator.

So, you live among the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains, you fought for Felton's water rights, and yet you seem to deeply enjoy deserts. Is there a common, maybe archetypal thread that connects the two?

Big cities don't do much for me. We live in the redwoods at the end of a potholed dirt road. Our dogs get skunked. I wake up to deer eating my freaking roses. I even saw a chupacabra once. We're within driving distance of the ocean, the mountains and the desert. I never take that for granted for a second. I've been very fortunate in life and when I can, I try to give a little back.

If you had one thing to say to Santa Cruz County, what would it be?

Pffft. No one listens to me :).

Bruce Damer - Burning Man, NASA, & artificial life

Chris Arkenberg — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:05:32 +0000

Bruce Damer is a technologist, virtual world pioneer, and computer historian. He is the CEO and founder of The Digital Space Commons, director of the Contact Consortium, and author of the book "Avatars".

I talked with him about Burning Man & Katrina, NASA & near-earth-objects, artificial life & his EvoGrid project, and the legacy of psychedelic visionaries...

At the end of August, 2005, you were at Burning Man in a heavily-outfitted RV. News quickly spread of the Katrina disaster. How did you respond from the middle of the Nevada desert?

At Burning Man in 2005 our camp was among other things, running the webcast and helping maintain the playa wifi network, so we knew about Katrina while other burners were in their glorious offline world. One of our camp-mates, who worked for the Pentagon devising "extreme communications" disaster relief hardware and deploying it in places such as for the Asian Tsunami that year, pointed our dishes skyward and tracked the incoming hurricane via some super high-res satellite. He phoned the Pentagon to order up some blackhawk helicopters to take his crew down to New Orleans to help the citizenry but due to government red tape that order was denied. I said at the time "whew, those scary loud black things buzzing the playa would have caused some serious kind of mass panic about a bust by the Bushies or a belief amongst burners that the UFO invasion had chosen Black Rock as its landing pad". Instead, our camp took quick action by setting up a Katrina Information Center and people came in to see the satellite views and get the latest disturbing info about their neighborhoods. Then the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping stopped by and rapidly organized a Dixie Land band, recruited folk singer Joen Baez who was there that year, and hosted a phenomenal prayer and concert at the Temple. Andie Grace, Burning Man Community Manager, state that this concert was the finest moment in the history of the festival. After collecting tens of thousands of dollars in water jugs, organizers determined to give this money directly to stranded residents of the gulf states and New Orleans, who were gathering in a state of shock at the Katrina Information Center. Later the spark that was set off at the Katrina Information Center grew into the Temple to Temple initiative, various Burning Man direct volunteer relief and Mississippi Delta reconstruction efforts, and ultimately Burners without Borders. This year a documentary film was launched on the whole wonderful drama.

I have to say that serving as minor support agents in this Katrina effort were the finest moments Galen and I ever experienced at Burning Man. We still have the sign "Bring Jazz, Concert for New Orleans" in our living room.

Reverend Billy leading thousands in prayer for New Orleans, at the Temple, Burning Man 2005.

You've been a NASA contractor and group leader of your own research and development company for many years. What is the most interesting project you've worked on with them? How did this work inform your own life?

Yes indeed, since 1999 I've been leading a team here at DigitalSpace, which does 3D virtual worlds with high powered physics. NASA funded us for years to develop an open source platform to help them model rovers on the moon and mars, space station construction, the Hubble Telescope servicing mission and more. In the most exciting project, a team approached us in 2007 with a really novel challenge, how to visualize a human crewed mission to a near earth object (ie: an asteroid). I said to them "yes we can do that but have you guys thought of how to put the crew down on the surface". They hadn't and so I offered to lead a design exercise, which resulted in one of the first actual studies and spacecraft designs for going to another body in the solar system sine Von Braun and his team conceived of the Saturn architecture and the Lunar Module in the early 1960s. The study was controversial so the information was embargoed for a while. I was given the go ahead to release our part of it, the design of how the multi-ton spacecraft would dock and "tether" itself to the low-gravity asteroid surface allowing the crew to exit and explore with handholds and jet-packs. On July 31, 2007 I did a talk at Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco in a room next to where the costume of Darth Vader stood. I then went on to an official NASA talk in the city where a real life Darth Vader, NASA Ames Center Director General Pete Worden, was in attendance. This was the first public release of the design concept mission. All over the net the image of this mission concept appeared, from Space.com to AOL, and it appeared on the cover of Popular Science. This was a high point in my "NASA career" and a real thrill for an outsider. [See video of the asteroid mission here.] This work has connected me in in with the whole space exploration and development (those who dream of colonies) community. I was also given a dose of cold water to sober up the reality of what is actually possible in sustainable human space exploration and longer stays. I am now a realist in those terms (a lunar colony is not even remotely a possibility with our current technology and approach to this enterprise). So in a real way this decade working with Space directed me back toward studying evolution in software, which I had been interested keenly in since about 1982.

Would you describe your current PhD work on evolutionary computation and artificial life? What do you hope this "EvoGrid" effort will enable for future researchers and the future of humanity?

I started my PhD work at the University of Southern California in 1985. At the time I was trying to use computers (a VAX 11/750 on the ARPANET) to model gazillions of small entities that would reproduce, adapt and be able to solve problems. The problem I came up with was the "brilliant pebbles" challenge posed by the old "Star Wars" missile defense program. Its basically how to build a computer that can process gazillions of radar returns from a lot of warheads streaming through space during an all-out nuclear war, and then target those warheads. I developed what today might be called an "artificial life" approach to the problem with little software critters that would "eat" the signals and rapidly work out where everything was going. This didn't get implemented beyond a demonstration stage and a display of laser optics setup on a big fat Tektronix color display. Our group got 300K or so from the "Strategic Defense Initiative" about the time I left the group. Later in the early 1990s my ideas got communicated to a black-ops program, and supposedly implemented and flown (after one booster failure) out of Vandenburg Airforce Base to do a rapid fly-by of a clump of small asteroids. I was told the algorithmic approach worked like a charm but not permitted to know specific results. Given the trajectory I calculated that this spacecraft must be one of the most distant objects in the solar system by now, out with the Voyagers and Pioneer 10 in the Ooort cloud. I hope the aliens find it before they pick up on JPL's craft with their linear go-to programming or else its the giant yellow galactic bulldozers for us!

Back on the PhD track, throughout the 1990s I kept the dream alive of creating software that could show biology, evolution or at least something life-like in action. I established Biota.org in 1996 to serve as a catalyst between the communities of paleontologists, biochemists, computer scientists, artists and writers thinking about origins of life, evolution and life as it could be here or elsewhere. I started a conference series (Digital Biota) that went to the famous Burgess Shale fossil quarry, and involved many luminary thinkers such as Karl Sims, Tom Ray, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Adams, Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling. In 2007 a full 20 years after the original USC PhD work I worked out that not only was computing power probably up to the task (in my remaining lifetime) of doing the job, but that I was hitting 45 years of age and I better get going. I took a pilgrimage to see Freeman Dyson about the newly reborn project, which I conceived with my collaborators as a kind of "origin of artificial life" and Freeman found it delightful and said "look, I am forty years older than you, you can get a lot done in forty years".

Thus inspired, our tiny team is powering forward into the extremely challenging worlds of simulating chemical reality, with the hopes one day of the larger EvoGrid simulation showing some interesting signs of artificial biological emergence, or better still, Darwinian natural selection leading to the first all-digital artificial life cell, perhaps within my lifetime! [You can see an animated overview of EvoGrid here.]

How did you get involved with the Timothy Leary Archives? What is your role and what is the goal of the organization?

I met Denis Berry, the trustee of Dr. Leary's archives, several years ago and pledged to help in any way I could to find a home for these 400 boxes of Tim's stuff. Its amazing stuff, perhaps the biggest collection of counterculture artifacts in the world, including letters to and from Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon and many more notables of the time. An effort supported by Brewster Khale of the Internet Archive, and lead by Lisa Rein, has led to the scanning of all of Tim's books, movies, rare reel to reel audio, and a start on key documents and photographs. , and the audio is being put out into the Psychedelic Salon podcast run by Lorenzo Hagerty. This whole effort has provided the world, especially the up and coming younger generation, a re-introduction to Dr. Timothy Leary way beyond the typical excoriation and one dimensional villain portrayal by the media.

How has the psychedelic experience informed your work, your art, and your life?

As I am a virtual worlds aficionado and I see parallels between the worlds of the elevated mind and our development of 3D digital spaces where we clothe ourselves as weird alter-beings known as avatars, and interact with any number of weird humanoid and non-humanoid entities such as in-world AIs and other people. Back in 1999 the late Terence McKenna (the mushroom bard) and I engaged in some explorations of virtual worlds, with him experiencing these spaces for the first time. Our shared commentary about the experience reveals that trip-spaces and trips into cyberspace may not be that unrelated! As Terence's archives were destroyed by fire some years ago, I have been working with a group of dedicated people to bring some of Terence's thought back to life.

Terence McKenna inside a virtual world, 1999.

You've collected an incredible array of hardware chronicling the history of personal computing at your DigiBarn Computer Museum project. With that as a background what is the one big techno intervention you hope to see developed in the next decade or two?

Like all shy and geeky teenagers of the 1970s I had my eye on the hottest personal computers of the day (Commodore PET 2001 anyone!) and in the 1980s I had the golden opportunity to work on early innovative user interfaces with Xerox (who invented the modern concept of networked personal computers with GUIs, mice at their Xerox PARC laboratory). So in the late 1990s after having "bought the farm" I found that I could fill our large barn here with my own collection and donations from around the world. The DigiBarn Computer Museum now features the sweep of the history of PCs from the 1960s on up and has a few big systems (Cray supercomputers) thrown in.

What I see next is a grand convergence between the ever shrinking, ever more powerful format of the PC, now embodied as a smartphone, the growth of alter-selves as avatars, social network identities, and the ubiquity of spatial data in the guise of Google Maps & Street View. This convergence will pump up the growth of Augmeted Reality (AR) seen first on your smartphone and then down the road on some kind of glasses or stylish retinal display. In 10 or 20 years we (or our kids) will be walking around seeing all kinds of data, images, media, avatars, game play elements and social networks mapped onto the world all around us. An inevitable yet frightening vision? A great description of this future is available in Vernor Vinge's novel, Rainbows End.

Tish Shute - Augmented Reality, ARWave, and the industry

Chris Arkenberg — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:26:37 +0000

Tish Shute is a visual effects designer, technologist, and social ethnographer. She explores the world of augmented reality through her blog, Ugotrade, featuring interviews with many of the leading minds in the emerging AR industry. She recently co-chaired the Augmented Reality Event 2010 in Santa Clara, Ca., recognized as the first major augmented reality conference.

I recently asked her some questions about her background and interests in AR, the ARE2010 event, the Google Wave Federation protocol, and the possible future of augmented reality...

Would you tell us a bit about your background? How did you become so interested in Augmented Reality?

My interest in augmented reality began with doing visual effects for film and television. We used robotically controlled cameras, and models, to create augmentations for movies with multi-pass photography back then. There are several key people involved in the emerging industry of augmented reality today that have a background in special effects, flight simulation, theme park rides, and virtual reality. This work is part of the family of technologies that includes augmented reality and virtual reality. But Bruce Sterling nails it when he says,"VR is the gothic sister of AR."

I have a lot of enthusiasm for the young AR industry, partly, because, I feel we have shrugged off virtual reality's fatal flaw - all that over the top expensive equipment we had to flog with it. My current interest is in social augmented experiences. This not a vision of a AR that requires AR goggles. Goggles may actually detract from the social augmented experience, by isolating the user. In his keynote at ARE2010, Bruce pointed out, "if you get the head mounted goggles, your gothic sister, virtual reality, is going to come out of her coffin."

ARE2010 co-chair of are2010, Ori Inbar, CEO of Ogmento

Your blog, Ugotrade, has been a huge resource for AR and has really helped promote the larger community of developers and innovators. Recently you co-founded and produced the ARE2010 conference in Santa Clara, Ca. What were the motivations behind this event? Do you feel it was successful?

Ugotrade expresses my interest in ethnography and participant observation as cool ways to follow the advice of Alan Kay, that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it." My most recent interview is with Bruce Sterling on his experience at Augmented Reality Event.

There are a lot of interesting intersections to explore in what Bruce calls, the "glocal" atmosphere of emerging technologies today. The AR industry is exemplary of the "glocal," as Bruce points out, with both a strong global community, unusual for such a young industry, and, true to its hyperlocal nature, distinctive local flavors - "Augmented Dutch Reality," "Augmented Japanese Reality," and so forth.

I co-founded and produced the ARE2010 conference in Santa Clara, Ca. because the speed with which an augmented reality industry emerged last year convinced me that this was a conversation that could be writ large in a trade conference. Before the event, many people thought it too early for a large conference. But I think anyone who was there will tell you it was a great success. AR start ups from around the globe, brimming with a business savvy and AR hipster style, mingled with innovators and thinkers of the stature of Bruce Sterling, "the prophet of AR," "videogame god" Will Wright, the brilliant "Gamepocalypse" visionary Jesse Schell, and 3D mapping genius Blaise Aguera Y Arcas. Bruce Sterling was omnipresent, hanging out with Rudy Rucker. It was interesting to hear AR artists asking Bruce what AR means for artistic practice. Will Wright could be found hacking the parrot AR drone in the hallways. And with over 400 minds coming together to figure out how AR will change the way we communicate, isn't that pretty much as good as it gets for an emerging tech conference?

I think the success of are2010 tells you we are in new era for start up culture, one which has moved out from garages in Sillcon Valley and Silicon Alley into a global internet garage. But the global AR community is still eager to meet and share a maximum bandwidth experience. As Bruce noted, when we talked at length after the event, "It was interesting to see so many people from so many different nations in such a collegial atmosphere."

The AR community makes for a fun conference because it is very diverse. The gang was all there; mobile developers, artists, game developers, "geowankers", VRML fanatics, social network gurus, UX experts, mobile advert people, cloud computing and hardcore gis experts, computer vision ubergeeks, urban planners. ARE2010 had a whiff of the euphoria of internet bubbles of times past. There were "meetings" everywhere, a big fat check from Qualcomm for the best AR start up, and Hollywood execs were hovering in the wings.

The American idol style commentary from Bruce Sterling, Jesse Schell, and Mark Billinghurst during the Auggies - the competition for the best AR demo, is a primer for anyone interested in making their mark with an AR app. It is also great entertainment - a critique, in the form of humorous and brilliant repartee.

Who are the most advanced and invested players?

Well first, hats off to Qualcomm - our presenting sponsor for are2010. We couldn't have done it without them. Qualcomm obviously seem to have commercialization plans for their AR technology, and to be actively scouting and acquiring talent, and ways to deliver new AR experiences. Big players - Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia will make many important moves in the next year which could change the game for the creative young start ups. Google, I think, has the most pieces in hand for making AR a mainstream phenomena. That is, if they can get over what Bruce calls the "spiders mating" problem and put it all together. Also, the iphone 4.0 will offer some interesting opportunities for AR developers. But, I think, AR innovation will continue to come from the edges. Although, AR games could soon become so ubiquitous we don't bother to call them AR games anymore.

How do you see the Google Wave federation model as a platform for augmented reality? What's the status of your research in this area?

Wave Federation Protocol is very interesting as it presents the first possibility for an open, federated standard, and a real time communications platform for Augmented Reality. But, typically, I have to expend quite a few words explaining that the ARWave, while built on Wave protocol, does NOT use the Google Wave web user interface (see my ARWave slide presentation at are2010 ).

ARWave has the potential to unleash the power of social augmented experiences and enable augmented reality game development in a big way. Also, very simply, it will allow anyone to attach data to their world view, and share it with others. Things will start getting really interesting when anyone can create AR content, an AR browser/client, or even set up one's own server. An open federated platform for AR, where people can share data and one login, will be a big step forward. I can't wait to see AR experiences move out of walled gardens!

The next step for ARWave is to create an API so browsers like Layar can use the platform for real time mobile social communications, at least. I mention Layar, in particular, because Layar co-founder, Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald, told me at are2010 that exploring ARWave integration is on their to do list. But ARWave will support as many browsers and data formats as possible. The new web standards based AR mobile architecture from Georgia Tech, Kharma, and powerful open source tools like ARToolworks are high on our list.

An open communications framework is vital for open AR. A group from ARE2010 is exploring how ARWave could be used as a standard for future AR eyewear. Personally, I am very interested in linking ARWave with eGov and open data efforts. AR is a great interface to the high concentration of people and information in cities, and some really cool AR demos could play a key role in encouraging government to open up data. Thomas Wrobel, who has led the development charge on ARWave, is an ARG game designer. I know he can't wait to get some AR Wave clients/browsers integrated to show off the potential of the ARWave platform.

In your mind, what are some of the most interesting and compelling possibilities of AR? Is there a dark side to AR?

I think, without doubt, social augmented experiences will underpin the most interesting and compelling possibilities of AR, and not not just in mobile augmented reality, but with marker based and projection AR. I would also like to see people continue to come up with unusual and quirky forms of AR like "."

Bruce debunks many of the current dire warnings about the dark side AR - see our conversation here - including the interpretation of the famous Roger Corman horror film, "X: the Man with the X-ray Eyes," that Jesse Schell so brilliantly presented at are2010. I think most of our current "dark side" imaginings for AR may miss the point, as we are so early on in our understanding of the potential and diversity of AR experiences.

What do you think the augmented future will look like in 10 years?

Well as I try to follow Alan Kay's advice to invent rather than predict the future, I may wriggle out of this question. My immediate goal is to focus on lowering the barriers of entry to creating AR experiences. I think AR will be diverse and omnipresent long before we are through with the twentyteens, and blended realities will be the norm before the end of the next decade. But, as I mentioned at the end of my Humanity + interview, reading Vernor Vinge, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, William Gibson, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, Roger Zelazny, Jane Lindskold, Tad Williams, Larry Niven, Steven Barnes, and watching the great Japanese anime Dennō Coil (é›»è„³ã‚³ã‚¤ãƒ«) will tell you much more about what to expect in 2020 than I.

[See also the article by IFTF's Mike Liebhold at Niemen Reports on Digital Immersion: Augmenting Places With Stories And Information.]

Images from chcameron's Flickr stream

Thoughts on augmented realities

Chris Arkenberg — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:45:41 +0000

CC-licensed photo from robinmochi's Flickr stream

Augmented Reality is definitely trending up the Hype Cycle in a big way. The past year has seen explosive growth in this nascent field buoyed by the rise of gps-enabled, cloud-aware smart phones. The marketing hype has, of course, been even more resounding, like a wailing chorus of virtual vuvuzelas trumpeting the next great wave of advertising (I couldn't resist). But beneath the hype and the fluff is a thriving community of innovators & designers working to weave this technology into the very fabric of our lives.

As a quick review, augmented reality is a context-aware UI layer rendered over a camera stream or other transparent interface. This is typically mediated by geo-location, orientation, physical markers (those funky UPC-like symbols), and visual recognition. In this manner AR is able to reveal visually the hidden data shadow of our world, like showing you the nearest coffee shops or details about the air quality in your city. The mobile device gets info about where you are and what direction you're facing, goes to the cloud to look up data appropriate for the vicinity, then renders it over the camera stream in a way that updates as you move.

A whole industry has been born around this premise, dragging in images, annotations, and data to overlay on the camera stream of our mobiles. But the really interesting stuff is yet to come. As standardization issues, hardware issues, and numerous UI design challenges sort out in the next couple of years, concurrent with the development of AR-specific devices, our interaction with visualized data will become more and more specialized and appropriate to our individual needs. The clutter of markups that currently plagues many AR apps will be attenuated by algorithms that know our interests and affinities and block out the elements we wish to avoid. Just like Amazon makes recommendations based on your click & purchase history, AR apps will screen out the noise and provide us only with the data we need.

When paired with the massive deployment of embedded sensors AR becomes a lightweight visualization layer for interfacing with the instrumented world. Civic workers could see underground cables and pipelines. Homeowners could see real-time energy & network use. Police and early responders could post visual warnings cordoning streets and alerting to hazards. Ecologists could determine water & air quality at-a-glance. Ecosystems begin to have a voice, communicating soil contamination to observers. Public facilities like park benches, utility poles, and street signs could hold annotations & links created by community members, made public or gated by in-group permissions. Geographic social annotations could mark up our cities with tags and content. Virtual worlds might break out of the box and overlay on the physical plane. The environment suddenly becomes much richer - and potentially much nosier - with a flood of information. Augmented reality promises to exteriorize the cloud, drawing it out across the world canvas and making visible our social fabric. But it doesn't promise to mediate or regulate that content.

We risk myopia, disconnection, visual occlusion, fragmented realities, reinforced tribalism. Consider the seemingly-inevitable future where eyewear mediates a cloud-aware augmented interface with the world. Perhaps you opt to obscure ethnicities or anyone not connected to the net. Ghettos look much nicer when painted over with high-res colors and dancing sprites. The world you experience is really only shared by the other people running your default layer set. Maybe you see paycheck information or health records or political affinities of those you pass, measuring up the once-private lives of your community. Perhaps the most popular layers are hacked to display swastikas or porn or spam swarms or simply to black out your view in the middle of the morning commute. How does the layered world enable crime, gang affinities, and political or religious extremism? What inevitable inequities might arise between those able to purchase such access and those condemned to the dark poverty of quiet disconnection? Do the wealthy become even more enhanced & capable compared to the underclass? And what are the risks of getting lost in the virtual glitz? Are there considerations for how these augmented realities will bring us closer to the natural world in which we're embedded? And just what is "real" or "natural" anymore?

As connected social computing devices get smaller & smaller and nearer & nearer to us, the weight of the cloud gets lighter. We carry around immense computational power and almost immediate access to the global repository of information. The mobile phone will eventually pair with head's-up eyewear displays just as more and more people avoid catastrophic disease & injury through the aid of embedded brain-computer interfaces. As computation moves next to and into our bodies, the cloud is breaking out of the screen and washing onto our world. We grow more augmented with computation while our environment is getting smarter and more aware and increasingly able to communicate with us. It may very well be that in 5, 10, 20 years the world is a much more visual, dynamic, and communicative place than we can even imagine.

For more of my explorations of this subject check out my articles Breaking Open the Cloud: Heads in an Augmented World and Cognition & Computation: Augmented Reality Meets Brain-Computer Interface.

Justin Boland - The indie hip hop game

Chris Arkenberg — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:49:26 +0000

Justin Boland, AKA Wombaticus Rex, AKA Humpasaur Jones, AKA Thirtyseven, is a rapper, philosopher, and independent record producer who is just as likely to spend a year researching the technologies of bioremediation as he is to relentlessly educate the hip hop industry on DIY promotion & marketing from his blog, Audible Hype. He is a founder of the independent hip hop label, World Around Records, and his most recent work is published there as Algorhythms.

I talked to him about identity, avatars, independent hip hop, and the industry at large...

What's it like being a white, nature-loving, long-hair hippy playing the hip hop game? Do you find acceptance or has it been a challenge to bring your ideas into the scene? Or does acceptance even matter?

Well, it's been awesome. And yes, acceptance definitely matters. We don't fetishize being "outsiders" and we hold ourselves to high technical standards on all our projects. I am into emceeing as an art form, and I would rather listen to Big Daddy Kane rap about shooting people than a mediocre rapper doing a "conscious" verse with a really good message. I absolutely don't rap about normal anything, but I do push myself to make every verse the tightest possible puzzle box it can be. There's an international community of obsessive writers like that, and that's definitely the peer group I'm aiming to impress, no matter what they look like or talk about. We're all engaged in the same war against the alphabet.

In 2010, because of artists like Apathy, El-P, and Edan, being white is not a liability at all. As for being a hippie/hick hybrid from Vermont, that's actually a huge advantage because I'm different by default. I don't have to figure out a new angle to get people's attention, I can just walk onstage and be myself.

You've released a number of projects under various names. Would you talk a little about these projects and your aliases? Do your avatars embody & express your art in some way?

I suppose they do, man. They definitely embody the fact that my interests are intense and short-lived, that I tend to give all my content away for free, and there's also a strong whiff of the stubborn stupidity I'm known for. I've made music as Wombaticus Rex, as Humpasaur Jones, and as Algorhythms, as well as way, way too much other stuff. I'm somewhere between 50% and 90% of DJ Multiple Sex Partners, depending on the vintage. The Hump Jones project was dangerously stupid, I was really pushing the Total Sexual Freedom meme past legally safe boundaries there, although I will probably still publish the book, Human Sexuality for Filthy Apes, that I was preparing for that. It makes me sound like more of a perv than I am, but that entire project was borne out of a single joke instructional song about anal sex. In retrospect, it was good, loving advice and I stand by it, so perhaps it was not a joke track after all?

My avatars also reflect a copyleft mentality. Algorhythms is a project I really believe is my best work to date, and it's also the collaboration that led to the creation of World Around Records in the first place. It's also legally impossible to build a business around. Even within hip hop, there's another NY based producer named Algorhythm. Like I said, though: stubborn and stupid. We will continue to release our best material under that name regardless.

From a business perspective, do I regret not building all my music around a single consistent name? Absolutely, yes. Doesn't matter at all, though, because that's what happened and I think I'm in a much more interesting position now. The funniest part is that none of the names I mentioned are even what I call myself onstage: I've been rapping as "Thirtyseven" since I was 16. So my actual gig is what I'm the least known for. This small anaecdote sums up my life quite nicely.

You've built an independent label, World Around Records. What was your motivation to create the label? Why now? Who are the artists on your roster you're most excited about?

It's absurd, isn't it? It's so dumb to start a label. That's definitely part of the appeal, for both myself and Dr. Quandary. Record labels are going through an extinction level event and we decided to start up a new one with basically zero money. It's been working out great, too.

In reality, we're a promotional platform for a like-minded group of independent musicians. The live band on our roster, dumate, is very successful in Madison and 100% run their own operation. Our newest addition, the Swiss producer & instrumentalist Naturetone, has a totally self-contained process where he just gives us the finished product, artwork and all, and it's more impressive every time. My job is to run around the internet waving my arms and yelling about how awesome those guys are. There's more dignified ways to put it, but that's what it is.

Our navigation system is the feedback loop between my bullshit detector and Dr. Quandary's aesthetic 6th sense. We're definitely proving our case that good music can drive a business model without treating fans like "targets." Last month, the UK producer s. maharba released a vinyl collector's edition of his "S/T" beat tape and he did an experiment. Right on the landing page where he's selling the vinyl, he's giving away the entire album for free digitally. Despite this, he sold out 100 pre-order packages and he's about to run out of the 2nd printing now, too. So we had a lot of doubts since 2007, but this year has been a breakthrough. We've just been watching it work, week after week.

What are your thoughts on the current state of hip hop? Who are the names you think are doing the most to evolve the art & the scene?

Hip hop is amazing and pretty much always has been. I've never understood the arguments about it being dead or needing to be saved. Hip hop is completely un-killable and there's hundreds of innovative and excellent albums coming out every single year. How hip hop gets presented in the media is something completely separate, that just represents who's getting corporate funding that year.

I have an increasingly bad habit of going off on people who complain about hip hop, but it's exactly like when a guy sits down at a bar and starts complaining about women. That's got nothing to do with women and everything to do with the guy's own failures. Everyone should know about Jay Electronica in 2010. Everyone should know that the city of Detroit has been producing some of the best hip hop on Earth, from Royce to Elzhi to Invincible to Black Milk to the criminally under-rated Majestik Legend. Hip hop is on a long run of incredible albums. Roc Marciano, Diamond District, Tanya Morgan, Brother Ali, Termanology, Aesop Rock, Mos Def, Little Brother, Strange Fruit Project, I could fill a month of your life with front-to-back classic albums that came out in the last 5 years. There's so much out there, it's just not being spoon-fed to Americans by mainstream media.

My focus in on the emcees, and there's a LOT of writers who are really pushing me to work harder these days. Freddie Gibbs, from Gary, Indiana. Blu, Nocando and Fashawn from LA. One of my all-time favorite rappers is Motion Man, he's way too obscure. Most of my favorites are like that -- The Loyalists, Alaskan Fishermen, Witness from Philadelphia. There's older guys who have made comebacks and are still among the best living, like Kool G Rap and Canibus. I can see how people get burned out on the business, but I could never get burned out on the artform. It's amazing that there's still so much room for creativity with such a simple recipe and so much competition.

Side note: being dedicated to craftsmanship can be bad for business. We have turned down 99% of the rappers who want to work with us.

How has the industry changed, particularly with respect to independent artists & labels and emerging distribution channels?

Best decade ever. I feel really grateful, looking back, that I discovered Marshall McLuhan before I got into this business, because he was the best possible guide. It's beyond spooky how far ahead of his time that maniac was. When it comes to huge, multi-billion dollar industries being disrupted by technology, I really think the saga of the music industry will go down as the most entertaining example in history. Or at least, until the Personal Force Field app takes out the law enforcement bubble in 2019...that will be even better.

In the past 5 years, probably 90% of what I learned became obsolete. I really studied up on the music industry, and now in 2010 almost none of that matters. The only numbers we need to focus on are internal. The only asset that we have is our community of fans. We're creating unique space, so instead of modeling what "The Industry" is doing, now we're focused on communication and experiments. We're big believers in the Bandcamp platform, we've started working with Fairtilizer, and thanks to the coding talent of Charles Choiniere, we've also got a custom CMS and music management system built into the World Around Records website. That's been a huge advantage. For any curious tech heads, he built it with Django, a mutation of the Python language.

Artists have to be in control of their own data, their own music players, their own email list. Getting 100,000 downloads means nothing if you don't know who those people are. I think about this daily, and I write about the music business more or less full time for Audible Hype. I guess I should refer folks there instead of giving a 23 paragraph lecture.

What are your hopes and dreams for WAR and your own work?

There's nothing normal or healthy about day jobs. First and foremost, I want to end the tyranny of Day Jobs for our entire roster. So centralized success is not really the end goal here, with the actual World Around platform, our goal is sustainability. It's not a charity. I study business design like I study rap verses and having worked in marketing and ghostwriting and copywriting, I know exactly what kind of business I don't want to be. I was growing up in Vermont when Ben & Jerry's, the great hippie capitalism success story, sold out and absolutely killed the company right in front of us. I don't want anyone on our roster to be dependent on us, this has to be a collective and this has to be about mutual respect. I'm guessing that only comes from mutual success, if it's going to mean anything.

I don't think any of us want to be rich, we just want to make music, all day. Food in the fridge, functioning living space, no wasted time. Whenever our resident philosopher Louis Mackey gets a week of free space, he'll come back with an album's worth of amazing material. I want to unleash that for everyone on the team, that's our version of spiritual ascension in 2012.

Personally, I want to break one record in particular this year: Dr. Quandary's debut album, Beyond All Spheres of Force and Matter. I think it's the high water mark for World Around quality and I think it's got a universal appeal since it's huge, cinematic and distinctly Eastern-sound instrumental hip hop. He carved out something exceptional, so my big business goal is to push an independent release onto the national stage...but first we need to fund the vinyl.

Long term, I want to make a lot of money to fund a concept that's been on my mind since 2000 or so. Me and Dr. Quandary want to make "World Around" into a sort of international recording equipment aid organization, seek out talent in Asia, Africa, India and Latin American nations, find the future Lee Perry/Leo Chess figures who will do great things with it, and basically give them a studio. I want to learn and be inspired from outside of the great American echo chamber. We're both interested in solar and portable tech, and we're both huge Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure fans. I'm still obsessed by the concept that a radio station in the middle of the Sahara could have brought me such life-changing music, years later, on the other side of the planet. Humans mostly exaggerate everything, but I don't think we can over-estimate the power of music.

What's your personal message to the world that you try to express through your art?

This planet is on fire and everyone is asleep. I'm uncomfortably conscious of the fact way too many hippies took the signal "Find the Others" to mean "hang out with like-minded white people." I want to relax people and I want to make them uncomfortable, preferably at the same time. Yes, you can do it...no, you cannot keep lying to yourself every day. I talk about getting free of belief systems a lot, but I have to confess, I am an Anarchist fundamentalist. I believe we are all completely free at any given moment and free choice is like oxygen or gravity or time itself, totally pervasive, and pointless to argue about. The only question is what we do with it, now.

I'm here to be part of the next big global movement. I am here to watch closely, work hard, and make the moves that I can. That's a big reason I stopped doing "clever" battle rap and pop culture references -- I'm trying to force myself to have a bigger horizon. The future of hip hop is global because reality already is global. Ghandi saw it and so did Malcolm X, any real peace and freedom movement has to be bigger than borders. It already is, too, our choice now is how we can either get involved, or justify ignoring it. American media loves to gloat about the reach and power of American culture, but the most important point, to me, is this. An international blockbuster like Independence Day gets translated into dozens of other languages, but everybody, around the world, listens to Tupac and Biggie in English.

Keytar-playing platypus explained

Chris Arkenberg — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:30:49 +0000

From Tenso Graphics.

Behnam Karbassi - Transmedia world-building

Chris Arkenberg — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:08:30 +0000

Behnam Karbassi is a founding partner of No Mimes Media, currently producing alternate reality and transmedia projects. He has worked in the entertainment & advertising industry for the past decade, leading teams at Saatchi & Saatchi and producing projects for companies like Toyota, Warner Bros. and Sony. He is a producer & director at LIFTmob, and was a producer at 42 Entertainment where he worked on the alternate reality experiences Why So Serious? for The Dark Knight and Project Abraham for Playstation 3's Resistance: Fall of Man franchise.

I sent him some questions about transmedia world-building and the new media landscape... [Disclosure: No Mimes is a Hukilau partner.]

Before creating No Mimes Media, you and your partners were at 42 Entertainment where you helped create the Why So Serious? transmedia campaign for The Dark Knight. Would you describe that project? Did the results meet or exceed your expectations?

I've worked on a lot of amazing projects, but, at the time, Why So Serious was by far the most incredible movie marketing I'd ever seen, much less, been a part of. I think that's because it went way beyond marketing, it extended the story of the Batman reboot, bridged the gap between the two films, and most importantly, made millions feel they were actually citizens of Gotham City. This was in part thanks to a very willing studio, an extremely involved director, producer, and writer, and a groundbreaking creative team. By the numbers, it was the biggest experience of all time (in budget, participation and ticket sales), with the most interesting part being that it grew over time and across media rather than dropping off as is the norm. It was a perfect storm of 50 years of mythology, a great first film and an outstanding campaign. Best of all, it was when I met Steve Peters and Maureen McHugh who would become my partners at No Mimes Media.

Transmedia is becoming a hot Hollywood buzzword. How do you define transmedia and what do you feel are some of the key elements to a successful transmedia project?

We've spent the last year meeting with and helping educate studios, networks, brands and agencies on the potential of transmedia. We're very happy that it's catching on, because we really do believe it's the future of storytelling. But there has been a lot debate over the definition of transmedia, especially since the PGA's bold move to add transmedia producer as an acknowledged position. We've whittled it down to a three-fold explanation:

1) franchise transmedia: extending a story world across media

2) marketing transmedia: stories that support another brand or transmedia

3) native transmedia: stories intended to weave across media from their inception

The holy grail for us is, of course, native transmedia, but both funders and audiences have to change their thinking before it is widely created and accepted.

The key element that is shared across any definition is story (and the world that this story creates). Applying this essential narrative base to the right media for the right audience is our formula for creating compelling transmedia.

How does transmedia extend & challenge the idea of the traditional narrative? Are these experiences primarily brand-driven or are they ultimately about world-building and engagement?

Prior to the web, audiences had become accustomed to sitting back and taking their entertainment as it was given, usually in a linear fashion. The web and digital media gave audiences on-demand and the ability to easily make and share their own content. Transmedia takes the best of all worlds, and adds a non-linear element by reacting to its audience. This is why we like to think of it as the truly interactive way to tell stories.

Transmedia has the amazing ability to create "brand evangelists" (whether it's for soap, a movie or an original story) BECAUSE it is about immersing the audience in a story world and engaging them with interactivity. And they are truly an "efficient" way to get an audience thanks to huge engagement times as compared to a 30 second commercial or even a 2-hour movie. All marketing buzzwords aside, they are most importantly, a lot of fun.

No Mimes Media recently partnered with Hukilau. Do you see transmedia as a way for independent creators to engage new audiences without having to deal with the major studios?

The fascinating part about the digital and transmedia revolutions is that they are closing the gap between big budget studios and independent producers. It is no longer a top down situation. Indies are generally bigger risk takers and they are embracing transmedia and its potential much more quickly than the big guys. Transmedia works best when its thought of at the beginning of development, and indies can do this much more nimbly. They realize the benefits of building and engaging their audience with compelling experiences since they don't have huge marketing budgets and big-name stars. Hukilau is at the forefront of providing independent producers with the tools they need to digitally (and traditionally) distribute and market their work, and we're thrilled to be partnering with them. When were you able to ever do this before?

Does transmedia represent a fundamental shift in the way media is created & consumed? Is the fourth wall coming down?

The future of transmedia experiences that we envision will require a shift in the way we use and interact with stories/media. Kids are already porting content from one screen to another, blurring the lines of media. Perhaps their kids won't give a second thought to starting a story at home, calling the phone number that leads them to the event that then gives them rest at the movies that they help end with their fellow viewers.

In the future of transmedia experiences, do you imagine a role for emerging technologies like augmented reality & geo-location?

We've already used both augmented reality and geo-location activities in our past experiences, but the mobile hardware has not really caught up to our imaginations. One day, you'll exit your flying car and use your neural visor to see the transmedia world in front of you, or just use the transmedia holodeck. Either way, we're always looking for new ways to push the limits of storytelling.

Transmedia Storytelling and the New Media Convergence

Chris Arkenberg — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:01:29 +0000

Narrative media is undergoing a shift from the traditional model of single, linear story lines to much broader explorations of the story world. Narratives are developed within larger contexts where even tertiary characters can act as launch points for new stories that flesh out the fictional universe. These bleed into the physical world through alternate reality gaming and transmedia cross-platform experiences that directly engage the audience, drawing them into the story through real-world challenges. ARG's may not be especially new but they're being more commonly integrated into franchise productions through transmedia campaigns across web sites, mobile engagement, shorts, graphic novels, video games, music, and any other possible medium that can extend the story.

While much of this shift has been driven by the entertainment industry, typically around run-up advertising campaigns, transmedia experiences are perhaps most compelling as native expressions of a fully-articulated narrative universe. This is transmedia world building: creating a fictional universe so rich and complete that a multitude of interweaving stories can emerge from it, taking form through the social and technological spaces we share. The video game spin-off becomes an opportunity to extend the narrative and create a new experience. The web site becomes a breadcrumb in the story arc offering a phone number that conveys a meeting place. The graphic novel picks up the life of a tertiary character from the original story. The audience is asked to participate in the unfolding narrative.

The pieces here aren't particularly new but they're all starting to converge with the technologies that enable these experiences. Most importantly (and disruptively) they are converging in a way that radically empowers independent content creators at exactly the moment when they've been completely abandoned by the industry giants of yesteryear. The majors have ditched or shelved their independent film houses and now focus solely on tent-pole blockbusters. Premiers at Cannes, Sundance, and other indie fests are barely selling to the studios. Yet, independent creators can set up powerful home studios and score a RED camera or even a Canon 5D mk2 to shoot & produce exceptional, authentic work. And very soon the audience will control access to this massive Long Tail of content right from their living room (and from their mobiles, and laptops, and kiosks, and car stereos, etc...)

Indeed, the near-simultaneous announcement of both Google TV and the new iteration of Apple TV herald the final arrival of truly integrated internet TV. This is the enxt major wave of convergence. These devices will fully legitimize web video - the pre-eminent domain of independent film, tv, and short-format creators - and bring it directly into the living room for mass consumption. Viewers will be able to open chat streams, web browsers, interactive content, and feedback polling while watching content from YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo and anyone else uploading to the cloud. Content providers will grab analytics off the back-end, manage ad placement, and push interactive challenges directly to the viewers. Internet TV convergence will be radically disruptive.

The majors are fighting hard to control this space. They'll continue to defend the old models & limp box office gimmicks like "3D" movies while new media innovators will be figuring out how to use Microsoft's Kinect and augmented reality and geolocation to extend the reach & impact of their content. New models of crowdfunding & collaboration will bring the audience into the production, and creators will push out distribution through iTunes, Netflix, torrents, and the emerging array of independent web hosts. Whatever the role of Old Media may be in the future, independent creators will play a much larger role in the new media landscape.

Gregor MacDonald - Energy, transportation, and transitions

Chris Arkenberg — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:23:47 +0000

Incredible photo manipulation by Hubert Blanz.

Gregor MacDonald is an independent energy analyst & investment consultant. He publishes public analysis to his website, Gregor.us and hosts the internet investment show, StockTwits.tv, with Howard Lindzon. He offers private consultancy and regular email newsletters on global energy trends & investment guidelines.

I asked him some questions about his background, the state of global energy, the BP disaster, and California's dependency on oil...

How did you end up as an energy investment analyst? Would you describe the work you do now?

In 1995 I moved to London and found that living outside my own country enabled me to see the world with fresh eyes. In university I had studied cultural anthropology with an emphasis on markets and economies, and a number of the insights from those studies began to unfold the more time I spent in the UK, and Europe. I started to become interested in currencies as a cultural phenomenon, for example. I concluded there was very little logic in the purchasing power of the US Dollar, The British Pound, and continental currencies, and I started to form an early idea that perhaps in relation to oil, the US Dollar was overvalued. And that's how my interest in oil began.For it was soon thereafter that, in order to pursue my idea of the US Dollar's overvaluation, I had to learn more about oil--which was this separate and very large, complex, global system in its own right. Ten years later, and probably 10,000 hours later (see Gladwell's Outliers for a discussion on the significance of 10,000 hours), I find myself doing a host of various research for individuals and a few institutions--primarily on the broader subject of energy. At www.gregor.us I share my ideas for free, and also produce a subscription newsletter. At StockTwits.com, which is a very cool startup based in the US, I run a model portfolio via www.gregorweekly.com and host an internet based show each Sunday night on www.stocktwits.tv. That broadcast has viewership around the world, from Asia to North America. So, although my days in London are over and I am living back in the States, I still feel connected to people in other countries which is very important to me, and my work.

What does the current landscape of energy look like to you? Do you think renewables will replace fossil fuels any time soon?

Energy transitions, historically, are a long process which tend to be measured best in decades. What's very clear now is that global oil supply, which has been the primary energy source for the world, is no longer available to fund economic growth. We have enough current oil supply to maintain economic stasis for a few more years, but neither in absolute supply volumes nor in terms of affordable supply volumes, is oil able to increase its availability. To fund economic growth, therefore, the world will have to turn to an array of other energy resources. Unfortunately, none of them have the high levels of energy density as oil. This is not only a problem best described by energy physics, but its a problem for humanity because we have built the world over the past 80 years using the most powerful energy source of all. Transitioning now, away from this source, will be a difficult and lengthy process.

What's the most important global trend, in your mind, that people should be considering when thinking about energy?

That the world is increasingly turning to coal as an energy source, as oil is no longer able to fund economic growth. It's nice that so much wind and solar power is being constructed around the world. But, these are technologies to capture diffuse energy. The important trend, and risk, centers on coal.

How do you think the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will affect energy policy in America?

Once again, just as in the conditions which led up to the bursting of the credit bubble, we have completely mis-priced risk. This is a huge subject but the bottom line is that because the new barrel of oil is expensive and hard to extract, not only will we have to pay more for that barrel outright--but we may have to start paying the environmental-risk costs of that barrel. I anticipate that insurance rates will blow sky high for offshore operations, thus lifting the cost structure for new oil even higher. The craziest thing of all? Vast numbers of well-educated people in the West still don't understand or accept peak oil. This is peak. You are watching peak in action, and its coming to us various ways. In the BP Leak, it's coming to us through price, and a tectonic change in perception of risk. As for energy policy, sometimes events like this actually serve to paralyze the policy making process more deeply. For example, there is a spreading view that this event will finally cause Americans to wake up. Don't bet on it.

Do you think there are circumstances or trends in America that could lead to similar energy insurgencies as those in Nigeria?

What we know from history is that large scale problems are simply too big to be addressed by a political process, and often what happens is that crisis--not discretion or choice--is the motivator to change. So, in this regard, we could see a State's Rights movement unfold that would derive some of its strength from those who want to assert state control over resources. I can't see Nigerian level insurgency in the US on the level of guns and boats and small scale military strikes. But, I could see Louisiana suing the government to assert control over oil extraction, or states in the interior attempting to rebuff Federal control over shale gas extraction. We could indeed very much see the issue of Federalism come into play over the issue of natural resources.

What are some of the most important things that California could do to manage it's energy dependence?

California needs to recognize that the automobile and highway system is now in a state of diminishing returns. It's an energy and economic sink, that is a net economic drag on the CA economy. I've done a lot of work in this area. Look at San Bernardino and Riverside counties, with their enormous and leveraged sensitivity to automobile and highway transport. Economically they are hurting very badly. They need gasoline at a dollar, not three to four dollars. Look at the food stamp usage and the unemployment in these counties. It's severe. So, California needs to realize that a dollar invested in maintaining the road-based transport system is a dollar that's going to money heaven, and never coming back.

What's the one possible energy outlier on the horizon that you find most interesting?

If the United States decided to spend a trillion dollars on rail based transport--light rail, commuter rail, high speed rail, and freight rail--and used Chinese financing or manufacturing in part to undertake this project, this could be the trigger for a Sino-American build-out also of utility grade solar and wind to provide the power to such a new system. Were that to happen, some economic synergies and economies of scale might finally come in to play, depressing temporarily the price of oil, and effecting a psychological shift in perception, globally. It's important to remember that the construction fuel for any global build-out of alternative energy is going to be oil. In that context, oil's high energy density would be used more efficiently. In other words, this is really the true fate of oil and the best tactical use for oil: as the construction fuel to fund not further economic growth but rather the massive 10-20 year global engineering project required to build out new power grids and new power generation. Obviously I hope that happens.

Painting: Kim Jong Il Launches Nuclear War

Chris Arkenberg — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:20:05 +0000

This appears to be a rendering of Kim Jong Il overseeing a Pikachu ICBM nuclear war. I have no idea who the artist is but I love it!

John Robb interview: Open Source Warfare & Resilience

Chris Arkenberg — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:22:33 +0000

John Robb is a globally-recognized author, technologist, and entrepreneur specializing in the complex systems of insurgency and asymmetrical warfare. His book, Brave New War, is an Amazon best-seller and established his expertise as a researcher & military consultant. He has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, and the Wall Street Journal. His daily thoughts are collected on his blog, Global Guerrillas.

I asked him some questions about his work, our times, and the shifting landscape of governance & power...

In your book Brave New War you explore the changing nature of warfare. What are some recent examples of insurgency, resource conflicts, or terrorism that you feel best illustrate this new landscape?

Here's an interesting story that may do the trick. Back in 2004, the US military was getting trounced in guerrillas in Iraq. Worse, the US military establishment didn't know why. Didn't have a clue. To correct this, I began to write about how 21st Century warfare actually worked on my blog, Global Guerrillas. Essentially, I concluded that guerrilla groups could use open source organizational models (drawn from the software industry), networked super-empowerment (freely available high tech tools, network information access, connections to a globalized economy), and systems disruption (the targeting of critical points on infrastructure networks that cause cascading failures) to defeat even the most powerful of opponents, even a global superpower.

The new theories of warfare I developed on the blog proved both predictive and very popular. As a result, I spent a lot of time on the speaking circuit in Washington DC (DoD, CIA, NSA, etc.). Of course, since my work was on a blog everyone could read it, even the guerrillas themselves.So, it was a little surprising although not unexpected when I got an e-mail in 2009 from Henry Okah, a leader of MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). He invited me to Nigeria and stated that he was an avid reader of my blog.

It was a moment out of history, as if the UK's General Liddell Hart (the originator of blitzkrieg armored warfare) got a note from Germany's tank General Heinz Guderian in 1939, thanking him for his work. Here's why: MEND's campaign against Shell (the oil company) and the Nigerian government between 2006 and 2008 was a great example of how I thought 21st Century warfare would be fought. The organization structure was loose and organized along the lines of an open source movement. Lots of small autonomous groups joined together to take down the country's oil infrastructure by targeting vulnerable points in the network (Nigeria is a major global oil exporter). During 2007, they were able to take out one million barrels a day of oil production. This shortfall was the reason oil prices rose to $147 a barrel. Those high prices had a negative global economic impact: the start of a global recession and a spike in default rates in US sub-prime mortgages (due to higher driving and food costs). That spike in sub-prime mortgage default rates radically accelerated the demise of our grossly over leveraged global financial sector, which in turn led to the financial panic of 2008.

In short, MEND's disruption campaign, yielded tens of trillions of dollars in global economic damage for tens of thousands of dollars spent on making the attacks. That's a return on investment (ROI) of 1,000,000,000%. How do nation-states survive when an unknown guerrilla group in a remote corner of the world can generate returns on that magnitude? They don't.

The United States is suffering both the economic decline of its industry and the ongoing dismantling of the social welfare apparatus supporting the citizenry. In your opinion, will this inevitably lead to some form of armed insurgency in America?

Yes. The establishment of a predatory and deeply unstable global economic system - beyond the control of any group of nations - is in the process of gutting developed democracies. Think in terms of the 2008 crisis, over and over again. Most of what we consider normal in the developed world, from the middle class lifestyle to government social safety nets, will be nearly gone in less than a decade. Most developed governments will be in and out of financial insolvency. Democracy, as we knew it, will wither and the nation-state bureaucracy will increasingly become an enforcer for the global bond market and kleptocratic transnational corporations. Think Argentina, Greece, Spain, Iceland, etc. As a result, the legitimacy of the developed democracies will fade and the sense of betrayal will be pervasive (think in terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union). People will begin to shift their loyalties to any local group that can provide for their daily needs. Many of these groups will be crime fueled local insurgencies and militias. In short, the developed democracies will hollow out.

How big of a domestic threat is there from the narco-insurgency in Mexico and the growing power of Latin American gangs in America?

Very big. A threat that dwarfs anything we face in Afghanistan (a useless money pit of a war). It's not a threat that can be solved by conventional military means, since the problem is that Mexico is a hollow state. Unlike a failed state like Somalia (utter chaos), a hollow state still retains the facade of a nation (borders, bureaucracy, etc.). However, a hollow state doesn't exert any meaningful control over the countryside. It's not only that the state can't do it militarily, they don't have anything they can offer people. So, instead, control is ceded to local groups that can provide basic levels of opt-in security, minimal services, and jobs via new connections to the global economy - think in terms of La Familia in Michoacana.

The real danger to the US is that not only will these groups expand into the US (they already have), it is that these groups will accelerate the development of similar homegrown groups in the US as our middle class evaporates.

Do you see a diminishing role for the state in large-scale governance? Does this compel communities to do it for themselves?

Yes, large scale governance is on the way out. Not only are nearly all governments financially insolvent, they can't protect citizens from a global system that is running amok. As services and security begin to fade, local sources of order will emerge to fill the void. Hopefully, most people will opt to take control of this process by joining together with others to build resilient communities that can offer the independence, security, and prosperity that isn't offered by the nation-state anymore. However, this is something you will have to build for yourself. Nobody is going to help you build it.

In what ways are the new methods of insurgency & terror instructive towards building strategies for resiliency?

Here are a few of the parallels:

* Powerful technologies. Inexpensive tools that make it possible to produce locally what it used to take a global economy to produce.

* Networks. The ability to draw on the ideas of hundreds of thousands of people working on the same problems through open source tinkering networks. The ability to create new economic networks that accelerate prosperity.

You're currently writing a book about local resiliency. What are the primary global drivers behind your interest in resiliency?

Yes, I am. It's about building resilient communities. Communities that offer energy independence, food security, economic prosperity, and protection. What are the global drivers that make resiliency important? Simply: stability, prosperity, and security is going away. You will soon find you are on your own, if you haven't already. If you do nothing, you will suffer the predations of gangs, militias, and corrupt bureaucracies that will fill the void left by retreating nation-states. If you want to avoid this fate, you can build resilient communities that not only allow you and your family to survive intact, but to thrive. My goal with my new book, is to provide people with a road map on how to build resilient communities from scratch.

What is the core messages you have to communities about preparing for the coming age?

Produce everything you can locally. Virtualize everything else. The value of your home will be based on the ability of your community to offer energy independence, food security, economic vitality, and protection. Survivalist stockpiles and zero footprint frugality are pathways to failure. Think in terms of vibrant local economic ecosystems that are exceedingly efficient, productive, and bountiful.

The Mexican Narco-Insurgency

Chris Arkenberg — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:10:26 +0000

Benefiting from the inflated margins of the illegal drug trade, Mexican cartels move billions of dollars worth of cocaine, methamphetamine, & marijuana to the high-demand markets of the United States, using sophisticated weaponry and horrific violence to defend their markets against competitors and directly challenge attempts by state militia to control their activities. In return, they purchase guns from border states like Texas, Arizona, and California to arm their narco-insurgency. The Mexican state apparatus has become a hollow shell, heavily militarized but incapable of managing its territories.

PEMEX, the major oil developer along the Mexican Gulf, has reported that cartels siphon about $1B in oil annually, reselling it on the open market to fund their insurgency. This tactic has escalated to include the kidnapping of PEMEX workers, possibly to further infiltrate the company. It was recently reported that cartels may be using IED's to attack the Mexican military, suggesting that the techniques of full-scale insurgency developed in Iraq are now finding their way to Mexico.

Of particular interest are cartel incursions into the United States. The DEA is tracking cartel networks across the major cities of the southern United States. Americans have been indicted smuggling weapons south across the border. Arrests of compromised Customs and Border agents has increased 40% in the past year. Agents say that substantial cartel violence in the US is only a matter of time. The US DHS has submitted plans to deal with cartel incursions into the United States.

Recently, Pinal county sheriff, Paul Babeu, states that Mexican drug cartels control parts of Arizona. "We are outgunned, we are out manned and we don't have the resources here locally to fight this," said Babeu, referring to heavily-armed cartel movements three counties deep in Arizona. Even Phoenix has seen ongoing cartel violence.

It's important to understand that the Mexican narco-insurgency is possibly the most direct threat to the stability of American communities, far more so than any of our foreign wars. Immigration laws will not work, just as drug laws have failed to stem the flow of drugs across US borders. Legalization of drugs is perhaps the most obvious solution, though it's not without its own costs. In all likelihood, near-term management will take the form of increased troop deployment to southern states, coupled to advanced enforcement technologies. For example, Wired recently reported that the FAA is considering how to integrate drones into US airspace. Certainly the landscape of the America's southern states is shifting to include a more violent and militarized gang presence.

Bruce Sterling Interview: Cities

Chris Arkenberg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:40:41 +0000

Bruce Sterling probably needs little introduction here... Through an electric career as a science fiction author, cultural observer, and futures provocateur he's emerged as one of the most important voices of the nascent 21st century. He has a sharp wit, an impeccable turn of phrase, and a keen eye for spotting the most interesting and obscure trends before they hit the world stage. His 2009 novel, The Caryatids, was released to glowing reviews by the likes of Cory Doctorow and Alex Steffen. You can grab his daily brain feed over at the Wired blog, Beyond the Beyond. I got in touch with Sterling and asked some questions about cities...

What are some of the cities you find most interesting? Why?

I go for Austin, Belgrade and Turin. Because I hang out there enough to have some idea of how they function. I'm also keen on the much bigger cities of Berlin, London, and Mumbai, but in a more detached way. I'm getting very interested in Sao Paolo lately.

What do you see as some of the more valuable aspects of urbanization and some of the more dangerous?

Well, the "valuable" aspect, or at least the interesting one, is that bigger towns are getting much more "urban-informatic" lately.There's a lot of innovation in the urban fabric these days. Cities also seem to have political energy in an era when nations are getting weaker every day. For instance, the UK is a creaking financial wreck while Boris Johnson's London is a freak scene.

The obviously dangerous aspect of modern cities is urban organized crime, narcoterror, low-intensity warfare, war in urban terrain, favela shoot-'em-ups, whatever faddish name the trouble has this year. Baghdad, Mogadishu, Grozny.

But I'd also like to point out that large financial centers in certain cities around the planet are certainly going to kill millions of us by destroying our social safety networks in the name of their imaginary financial efficiency. You're a thousand times more likely to die because of what some urban banker did in 2008 than from what some Afghan-based terrorist did in 2001. *Financiers live in small, panicky urban cloisters, severely detached from the rest of mankind. They are living today in rich-guy ghetto cults. They are truly dangerous to our well-being, and they are getting worse and more extremist, not better and more reasonable. You're not gonna realize this havoc till you see your elderly Mom coughing in an emergency ward, but she's going there for a reason.

Do you think governance can scale with the increasing size of megacities like Jakarta, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, & New York? Or are such cities doomed to increasing ferality?

I don't think urban scale is a truly serious problem. Tokyo and Jakarta share the same scale, but not the same problems. There are plenty of cities that are getting *smaller* and have some awful problems, viz Detroit.

There are many cities that have outgrown their old infrastructure and become huge squatter camps, but that's not inherently a scaling problem, it's a management problem.

How do you think the psychogeography of the city might be affecting identity and tribalism? Do you suspect the trend is more towards collaboration or fragmentation?

That word "psychogeography" probably means something, but guys who use it go out on Situationist drifts and look for urban ley-lines. I do a lot of similar activity, but I don't like to dignify it too much.

Modern large cities are the engines of globalization in the way that New York used to be an engine of Americanization. You look at New York back in the 1800s, obviously collaboration and fragmentation were going on there at the same time. Little Italy, Little Ukraine, whatever... but those sharp distinctions tended to melt with time. Cities that segregate their citizens into ghettos tend to go broke.

The infrastructure always ends up shaping people more than they think it will. Modern big city people tend to think and act like big-city people anywhere. A big-city New York guy sleeping in bus stations is as poor as his brother, some Deep South sharecropper. But the social chasm between those two people is immense.

You talk about the favela chic expressions of the slums. In a world of increasing poverty do you see slums as incubators of the future or more as casualities of the past?

To tell the truth, the slums are probably just as various as the cities. The slums were caused to exist for all kinds of different bad reasons. But the slums sure as hell have the birthrate to be the "incubator of the future." The slums are the nurseries of our planet. Why we allowed ourselves to let that happen, I dunno, but it's the truth.

What, to you, are the most interesting possibilities of augmented reality, good or bad, for life in the city?

Oh, it's all about those nifty little navigation apps. They've got the means, motive and opportunity right now. But you don't really need AR to do digital mapping of cities. AR comes more into its own with artsy, confrontational, bend-your-reality stuff. Like the Layar app that "shows" you the Berlin Wall in its fearsome glory as you are walking thoughtlessly through modern Berlin. Or the Museum of London "Streetmuseum" iPhone app that pastes historic photographs of London over the modern London you see in your iPhone screen.

Then there's the chance of turning urban billboards interactive, and augmenting them. Not too much of that going on yet, but it's a super-interesting idea. How come billboards are still so print-based and static? With displays as cheap as they are, paper billboards oughta be dying like newspapers.

Finally, what song or artist comes to mind in your personal urban soundtrack?

Two for the price of one: Ladytron, "High Rise" and "Fighting in Built-Up Areas."

Running On Empty - L.A. Without Cars

Chris Arkenberg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:31:22 +0000

Here's the video by Ross Ching, Running On Empty, that Bill Barol referred to here a couple weeks ago. I think it's a great bit of provocative future fiction showing the vast topologies of the Los Angeles roadway infrastructure absolutely free of automotive traffic. Perhaps a sudden, massive lifestyle change has ended car use. Or a Peak Oil soft landing, or personal teleportation devices have gone mainstream, or the Rapture came and somebody lost the list of sinners and just decided to take everyone... I like to imagine this vision rolled forward 20 years when vegetation has overtaken all the useless hardscaping, no doubt matched by some Jumanji-type unleashing of large fauna across the sprawl.

Beautiful big wave set at Jaws

Chris Arkenberg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:04:14 +0000

I'm a surfer but I'm not crazy. I wouldn't go anywhere near these waves. But I really like this video by iamkalaniprince capturing a seemingly relentless set of 25+ foot peaks rolling in at Jaws on the North Shore of Maui. These monsters come barreling across the deep water trenches of the Pacific then heave up onto the Hawaiian reef creating some of the biggest and fastest waves in the world. The slow-motion (and the glorious Canon optics) underscores, to me, the majesty of this great dance and the strange harmony we human apes find amidst the power of nature.

80 HDR Pics of Tokyo

Chris Arkenberg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:09:31 +0000

Photography purists might see many HDR images as gaudy & cartoonish but I really dig the way they bring out a new experience of the subject. The hyper-realism of some HDR compositions seems to almost virtualize the world blurring the lines even further between real & synthetic. It's this same boundary dissolution that I enjoy in immersive games like the Grand Theft Auto series where you can suddenly find yourself gazing at the play of light on the city walls at sunset, awed by the natural beauty and simultaneously amazed by the number crunching under the hood.

This series of 80 HDR photos of Tokyo seems especially appropriate to me as it pushes the hyper-modernity of this massive city closer to my own Manga-fied senses. (Click through each pic for larger Flickr sets...) 80 Photos of Tokyo in HDR