Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

Kurt Vonnegut died at age 84.
His "profound pessimism" and sharp wit were inspirational to me.

77 Drum Kits! Eye!

PICT0274
Originally uploaded by silverfuture.

A fitting 77th post* for me. A friend at VICE just reminded me about the Boredoms' 77 Drum performance. It's happening on July 7th (7/7/07) in NYC.

Maybe Eye will see you there.

* If you count, you'll end up with fewer than 77. A few posts haven't been published yet, but Blogger assures me this is post 77.

Revamped

You may notice a few subtle differences in PYLB. That's because I upgraded to the new Blogger over the past few days. And added some new links. And tags. And some other things you probably can't see yet. Excuse any little hiccups while I get everything situated.

Zombie Products = Lazarus Taxons?

I say "products" because these, not brands, are actually what Slate's Daniel Gross refers to in Zombie Brands II. (A follow-up to Zombie Brands part one -- which is also about products, not brands). For example, the McRib is a product; McDonald's is a brand. Likewise, the Taurus is a product of the Ford brand. And Tab is a product of the Coca-Cola brand (though I'm sure Coke's marketing folks might argue that Tab is a sub-brand within Coca-Cola's brand architecture). I'm calling them "zombie products" because "zombie brands" seems less correct for the majority of Gross' examples.

Now that we've gotten that clarification out of the way, I should get to my point: These zombie products are consumerism's version of the Lazarus taxon. I make note of this because in a previous PYLB post I discussed the "comeback" taxonomy seems to be making right now.

Scientific Prank Methodology

That's the term I just learned from an article in the latest issue of WIRED. The article explains how Annalee Newitz paid a service to get her incoherent, experimental blog a top rating on Digg. This, according to Newitz, was after Digg CEO Jay Adelson claimed "all the groups trying to manipulate Digg 'have failed,' and that Digg 'can tell when there are paid users.'"

It must sting to be Digg right now. But that's not the only reason I'm blogging about the article. The "cultural engineer" side of me picked up something other than the debunking of a CEO's claims.

It's interesting to read about the lemming effect that ensues once a few paid ratings are imitated by other Digg users. At a time when a lot of attention is given to the alleged usefulness of user recommendations, this is a reminder that the herd instinct is still in effect online.

Since most of us don't have the time to check the reputation of every user name we encounter ourselves, my gut tells me that we should expect to very soon see a service that recommends the best recommendations. Or, at the very least, some new sort of validation layer added to the experience of Digg. Surely, the folks at Digg must be all over it by now...

Read: "I Bought Votes On Digg"

My Trip To United Nations HQ

I still have over 250 photos to sort and tag, but here's the video I took inside the United Nations Headquarters last week. It's Ennio Morricone conducting a full orchestra, in a concert reception for the UN's new Secretary General. We actually sat in the same seats the UN ambassadors sit in -- we were in the Palestine section -- complete with translation ear-pieces and desktop gooseneck microphones. It was pretty cool. More details will come in another post, when I have the photos sorted.

For now, enjoy this capture of the very first time Morricone performed "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" on US soil (technically, the UN is international soil... but we saw Morricone the next night at Radio City Music Hall... both venues are in NYC).

VICE's VBS.TV

Friends at VICE today launched VBS.TV, and it looks pretty impressive. With associations ranging from Brightcove to Spike Jonze, this is certainly one online video effort to watch.

VICE explains VBS.TV best:

VBS is an online broadcast network. We stream original content, free of charge and 24 hours a day. We carry a mix of domestic and international news, pop and underground culture coverage, and the best music in the world. People have used words like eclectic, smart, funny, shocking, and revolutionary to describe VBS, but we kind of just snapped our fingers in their faces and went, “Whatever. Tell us something we don’t know.”

With Academy Award-nominated director Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) as our creative director, original content from a veritable United Nations of contributors, and bureaus in 20 countries, VBS has hit the planet in a manner not unlike a massive global plague. Streaming on VBS’s signature “in-room” widescreen and remote, content will be available all the time, on-demand.

Basically, VBS will exploit every utopian vision the internet has thus far failed to live up to. Thanks for watching.

If that doesn't illustrate the vision enough for you, there's this YouTube clip they linked to as well, at the request of Spike Jonze, which reminds me how I used to be a big fan of Frederick McFeely Rogers and his Neighborhood.