Remix of Out of Control
The other day I got a note from a Danish guy who is a fan of my book OUT OF CONTROL. He found my ideas great but my presentation "frustrating." But unlike my other "frustrated" readers, Andreas Lloyd decided to do something about it: he remixed my book!
I think the result is quite amazing. Remixing is perhaps too strong a word because he mostly simply dropped entire chapters, with a little re-arranging here and there. It is a very sharp but intelligent edit. But the effect is striking. Instead of a rambling book about one dozen things, Lloyd's remix of my book focuses it on the cybernetic and feedback aspects of the systems I was reporting on in the early 1990s. I suggested this focus needed a better title than OUT OF CONTROL, which I never was happy with anyhow, so Lloyd came up with a new one for this version of the book. He calls it BOOTSTRAPPING COMPLEXITY.
So if you never read OUT OF CONTROL because you were put off my its length, here is a user-generated remix that shortens and focuses the book. You can read it on Lloyd's website or even download the PDF. (I will post the PDF here on kk.org as well.)
Lloyd's notes read thus:
Kevin Kelly's book "Out of Control" is a fascinating book full of fascinating ideas reaching across the board from artificial intelligence, evolution, biology, ecology, robotics and more to explore complexity, cybernetics and self-organising systems in an accessible and engaging way.
But in reading Out of Control, I found it suffering from a number of frustrating flaws: Not only is it way too long-winded, it is also almost completely void of meta-text to help the reader understand what Kelly is trying to do with his book (having read the book, I'm still wondering).
Indeed, reading the book I got the feeling that Kelly was trying to combine several different books into one: There is a fascinating study of self-sustaining systems. But there is also a sort of business-book take on network economy. And an extended meditation on evolution and postdarwinism.
I'm sure that to Kelly, all of these things are tightly interconnected. But he doesn't explain these interrelations very well to the reader. His central argument is that as technology becomes ever more complex, it becomes more akin to biological systems (eco-systems, vivisystems, interdependent and co-evolving organisms). But because the individual chapters are set up as essays on their own, there is often little to tie these wildly different ideas together.
I would have preferred a much shorter book, more narrowly focused on the idea of self-organising systems. The whole text of the original book is easily available online at Kelly's own website, so I thought: Why not remix the online text to make such a book?
So I did.
However, if you liked BOOTSTRAPPING COMPLEXITY, you may also want to try my "long-winded" original version with lots more stuff. It is available as web text and a free PDF as well.
I think Lloyd is a fantastic editor, and his fan-based work is exactly the kind of liquidity of text that I believe will propel books in the next century. His remix is the kind of literary fluidity I was talking about in my Scan This Book article for the New York Times.
Oldest Living Things in The World
Besides the canonical Bristlecone Pine, there are many other organism on earth that will outlive you. Photographer Rachel Sussman has been traveling around the world to find and photograph them. I'm surprised by the number and variety of long-lived organisms. I very much like that she includes the low lifes -- lichen and so forth. You can keep up with her investigations with her intelligent blog.
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Evolution of Origin of Species
Ben Fy has visualized the evolution of Darwin's text as he edited and updated his On the Origin of Species. Fry says:
We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.
Social Media Venn
I thought there was some truth in this Venn diagram of behavioral disorders and social media. You can get the diagram on a T-shirt.
Crowdsourced 3D City
If a million monkeys typing can write Hamlet, can a million tourists' snapshots map out a 3D picture of Rome?
The answer is yes. And Venice, too.
There are more than 2 million photos on Flickr tagged with Rome. They capture almost every nook and cranny, every column and doorway, of the old city. If you had a lot of computer power, and the right smart software, you could take these 2 million views and compile them into a single unified 3D portrait.
And if this system from the University of Washington GRAIL lab worked for Rome you could take other highly photographed places, such as St Marks Plaza in Venice, and construct a visual 3D picture, down to the smallest detail.
Microsoft's Photosynth accomplished a similar feat. The movie below does that same thing with huge piles of photos taken off of Flickr.
Eventually, the every city in the world will get a full textured 3D view of itself. (via Waxy)
Very Short History of the Planet Earth
John Baez has written a Very Short History of the Planet Earth. He says, "The Earth has survived some remarkable disasters. To keep our tale brief, let us focus on four: the Big Splat about 4.55 billion years ago, the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago, the Oxygen Catastrophe roughly 2.5 billion years ago, and the Snowball Earth events about 850 million years ago. The details of these events --- and indeed, whether they even happened at all --- remain controversial. We shall present some widely accepted theories without dwelling on caveats or alternative scenarios. In every case, there is interesting physics involved in testing these theories."
It's not the whole history, but select dramatic parts, told simply and quick. It includes many scenes I was not aware of.
The dust cloud that is the precursor to Earth.
Free Wins Against Malaria
"Nothing free can be valuable" say some critics. That is, giving away things devalues them. This is obviously untrue in the digital realm, but what about physical things? The fear of the free was especially an issue in charity. If, with good intentions, you give medicines, or pumps, or solar panels, to the needed for free, won't they neglect, or trade off, or ignore these gifts? In particular, if you give long-lasting insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets to families in malaria territory, would they just use them for fishing, or sell them? Maybe you should sell them the nets originally for a small amount?
Turns out after many years of testing, that the free nets are incredibly effective in reducing malaria. Free wins! The story by Jeffery Sachs is here in Scientific American. Or you can read the PDF for the academic paper on the experiment.
Free or not, nets are a great idea and better than malarial drugs. If you want to fund a net ($10), there's a number of places that help you do that, including Nothing But Nets.
Effective Apology Skills
One of the essential skills in life is learning how to apologize with grace and honesty. For real. A genuine apology can move mountains.
We expect character from corporations even though they are not people, but when business do behave like upstanding people, we notice. Amazon did a silly thing recently by disabling books that they mistakenly sold on the Kindle. Founder Jeff Bezos just posted an apology that raised him two notches on my Buddha scale. It takes courage and wisdom to apologize as genuine and effectively as his did. Man, he is good.
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Crowdsourced Music Video
Crowdsourcing art. More proof that the hive can make art, when directed.
"This music video was shot for Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP'. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam."
Nice story about the not-surprising amount of work it took to coordinate. (Thanks, Michael)
How long did it take to make, start to finish?
Kawamura: The whole thing took about three months. The first month was really about the planning phase, the second month was about preparing for the shoot – prototypes, working with the animatics -- and the third month was all about going out and getting it shot.
What surprised you most about the process?
Kawamura: No surprises. We saw everything coming (laughs).
650 Million Years in 1.2 Minutes
This ultra time-lapse simulation of tectonic drift shows how dynamic our home planet it. The clip portrays the most recent 400 million-year geological history of the continents of Earth, and a prediction of its next 250 million years, all in 70 seconds. I love the way New York comes crashing into London in the far future. (Thanks, Stewart Brand) UPDATE: My mistake. I got lost. In 250 million years NYC crashes into West Africa, not London. Much more interesting!
