Recently in Essays Category

My reading of the last few months has been so novel as to make me change a few of my fundamental views on things.

The books were The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, Accelerando by Charles Stross (who'd obviously either read Kurzweil or the same sources, and Consciousness by Susan Blackmore. The first two very much majored on GNR (Genes-Nanotech-Robotics) and the singularity, the last on the consciousness aspects of humans, animals and AI. In fact I prefer to think of GNR as GNA – Genes-Nano-Artificiality, encompassing both AI and VR.

The changes of viewpoint are largely around a) SF and the future of space exploration, and b) AIs .

Nabaztag! No its not my hay-fever coming back but the cute bunny now sitting on our breakfast bar. Like Harvey he's white, but unlike the famous film rabbit he's only 20cm tall, conical, glows with multi-coloured lights, has rotating ears, and is French.

Why re-invent the wheel? Last weekend I finally hawked my CD and vinyl collection round the record shops of Birmingham. Having moved everything to MP3, and stored a DVD backup in deepest Surrey, I vowed never to buy another mainstream CD.

This month the British Standards Institution finally published the “Publicly Available Specification 78 (PAS 78): Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Web Sites”. PAS 78 has been under development by the BSI and the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) for many months. Its intention is to provide those commissioning and designing web sites with clear guidance as to how to implement accessibility effectively.

Here's a call to action. I've created a Digital Birmingham group at Frappr! Just go to http://www.frappr.com/digitalbirmingham, put yourself on the map, take a look at your digital neighbours, and demonstrate your commitment to a truly digital Birmingham. And don't forget to tell your friends.....

Digital Birmingham launches today in Chamberlain Square. Kids and half-term willing I might head down there to find out what all the fuss is about. My Digital Birmingham guide tells me that Birmingham is leading the digital revolution and that the city will be “embracing the latest technology .. to ensure our city and its workforce are ahead of the game”.

Needless to say that got me thinking. What would be on my shopping list for a Digital Birmingham?

Ever wanted to be a roadie, a film star, a CEO? Now you can be. With 20Lives the Nokia Game, whose loss I lamented here a year ago, is back.

The premise is simple. Every day you play one of 20 different lives. Living out a day in the life of one of the characters. The nicest touch is that all of the game is in a first person perspective, you see people and places only through your character's eyes – and there are a lot of people talking right in your face. Each of the lives is interlinked, inhabiting the same city. You'll play one character one day, only to find yourself encountering that same character the next day whilst you're in somebody else's skin. Useful information comes fast and without warning, and you soon learn to keep a pen and paper handy.

A major trend in technoculture at the moment is the remix. We've all grown used to DJ remixes dominating the dance floors – but the remix, or mash-up in US geek speak – is now appearing almost everywhere. The reason is that the cost of the technology needed to re-edit existing material has plummeted. Star Wars fans have used desktop PCs to create a Jar-Jar Binks-less A Phantom Menace, anime fans have cut video-game footage to fit their favourite pop songs, and machinema enthusiasts have used commercial game engines like Quake and Halo to create their own video soaps. Now, though, it's happening to the web.

Every so often an application arrives on the Internet that takes your breath away. Google Earth is such an application. Using satellite photographs taken over the last three years Google has stitched together a complete image of the Earth. A globe which lets you zoom in with every increasing detail until you can see individual buildings, gardens and even cars. And when you get down to ground level you can tilt the entire image into a relief view so that mountains rise high above you, and seas spread out before you.

You may have read of the BBC's plans to release some of their immense digital library onto the web Yet another BBC initiative, BBC Backstage, received less coverage but could have a greater long term impact.

Launched in May, BBC Backstage is where the BBC will open up its computer programmes to web developers. As it says on the BBC Backstage web site “we're passionate about giving designers and developers the content and services they need to create cool new things“.

What do Hogwarts and Tottenham Court Road tube station have in common? Moving pictures, that's what.

On a recent trip to London I found that all of the advertising posters on the Northern Line escalator at Tottenham Court Road tube had been replaced by LCD displays. We've become accustomed to seeing these as one-off advertising displays in post offices and shops. However to be suddenly confronted by 40 or 50 of them doing no more than cycling through adverts for West End Shows, recruitment companies and sunglasses made me realise just how ubiquitous this new media is about to become.