The Obama transition team launched this new web site, Change.gov in order to keep the public informed on the transition team’s decisions and news. They are also soliciting information from the public—so go tell them what you think! I, for one, think that this web site, among other statements that President-elect Obama has made about making government transparent is a fantastic sign of things to come.¹ Take a look at the current White House web site and try to imagine what it’s going to look in the next year—a new generation is what. Given the large amount of importance that online efforts played in the President-elect’s campaign, I think we can expect it to play a large role in his administration.

While this little piece is not quite as elegant as crayon physics or quite as realistic and detailed as MIT’s illustration of whiteboard physics, this demonstration of whiteboard pong is definitely a new take on the concept and one that would easily indicate to me the possibilities of what happens when some video game company figures out how to get tactile media video games into the home.

This is really exceptional.  The latest Radiohead music video for “House of Cards” was filmed entirely without cameras, using instead, only lasers to scan the scenery and actors. The images seem weirdly realistic in their depth and motion; more so than video to me. The link above gets you the music video and the “making of” video as well. This imagery is so entirely appropriate for this haunting ballad—by far one of my favorites off of In Rainbows.

Oh good lord.  Why is that every medium that comes along has to be analyzed in this completely non-productive, irrational way.  Nicholas Carr over at Atlantic Monthly is jumping on the bandwagon of the Google-makes-you-stupid folks.  He starts with something I’ve heard a thousand times anecdotally from others: 

My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

“Oh nooo.  I’ve been using the internet and now I can’t concentrate.”  It’s not the net, it’s you.  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  The net doesn’t make you unfocused, you do.  I’ve been using the web since it was and although I went through a period where I realized I was just too distributed through various channels, I got ahold of myself and started prioritizing and organizing. I learned to use tabs while browsing.  I got NetNewsWire.  I stopped reading everything right away and started building chronologies of stuff TBR (to be read) on del.icio.us and now Laterloop.

Not only can I still read books, I read books that are longer than human history.  That’s right, I put that link there to distract you!  You can’t resist clicking on it, can you!?  No, because the web and email have made you an unfocused idiot.  The problem here, Carr—the only problem—is that while you are literate, you are not web literate.  It’s changing the way you think because you don’t know how to control it.  It’s no different than television, folks, either you know when to turn it off, or you’re a couch potato.  It ain’t the TV that’s the problem.

To quote Joe Mathlete:

JESUS FUCK STOP IT I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS??? EVERYTHING YOU CREATE IS CANCER AND MADNESS

Ok. Now that that’s out of the way, I will attempt to comment on this article over at Wired about the major label’s new strategy: everybody pays for all the music! That’s right. Now the RIAA has decided that they can make ISPs charge a fee to their customers in exchange for access to “a database of all known music.” Read more…