Thursday, March 16, 2006

Society of the Spectacle (2.0):. Surveillance in the Internet of Things "I was recently asked to consider how the new surveillance is (or might) operate in the era of networked Things. It's not a hard one to think through, but I reflected upon the role that visual surveillance has played in reshaping and refashioning physical space and thought maybe visual surveillance doesn't matter so much any more. Video surveillance was once all about "the man" having more power to see and reveal than those who were being watched. It was easy to grow wary of video cameras and their use, particularly by private entities whose cameras captured activity in public space, especially when there are no formal accountability protocols. I could get hopped up about that, certainly. I spent a day with the Institute for Applied Autonomy back several years ago, helping map out surveillance cameras in Manhattan as part of a wonderful exhibition that Eyebeam put on called We Love New York. It was about mapping the ways in which public space becomes a space that surveilled in a problematic way. It's too secret, this surveillance. Log files and Arphids are what we have to worry about, not video surveillance. In the Internet of Things, it's a web hit in an access log that'll send you to the big house. Continue reading Society of the Spectacle (2.0): Surveillance in the Internet of Things by Julian Bleecker. Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by angus on Mar 15, 2006 at 05:49 PM [unmediated] 8:50:20 PM    comment []

NCAA Jumps Through Hoops With RPI. Should invitations to the Big Dance be based on objective stats and formulas or messy subjective judgment? By John Gartner. [Wired News: Top Stories] 6:17:29 AM    comment []

Sony loses ground as snags delay PlayStation 3. Technology: Blu-ray console launch date shifts to November · Microsoft and Toshiba take lead in format war [Guardian Unlimited] Meanwhile, Wes sez: Skip the Playstation 3 echo-chamber stories and go straight for Sony's slides from today's announcement. (Why can't I find coverage this good in English?) 6:17:25 AM    comment []

Distributed citizen surveillance. David Pescovitz: The East Orange Police Department in New Jersey is enlisting residents to monitor surveillance camera video of their neighborhoods. The police will apparently invite certain citizens to participate in the "Virtual Community Patrol." From The Star Ledger: Soon-to-be-chosen residents will get access to a a Web site that provides panoramic views of their block, allows them to type in general complaints, pinpoint a problem location, immediately send that information to police headquarters, and simultaneously activate hidden police surveillance cameras, (police director Jose) Cordero said... "We plan on giving the community control of a very powerful technology," Cordero said. "We want to now give them shared virtual control of their community," Cordero said. "Essentially, when they see something that alarms them, they can go to the Web site, type in information, and hit send. "We will then get an alert in our community center, and, automatically, video cameras will turn to what they (the neighborhood resident) are looking at, or what they are complaining about," Cordero said. "We'll see what they're seeing. We'll be able to respond quicker." Link (completion of stupid short reg form may be required) (Thanks, Jason Tester!) [Boing Boing] 6:17:19 AM    comment []

Single Protein Compound May Start Memory Decline. Does rodent brain study point to a candidate model for 'cause' of Alzheimer's disease? The derivative of amyloid-beta precursor protein (APP), which is linked to the "plaques" and "neurofibrillary tangles" that are characteristic of the Alzheimer's brain, is well on the way to meeting Koch's postulates, the formal requirements that allow us to say that a substance has a causal role in a disease. First, it is found regularly in the brains of animals affected with a form of memory loss that is considered an animal model of Alzheimer's. It is not found in the brains of unaffected animals. When extracted from affected brains and given to healthy animals, they develop signs of memory loss. And the same protein appears in human brains. The mild cognitive deficits which precede the development of fullblown Alzheimer's Ddementia could be caused by this protein demonstrated to cause transient memory deficits in rodents. It might be the first step in the cascade of changes to brain proteins that underlie the degenerative process. If this finding is borne out, it holds out the promise of early detection of the Alzheimer's disease process before dramatic cognitive deficits develop. Identification of the protein could also lead to the development of medications which block its actions or vaccines to immunize patients against the development of Alzheimer's. (MedPage Today) [Follow Me Here...] 6:17:15 AM    comment []

"Is Your Cat Infected With a Computer Virus?". The NYT has an article on work by Andrew Tanenbaum and colleagues at Vrije Universiteit on RFID Malware: RFID exploits, RFID worms, and RFID viruses. [Thanks to Tim Finin !!] Study Says Chips in ID Tags Are Vulnerable to Viruses "A group of European computer researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to insert a software virus into radio frequency identification tags, part of a microchip-based tracking technology in growing use in commercial and security applications. ..." You can read their 2006 Percom paper Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus? which introduces the possibility that RFID tags with bad data can introduce a virus into an RFID reader which could propagate via writable RFID tags. This prospect may seem unlikely today, but will get much more plausible as tags with high data capacity become more common, especially if they include writable data segments. [Smart Mobs] 6:17:11 AM    comment []

UN-Iran discussion mirrors Iraq debate. Some experts warn that the US may act independently if the UN Security Council takes too long on Iran. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 6:17:07 AM    comment []

What Right in Digital Actors?. A Copyfight reader pointed me to a Slate story on digital thespians. Epstein talks about two kinds of digital creations: wholly new 'synthespians' as well as digitized representations of actual actors (Tom Hanks for Polar Express; Sean Connery for the From Russia with Love game). Although the technical hurdles to such captures remain quite large - especially if your goal is true-to-life, fool-an-audience reproduction - the reader's question was different. To wit: what rights do you purchase/license/contract for in creating such a reproduction of a real person? Rights to the "likeness?" Performance rights? Do either of these cover things the actor never physically did or said? Is there an exclusivity clause? There are clearly some issues around the ownership of a character, if that character has appeared before (e.g. Connery's Bond) but usually the character rights reside with the studio. But if you want the Connery Bond instead of a generic James Bond you also have to incude Connery in the deal, as well as whatever studio or estate has the Bond character rights. IANAL, but I'm hoping some of my readers are or can point me to resources from people who've actually worked in this area. [Copyfight] 6:17:03 AM    comment []

How Much Is That In Oil?. This is brilliant. Oil Standard is a Greasemonkey plug-in for Firefox that translates prices from dollars to barrels of oil equivalent, based on current spot prices; this means that the oil equivalent price fluctuates daily. "Networked Performance" art website Turbulence created the script, which works exactly as promised. Hit any web page that shows prices in dollars -- Amazon.com, the New York Times stock pages, even your bank account info -- and Oil Standard will show you how many barrels of oil it would take to match that amount of money. Why did they do it? Seeing the cost in oil of a new iPod on Amazon.com, or the balance in your bank account is startling. More than just a play on the concept of the 'Gold Standard,' or the old 'Standard Oil' company, this is a glimpse into the moment when oil will replace (or already replaced) gold as the standard by which we trade all other goods and currencies. To be clear, this isn't telling you how much oil goes into the production of a given item, although that would be pretty cool. Its goal is something quite different: as a reminder of just how important oil is to our economy. I have just one request, though: I want an option to see the prices in kilowatt-hours of wind power instead. (Via Information Aesthetics) [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 6:16:50 AM    comment []