Why Internet Radio Changes The Game
Hanging out again with the guys from Umbrella Radio the other night, the significance of the so-called media convergence and the now-delayed digital transition in America suddenly struck me. Web radio is the new AM/FM. Why? Because – as we’ve examined at length on this domain – computing is undergoing what could be described as a quantum leap (if mostly in our perception, rather than our sheer computational power) as what we consider a computer morphs and irrevocably vanishes. The mainframe shrinks to the desktop shrinks to the laptop shrinks to the handheld shrinks to the cell phone shrinks to the — vanishes into ubiquitous ambient mobile environments with embedded location and context-aware information microtargeted to the individual consumer like you have no idea.
Surveillance up the yin-yang? You betcha – somebody’s ad dollars have to pay for all that equipment! All the microchips. All the transceivers. All the satellites. But goddamn, you’ll have whatever kind of content you can dream of across the gamut! The wealthy will have better interfaces and will take their illusions perhaps the most seriously of us all; some things never change. But all of our lives are powered on dreams. We have to remember that. Dream better. Dream bigger.
My dream goes something like figuring out a technological method and business process for embedding media content in geo-spatial locations. RF technology seems like a natural fit for learning about how something like this might work on a practical level. How to make it work. How to sell it. The future I see is only the present extrapolated: bands of frequency on the electro-magnetic spectrum are being carved up and auctioned off to broadband and other services. What is wireless broadband? How does it work? RF. Radio frequencies. That’s what your wireless router works on. Imagine wireless transmitters operating on a tiny scale: RFID chips. Transmitting and receiving information as they move through geo-spatial locations. Whirling dots. Orchestration of infinite data points. Choreography of microchips attached to animist spirits. The nets we weave to catch the impossible and to give concepts shape.
Once the technology is cheap enough web radio then, coming back to my original point, becomes the equivalent of what low-power FM/AM stations once were before they were corrupted by corporate interests. Ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence means the electro-magnetic spectrum is re-apportioned to suit wireless internet/data services. Any consumer-level products which ride this observable shift are pretty much guaranteed to succeed. Luckily, we even have many useful paradigms and concepts – thanks to RF technology which is well over a hundred years old – to guide in our imaginings…
In any case, these are the scale and quality of thoughts which occupy my immediate cognitive playground these days in betweens the many other activities I’m currently engages in. Hope you all are well and staying warm. The end of winter / beginning of spring is such a weird time. Things that have lain dormant for what seem like an interminably long time are coming alive again. It’s a joyous transition, even though it means radical shifts back and forth and getting snow dumped on you from time to time. Stay warm!
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT BY TIM BOUCHER (Auto-Generated)
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- Quick-change acts as sleight-of-hand
- The Stage Door
- SUPER HAPPY FUN TOWN
10 Comments
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7920067.stm
Which is exactly why people need to start developing mobile web-based radio solutions, to circumvent these problems
stubmled across these creepily sterile microsoft videos looking at ubiq-computing – chimes in with the idea of the dissapearing machinery
They expect us to wait ten years for that shit?
I think you are going the wrong way with this stuff.
All the stuff you are talking about lately, ubiquitous computing etc. was predicted by Rudolph Steiner as being the incarnation of Ahriman.
You say a lot of the same stuff word for word, only he saw it as really ominous and you see it as positive, like computer networks becoming sentient intelligences.
I remember a post you made a while back called “some shit about fairies because… whatever”
You being flip about it but you really understood it.
You really do get shamanism. You don’t think its cool, I guess unless its combined with computers and new technology, but anyway..
Here is the concern: Nature spirits and demons are, like you know, at war. Western technology is by and large the realm of demonic forces. So, how do you know you aren’t just working to help these demonic forces make inroads into nature? This is serious shit here. Sure you can say I am just a crank, but really the whole materialistic program is demonic. It denies the Spirit. Francis Bacon wanted to put mother nature on a rack and force her secrets out of her. That is almost an exact quote.
Why is it your goal for the internet to be ubiquitous and dominate everything? Every bit of space, all consciousness?
You don’t need the internet for consciousness. You can do all this stuff through meditation and spiritual practice. Taking walks in the woods. Did Edgar Cayce need the internet?
Its like this this machine intelligence is gaining dominion over everything through human agency. How do you know that is a good thing?
http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic.php?id=2443
I think you might be taking this like way too seriously dude
That’s not even a response, like..dude.
I guess you are too cool to deign to condescend to me and adress my points.
So that’s fine. What you spend all your time on and what you think is the next big thing that will make lots of people rich and be a revolution in computing and transform society and how people percieve reality is not meant to be taken seriously..
uh Ok. My bad.
I’m not going to let you riff my chill, homey. I’m not saying these things *should* happen. I’m saying they will happen. Then what? Complain about how it never should have happened? Too late, sucker!
Well, I am not presenting these reservations as if I am looking at Rudolf Steiner in a doctrinaire way.
What his message amounts to is that we should be aware enough to be able to resist this Ahrimanic influence in an intelligent way.
Its a nuanced view he had. He sees not a duality in the world but these three spiritual forces. Lucifer, Christ and Ahriman all playing a part in human evolution, Christ being the blancing force. Its like the fleur de lis, or the concept of the trinity. He said it was philistinism to say basically “ooh, that’s of the devil! I’m not going to have anything to do with that.”
I am not saying that either. But that to me is not the same as gleefully embracing these Ahrimanic influences that are coming to a head now.
Is it a good thing for electronic networks to have dominion over consciousness?
I think its fucked up. First of all it not that consciousness needs this artificial scaffolding over it. Its not supporting consciousness so much as trapping it and feeding off it.
You can scoff all you want. You may not hear to many people quoting Steiner to you like me,
But not everyone is all enamored of this ubiquitous internet stuff. Young techno saavy hip people too are getting creeped out by it.
I am not just coming from out of left feild with this.
Nowhere at any point in my many ramblings have I advocated that we ought to let these things have control over us.