No Picnic: Marketers plan for the future

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Photo: A different kind of picnic in Amsterdam. CC Mark van Woudenberg (http://flickr.com/people/mindcaster-ezzolicious/)

The speeches by leading futurists, celebrities like Sir Richard Branson, the yoga classes with Woody Harrelson: Picnic in Amsterdam is a great big party for the global technorati.

Futurist speaker Adam Greenfield at the conference next month will address the loss of privacy and independent thought caused by ubiquitous computing devices.

In an interview at the Picnic website, Greenfield describes how a mobile device might present you with map, minus a route through a bad neighborhood. In other words, it has already done some of your thinking for you.

Greenfield, a former PSYOP sergeant in the US Army’s Special Operations Command, is now head of design direction at Nokia.

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I did not know that…

The U.S. is closing in on $10 trillion in debt. It is painful to contemplate what being in hock like this will do to our liberties. The latest FUD flick, in the Inconvenient Truth vein, is IOUSA…

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Imperial forces take San Francisco

Great CGI stuff, makes me feel better for moving away from SF, knowing it is clearly now under Imperial occupation.

Also, here’s a chestnut from Alan Watt, last night on RBN, about the “scientific dictatorship,” and its attempts to blind us with science: “When you really see the truth of it all, it’s beyond science science fiction. It’s hell.”

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Meet the new kids at Plymouth Rock

Two of my former writing students at Emmanuel College are turning out a very cute, funny, and well-produced Web comedy series for Plymouth Rock Studios. One of these guys, Ryan Murphy, also produced a brilliant newsreel version of the Plymouth Rock story.

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Gitmo on the Platte: "Secret" detention camp for DNC Protestors

Protesters at the Democratic Convention in Denver, many of whom were kids at the Boston convention in 2004, do not appear to know what they are up against. If they get out of line in the streets of Denver, police will use stun guns to stuff rabble-rousers into a caged parking area.

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Running against the reptilians

The candidate: David Icke is standing for a parliamentary seat. Photo: Jack Cutting

(Update: Steve, in his excellent comments, below, says I mischaracterized David Icke’s spiritual views in this post. In short, Icke believes that he is a Son of God, not “the” Son, a state he shares with any other human being. — mb)

from Mark:

Red Ice this week made international news of David Icke’s anti-Big Brother campaign for British Parliament.

Icke, the former sportscaster, footballer and a Son of Godreincarnation of Jesus Christ (so he says), does not want the job, actually.

Rather, he seeks to call attention to Britain’s alarming cascade into a full-blown police state.

As the Palmgren brothers note at Red Ice, The Times of London, a Rupert Murdoch paper (that I’ve written for), mocked Icke’s announcement, noting the conspiracy researcher’s assertion that the Royal family and other world leaders are members of a reptilian master race.

The Times lists Icke alongside a beauty queen and the gag candidate, Mad Cow-Girl, as the candidates for the available seat.

David Icke’s Media Conference In ‘Big Brother’ By-Election Update (Video) In case you’ve missed it, David Icke will stand under the title ‘Big Brother – The Big Picture’ with David Davis in the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. Listen to our radio program from July 1st with David Icke to get the background. The following video is the presentation David Icke gave at the press conference July 2nd:[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-972704915352925347]

"Kirk" calls for depopulation

If Man won’t do it, Nature will, William Shatner says.

(In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk meets a wicked Spock in a parallel universe. He dissuades his first officer from eradicating an uncooperative humanoid race. Image: StarTrek.com)

from Mark:

Star Trek star William Shatner said last week that the earth is striking back against humans with natural disasters.

“They [people] are pressed together, defecating into the ocean,” said Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. “The earth can’t take it.”

At one point in a long conversation with talk show host Glenn Beck, Shatner decried humankind’s penchant for reproduction. (See clip, and an excerpt from the transcript, below). It is a position he shares with his fellow transhumanist, Max More.

In a strange blurring of real and virtual reality, both Shatner and his Star Trek character are heroes to the transhumanists, who view the human body as limited, imperfect, and in need of artificial augmentation.

The transhumanists also want to bring about “a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.”

Shatner, a vigorous 74-year-old (he also appears to have been “under the knife”), was on Beck’s show to flog his new autobiography, Up Till Now.

Note: I was a contributing editor to one issue of Glenn Beck’s magazine, Fusion. — mb

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2xn35NpdA]

Glenn Beck – Interviews – Shatner v. Glenn
Well, nature, nature eventually will take care of that problem like they did, like nature does with animals. We’re overgrazing. So when deer multiply, when the natural order of things is disturbed and predators are taken away, for example, the deer, they overpopulate, they eat too much of the food and they starve. And we’re going to — if we don’t curb — how do we stop the overpopulation? I guess it’s by education and saying you’ve got to have less children, you can’t have all the children you want anymore. There’s a difference in the world now. Or nature will take care of it.

Headsets getting some cachet

From my Boston Globe column last week: Smaller, better-looking video eyewear (for watching vids, checking in on your Second Life, etc.),

Headsets getting some cachet – The Boston Globe
By Mark Baard
May 12, 2008

digital eyewear
Digital eyewear is slowly becoming suitable for public viewing. In other words, headsets such as the Myvu Crystal are slim and colorful enough that they might be taken for a pair of over-the-top Gaultier frames instead of an assistive device.
more stories like this

The ear buds hanging from the arms of the Crystal are a dead giveaway that something “smart” is going on behind those shades.

Like the original, less sexy looking Myvu models, the Crystal (about $300 at myvu.com, starting next week) creates a single image you can see inside the translucent lenses.

OLED displays could speed immersive, home media centers

Progress: From Toshiba, the largest OLED display yet

Brown University has its 3-D VR cave. And your rich neighbor has his man cave, with its surround sound stereo and big screen TV.

But a truly immersive, video system for the home–a mini-holodeck, if you will–is probably out of most everybody’s price range.

OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays promise to make the imaging piece of immersive video cheaper. Because they will be made large and flexible, you will be able to wallpaper your home with OLED displays.

And there are still more advantages to OLED (see link and excerpt, below)…

clipped from www.technovelgy.com
The world’s largest OLED display was introduced by Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co. this week. Organic Light-Emitting Diode displays are now a whopping 20.8 diagonal inches in size.

  • The polymer layers of an OLED are thinner, lighter and more flexible than those of an LED or LCD; this flexibility provides a wider range of applications over brittle LCDs.
  • OLED displays are brighter than LEDs and LCDs; because they are thinner, OLEDs pass more light.
  • OLED displays do not require backlighting; they consume much less power, making them ideal for use in small devices like PDAs, iPods and mobile phones.
  • It seems likely that OLED displays will be cheaper to make in larger sizes.
  • OLED displays have larger fields of view – up to 170 degrees.