MachineMachine /stream - tagged with space http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Innovation Starvation http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation SF has changed over the span of time I am talking about—from the 1950s (the era of the development of nuclear power, jet airplanes, the space race, and the computer) to now. Speaking broadly, the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a generally darker, more skeptical and ambiguous tone. I myself have tended to write a lot about hackers—trickster archetypes who exploit the arcane capabilities of complex systems devised by faceless others. ]]> Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:47:54 -0700 http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Sun, 18 Sep 2011 04:21:33 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ&feature=youtube_gdata The Astronaut Suicides http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/9874744077

The Astronaut Suicides

Bonus: original photos by Neil Dacosta

]]> Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:53:01 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/9874744077 The Science of Nothing; The Philosophy of Everything http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/9037022482

The Physics of Nothing; The Philosophy of Everything

]]> Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:34:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/9037022482 Traces of humanity http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/traces_of_humanity/ What aliens could learn from the stuff we’ve left in space

Even in space, where none of us live, some of what we’ve left is space junk: stuff orbiting the earth that nobody particularly intended to leave anywhere. But much of what we’ve left in space is intentional. Some of it is symbolic artifacts intended for an audience of people here on Earth - the fallen astronaut, the American flag on the moon, a CD containing a list of over half a million people who wanted to send their names to a comet, courtesy of a NASA… ]]> Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:32:57 -0700 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/traces_of_humanity/ Michel Serres's Milieux http://www.stevenconnor.com/milieux/ There is a Yiddish expression used in London which always gives me a little jolt of pleasure whenever I hear it. ‘In mitten drinnen’ corresponds to German ‘In mitten darin’, which means ‘in the middle of it’ or ‘in the middle of things’. Actually, in common use, the phrase might be more idiomatically rendered as ‘right in the middle’: though this is a bizarre-enough phrase in itself. If it is really right in the middle, dead centre, as we also sometimes say, then why does the word used to signify this seem to have a list, in etymologically leaning to… ]]> Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:49:58 -0700 http://www.stevenconnor.com/milieux/ In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 Imagine you are falling. But there is no ground.

Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.1 We cannot assume any stable ground on which to base metaphysical claims or foundational political myths. At best, we are faced with temporary, contingent, and partial attempts at grounding. But if there is no stable ground available for our social lives and philosophical aspirations, the consequence must be a permanent, or at least intermittent state of free fall for subjects and objects alike. But why don’t we notice?
]]> Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:49:08 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 Alien space bats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alien space bats (ASBs) is a neologism for plot devices used in alternate history to create a point of divergence that would otherwise be implausible. [edit]Definition "Alien space bats" originally was used as a sarcastic attack on poorly written alternate histories due to lack of plausibility. These attacks are usually phrased as the need for alien space bats or by saying the alternate history has gone into "ASB territory". This original definition was used by one critic to criticize Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy.[1] The term eventually evolved into a deus ex machina to create an impossible point of… ]]> Tue, 03 May 2011 15:13:35 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alien space bats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alien space bats (ASBs) is a neologism for plot devices used in alternate history to create a point of divergence that would otherwise be implausible.
[edit]Definition

"Alien space bats" originally was used as a sarcastic attack on poorly written alternate histories due to lack of plausibility. These attacks are usually phrased as the need for alien space bats or by saying the alternate history has gone into "ASB territory". This original definition was used by one critic to criticize Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy.[1] The term eventually evolved into a deus ex machina to create… ]]> Tue, 03 May 2011 12:27:43 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats Alvin Lucier: I am Sitting in a Room http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html "I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any sem- blance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physi- cal fact, but more as a way to smooth… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:48:11 -0700 http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html The Temporary Autonomous Zone http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political… ]]> Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:43:13 -0700 http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (Michel Foucault, 1967)

The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mythological resources in the second principle of thermaldynamics- The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of… ]]> Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:32:41 -0700 http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html The Danger of Cosmic Genius http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-danger-of-cosmic-genius/8306/ Freeman Dyson is one of those force-of-nature intellects whose brilliance can be fully grasped by only a tiny subset of humanity, that handful of thinkers capable of following his equations. His principal contribution has been to the theory of quantum electrodynamics, but he has done stellar work, too, in pure mathematics, particle physics, statistical mechanics, and matter in the solid state. He writes with a grace and clarity that is rare, even freakish, in a scientist, and his books, including Disturbing the Universe, Weapons and Hope, Infinite in All Directions, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, have made… ]]> Sat, 13 Nov 2010 06:07:00 -0700 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-danger-of-cosmic-genius/8306/ Criswell Predicts : Plan 9 From Outer Space Outro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_DEtfvv9MU&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:40:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_DEtfvv9MU&feature=youtube_gdata Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.200-rethinking-einstein-the-end-of-spacetime.html Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simple

IT WAS a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere… ]]> Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:25:00 -0700 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.200-rethinking-einstein-the-end-of-spacetime.html The 10 Most Disgusting Alien Civilizations http://www.geekosystem.com/power-grid/The+10+Most+Disgusting+Alien+Civilizations/ We've dedicated this Power Grid to the most disgusting alien civilizations to ever grace the page, screen, or hard drive.

Why is biology used as technology the easiest way to make aliens seem alien? Why are the bad guys’ ships always covered in strange fluids and dubious orifices?

And for another thing! Why are the ships in Star Trek and Galaxy Quest so damp? ]]> Tue, 10 Aug 2010 06:56:00 -0700 http://www.geekosystem.com/power-grid/The+10+Most+Disgusting+Alien+Civilizations/ Big Ball of Mud http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#ShearingLayers The notion of SHEARING LAYERS is one of the centerpieces of Brand's How Buildings Learn [Brand 1994]. Brand, in turn synthesized his ideas from a variety of sources, including British designer Frank Duffy, and ecologist R. V. O'Neill.
Brand, Page 13

Brand quotes Duffy as saying: "Our basic argument is that there isn't any such thing as a building. A building properly conceived is several layers of longevity of built components".

Brand distilled Duffy's proposed layers into these six: Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space Plan, and Stuff. Site is geographical setting. Structure is… ]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:09:00 -0700 http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html#ShearingLayers Analogue Inception http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ The structure of the film is that of a heist movie, but if the film were to be slotted into a genre, that genre would have to be science fiction. Personally, I would say it’s cyberpunk. But it’s a strange kind of cyberpunk where the emphasis is less on technology and more on the film-noir mood and transcendental possibilities of the genre.

In fact, technology in Inception is notable by its absence. There is a piece of hardware to enable the central premise of the film, but it’s of no more importance than the hardware used in… ]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:07:00 -0700 http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ On plasticine worlds, orbiting pinker stars, the fingers of your left hand have all grown nostrils http://hellograndad.com/post/600609827

]]> Sat, 15 May 2010 04:21:00 -0700 http://hellograndad.com/post/600609827 Five Creatures That Prove Life Could Exist On Other Planets (Or In Space) http://io9.com/5536752/five-creatures-that-prove-life-could-exist-on-other-planets-or-in-space?skyline=true&s=i Want to know what life will look like on other planets? Look no farther than these five creatures, who are already prepared for life on Saturn's moon Titan - or in the hard vacuum of deep space.

Unlike humans, with our pesky need for things like oxygen and sugar, some creatures are more flexible in the habitats where they feel comfortable. Here are five lifeforms who are prepared to live on other planets right now. ]]> Fri, 14 May 2010 03:34:00 -0700 http://io9.com/5536752/five-creatures-that-prove-life-could-exist-on-other-planets-or-in-space?skyline=true&s=i