Film: Planet Terror

If you love exploding zombies, guns blazing, sexy women and the best damn BBQ sauce in Texas then this is the most fun you will have this year.

It’s now clear that this first part of Grindhouse is by far the best – beating Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof to a squishy pulp. As much as it pains me to say it, Robert Rodriguez is now officially the better of the two directors.

Add in the special effects to age the film stock, blatant liberties with the storyline and the amazing fake movie trailers at the start of the film, and you have an instant classic.

The DVD has some entertaining extras – a 10 minute film school on how the movie was made and an interview with the two Grindhouse directors and stars of the two films at ComicCon (QT was seriously cool a decade ago, but these days his whining enthusiasm just does your fucking head in.)

I know it look me a long time to catch the film, but you should see it, like, yesterday.

Article: How the Web Was Won

Subtitled “An oral history of the Internet”, this brilliant article tracks the development of the internet from its military origins to today’s Web 2.0 social behemoth.

All the big players have been interviewed (and a number that do not normally get the credit) and their testimony pieced together to tell the story.

There are little audio snippets from some of the participants, but the authors say that there were more than 100 hours of interviews – wouldn’t it be great to get the majority of the stuff online? Then you would have a real oral history worth preserving for prosperity; especially as a number of the gentlemen interviewed are “elder statesmen” and are not getting any younger.

Here are a number of quotes that caught my eye:

1969 was quite a year.  Man on the moon.  Woodstock.  Mets won the World Series.  Charles Manson starts killing these people here in Los Angeles.  And the Internet was born.  Well, the first four everybody knew about.  Nobody knew about the Internet.

He said, I need some symbol that separates the name of the recipient from the machine that the guy’s files are on.  And so he looked around for what symbols on the keyboard were not already in use and found the “@” sign.  It was a tremendous invention.

The first thing I did is I actually picked up the phone and dialled 411 and I said, I’d like the number for the Internet please.  And the operator is like, What?  I said, Just search any company with the word Internet in the name.  Blank.  Nothing.  I thought, Wow, this is interesting.  What is this thing anyway?

I’d never seen a hyperlink before.  I don’t think anybody had.  And it was kind of drop-dead amazing.

Windows will be reduced down to being a poorly debugged bag of device drivers

When you look at the history of any new medium, it takes a decade or more for people to figure out what the native behavior of that medium is… when you look at the fundamental or native behavior of what the Internet is, it’s social.  It is two-way communication.

Communication always changes society, and society was always organised around communication channels.  Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers.  It was sea-lanes and mountain passes.  The Internet is another form of communication and commerce.  And society organises around the channels

It’s a great article.  Enjoy.

Vanity Fair:  How the Web Was Won

Mediocrity and the future of the Internet

We were lucky enough to have the author of “The Future of the Internet… and how to stop it”, Jonathan Zittrain, speak at an event recently at work. His core argument was that we are returning to the situation at the very start of the computer age where computers were essentially closed shops where you had to work in a specific way defined by the machine or operating system rather than having any real freedom to work how you want. Today’s computers and devices are moving away from the open operating systems that have ruled for the last decade (essentially Windows / Mac) that allowed you to do whatever you wanted at the cost of instability and insecurity. (Note: what follows is based on what the presentation covered – I haven’t read the book.)

He points out that the new devices, such as the American digital video recorder Tivo, Sky+ and the iPhone, do what they do well but the companies that make them exert a power over them even when the consumer owns it, and whilst this can be good for the consumer (they get a device that is designed for a specific purpose and does it really well) it can be very dangerous.

His main example is the iPhone (and this is timed nicely, with the recent announcement of the new 3G iPhone and the soon to arrive iPhone 2.0 operating system which offers the opportunity to buy applications and a lot more.) Here’s a bit of history (from me): the first version was tied to a specific mobile network (AT&T in the US, O2 in the UK) but people soon could “jailbreak” the phone so that you could use whatever network you wanted and install unsanctioned 3rd party apps. Apple remained largely silent on the matter (this would sell more iPhones?) until one software update essentially “bricked” many phones that had been altered. Not all were affected and many people had to remain on an early version of the operating system if they did not take the risk. It is not really clear if Apple did this on purpose or not.

He gave other examples of devices that could be manipulated by their manufacturer even though it was in a consumer’s home, often to comply with the outcome of a lawsuit. This could change or reduce the functionality of the device to the point that it may no longer do what you wanted it for in the first place.

So the question raises itself – is it better to have something that is buggy and open to abuse but gives you the freedom to do whatever you want or is it better to live in a walled garden (such as iPod / iPhone’s reliance on being used with iTunes software and the iTunes Store which download songs and more that can only be played on an Apple device) which delivers a reliable device that does what it does incredibly well?

I believe that part of this is due to a device that appears and is so far ahead of the competition that it changes the game. iPod / iPhone allows you to take your digital life on the road – in a way that is miles ahead of any other smartphone / media player on the market. No wonder people go for it – it does what people want to do and does it in style – and it can keep up with trends and add features so that people believe that they are getting a better experience and fuctionality than they originally paid for.

This situation is possible because all other products are so mediocre. If other companies could keep up in their particular field (eg Microsoft Zune as competition for the iPod, Sony Walkman mobile phones) and come up with a compelling device that matches functionality and elegance, then one company would not be able to exert such a controlling influence. One example: Apple may have been forced to open up it’s music files from the iTunes Store so that they play on other devices.

The bottom line is that if all companies delivered a product that met people’s needs at the right price then the subsequent competition would keep things open. Living in a walled garden is fine if it represents 80% of the market and all your friends are in there with you. It’s not so much fun if the garden is only 15% of the market and you can’t do what you want with your friends because systems are incompatible. You wouldn’t stand for it.

So, if you want to change the future of the internet, tell the industry that you are interested in to get it’s finger out and do something great (not just good) for a change.

• The Future of the Internet

• You can download the book in PDF format here (relax, it’s free and legal.) The author has released the book under a Creative Commons licence. (Note, if you meet him, he will only sign copies of the real book, not a printed out copy!)

Don’t forget the B and R in BRIC

For all my talk on China and a little on India, there are two BRIC countries which have not appeared in Spare Cycles at all so far. To redress the balance – a little – here are short articles explaining the rise of Brazil and Russia.  They also look at the situation at the moment and the challenges to be tackled.  I found them a good, concise place to start…

The Observer:

Brazil: giant of a new economic world order

Russia: giant of a new economic world order

Article: In the Google age, openness is a virtue

Just a short one… “Facebook is standing at a critical juncture…”

The Guardian: In the Google age, openness is a virtue