The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

Launched on the 26 February, The Edge is a new initiative of the State Library of Queensland, with an emphasis on digital media and innovation.

The Edge is the State Library of Queensland’s newest initiative, sitting alongside its established programs and continuing the library’s growth as a cultural and knowledge destination.

It is a place for young Queenslanders; a place for experimentation and creativity, giving contemporary tools to young people to allow them to explore critical ideas, green initiatives, new design practices and media making.

The Edge enables the creation of all sorts of art and technology, research, training, mentoring and being mentored, networking, and entertaining and being entertained.

Informal spaces abound for discussion and the pursuit of individual and group activities, which foster a sense of community, a commitment to collaboration and a spirit of openness.

It runs programs devoted to innovation in craft, music, film, writing, and other areas, with workshops and presentations, as well as areas where you can just drop in and play.

It’s still early days, and it will be interesting to see how all this turns out: whether it becomes a vibrant area of digital arts in Brisbane, or whether it turns out to be a multi-million dollar (I assume) white elephant.

The early signs are promising.

There’s been a lot said about the Apollo 11 moon landing, the 40th anniversary of which was yesterday (US time). I’m not going to add anything to the extensive reminiscences already online, other than to acknowledge whoever it was at the Bundaberg Central State School who allowed this star-struck eight-year-old to go home and watch it on TV.

(My recollection is that I spent most of the afternoon in the lounge room wearing the NASA space suit that my grandmother had made me, picking up rocks with the BBQ tongs).

Of course, no discussion of the Apollo Mission’s awesome accomplishment is complete without reference to that famous (apocryphal?) quote from one of the early astronauts (variously attributed to John Glenn and Gus Grissom):

“There I was, strapped in my seat, ten seconds from launch, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was sitting on top of twenty thousand parts, every one made by the lowest bidder.”

Well done Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. You deserve the accolades.

The Sony Walkman was released 30 years ago today, apparantly. It not only changed the way we listen to music, it played a key role in the development of that new-fangled cultural studies thingy: Doing Cultural Studies is dated, but still essential reading. Compared to the 120GB iPod with its capacity of 30,000 songs, the Walkman now looks as quaint as its gender-specific name, but in its day it was an engineering miracle.

In the spirit of nostalgia for the incredibly short-lived batteries, the tape that “wowed” every time you took a step (“Standperfectlystillman” might have been a more accurate name), and a portable listening device that held 12 songs, I provide this review courtesy of the BBC by 13 year-old, Scott Campbell, who swapped his iPod for an antique Walkman for a week. Favourite sections include:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

So happy birthday, Walkman. In celebration I urge everyone to listen to the song that was inspired by the device. Of course, if you have any taste, you’ll listen to the B(if)tek cover instead.

Opposition broadband spokesman Nick Minchin quoted on the ABC News site this morning:

“We’ve got a $43 billion plan with no…evidence that people actually want 100 megabits per second of download speed.”

No Nick, that’s why so many of us stayed with dialup. Is a complete lack of understanding of the portfolio a prerequisite for being an Opposition Spokesperson, or is it just coincidence?

Elsewhere, John Quiggin suggests (based on back-of-the-envelope calculations) that somewhere around $80/month might be in the ballpark, assuming a takeup of around 5 million households/businesses. Given that that is not much more than I am currently paying for 1.5mbps, Minchin’s reading of the market might be deemed a little too pessimistic.

There’s going to be a lot more discussion about this, especially when it gets to the Senate: the Fake Steve Fielding has already tweeted that he would “block NBN in exchange for $179 trillion for family cohesion measures”, and I expect the real one will be thinking something similar. And there should be careful scrutiny of this proposal, provided it is more than the opposition’s current tactic of “oppose everything without consideration on principle”. I’m not big on the proposal to sell the company after five years, given that much of the current situation can be blamed on the privatisation of Telstra, but I suppose it will save the Coalition the bother of doing it when they are next in power.

But all in all, $43 billion sounds like a reasonable price for Australia to get middling-to-average internet speeds.

It’s Ada Lovelace Day and as promised, here is my post about “women excelling in technology”. Because this is Memes, and we have our own interests and perspectives, my take on the excellent female technician is Dr Susan Calvin of US Robotics.

Susan Calvin is, of course, fictional. She features in many of the early robot stories of Isaac Asimov. The author is slightly self-congratulatory about his creation:

You will note, by the way, that although most of the Susan Calvin stories were written at a time when male chauvinism was taken for granted in science fiction, Susan asks no favors and and beats the men at their own game. To be sure, she remains sexually unfulfilled—but you can’t have everything. (Asimov, The Complete Robot, Granada, 1982: 265)

Nice. Women can be as talented and scientifically rigorous as men, but only by suppressing their identities as sexual beings. You can have science or love, but not both, apparently.

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Reposted from FindingAda.com

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

More here.

Internet researcher and social media guru danah boyd has published her just-submitted, Creative-Commons-licenced PhD dissertation at her blog, zephoria. Congratulations to danah!

A study reported by the BBC claims that the largely discredited six degrees of separation theory might in fact be correct after all:

A US study of instant messaging suggests the theory that it takes only six steps to link everyone may be right – though seven seems more accurate.

The study which was published in March this year was conducted by researchers from Microsoft and looked at the addresses of 30 billion instant messages sent during a single month in 2006.

One of the researchers on the Microsoft Messenger project, Eric Horvitz, said he had been shocked by the results.

“What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity,” he was quoted as saying by the Washington Post newspaper.

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I’ve set up a Twitter account for Memes with an automatic RSS feed. If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow us.

It seems a little too much of the self promotion thing, but I’m actually exploring mechanisms for providing web-based information largely automatically. More about this later, maybe.

Twitter, the minimalist social networking site with the funny name, has started doing interesting things with its “firehose” of member content. (more after the jump)