“In that sense, maybe there’s no contradiction after all. Both futurism and conservationism entail what Brand would call “long-term thinking.” “One of the problems now,” he says in We Are As Gods, “is that civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span.” A fundamentally weird, brilliant man, Brand has tried his whole life to force us outside the present moment, so that we might better understand how to fix it.”
If you’re in a gift giving mood. This would be a great place to start.
Third Man Records “We miss cigar-smelling newsstands crammed with amazing publications from everywhere all at once. We miss Creem. We miss Ragtime Ephemeralist. We miss Spy. We miss NY Rocker. We miss weirdo newsprint thrust at us right by subway entrances. We miss Weirdo. We miss Locus Solus. We miss Off Our Backs. We miss Low Rider. We miss Kicks. We miss The Voice. We miss Motorbooty. We miss Avalanche. We miss Grand Royal. We miss Slash. We miss the Gentlewomen of California. We miss Raw. We miss being able to find stacks of old Oz, It, or Black Panther newspapers in the back of that used bookstore in the strip mall. We miss the red and black. We miss the crowding into See Hear. We miss Index Magazine.”
LATimes: “For a city constantly in flux, song lyrics tether an address to the past in the same way that scenes from locally shot old movies reveal the disappeared traits of intersections and streetscapes. Call it a Map of the Couplets.”
This place has everything, including a playlist.
Intelligencer: “Silicon Valley, it turns out, won’t save the world. But those who built the internet have provided us with a clear and disturbing account of why everything went so wrong — how the technology they created has been used to undermine the very aspects of a free society that made that technology possible in the first place.”
Ugh. We use to think things were going to be so different.
“DataPools is a Wi-Fi geolocation spoofing project that virtually relocates your phone to the latitudes and longitudes of Silicon Valley success. It includes a catalog and a SkyLift device with 12 pre-programmed locations.”
Hyperallergic “Of course, actual beauty, talent, and innovation only factor marginally in this. Rather than deny this, the art dealers interviewed for the film are remarkably candid about how coldly they approach their trade. Seemingly everyone almost gleefully acknowledges that they’re riding a bubble.”
I watched it on HBONOW. Not sure how long it will be around for streaming, but definitely worth the price of admission.
