future
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker
Given access to a super-precise, industrial-strength, programmable robot arm, what would you do with it?
In the 21st century, we will all be called upon to answer this question.
Me, I’m imagining the coolest ice cream shop ever.
Sci-fi hip-hop
Wow, didn’t expect to find today’s music pick on the Tor blog (?!) but there it is. I like this claim:
Hip hop’s connection to science fiction goes way, way back–to these ears, it’s encoded in the genre’s DNA, thanks to its heavy sampling of P. Funk–but some groups make the connection more explicit than others (OutKast, Kanye West).
Wu-Tang, too! What is Wu-Tang if not, basically, a giant awesome science fiction project? (Actually, don’t answer that; I’m out of my depth here.)
Anyway, Tor’s Brian Slattery singles out Kid Cudi’s track The Pursuit of Happiness, and I have to concur: It’s got a really fresh sound. It’s a collaboration with MGMT and Ratatat, which sounds completely made-up—but here it is. Definitely worth a listen.
Databar
Check out this wee guest postlet I wrote for Tim Maly’s terrific blog. (This is the new workflow in 2009: Tim was in San Francisco, I happened to spin this out in conversation, and he said, “write that for my blog!”) It’s a sketch of an imaginary bar that I wish existed:
So, this is what it’s like to visit Databar:
You walk in and draw a tiny RFID tag out of a black top hat—there’s one hat for men, another for women. Stick it in your pocket, pin it to your skirt, tie it to your shoelace, whatever. Just keep it with you.
First glance: It’s a plain white space, shadowed to indigo and beige. Throw-lights in Nintendo colors show, by relative brightness, where the men and women are. Over there: a gaggle of girls framed by a bright splash of blue. Opposite them: a row of quiet dudes, talking in pairs, silhouetted in red. Other corners are a violet mix.
And so on.
Putting Databar into the context of smart architecture writ large, Tim writes: “I mean, it’s not going to be ALL jackboots and mind-control fungus, is it?”—and it’s only Monday morning, but I think that’s already a candidate for sentence of the week.