The Future Is a Season
If you're keeping tabs on the literary technosatire mystery I sent out earlier this week, I've got a couple of updates and new clues for you. My request for a meetup with the author(s) resulted in this reply: "[S]adly we cannot meet. It would be great fun. We cannot."
People have also attempted all kinds of fascinating experiments, like trying to decode the non-functional mail barcodes or putting the odd-stamp denominations on the envelopes through a letter-replacement cipher, as Wired's Joe Brown did. The case remains uncracked.
On with the newsletter:
1. Fun, strange futurism: Styles and customs in the 2020s.
"The early part of the decade is lifestyle-dominated: the twee, up-cycled, bespoke, socially aware, artisanal life. Twice removed from the original source material, the first departure being the post-ironic referential mania of the turn of the twenty-first century. The second manifestation makes no attempt at authentic recreation. Instead, the content is self-conscious and wholly concerned with artifice (in the tradition of Lana Del Rey and Instagram filters). Sharing the sentiments of yesteryear’s steampunks, this hegemonic movement produces killer drones clad in Tuscan leather, driftwood, and yarn, and smartphones made out of distressed scrap metal and mass-produced Bohemian glass. The future is a season."
2. I love the idea that right now, a herd of baboons is slowly domesticating some wolves.
"In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present. The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans (see box, below), and was spotted by primatologist Vivek Venkataraman, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, during fieldwork at Guassa plateau in the highlands of north-central Ethiopia."
3. This has to be one of the best residencies for a certain kind of scrappy artist.
"During their residencies, artists have scavenging privileges and 24-hour access to the company's well-equipped art studio. Artists speak to elementary school classes and adult tour groups about the experience of working with recycled materials. At the conclusion of their residency, Recology hosts a two-day public exhibition and reception for the artists featuring the artwork made during their residency. When the residency ends, artists contribute artwork to the program's permanent collection and these pieces continue to be shown in off-site exhibitions that promote recycling and reuse."
4. The story of Zapf Chancery.
"The ITC Zapf Chancery® typeface has been seen by just about everyone who uses a personal computer. In particular, one member of the family – Medium Italic – has been selected (or not) by millions of designers and non-designers alike. In the mid-’80s, ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic was chosen as one of the original Apple LaserWriter core font set. Years later, it became part of both the Mac and Windows OS. It has become one of the most commonly used – and one of the most widely misused – typefaces of our day."
+ Hermann Zapf died last week.
5. AI like IBM's Watson have not transformed health care.
"Impressive as that original 'Jeopardy!'-blitzing Watson was, in medical contexts such an automaton is not really useful. After all, that version of Watson was fine-tuned specifically for one trivia game. It couldn’t play The Settlers of Catan, much less make useful recommendations about a 68-year-old man with diabetes and heart palpitations. ' ‘Watson, given my medical record, which is hundreds of pages long, what is wrong with me?’ That’s a question,' says Watson software engineer Mike Barborak. 'But it wasn’t a good question for Watson to answer.''
On Fusion: We dive deep into the science and culture of embryo adoption, meeting some new types of families.
1. supercommunity.e-flux.com | @smwat 2. newscientist.com 3. sfrecycling.org | @the_jennitaur 4. fonts.com 5. spectrum.ieee.org
The Future Is a Season