To Explore the Deeper Possibilities of The
In today's edition: revenge porn, feminist futures, the purpose of life, the future of work, Bowienet, and machines that get jokes.
It's here! After the broadcast premiere last night, the Real Future TV show begins its digital rollout today. We made this show about how people use technology, and by people, we don't just mean white CEOs. Up first, we tracked down a revenge porn mogul in Dayton—and got a surprise. Kevin Roose hosts, production by our beautiful friends Citizen Jones. Expect new segments Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next two months.
1. The feminist utopia in sci-fi.
"The Feminine Future charts the evolution of sci-fi from a mode employed plastically by a variety of female authors to a genre consolidated around the pulps and its preferred form, the adventure story. Formally, this can seem like a winnowing of sci-fi’s diversity, but really it reflects the semi-professionalization of the sci-fi author and reminds us that when we apply the term 'sci-fi' to the 19th century, we do so in order to retrospectively corral and organize a diffuse body of literary works."
2. Why is life?
"Energy, Russell thinks, must have preceded anything resembling DNA or RNA, so the origin of chemiosmosis could help to reveal how the first organisms arose. Chemiosmosis takes place deep in our body’s cells, most of which harbour hundreds or thousands of microscopic structures called mitochondria. The mitochondria extract the chemical energy from food and, with the help of the oxygen we breathe, convert it into a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Just as much as DNA, ATP is the molecule of life; it is the currency we spend to grow, move or think."
3. London, 2023.
"For a workshop on future London, five individuals — Arup, Social Life, Re.Work, Commonplace, Tim Maughan and Nesta—created 10 Future Londoners for the year 2023. This is a short fictional piece describing the working day of 19 year old Nicki, a zero hours retail contractor."
4. Bowienet.
"Throughout 1997 and 1998 he worked with the web and interactive entertainment pioneers Robert Goodale and Ron Roy to explore the deeper possibilities of the internet as a means of reaching fans and distributing music. The result, on 1 September 1998, was the launch of BowieNet, initially in North America, but later worldwide – an ISP offering “uncensored” access to the internet attached to a dedicated David Bowie website. Subscribers could browse a vast archive of Bowie’s photographs, videos and interviews, as well as a blog, career chronology and news feed. The artist also promised further exclusive tracks and webcasts, including footage from the Earthling tour. Most enticingly for many fans, users also got their own BowieNet email address – a strange, exciting new way to declare their affinity with the artist."
"Arjun Chandrasekaran from Virginia Tech and pals say they’ve trained a machine-learning algorithm to recognize humorous scenes and even to create them. They say their machine can accurately predict when a scene is funny and when it is not, even though it knows nothing of the social context of what it is seeing."
1. lareviewofbooks.org 2. aeon.co 3. medium.com 4. theguardian.com | @scouseview 5. technologyreview.com | @charlesarthur
To Explore the Deeper Possibilities of The