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I was just proclaiming how I didn’t have any reason to miss TV…and then this ad came on.  Damn you, cable programming!

I’m writing this from the living room in Maryland, where the power is resoundingly out this afternoon.  One conclusion that can be drawn from this incident is that, unlike 1993, there is very little reason to have a computer without internet connectivity in 2011.  I can’t even remember the last time I wrote while offline – how will I link?!

Pages 84 – 89 (review pages):

• WatchIT!TV, a full-size, 16-bit PC expansion card that allowed for analog television tuning – and the author’s awesome VCR recording pass-through
• “Information plugs us into the world of computerized productivity, but the open space of books balances our computer logic with the graces of intuition.” – The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
• Wired began using Music Access to provide samples of reviewed albums by 900 number at a cost of 95¢/min
• Ambulance: An Electronic Novel, which came packaged on 2 high-density floppies and required 2 MB of RAM
• touch tone dialer (?)
• page 89’s ad for OMD’s new album – and that is all that needs to be said

Given the excitement about the royal wedding, though, I thought that a bit of royal gossip with French & Saunders might be appropriate.

I have been rather despondent over the transformation of the SciFi Channel into this abomination that is Syfy. It wasn’t so bad at first but then the cancelations began. Namely, the axing of Caprica which I moaned about earlier. Then SGU – a canceled Stargate series at that! Most recently it was the inclusion of increasingly ridiculous shows more akin to TLC (also a disappointment as a network lately). Take WCG Ultimate Gamer, the plethora of Ghost Hunters or WWE wrestling as examples.

My excitement, then, over the promo for Face Off is ludicrously boundless. A show that, while not strictly science fiction, at least features the world of making science fiction as it searches for the next great makeup artist. PLEASE DON’T SCREW THIS ONE UP, SYFY!

Not that anyone was really watching – which was the main reason why Syfy decided what they did – but Caprica has been canceled midway through its second season.  This saddens me for all of the reasons that io9 explores in their post-mortem, “What killed Caprica?”  Too smart for TV?  Probably.

A shame, but I suppose more space on the DVR.

Does anyone else think this exceptionally well-shot ad for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas looks like it could be a promotion for the next vampire hotel visited on True Blood?

Anyone who knows me knows that I love both a good science show and the thoughts of Arthur C. Clarke with equal vigor.  Therefore, this 1964 BBC program, Horizon, with an interview of Arthur C. Clarke is exceptional:

Was Arthur C. Clarke ever wrong?  And, more importantly, was Arthur C. Clarke ever young?  I swear he looked the EXACT same even when he died just a short while ago!

(io9)

I realize I’m probably setting myself up to be vastly, wildly disappointed but I’m super excited for The Event on NBC.

I must know: what are the peacock people planning on doing with this series?  Will the writing and acting live up to the deliciously edited trailer?  September 20th will tell us…9/8c.

If you aren’t watching Bravo’s Work of Art, I highly suggest that you start.  The premise is described as such:

In each episode, contestants are faced with the challenge of creating unique pieces in a variety of mediums such as painting, sculpture, photography, collage and industrial design. The weekly assignments are exciting, original and will challenge the artists’ to push the limits of their technical skills and creative boundaries.

A slightly less flowery way of defining the show would be Project Runway for visual artists.  And, by virtue of not being on Lifetime like Runway is now, the show benefits from the caliber of editing and production that PR used to have.  If that wasn’t enough, it’s hosted by a woman named China Chow, a name that begs the be shouted, as the commentating gays at Tom & Lorenzo pointed out. (Personally, I think her name sounds like a dog food with Asian flair.)

Anyway, I caught a marathon of this what-I-thought-would-be-a-train-wreck-but-is-really-stupendous show over the 4th and have been hooked ever since.  As Kate says, it’s a little like watching a room for of people like me.  The artists are all methodical and, despite multiple neuroses, highly willing to help each other out and offer encouragement.   Even the Tim Gunn stand in, Simon de Pury does a fantastic job offering mentorship and zippy little Swiss-flavored one liners.

After a four episode binge, I was jonesing for this past week’s installment.  Arriving back from vacation on Thursday, I dove right in.  And what awaited me was perfect.  The artists were asked to travel the streets of New York in a fleet of Audis – Q5s and S4s – before arriving at the Audi Forum in Manhattan.  *jealousy* They were then given half an hour to explore the dealership and come up with an idea that would translate the NY experience and time in the cars into an art work.

While the idea sounds sickeningly commercial, I will point out the BMW art cars as precedence.  I will also say that the works this week are starting to exhibit the symptoms of overtaxing the creative process.  That being said, my favorite contestant, Miles was able to again knock it out of the park.  With the connections this show clearly has, it can only get better from here and I can’t wait to see where we go next week.

China Chow!

A few days ago, I posted briefly on a New York Times article talking about the remapping of our brains that occurs when we multitask heavily or even just use computers in general. Echoing this article’s view that more media = less focus is a piece by Nicholas Carr from the June issue of Wired (which I was reading on paper, thank you very much) which discusses the distracting nature of hypertext hyperactive content.

A 2007 scholarly review of hypertext experiments concluded that jumping between digital documents impedes understanding. And if links are bad for concentration and comprehension, it shouldn’t be surprising that more recent research suggests that links surrounded by images, videos, and advertisements could be even worse.

The takeaway seems to be that we are causing our brains to remake themselves in order to deal with a wide breadth of stuff – that never goes very deep.  Bad, computers!  Shame on you, technology! Or maybe not.  Because in the exact same issue, Wired, asked two researchers of personal motivation, Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink, to discuss what is being termed (by Shirky) “the cognitive surplus.”  Their argument goes a little something like this: with more options for putting our time to use than ever before, free time pursuits will become more varied, taking forms never seen before.  Though not precisely related to the idea of focus, this statement did get me thinking:

When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. When someone buys a computer or mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one.

Whoa!  And it’s true – I often find myself cursing the lack of hours in the day to get caught up on my favorite TV shows when I fill my evenings with blogging, online reading or freelance design.  If it weren’t for these infernal computers stuffing my free time with their distractions, I could take part in the much more honorable 200 billion hours of television that I should be watching with my fellow Americans this year!

(As originally posted on my Instructional Technology work blog.)