Stritar's chronolog

Is it even possible to create original content in this age?

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 11:52:13 GMT

I've been blogging for more than three years now. And I love doing it, hell, I think my blog is pretty fucking awesome. But there's a problem I've been noticing lately. Every single piece of content I write has probably been written hundred times before. By mainstream media, by authors, by bloggers, by you. There's no way around it, and it bugs me to infinity. Take this specific post for instance, I won't even google it, but I can guess plenty of others writers have faced these thoughts and wrote about them from their own viewpoints. The irony of the situation is fantastic.

The amount of information on the internet is overwhelming. Thousands of blogposts created every day, hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, infinite tweets (check out this cool infographic). And only so many things you can tell. Which pretty much means that no matter what you write, someone else surely wrote it before you. All the topics have been covered so many times it's silly. You feel you're stealing other people's ideas even if you aren't. Or are you?

I'm one of those people who tries to absorb as much information as possible. I want to learn every day, synthesizing the gathered knowledge for various reasons, such as my work or this blog. From this perspective, I'm inevitably copying other people's ideas, rewriting content that's already been written many times before. Stealing Lego blocks and using them to build new sculptures. Is there even such a thing as an original idea? There probably really aren't that many.

Writers and bloggers are just a bunch of monkeys who are trying to write Shakespeare anyways. Curators, who are striving to separate the sheep from the goats, blending extraordinary ideas into somethings even greater. And that's what matters, that's where the value is added. Even though most of the content is not original, if any. But I guess that's ok, I just needed to think and write about it, which helped me understand this is the very essence of blogging.

Why Web 2.0 is so important

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:10:53 GMT

The influence the Internet is having on our every day lives is reaching almost unimaginable levels. The extent of the information revolution can only be compared to inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past, which are all major achievements that allowed new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas between people. Web 2.0 is the next step of this information (r)evolution, and to understand why it's so important, we have to observe all the significant applications it represents (according to Wikipedia). This will hopefully give us a better insight into the potential they bring to our personal and professional lives, besides their impact on the whole humanity which we still perhaps don't fully comprehend.

Social networking

Social networking sites enabled probably the greatest migration of people to the virtual world. People have a new opportunity to interact not only in real life, but also in cyberspace, where geographical and other physical barriers don't exists. I'm not saying this is a promising thing overall, some people are obviously overdoing it, but it's still useful for keeping in touch with people. Together with the implementation of feeds and streams which enable dynamic information, social networking could represent the biggest and most important component of Web 2.0, reshaping business, marketing, politics and just being plain amazing.

Video sharing

Yesterday we read the newspaper, listened to the radio and watched television. Today, we have a super-medium that supports all of it at once. Video, as the most complex form of multimedia, is something that you can record with your telephone and publish online in minutes, from where it can go anywhere. If distributing a video is easy, anything else surely has to be a piece of cake. This fact obviously holds massive potential for science and arts in general.

Wikis and folksonomies

Wikis and folksonomies are tools which harness the amazing effect of participation and collaboration of millions of people to create information and knowledge. Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, holding knowledge whole mankind can benefit from. Folksonomies, such as tools for collaborative tagging and social indexing enable structured knowledge, while recommendation engines help us get information from massive quantity of data available online. Today, if something important is discovered, everybody knows it in minutes.

Blogs

Most people have the need to express themselves, and blogs (and microblogs) are the perfect tool for that. Plain and simple: anybody can be a journalist and if you have something smart to say, people will listen. Those who are influential enough can even break out of anonymity and become opinion leaders.

Web services and mashups

Web services and mashups enable and use open flows of data from one online service to another, from one online platform to another. System integration used to be one of the most complex things in IT, but thanks to new standards, protocols and technology, data can freely travel from and to different sources. This provides a perfect ground for exchanging information and enables evolution from software services to software platforms.

Perhaps we should also mention cloud computing, which makes hardware requirements irrelevant – the processing power and memory is around in plenty – but computer grids with shared resources have already been around for decades. All the better to understand that Web 2.0 is more about concept than it is about technology.

Web 2.0 is important and revolutionary, both in a good and a bad way. It brings a new perspective and new opportunities to different arts and sciences, such as business, education, sociology, psychology, literature, politics and many other. My professional and academic work focuses mainly on it's influence on information science and technologies, but it's clear that this new paradigm has a huge global effect, whose scale we still can't fully estimate. Now we just have to hope younger generations don't get too overwhelmed because of it and will be able to adjust to this new reality without abusing it too much.

What's hot on the web - Part 5: Cool and funny webcomics

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:52:32 GMT

There are probably millions of different webcomics online today. A few of them actually made it to the mainstream, with a bit of help from the social media and the cyber community. If you examine the most popular ones, you can see that they actually have a lot in common. They are short and to the point, providing great and funny content within usually simplistic drawings, with a focus mostly on geeky topics. After all, this geeky community is probably the driving force behind the World Wide Web and if they like it, the comic has a great chance to succeed. This part of What's hot on the web will display some of my favorites and help you spend a bit of your valuable time doing useless things.

Amazing Superpowers

This comics has a great sense of humor, covering themes based mostly on weird situations and self irony, usually with a great twist at the end. It's up to you to decide if you'll laugh or cry.
URL: http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/

Cyanide and Happiness

Another very popular webcomic feeds on dark humor, often focusing on offensive topics some could describe as insulting and tasteless. Nevertheless, this doesn't stop it from being one of the most well known and most praised by the cyber community and the social media.
URL: http://www.explosm.net/comics/

Dilbert

One of the most successful online and offline comics is Dilbert, a satyric office humor comic that made it everywhere – books, merchandise, cartoons, video game, etc. If you don't mind it being a bit commercial and if you work in an office, you'll probably be amused by witty portraits of real life situations.
URL: http://www.dilbert.com/

Penny Arcade

Focusing mostly on geeky themes, such as video games and technology, this comic has also gotten its fair share of fans on the web. Because of its success, the authors were able to make other projects connected with it, also because Penny Arcade is supposed to be the first gaming oriented comic.
URL: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

A bit twisted and dark, this comic mocks practically everything it can get its hands on, specially religion. A good and light reading if you don't have problems with that sort of things.
URL: http://www.smbc-comics.com/

The Perry Bible Fellowship

This amazing comic sadly stopped coming out back in 2008. Before that it was one of the most popular around, appearing also in newspapers and books. Because of it's great surreal humor and experimentation with different drawing techniques it definitely still deserves a mention.
URL: http://pbfcomics.com/

White Ninja

With a plot set around weird and funny everyday experiences of white ninja and more than 1,000 different parts already written, White ninja became an online success. Short and simple stories provide great casual reading.
URL: http://www.whiteninjacomics.com/comics.shtml

XKCD

This famous stick man is one of the most popular online comics, focusing mostly on geeky topics, such as computer sciences and mathematics. This webcomic became so popular that the author got a book deal in 2009. Yes, with a stick man.
URL: http://www.xkcd.com/

local: Paradise Misplaced

Written and drawn by one of Slovenia's most talented comic artists Izar Lunaček, this emerging webcomic puts Adam, Eve, God and other biblical characters in Eden, doing crazy things and getting acquainted with different sins. As the authors puts it, 'Every sin is original', so why shouldn't it also be funny.
URL: http://www.paradisemisplaced.si/

Hope you enjoyed this part's selection and had fun browsing the mentioned sites. These comics and artists can truly make your day, so they are worth checking out. Face it - comics are no longer considered to be just for geeks and children, so you might as well embrace them without having a guilty conscience.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Arthur C. Clarke envisioning the World Wide Web in 1968

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:10:06 GMT

One of the greatest thrills in my life is when I stumble upon a visionary prediction in any form – text, movie, novel, painting, etc. Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors of our time, did just that in his famous novel 2001: A space odyssey. Most of us are acquainted with the plot and the scary artificial intelligence named Hal. The whole novel is really revolutionary for the age, but the thing I found most intriguing when I read it, is the detailed description of the technology we know today as the World Wide Web.

1968 was a year marked by student protests, the Vietnam war and the death of Martin Luther King. The Apollo program was well on the way, but would still need to wait one year until men could land on the moon. 1968 also marks the year when Intel, one of the biggest microchip manufacturers in the world was founded. Personal computer was still ages away, but the global network Internet was already being designed. This year UCLA was selected to be the first node of the incoming new network. Since then, things evolved and formed the modern computers and the Internet as we know today, but let's take a look at what our author had to say about it then, in 1968.

"There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read. When he tired of the official reports and memoranda and minutes he would plug his foolscap-sized newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen, and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousand of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word ‘newspaper’, of course, was an anachronistic hang-over into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorb the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It's hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry of depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials – these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull."

Pretty impressive. His vision goes even beyond technology and well describes the role of modern news and media. Predicting all of that in 1968 can only be marked as pure genius, and is a great example of why so many people love sci-fi. Sadly, Arthur C. Clarke passed away in 2008, but shall be remembered forever for many things. Perhaps space travel did not make it as far as he foretold, but looks like he knew how technology, information and media will look 40 years later in stunning detail.

The Dune universe - world's greatest saga

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:26:46 GMT

Many people are familiar with the Lord of the rings, which became even more popular after the movie trilogy a few years ago. It's a typical saga, with novels and stories covering events on a scale of tens of thousands of years. This approach brings fanatical belonging of the readers, because studying generations of people has a huge appeal and insight into life long conflicts causes strong sentiment. The technical focus of LOTR is mostly on mythology, culture and linguistics, but sometimes it comes out too naive. People (except Frodo) are mostly black or white and most of the motives are quite superficial (and sex doesn't exist). After all, it's supposed to be a tale for children. So, in case you would like more complex stuff in your saga, you should definitely check out Dune.

Frank Herbert's Dune is a bit similar to LOTR, the whole plot (14 novels I think) extends for millenia. The story is about planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, which is the only place in the universe that produces the ultimate drug in existence, called Melange (Spice). Spice gives you higher level of conscience and prolongs life. Everybody wants and needs Spice, and the plot built around that is very complete, creative and fun to read. The whole story makes Dune a perfected alternative universe filled with complex political situations, religions, manipulation, psychology and other "adult" themes. It's freaking awesome, and it is known as one of the best sci-fi novels of all time.

The political situation of the Dune universe stands on a tripod between the emperor, noble houses and the spacing guild, which holds the monopoly on space travel. If that wasn't enough, other sources of power also exist, such as CHOAM (the biggest manufacturer of goods), the witches Bene Gesserit (with their breeding program for creating the messiah), the Tleilaxu (genetic specialists), Ixians (technology monopolists), the Mentats (human analytical computers), Swordsmen of Ginaz (superior warriors) and of course, the Fremen of Arrakis (the native people of Dune who live in sietches in the desert and tender the worms). Many players and interests - infinite possibilities of conflicts.

Another interesting thing in the novel is the flow of thought, which is solved really good. The movie (which I don't like that much, even though it's by David Lynch) tries to imitate that, but in my opinion fails quite miserably. The book does it much better, and the main mantra, used by all Bene Gesserit educated is quite inspirational:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Reading about prior generations of protagonists and antagonists and knowing how historical events caused the current situation makes the Dune series one of the best novels ever written. It can keep every sci-fi fan occupied for years, which is the time needed to come through the whole saga that totals in more than 5.000 pages. If you're into that sort of books, you should go for it - and then you will be able to understand why Duncan Idaho is the ultimate.

Stunning Lego applications, creations and art

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:33:26 GMT

Lego started producing the already iconic toy in 1949. Since than, a few variations of the brick have been designed, but all made after 1958 are compatible. More than 50 years of models, themes, worlds, colors and fun for the young and the old. Yup, you heard it right, the old are mad about Lego. Because Legos are cool, Legos are pop, Legos are viral and Legos are really loved by the web society.

A blend of availability, tradition, flexibility, compatibility and creativity stimulation helped Legos become more than a toy. They became a platform, a concept, an artistic medium, and mostly, they became a cult. There are a lot of creative applications and creations around, but a few of them are specially worth mentioning.

The minifig society

Supposedly there are billions of minifigs in the world. Pretty impressive. They come in thousands of types and some of the greatest fans were actually able to make a detailed timeline of the minifigs. The Star Wars edition alone has more than 150 different minifigs, and this poster just makes you want to have 'em all.

Lego photography

There are a few cool pages that combine Legos with photography. If you're interested in that sort of stuff, you should check out album covers in Lego, or this amazing classic photography reconstructions.

Video edits

Perhaps even more popular than pictures, the video edits range from Star Wars videos, arcade games simulations and funny films, such as The Dark Knight trailer. One of the most popular is The Simpsons intro. I've said it before, people have too much time.

Robotics

Since Mindstorms came around, Legos gained eyes, ears, hands and programming logic. This means that things such as a money safe, Rubic cube solver or even the Touring machine (a primitive computer) are possible to build. The only limit is one's creativity and sadly, budget.

Amazing constructions

Artistic and giant Lego sets are being built by many people. Diversified lists can be found here, here and here. Other sculptures worth mentioning are the aircraft carrier and the Space Shuttle. Some other freaks made a 5 million brick boulder, which accidentally crashed into a car. The number of bricks is unconfirmed, because in England they made a 30m tall tower using just 500.000 of them. Below you can see Barack Obama's inauguration.

The Millenium Falcon

The Ultimate Collector's Millenium Falcon (that's Harisson Ford's space ship in Star Wars) is the biggest Lego set ever made. You can describe it in one word: Awesome. 5.195 pieces and a price tag of 500€. Ouch. Still, it is probably every Lego fan's dream.

There you have it, Lego fun for the whole family and all the different tastes. I told you Legos were cool.