Splice Now

I imagine we’ve all faced this problem — what to do with an old computer.

Last week I sold a 450 Mhz G4 tower along with a good 19″ Trinitron. Together, they cost about $3,300 in 2000 when they were new. The CPU still ran OSX just fine and the monitor was way better than your typical LCD. My goal was to find somebody who would actually use it, and if that wasn’t possible, then to dispose of it responsibly.

It took 10 days on Craig’s list. At $200 I didn’t get a single call. $75 seemed to be the magic number.

While my computer wasn’t selling, I was looking for places where I could give it away. I didn’t find much. The World Computer Exchange is supposed to get computers to young people in the developing world. They have a chapter in LA, but they only take Mac laptops and only in Massachusetts.

After that, I would have used an LA County E-Waste drop off center. If you you live in LA and haven’t used one of these places you should consider it. They’ll take your monitor, your CPU, and just about anything else that shouldn’t go in the trash, including paint, oil and solvents (list of locations). I’ve used the one on Vista Del Mar near LAX and enjoyed the whole process, including the drive along the beach. There are two pounds of lead in a 17″ monitor. And all kinds of other crap in that CPU of yours. By using the e-waste center you’re doing what you can to keep your garbage out of somebody else’s water.

Another choice, of course, would have been Goodwill or the Boys and Girls Club. I’ve given them a lot of stuff over the years.

In the end, though, the whole thing seemed awfully strange to me. We’re blythly purchasing and using these gadgets — and they are abandoned every year by the millions. Where do they end up?

Technorati Tags: media and society

“The Conversation” is a new conference focused on new media storytelling and distribution. It takes place October 17 and 18 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, and already has many interesting speakers lined up. Author Scott Kirsner, who writes the CinemaTech blog is one of the founders. Check it out at theconversationspot.com.

Technorati Tags: media and society

I was in New York recently and saw a wonderful piece of video art, displayed in the lobby of the new New York Times building. It’s called Moveable Type and, in the words of the designers, it’s “an active portrait of the New York Times that is fueled by the contents of the daily paper and the visitors to NYTimes.com.” It uses natural language processing algorithms to “extract fragments — words, phrases, quotes, numbers and places — from The Times’s growing, living, real-time news database and to recombine these fragments into a series of ever changing kinetic compositions.”

Physically, it consists of a couple of hundred small screens (deliberately old fashioned, vacuum-fluorescent displays) suspended on a wire grid, each mounted on a little computer, complete with a speaker, and all networked into the Times’ database, stretching back to the middle of the 19th century. There are about 15 moving “scenes” that it works through, each expressing a different theme, and pinging material around the room with sound that travels as well. Sometimes it sounds like a subway, other times like typewriters or linotype machines. The content itself never repeats because it’s wired into the living, breathing news of the world.

I was blown away by it and could have stayed for hours. Take a look at the video below (1:45). It gives you a taste, but keep in mind that it was made with a still camera and text is mostly unreadable, so it’s hard to appreciate what’s going on.

The Times posted this article about the installation along with this video interview with the artists, Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen.

The New York Times building is at 620 8th Avenue, between 40th & 41st Streets, across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I believe the lobby is open 24/7.

Technorati Tags: media and society

The FCC gets virtually zero news coverage on network, but it has a huge influence over what Americans see and hear in their media and how all of that gets paid for. The result is that the five FCC commissioners have a big, if hidden, influence over our political system.

I’m a fan of Robert McChesney’s radio show and podcast, Media Matters. Two weeks ago he interviewed FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. If you’re looking for a concise introduction to the FCC — what it does and why it matters — check out the show via podcast. You can download the mp3 here, or subscribe to the podcast on the iTunes store here.

Technorati Tags: media and society

When I was in junior high school, fist fights in the yard we’re a popular entertainment. Two kids would start a “rank out contest” (also called “playing the dozens”), and a crowd would gather. Calling people names (“your mother wears army boots” was a popular starter) was fun, but the crowd wanted more. So they’d egg the contestants on, and often, a fight would ensue.

That’s exactly what seems to be happening in our presidential debates, as a revealing article in today’s NY Times makes clear (Even as the Candidates Make Nice, the TV Crew Hopes for a Fight). There wasn’t much antagonism in last Thursday’s Democratic debate, and that didn’t please the guys in the control room, who, like my friends in junior high, wanted to see blood. Wolf Blitzer’s question about Hillary’s naivete was apparently instigated by CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman, prodding Blitzer over his earwig. But even as they push for more aggression, the guys in charge seem to know that this isn’t really what the audience wants. The best ratings in the South Carolina debate occurred when the candidates were talking policy.

In general, I’ve been pretty disgusted by cable news’ coverage of the campaigns. We get most of our news from just a few sources and they have tremendous power to decide who is really in this contest. One tool they use is something we know a little bit about — editing. For example, Edwards was doomed not so much by a lack of traction with the American people but by a lack of coverage by media corporations that didn’t like his anti-corporate message.

After the South Carolina debate, the wrap up I saw gave Hilary thirty seconds of uninterrupted coverage in closeup. Edwards got the same amount of time — but the camera was aimed at the crowd the whole time and only picked him up in a monitor in the back of the room. At least I think he was on that monitor — it was so small that I couldn’t be sure. And when Edwards dropped out of the race, CNN later reported on his speech — MOS. We saw his face, but the announcer talked through the whole thing. His actual words were never heard.

Technorati Tags: media and society