The Null Device
2000/8/31
The street finds its own uses for things: An outfit called the Institute for Applied Autonomy has developed a graffitiing robot. GraffitiWriter is like a cross between a model car and an inkjet printer, and prints slogans on the ground using an array of 5 spray cans.
An insightful essay about sex and (non-)participation therein in Western culture, by the author of A History of Celibacy, herself a practicing member of that most misunderstood sexual minority:
There's a fundamental difference between happening to be celibate and accepting one's celibacy. When you only happen to be celibate, you are still looking and waiting, tentative about life because you are not living the way you wish to be living.
Until a short while ago, most Western religions considered sex a "problem," stamping it out through sometimes torturous and extreme means; but today, at least in the secular world, the tables have turned. Celibacy has become the "problem." Now, the fear of not having sex is a driving force in all our lives. Young teenagers write to advice columnists, "I'm not having sex. What's wrong with me?" while grownups take pills, go to therapists, attend classes, read books and spend billions of dollars a year, in an effort to amplify their sexual lives and prevent the merest possibility of going a week without having sex.
Playing hardball: Are Universal trying to put mp3.com out of business? Universal (the largest of the Big Five recording conglomerates) have their own service (FarmClub) competing with mp3.com, and are the only RIAA member who have not settled with mp3.com.
Daft premises: To combat the tide of violence in video games, a professor of electronic arts has created and exhibit of games where you shoot dead people and they come back to life, frolicking among the flowers. Apart from the cloying hippy-dippy new-age sentiment, the playability issues sound dubious; where's the fun in shooting dead things, and why simulate people frolicking among flowers if you don't interact with them?
Slowdive lyrics! Not always complete (and not sure how accurate they are), but it should give a hint to what the songs are about.