Pete Chapman – Page 4

I Have Seen the Future and It is Shared.

September 30, 2010October 4, 2010 Pete Chapman A.I, artificial planet, Orion's Arm, science fiction, Singularity, Turing Test, worldbuilding0 comment

Does science fiction have a future? It’s past as a genre of pulp fiction that came up with the twentieth century leaves it in a precarious position at the beginning of the twenty-first. Once, like the buffalo, it roamed across the wide open spaces of the news stands and now only a handful of those magazines still exist and it’s been a long time since the days when a single short story sale could secure two month’s rent in Greenwich Village. There are novels, truck loads of novels as the…

Learning from Clippy: an interview with Clifford Nass

September 24, 2010September 27, 2010 Pete Chapman book, Clifford Nass, Clippy, Dawkins, Durkheim, interview, The Man Who Lied To His Laptop, transcript14 Comments

As a follow-up to our review of Clifford Nass’ book, The Man Who Lied to his Laptop, we were offered a chance last Friday (Sept. 17) to interview Professor Nass via telephone. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation. RGB Filter-I must confess that I’m daunted by this interview because your book has got me thinking… “Should I sequence my criticism following your suggestions in The Man Who Lied to His Laptop? Should I play the personality type “Critic” or “Side Kick” in my presentation? Should I alternate…

Arts Music

Cyber-Steam Punk Magic Scanner Lantern

September 21, 2010September 23, 2010 Pete Chapman Branchage Film Festival, Magic Lantern, Robin Rimbaud, steampunk1 Comment

If you’re not tired of film festivals and you happen to be on the Isle of Jersey between September 23 to 26 you may want to check out the Branchage Film Festival. A lively event that uses the island’s single Cineworld cineplex and 17 other venues (churches, nightclubs, the Opera House, the Polytunnel (a greenhouse), a “horse-box” trailer and a Sushi bar) as screening/performance venues for a variety of feature films, shorts, documentaries and live music soundtracks. That last item appears to be one of the specialties of the festival….

Arts Hardware

Fresh Look Through an 102 Year Old Lens

September 20, 2010September 21, 2010 Pete Chapman Canon 5DmkII, Cine-Velostigmat, Colt Rane, DSLR, lens, photography1 Comment

Photographic experiments can often yield some pretty interesting results, especially when you mix the old and the new. In a mashup of old and new camera tech, photographer Timur Civan put a 1908 (that’s the year , not the model number) Wollensak 35mm , F 5.0, Cine-Velostigmat lens on a Canon 5DmkII and walked out into the streets of Manhattan. The results are on view at Colt + Rane. Enjoy.

Monitor or Mirror? A review of “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop”

September 11, 2010September 11, 2010 Pete Chapman book review, Clifford Nass, Corina Yen, human machine interface, Penguin Books, review, The Man Who Lied To His Laptop11 Comments

Clifford Nass has been studying human relations by looking at how humans relate to machines. The answers coming from experiments documented in his book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop are an interesting mix of the unexpected and the familiar. You might think that it would take no time to read a 207 page book. Warning; this book makes one stop every so many pages to think about what it says. Not because it is difficult or obscure; the writing is clear and the presentation precise throughout but the…

Buzz Words Approaching: “Game Layer”

September 4, 2010September 4, 2010 Pete Chapman DICE 2010, facebook, Game Layer, Seth Priebatsch, TED, TEDxBoston1 Comment

By now, we’re used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web – building a “social layer” on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the “game layer,” a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce. Ten thoughts, questions, comments and micro-rants about what Chief Ninja Priebatsch is presenting here…

Movies Coming To A Theatre Beside You

August 31, 2010 Pete Chapman alternative universe, humour, movie posters1 Comment

The folks at “io9”, a very hip geek-site, published some painfully funny and astute poster art by Sean Hartter. The premise is sci-fi movie posters from an alternate timeline. His graphic chops are top drawer and his concept is, like any good alternate reality story, better than merely plausable. My Philip K. Dick circuit got a workout on these but it was the my inner film geek that was most delighted…the man knows his history. What he’s proposing isn’t that far from the truth. Take the David Lynch version of…

Zombie Ants – Threat, Myth or Just Another Weird Thing?

August 27, 2010August 28, 2010 Pete Chapman humor, humour, nature.com, paleobotany, Science, zombie ants9 Comments

At rgbFilter there is standing policy on providing accurate and up-to-the-minute information on one of the major cultural memes of our times; Zombies. Yes, for other news outlets the Zombie thing is like so ’07 but here at rgbFilter we know that the undead never sleep and vigilance must never tire. Towards this end we present not just the cultural manifestations of the Zombie Menace but probable vectors of infestation from current research in various fields of science. It started innocently enough these things always do. This reporter was scanning…

Sure he can act, but is he The Law?

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010 Pete Chapman casting, humour, Judge Dredd, Karl Urban, movie, Stallone2 Comments

It’s mainstream news that Karl Urban is going to attempt a reboot of Judge Dredd. This would appear to be cut-and-dry-feel-good kinda story however here are some things to keep in mind. 1. Yes, he is a better actor than Sly but can he scowl? At present a thorough search of the Interweb was unable to find an image of Mr. Urban scowling, sneering or even grimacing. 2. He has gone on record as saying that he will keep the helmet on. Bravo. Now we know he can eyebrow lift…

Too Good to be True or too True to be Good? Brainwave computing

July 29, 2010July 29, 2010 Pete Chapman Emotiv, mind machine, mind reading, TED, video1 Comment

Courtesy of TED, Tan Le demonstrates her take on the old Mind/Machine Interface trope. The Emotiv Systems’ EPOC headset uses 16 sensors to scan the brain and some very fancy algorithms to identify neural activity and translate this into control signals. Here are ten questions to keep in mind to the degree that the mind can keep anything. 1. Funny how this one seems to be as advanced as it is when speech recognition is still pretty clumsy. Will we jump into full mind/machine connectivity and bypass language altogether? (Just…