Quiet Babylon » housekeeping

Ideas Firesale II

Tim Maly — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:00:00 +0000

I’m coming to the end of the contract that led to the ideas firesale that’s been running since early March. It’s been good to clear out the inventory and make some room for new ideas and new projects. Been good too, to remember what it’s like to post things that are less than 1,500 words long.

I’m curious about your experience of this past month. If you’re so inclined, tell me what you thought.

I’ll be back next Tuesday.

Ideas Firesale

Tim Maly — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 03:34:34 +0000

For the next two months, I’m going to be working on an intense contract. Ordinarily this would be where I’d say something like, “So things are gonna be a little quiet around here.”

photo credit: pheezy

Instead, I’m taking the opportunity to double down. I have a massive backlog of drafts and notes that have never made it into essay form and, at this rate, never will. I’m going to spend the next 2 months posting one a day.

Elsewhere

Tim Maly — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:39:40 +0000

It’s still September, which means that it’s still cyborg month. In case this somehow escaped your notice, please let me remind you that all of the action is over at 50cyborgs.tumblr.com.

Some pretty fantastic stuff has been showing up this past week. Check it out.

Also, this coming Sunday and again on Wednesday, I’ll be on CBC’s Spark talking about the 50th anniversary of “cyborg”. The podcast is already available. I’m really pleased with how it went. The uncut interview is online as well.

If you are inclined to listen to it on an actual radio, the broadcast times are here.

photo credit: Ian Hayhurst

A Year in Review

Tim Maly — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:51:09 +0000

One of my favourite traditions from LiveJournal is the automatic year-in-review post. Here’s how it works: You go to each month, take the first post of the month, take the first sentence of that post and transcribe it. The result is a cut-up-technique overview of how your year went. It doesn’t get your best posts, or your most popular posts, or your most important ones. But it can offer unexpected glimpses and for that, I love it.

So in the waning days of 2009, as I take a break amongst the half-packed boxes I hope you’ll allow me this moment of self-indulgence with an automatic year-in-review (with commentary!) for Quiet Babylon.

January

Seth Godin argues that when it comes to transient or one-time transactions sometimes it’s better to let things go.

From: But Which Lesson?

Back in 2008 I had cut the tether to Quiet Babylon’s original subject matter: video games. I then spent the better part of a year trying to figure out what it was about. This post is typical of that period. Punditry about a celebrity’s punditry. Pointless.

February

No posts

How embarrassing! Let me take this opportunity to further embarrass myself by pointing out that the first subject matter of this site wasn’t really video games. It was whatever this is in 2002. The first incarnation of Quiet Babylon was lost when the registrar I was with folded, taking my domain with it. Squatters took it over and eventually abandoned it, whereupon I re-registered. The files you see are what I managed to preserve. Notice the early obsession with surveillance…

March

Built for the Montreal Expo, Habitat 67 is a wonderful grand-vision failure/success of architecture.

From: Pictures of Habitat 67

Now we’re getting somewhere. Original material, pictures of formerly futuristic architecture, an eye for the broken and leaking.

April

No posts

Quiet Babylon remains adrift.

May

Two stories appeared in rapid succession today on Wired’s excellent Threat Level.

From: Threat Level Context

A proto-post. Starting to synthesize instead of just reply. Too short and not far-ranging enough.

June

Check out this article on Ars Technica about law prof. Patricia Akester’s study examining the effects of DRM on the legal use of copyrighted works.

From: DRM: The Fight Against Posterity

I still hadn’t articulated what the site was about to myself, but this post feels very in-theme. Worth noting that these problems remain relevant.

July

As part of the Cultural Theory program, I took a university course called Cyborgs.

From: Adaptation: Cyborgs & Architects 1

And just like that, Quiet Babylon wakes up.

August

Here’s a Pair of Questions:

From: How deep do cities go?

The other thing I figured out this year was what Twitter was for. This post is a nice example of the interrelation.

September

Proceeding along the canal, you find a place where the path diverges to accommodate a weeping willow that dips its leaves into the gently flowing water.

From: Glimpses of a City 5

I consider these a failed experiment, but I’m going to try to revisit the idea of very short pieces in 2010.

October

This is kind of a weird post, but bear with me. It was my birthday yesterday and I spent the day buying and playing with plastic bricks, so Lego is on my mind.

From: There is no single-use Lego

Jason Kottke picked up this post beginning a grand tradition of my most-linked writing being the least Quiet Babylonian.

November

Will Wiles of Icon Magazine spent some time talking about augmented reality, Tron, and the fictional source of many design and technological innovations on his blog.

From: We can imagine it for you wholesale

I’m pleased that this is one of the posts picked up by the algorithm. I know Will exclusively through Twitter, blog comments, and Google Wave, which makes him representative of a lot of people who’s work I admire that I’ve met this year.

December

When I was working on the idea of the pocket-device model of augmented reality versus the lanyard model, I realized something about conference badges that didn’t really fit into the piece.

From: Conference Badges: Early Augmented Reality

Notable for the comments which are better than the post.

2009 has been an amazing year. In a very short period of time, Quiet Babylon has come to the attention of a lot of really intelligent people and I’m grateful for the comments, emails, and impromptu drinks that have come out of all of this. Aside from announcing the b-list grails contest results I’m not sure what the year has in store. I’ve got dozens of drafts in various stages of writing, a Twitter feed and RSS reader full of insightful articles, shelves of unread books, and some ideas on taking aspects of this project offline.

Stick around.

My Mom Makes Great Cookies

Tim Maly — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:58:48 +0000

Hello visitors from Dinosaur Comics.

In everyone’s defense, I should say that Ryan knew exactly what he was getting into when he came to a cookie party. I should also point out that some of the cookies were made by Pamela (who also does not have a website but does make great cookies).

If you are new to Quiet Babylon, the site is about cyborgs, architects, and our weird broken future. I normally update on Mondays and Thursday. I have some suggested articles to get you started.

Cyborgs & Architects is the series of posts that started the whole thing off.

Try The Lost Drone Army if you like science fiction stories in the form of fake news.

Secure/Obscure is about the blurring line between the physical and digital.

6 Involuntary Parks is a list for people into thinking about our collapsing environment.

B-List Holy Grails is the background for a micrononfiction contest that we are running. You can win a shirt by Ryan North or by Kate Beaton. The entry instructions are here.

Lastly, consider a visit to mini.quietbabylon.com, a rolling list of the images and quotations that drive the obsessions of this site.

We have a lot of serious-sounding concerns

Tim Maly — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:13:30 +0000

I managed to get an interview with Toronto Street Artist Posterchild and I’m still working out what to do with the nearly 3 hours of incredibly thought-provoking material. In the meantime, enjoy this basketball net/security installation conversion that we came across in the back-alleys while we talked about paranoia, security, and a healthy attitude toward risk.

Regular Service resumes on Monday. Topics in the pipe include: Afghanistan security in America, dead buildings, data-rich dance clubs, anti-aircraft guns …

Hello A Softer World Fans

Tim Maly — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:33:09 +0000

If you came from emily’s link, you are probably looking for this series: Adaptation — Cyborgs & Architects 1 (also: 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) . If you are into terrorism and pop-social-psychology (and who isn’t?) check out Broken Windows: A Terrorist Plot.