Category: Things On The Net

Newsmap

Lately I’ve been leaving Newsmap running for most of the day. Newsmap is a real-time graphic display of the current “info biosphere” on Google News. Think of it as a portable version of the television wall that every well-equipped “situation room” has. News stories grow in size, push other news stories out, and then grow dark and shrink. It’s slower than Conway’s Life sim but much more interesting.

newsmap

Progress City – where the future begins yesterday!

progresscity

Back in the day, my favorite part of Disneyland wasn’t the Matterhorn, the Autopia, or even Pirates Of The Carribean – it was Progress City, a model “city of the future” at the end of the Carousel Of Progress attraction in Tomorrowland. Think of it as one part World’s Fair utopian propaganda and one part model railroad set. A short video clip on the construction of the model (from the Walt Disney Presents TV show in 1968) is online.

 

Poison pen architecture reviews

Boing Boing links to cranky architecture critic James Howard Kunstler’s “Eyesore Of The Month“, a monthly case study in design stupidity with hilarious commentary. His May 2003 entry is priceless.

kunstler-eyesore

 

The mother of all Modernist public places: Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY, podium level, completed 1973.

The farther back the 20th century recedes, the more you shake your head and wonder what was going through their minds. Perhaps the imperial impulse is endemic to all societies, whether they are theocratic despotisms or bureaucratic democracies. You acquire enough wealth and power and terrible things happen. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller wasn’t a bad guy. He did it all for the sake of aesthetics, being a “modern” art connoisseur. The architect was Wallace K. Harrison, better known for the UN building in Manhattan. What they came up with was a place that only a Toltec could love.

Considering I took this shot at lunchtime (12:15) on the first nice spring day… and considering that the four towers are full of toiling state workers, the emptiness of the vast plaza is rather remarkable. Conclusion: it totally sucks.

As America (and New York with it) enter the era of political psychosis attending the downside of the global oil curve, this place will surely become a favorite spot for the bloodletters.