The Home Genome. A Google Lab Proposal.

Losing our collective illusions of “the others” could make us gain a focus on what really needs to be done to become an adult species.

 

For the nerds at Google their innovations lab has required, in this order

  1. technical solutions
  2. practical application among humans

Engineering has driven implementation of most of their ideas.

A very human and future oriented idea

It has at its core the entire portrayed history of Humans, to be gathered and integrated into an understanding of the Physical Earth as it is rendered by human minds:

THE AV EARTH

is what it is, but maybe a different name; something with a bigger feel

THE ART EARTH

HUMAN EARTH

PORTRAYED PLANET

What is the innovation here?

Let everyone else see your home – the streets and people and locations of your personal knowledge.

Map the Earth in historic sound and images.

Every movie not shot in blue- or green screen or in a studio is a historic location on Earth, with sounds and people and houses and life. Every microphone pointed anywhere on any street or location in nature at any time of the day is living history. Every image taken anywhere is living history, THEN-living history. The planet as depiction. Known for real only by those occupying the spot of land and leading their lives there.

Google could give up further technical achievements and go for something, which demands the participation of everyone sentient: Everyone, who can wield a video camera, microphone, camera, watch a movie or hear a soundscape or montage for radio and off air enjoyment.

Anyone can participate.

From present day savannas in South Africa to overview maps in TV presentations to street exhibits of landscape photos in Belgium to discovering and pin-pointing locations and orientation and movement in every film ever made to identifying the sound of ferries and fog bells in every harbor in every country of the world to footage of closed off civilisations and the homes there.

If anything the Art Genome is what makes and keeps us human – live remembering, and regarded as precise depiction we are only just getting started. The Home Genome has also only just begun – but in the hands of daytime and primetime TV myths of places and people are being spun to the lowest common denominator.

Mapping the Planet as Home

Humans mapping their home turf anywhere on Earth would be a worthwhile new project for an innovations lab like Google with the funding and the technical manpower and the need to become more human in general understanding and at the same time shying away from geopolitics to keep it as an Individual-based project.

There are many ways into the project. Say: ”Rebuild this particular road in sound”. ”The sound of the ice-scapes”. ”Mumbai, when it was Bombay”. ”Capitals A/V around the world”. ”Gleichers when there were gleichers” etc etc etc. Or just: Show the world, what you see and hear, when you leave your house to go shopping, eating, on visits, when you walk home at night etc.

Movies and radio too

The edited form of is still the Real World as raw material, and comparable to the real world of today, of any today… including tomorrow. Salvaged recognisable locations from a movie or radio programme are pieces of human geotime saved and shared.

We remain Human Beings

in character from understanding THAT we have a past. Google Earth gave us our own place on earth, and we can enter photos, but we cannot make a commitment to the place, we know best. And already now the images from where we live are old to all, who live there: The attraction of Google Earth is everywhere but home.

So, focus on people’s homes. Let individuals all over the world also gather material from archives and TV-reruns and movies and photo-material, which depicts the places they themselves know.

The Home Base.

PLANET HOME

This is people’s own back yard and front yard and cityscape and personal geographic history – the environment they grew up in and know from their family’s history and image history, the sounds that identify home (sad that smells cannot be recorded), the colors of the sky and the sea and the city and the nature surrounding and defining HOME.

“What is it like, where you live?”

Recorded image and sound history is sadly not much older than 150 years, but hopefully it will become very much older. Joining the living Earth into a coherent database or rather databaseS – as I suggest this be a distributed network, eg. p2p, where everyone participates on his and her own bandwidth with his or her own material – is not a monument to human beings. It is a living, daily access to anywhere in the world, and the actual movement and sounds and people and changes, over time possible to scroll through as material to confirm life everywhere.

If we as a species are ever going to leave our home and expand into the unknown, as every human has done individually in his life, and every tribe and nation has done before it became either tribe or nation, everyone of us need to understand that human beings are everywhere, living, breathing, procreating, dying, for a fact, everywhere, and that the Planet IS a living and changing organism, not just because Lovelock says so or because we humans change it with our number and the consequences of survival, but because LIFE means CHANGE.

The humble name for such a project, but it is most likely taken by trademark rights, would be THE LIFE SERVER. A bit more on the Grand side would be THE REAL WORLD. More correctly THE HUMAN RECORDED PAST. Boring, but correct: SHARED EARTH or SHARED PAST.

Summation

Distributed collection and storage of A/V and image material, heavily geotagged and annotated, of the Earth known to individuals as home, stretching back as far as recording goes. City maps and city scape renderings in hand can come too, and stamps too. Rejoicing Life as it was, because knowable life is always in a past. Rejoicing Life as it will be, because understanding always reaches into a future.

Simple, easy piecy Google People Project. The Planet, Home to Humans.

(And, honestly, let it be non-profit and let all material rights be free).

Google Books Ngram Viewer

Ja, vi tar lige én af dem på dansk, tak!

I Google Labs Ngram søgemaskine kan man søge i flere korpus (korpi?) bestående af millioner af bøger. Vælg mellem Amerikansk og engelsk engelsk, tysk, fransk osv. Ikke dansk, desværre.

For at finde ud af, hvilken indflydelse Philip K Dick har haft på det amerikanske samfund, tastede jeg hans navn ind; meget interessant: Der er tydelig påvirkning fra udgivelsen af filmen Bladerunner i 1982, og efter en nedgangsperiode i 90’erne, bliver der lavet den ene storfilm efter den anden over hans historier, som så efterfølgende afspejles i udgivelserne i det amerikanske samfund.

Følg linket for selv at prøve:

Google Ngram Viewer.


Google Instant

Google Instant er en funktion, der autofuldender ord, man som bruger indtaster.
Resultatet udgøres af ordsammensætninger, andre har søgt på.

Google Instant er en funktion, der autofuldender ord, man som bruger indtaster. Resultatet udgøres af ordsammensætninger, andre har søgt på.

28. december 2010 tastede jeg nogle tilfældige ord ind i Google for at se, om instant-funktionen var begyndt at blive dansk.

Har du sjove eksempler, så send dem gerne. krabat a menneske.dk, skriv “google instant” i emnelinien.

Kenneth Krabat, 31.1. 2011

Kommerciel censur, korporativt kontrolleret Internet

Google censurerer særlige ord og kombinationer af ord. I dag tækkes de frivilligt kapitalinteresser.
I morgen den amerikanske præsident? I overmorgen er de ejet af Rubert Murdoch?

 

Google Instant hedder en funktion, der autofuldender ord, man som bruger indtaster. Dette ud fra en database, der registrerer blot ét tilfælde af en søgning med et nyt ord eller en ny kombination af ord. Men Google har slået funktionen “auto-fuldendelse” fra ved indtastning af særlige ord og kombinationer af ord. Se nedenfor, og gå til link.

via Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More | TorrentFreak.

Kenneth Krabat, 29.1. 2011

Googles nye bogbiks (m. 3 mio bøger)

3 millioner bøger. DRM. Google.

Før vi i Danmark får del i at browse blandt 3 mio bøger, heraf nok 2/3 gratis, er vi lige nødt til at vente på, at Google får færdigforhandlet videresalgsrettigheder af digitaliserede værker.

I Danmark er det ikke nogen helt nemt opgave, da vi her, i modsætning til i USA, ikke endegyldigt afgiver vore individuelle rettigheder, heller ikke de digitale, hvilket gør at alle forfattere i princippet har forskellige kontrakter. Stort arbejde. Som selvfølgelig forlæggere kan gøre meget nemmere ved at lade være med at vente, til de bliver kontaktet af Google.

Dansk Forfatterforening og Dansk Forlæggerforening håber jeg har lært at sidde ved samme bord igen. I modsætning til standardkontrakten, som Forlæggerne ikke har villet genforhandle siden 1984, burde det lodret stigende ebogssalg være en chance for at få en ordentlig digital standardkontrakt i stand. Hvis altså ikke de to parter falder i dét hul, der hedder (endnu en gang) at vente på, at svarene viser sig i industrien i andre lande. Eller forlæggerforeningen forfalder til at tro, at det kun er nødvendigt at forhandle med bestsellerforfatterne.

Begrebet hedder proaktivitet, og det koster investeret tid og kræfter at nå til at punkt, hvor man alligevel kan tage fejl, fordi anden teknologi kommer ind fra højre eller venstre. Men når alternativet er at sidde med hænderne i skødet på vegne af en hel industri… What’ll it be, folkens?

Der er over 85 ebogslæsere på Adobes DRM-kompatabilitetsliste. Det er selvfølgelig betryggende, at man kan flytte sine ebogserhvervelser fra elæser til elæser – med udgivernes angivne begrænsninger – men det er på tide at nogen indser, at DRM stadig kun findes, fordi nogen tjener penge på (at promovere) DRM! Ikke fordi det giver mening længere at låse ebøger til hverken bestemte elæsere, et bestemt antal tilladte elæsere, have indbygget lånertid, slå udprint og kopiering fra, osv.! Ønsker man at dele sine købte erhvervelser på piratmanér, er det i dag muligt at bryde selv Adobes DRM. Verden behøver således kun 1 perfekt brudt krypteret bog for, at bogen perfekt kan distribueres til Alle og Enhver. I samme åndedræt behøver man ikke DRM til alle de mennesker, der ikke har tænkt sig at dele ud af deres bøger eller anskaffe sig bøger uden at betale for dem. Det bliver i min bog til, at DRM er unødvendig.

Og så er der det mere filosofisk aspekt ved at forbyde snarere end give fri. Der er f.eks. ledende stemmer i den amerikanske bogbranche (Baen Publishing), som mener at DRM er væsentlig årsag til piratvirksomhed – men det er nemt at være bagklog. Nu er det på tide at blive forklog, turde noget, være modig. Internettet er ikke et piratområde – mennesker er i forbindelse med hinanden, og mennesker taler sammen om, hvad de kan lide, og mennesker bytter, udlåner, prøver ting på, forærer væk. Dén praksis er ikke blevet forandret af, at forbindelserne har bredt sig ud over hele verden via det digitale netværk. Og bliver det næppe med ét slag. Kriminalisering af en væsentlig del af det at være menneske hjælper heller ikke noget.

Vågn op. Google, Barnes an Noble, Apple, Amazon… I er her også om 5 år, alle sammen. Eller snarere: Det håber jeg, hver gang jeg køber en ebog med DRM, så jeg også til den tid vil kunne læse den!