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SEPTEMBER 2013 IN THIS ISSUE:
BARFETTES FUTURAMA I WATCH iTOONS A QUICK DOZEN WHETHER REPORT NEW REAL NEWS KOMIX! SHOW HACK!
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cyberbarf EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE
For every ending, there is a new beginning: NEW REAL NEWS KOMIX! SHOW HACK!
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cyberbarf VOLUME 13 NO. 2 EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE cyberbarf barfette Investigators have found that the NSA, which initially said it did no domestic spying after saying it had no telephone or internet capture programs, has actually read content of private communications of citizens more than 2,600 times. The administration and the agency have lost all credibility in regard to this growing privacy scandal. A lame excuse was offered that the agency program confused the Egyptian international call code with the Washington D.C. area code. It is quite convenient mistake since the White House and Justice Department was on a leak rampage against reporters who worked in the DC area code, and whose reporters accounts were allegedly hacked by the government. barfette The worst kept secret in American history was finally acknowledged when the CIA admitted that Area 51 exists. Generations of people have known about the top secret military base in the Nevada desert. Its top secret clearance gave it the mystery of black ops and supernatural aircraft (with conspiracy theorists claiming that most advances are reversed engineered alien space craft beginning with the Roswell incident in 1947). The Cold War brought about an arms race which created American super secret military bases to research, develop and test new weapon and aircraft technologies. The U.S. has dozens of secret bases specializing in various aspects of new technology in the name of national security. barfette The quantitative analysis of the attention span of the average American has come into focus with the latest fad, Vine, which is a user content created upload of no more than seven (7) seconds of video or animation. The seven second run time is supposed to elicit super creativity. But it also goes to show how short Internet surfers' attention spans are these days. It goes to extremes of remote control quick clicking on the net or cable box to binge viewing of entire box sets or seasons of entertainment programs. barfette The bloodbath of layoffs at AOL's Patch division has started in earnest. More than 480 staff members, mostly site editors and technical staff, were let go as AOL management decided to close down approximately 60 percent of the sites, consolidate twenty percent of the sites, and partnering with other content operators on the last twenty percent. The Patch hyperlocal news and information site never got any local advertising traction. It also never got any real news traction because executives kept pushing reporter-editors, many who had no journalism experience, to sell more advertising at the expense of covering local stories. The quest for ad money disillusioned even the strongest Patch editors who believed that a hyperlocal news site in a community had real value. But with the vast majority of Internet business models, it was totally unprofitable.
cyberbarf EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE cyberbarf FUTURAMA ESSAY In 1999. Fox doubled down on Matt Groening by ordering a second animation series, Futurama. Fox executives thought they were going to get The Simpsons in Space. But Futurama was more adult, edgy and surreal science fiction. Fox was fearful about how the show would tread on topics beyond the farce of slapstick of Homer and the gang, so the series shuffled around the schedule until it was killed off by network neglect. But a loyal fan core was rewarded five years later when Comedy Central asked for 16 new serial episodes. But even then, the show got second class treatment. After on again, off again runs, Futurama ends in the first week of September with its final episode. It is another sad ending for a hip science fiction show which pushed the boundaries of space and acceptable character behavior. But what many viewers may not have realized that Futurama was a statement about us, humanity and our collective futures.
The Professor represents the old inventive dreamers who march on despite setbacks and failures. Modern American culture does not revere their elders like other societies. There has been an acceleration of nonproductive fads that the younger leisure heavy folk seem to gravitate too like memes to a high search engine placement. Everyone thinks the Professor is a fool, but his inventions and delivery business is what keeps the glue of their group moving forward. Zoidberg represents the people who for whatever reason got sidetracked away from their true passion and into a dead end career. He wanted to be a comic, but turned into a comedic doctor. People rise to the level of their incompetence. Leela presents the insecure (especially women) who were brought up as second class citizens destined for substandard occupations and little social mobility. She was stuck in a dead end job until she rebelled to follow Fry and Bender to Planet Express. Some people are destined to become leaders. Bender represents the fact that no matter how advanced new technology is, it will always come back to byte us on the butt. As a highly advanced intellectual robot, he has gone beyond his mere bending programming to become a world class criminal, hijinx fiend and satirical foil for the crew. No one can control him. Fry represents the outcast loser who may be too dumb to realize that the world keeps running him over day after day. He is a man literally and physically out of his time. But the one thing that keeps him sane is core belief of his dream of space travel. So no how bad things are, he always falls back that he is living his dream (even though he is still a measly delivery boy). Amy represents the spoiled rich kid whose naive outlook on life (through her trust fund) makes her a materialistic, selfish self centered celebrity wannabee that has overwhelmed today's culture in reality television. She does not have to work, so she does not work hard at anything she does, including relationships. She is the free spirit party girl that one day will wake up to find her friends and youthful appearance gone. Hermes represents the bureaucrat who will always be among us, telling us what we are doing wrong but rarely offering any sort of solution. He is the taskmaster and finds pleasure in the boredom of accounting. In some respects, he had to fashion his own personality to meet the dredge of his occupation. Futurama was an ensemble show of misfits and malcontents. It took traditional prime time animation and gave it a science fiction edge. Life and death struggles were really life and death struggles. Humor was cruel and direct. Most punches thrown were landed, especially to audience members who may not realize that some of the gags were direct satire of their own lives. Creator Groening has hinted that he has plenty of more stories to tell. He may continue to search for another network to reboot the series once again. Let's hope he is successful in his quest.
cyberbarf I WATCH PROJECTED REVIEW The world watches Apple. It has set the electronic trends for decades. People want to know its next move. Consumers and investment bankers all want to push for the next great, innovative product launch. Steve Jobs famously remarked that he did not believe in consumer focus groups telling a company what type of products they wanted to buy. Jobs said he would tell them what they wanted to buy. For months, the rumors have been that the next product launch would be an iWatch. Electronic watches are not new. Casio had a digital watch decades ago. Other companies have dabbled with bracelet devices or sticking a Nano on a wrist band. No one knows if there is an actual market for a supped up electronic watch. The same was true when Apple launched its portable music player. If Apple does produce an iWatch, it will have to blow the doors off current watch technology in both function and design.
It really should not be a watch at all. It should be a padded wristband with curved glass display screen. It should be a solution to those workout warriors who have to strap their iPod on an armband, belt clip or clutch it in their hand. It should contain the features of an iPod along with the Nike exercise applications. Sensor technology can add features like pulse rate, odometer for running, exercise timer, etc. It can be the next fitness monitor. With voice technology, you can have your own Siri fitness instructor. It would also have an iTunes music player because fitness junkies need their tunes. Since it is wrist device, and hands free, the iWatch should incorporate some Bluetooth wireless technology to link to both the Internet and the iPhone. An Apps icon and/or voice commands could activate programs without the person stopping what they are currently doing (exercising to driving a car). An I/O port could connect the wristwatch to a jack in a smart car or laptop to sync information. The device should also have a built in calendar/contact feature. The MAC OS incorporates those features in every device at present. There is no reason not to include it on the watch. The calendar would be important because it would be omnipresent and not offensive as some people get when people take out their smartphones to check dates on buses or planes. It also should have a large clear screen that would display the time by default, and application menus on command. Of course there are problems with this design and features. First, people may think that this is really odd flavor of the iTouch. In some respects, it is. But with the iPhone's great popularity, the non-phone iTouch continues to sell well. Second, there is no current technology what allows for mass produced curved glass. Apple and Corning have been working on this for Apple's new spaceship HQ building. Third, there will be a technological issue with any sort of touch screen on a curved surface. That is why voice command may be the only way to operate the device. Fourth, many people may think it is a redundant product. People stopped wearing watches because of the clock on their smartphones. The only way to overcome the current method of telling time is to make the iWatch a fashion statement. Apple has always been good at selling things most people really don't need. In summary, if Apple is going to do an iWatch, it needs to break some barriers because the critics and general public are skeptical on whether Apple without Jobs can still be an innovative wunderkind.
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cyberbarf A QUICK DOZEN LETTER FROM THE PUB A long time ago, writer and East Coast talk show mainstay George Plimpton once remarked at the peak of his literary celebrity that he could have been just as happy writing and editing a literary journal with a subscriber base of 3,000 readers. Such were the dreams of writers scratching out work on manual typewriters, ink ribbons, carbon paper, and onion skin paper. There were no Internet, no blogs, no social media, no smart phones and no digital news sites. Began with basic site that looked like a short lived BBS. The the zine turned into a DTP grid as the likes of Pagemaker 1.0 floppy disc booting up like rush hour gridlock in a major city. Our late tech guru, Rocky, was a great promoter of the Internet He said that I should move my zine, The Real News, to the web. It would be cheaper than a mailing list. But in typical fashion, I went overboard and founded three separate web sites, with cyberbarf.com concentrating on cultural ramifications of technology. Technology can ruin things. Watching a high schooler try to answer a phone call is as painful as having a dentist drill hit a nerve before the Novocain is fully active. The art of conversation is turning into a lost art. The same is true for long form literary works as algorithms and formatted formula retreads are the mainstay of the entertainment industry. The same goes for anything close to long form prose. One can surf through the cable channels for five minutes dancing between 500 channels and still find nothing interesting to watch. When the Discovery Channel stoops lower than scripted reality TV by creating “ mockumentaries” about sharks, no wonder television ratings are nose diving - - - if people can't trust educational channels providing factual information, what is the point of watching that network? So people gravitate toward the web to find information and entertainment. There are so many people today who want their voice heard that they post, stream and scream for attention on the web. The amount of diverse noise turns the world wide web into a silent movie. It probably frustrates content originators to no end. Even if they have something smart to say, their articles could be lifted by aggregators with no compensation or credit. The Internet is a zero sum game; only a tiny fraction of web operators make any money. And it is not a lot of money. There are hundreds of billions of snippets of information added daily to the information ocean. One website like this is merely a single drop in that ocean. So it is nice to know that amongst the millions of sites, blogs, feeds, and social media outlets, there has been a consistent loyal readership here. It seems that it is easier to hold on to an audience than to try to find one. So it is really hard to believe that cyberbarf is now into its 13th year of existence. Thirteen years on the Internet is beyond old. Look at the technological advances in the last decade. Anyone still plugging away after five years is ancient. Thanks for your support of the website. Surf on. Ski
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cyberbarf THE WHETHER REPORT |
cyberbarf STATUS |
| Question: Whether Apple's reported iWatch will be a hit like the original iPod? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
| Question: Whether the smart phone patent wars will slow innovation and progress in the next generation products? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
| Question: Whether fantasy sports teams will continue to grow for the next decade even if overall video gaming levels off? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
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