io9
dr horrible's sing-along blog
Posts Tagged “
Internet
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dr horrible's sing-along blog
watchmen
Now You Can Watch The Watchmen's Advertisements
A few lucky European cinema owners are getting a chance to view exclusive footage from the upcoming Watchmen movie at this year's cinema expo. Now the rest of us can do the same online - kind of. Under the jump: Glimpses of what you can see in next year's superhero movie of the summer, if you squint hard enough. More »
rant
Google is NOT Making us STUPID
Google and the internet are changing the way our brains work, no doubt about it. With the internet at our fingertips, why bother to remember trivial facts when Wikipedia is just a click or two away? In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr makes a convincing argument about the various ways our obsession with cyberspace is altering the way we think, then tries to tell us that's a bad thing. Here's why he's wrong. More »
Awesome Free Stuff On The Internet
In The Garden Of Iden, Kage Baker's fantastic novel about time-traveling cyborgs who work for the 24th century Company, is available as a free download. Five-year-old Mendoza is about to be tortured to death as a Jew in the Spanish Inquisition, when she's rescued by the Company and turned into a time-traveling operative — but her first assignment is to the 16th century, uncomfortably close to her own time. It's available in PDF, HTML, or Mobi formats. Meanwhile, the new New Yorker has George Saunders' bizarre pitch for a version of Heroes where people only think they have superpowers. (Although I didn't like the ending.) And the pilot for J.J. Abrams' Fringe is available for viewing on Surf The Channel, and shows no signs of being taken down. [Beam Me Up and New Yorker and Surf The Channel ]
Fat Guy Stuck In Internet
Exclusive Clip From "Fat Guy Stuck In Internet" New Adult Swim Series
One big lucky man lives every nerd's dream by getting sucked into the internet and being forced to live out his days among pop culture, YouTube videos and glorious scifi references. Fat Guy Stuck In Internet is the latest addition to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, and it premieres this week. The show will spoof everything from Star Wars and The Goonies to The Matrix. Fat Guy started when creators John Gemberling (who plays the main character) and Curtis Gwinn (plays an internet bounty hunter) decided to create their own series of shorts for Channel 102 called "Gemberling." The show airs 12:15 am next Monday morning.
mad science
It's the future of nanotech pseudo-science and rehab all rolled into one strange package. Fritz Hoffmann took this picture for National Geographic in Guangdong province capital city Guangzhou. Apparently these strange masks, which remind me of something out of a cyberpunk anime, are "nanometer wave machines" used to cure addiction. The person second from right is being cured of "internet addiction." Other treatments include isolation and electro-shock.
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A Chinese Cure for Internet Addiction
It's the future of nanotech pseudo-science and rehab all rolled into one strange package. Fritz Hoffmann took this picture for National Geographic in Guangdong province capital city Guangzhou. Apparently these strange masks, which remind me of something out of a cyberpunk anime, are "nanometer wave machines" used to cure addiction. The person second from right is being cured of "internet addiction." Other treatments include isolation and electro-shock.
More »
quantum internet
Quantum Internet Could Protect Batman's Secret Identity
With countries like China, Pakistan, and even the US spying on their citizens, it's nice to know a remedy might be on its way in the form of the Quantum Internet. As researchers like Seth Lloyd of MIT make progress toward the goal of quantum computing, they've found that the same architecture used to build quantum random access memory (QRAM) could apply across the whole of the internet. This could put an end to internet spying for good, and would mean that Batman could send email to the JLA without fear of discovery. More »
advertising
NBC Will Stop The Internet For Battlestar
Apparently, the Cylons aren't the only ones with a plan. Sci Fi Channel parent company NBC/Universal is pulling out all the stops to promote this Friday's return of Battlestar Galactica, including switching off the internet and telling you to watch television, instead. According to advertising bible Brand Week, NBC/Universal has made sure that you're not going to be able to surf the web instead of watching their show on Friday night.More »
rebel futurism
Consumer Scandals Of The Future: A Chronology
The next few decades will see miraculous improvements in consumer technology — and new and better rip-offs to go with them. No matter how advanced our science, corporations will still find ways to spam, scam and invade your privacy. Those shiny new toys will break down... or break your neck. Here's our future history of the lawsuits and nightmares you'll be reading about from now until 2038. More »
advertising
Mind Control Is Just a Click Away
The goal of most advertisers is, frankly, to bypass your rational brain and reach down into the murky depths of your limbic system to control your desires. And the Web has given advertisers powerful new mind-control tools, allowing them to generate fake "buzz" for products by implanting references to, say, Hewlett Packard on YouTube or Cisco on Wikipedia. The idea is to make people think that their "friends" online like a product and artificially jumpstart a word-of-mouth recommendation for the product. At a South by Southwest panel Friday about the worst viral media advertising, several marketers and critics gathered to discuss the most heinous and failed examples of ads that are turning our mediascape into a William Gibson or Philip K. Dick nightmare. Two ad campaigns stood out as the worst. More »
The Internet Will Not Bring Us Together
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has blocked the entire nation of Pakistan from looking at video-sharing site YouTube. Apparently the PTA is trying to prevent citizens from watching an anti-Islam viral video called Fitna made by right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders (pictured here, looking weirdly like an alien from This Island Earth). This is yet another sign that futurists who predicted that the internet would break down national barriers were dead wrong. Instead, nations have learned how to redraw their boundaries in cyberspace. [AP via Physorg]
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has blocked the entire nation of Pakistan from looking at video-sharing site YouTube. Apparently the PTA is trying to prevent citizens from watching an anti-Islam viral video called Fitna made by right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders (pictured here, looking weirdly like an alien from This Island Earth). This is yet another sign that futurists who predicted that the internet would break down national barriers were dead wrong. Instead, nations have learned how to redraw their boundaries in cyberspace. [AP via Physorg]
venus rises
First Clip Of Firefly-Influenced Space Drama Venus Rises
The Sci Fi Channel chose the wrong online TV show when it bought Amanda Tapping's Sanctuary, judging from this exclusive new clip from the much grittier Venus Rises. Venus Rises is about the struggle between the working-class Venus and the wealthy Mars in a post-Earth future. In this clip, Sam and Kylara are exploring the Ikarus, and they meet the crew: Demille and the deaf Aeriana. Click through for an interview with writer/director J.G. Birdsall. More »
retro futurism
Mom Goes Shopping Online, Dad Pays the Bills in "1999 A.D."
A young Wink Martindale starred in this Philco-Ford-produced educational film from 1967 that correctly predicts online shopping, banking, and email, but not the women's movement. 1999 A.D. was so eerily prescient in its vision of future technology that when clips started making their way round the internet last fall, there were questions about its authenticity. You can read more about the controversy, and see more clips here.
information dystopia
Yesterday and today, huge regions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are suffering internet blackouts after two long, underwater fiber optic cables were severed, probably due to human error. One of the cables was the famous 17,000 mile FLAG cable, whose route from Japan around the Middle East to Europe you can see in the map above (it even goes through the Suez Canal). The worst part? According to Ryan Singel of Threat Level, this kind of outage likely represents the future of the global internet.
More »
Middle-Eastern, Asian Internet Collapse is a Harbinger of Things to Come
Yesterday and today, huge regions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are suffering internet blackouts after two long, underwater fiber optic cables were severed, probably due to human error. One of the cables was the famous 17,000 mile FLAG cable, whose route from Japan around the Middle East to Europe you can see in the map above (it even goes through the Suez Canal). The worst part? According to Ryan Singel of Threat Level, this kind of outage likely represents the future of the global internet.
More »
heroes
Heroes 360 is a lot more than your basic network half-assed attempt at a web presence for a show. This site for NBC's mutant soap opera is packed with original content like Heroes web comics, blogs, stories, and interviews. New stuff goes up every week, and this is only going to happen more now that the writer's strike has made comics one of the only formats where you'll be able to see your favorite Heroes characters for the next three months. Here's our quick guide to getting started with the Heroes site.
More »
'Heroes' Web Comic-Palooza For Three More Months
Heroes 360 is a lot more than your basic network half-assed attempt at a web presence for a show. This site for NBC's mutant soap opera is packed with original content like Heroes web comics, blogs, stories, and interviews. New stuff goes up every week, and this is only going to happen more now that the writer's strike has made comics one of the only formats where you'll be able to see your favorite Heroes characters for the next three months. Here's our quick guide to getting started with the Heroes site.
More »
apocalypse
Searches for "End of the World" Are Skyrocketing on the Internets
Smartypants futurist Jamais Cascio has noticed something especially eschatological in the search logs for his blog, Open the Future. A few months ago, "end of the world" suddnely become the most popular search term leading people to his writing. Just to illustrate the weirdness, he's created a graph showing how the phrase stacked up against other search terms like "anthrax" and "astroid strike." Check out the results, with handy color coding. More »
patton oswalt
Patton Oswalt Compares 'Star Wars' To Ballsacks
Famous indie comedian/comic book writer/video game talent Patton Oswalt is known for his love of science fiction and most other things from Planet Geek. We caught his show last week in Los Angeles where he spouted off about his fantasies of murdering George Lucas for making the Star Wars prequels. Check out the highlights after the break, and realize you'll never think of Angelina Jolie the same way again. Heroes fanwank bonus points: yes, that's a Slusho! t-shirt he's wearing. More »
dystopia
The Internet Uses 5% of Global Electricity
Futurist Kevin Kelly has done a back-of-the-napkin calculation showing that the Internet uses about 5% of global electricity. This number doesn't include mobile devices that require charging up. This power-sucker has gone from using a tiny percentage of global electricity just 15 years ago, to using 5%. And as the internet grows, along with server megafarm-based businesses like Google, that number is likely to grow larger very quickly. Whenever I see this kind of data, I always worry about the sum total of world knowledge being dependent on electrical power. If we're not careful, the internet and all its goodies will flame out in a knowledge-apocalypse moment millions of times worse than the one that destroyed the library at Alexandria. AP Photo by Jay LaPrete.How much power does the internet consume? [via The Technium] More »
