The Canadian Medical Association Journal reports that "Internet Addiction Disorder" has entered the official lexicon of the medical establishment. According to the article, a US-based medical researcher claims IAD is "as real as alcoholism" and includes the attendant symptoms of addiction - withdrawal, loss of control, compulsive behaviour. Sounds like yet another mutation of the "Blame the Internet" meme to us.
In a new Norwegian initiative, Save the Children workers have gone online to search for child porn in an attempt to quell the supposed tide of filth which is engulfing our switches. The idea is to relay everything they find to the relevant police forces - which seems like a far more sensible approach than drumming up media hysteria. If you come across anything worth reporting, mail children@risk.sn.no.
Microsoft may be the bane of old-line media companies, the champion of mediocre software and Anne Bingaman's worst monopolistic nightmare, but the company can certainly cut smart deals. Recently, Microsoft sold the majority of its software manufacturing capability - the decidedly industrial factory where bits are atomised into disks, manuals and shrink-wrap - to the Japanese manufacturing conglomerate Kao Corp. Kao will take over Microsoft's Bothell, Washington, facility and service Microsoft's continuing bit-packaging needs. Sounds like a good deal for Kao - it gets a state-of-the-art facility and a long-term contract with the largest producer of packaged software on the planet. But what's in it for Microsoft? For starters, Verifone recently promised to work with e-money standards set by Microsoft, among others: Microsoft is getting into e-money and online commerce in a big way, looking forward to the day when the majority of software transactions happen across a network, obviating the capital expense of a manufacturing and distribution plant. We imagine Gates was not hyping that particular angle when he sold his facility to Kao. This certainly gives new meaning to the Japanese version of Microsoft's ubiquitous "Where do you want to go today?" campaign. The pitch, now splashed across billboards and buses all over Japan, translates literally to this phrase: "Microsoft: If you don't know where you want to go, we'll make sure you get taken."
IBM are making much PR mileage out of one of their modems being used not to hack a sensitive Website but to crack a nut - quite literally. The modem in question was lying around the village of Bantu tribesman M'wana Ndeti in southwestern Zaire, on the set of a commercial that Big Blue was shooting at the time. Apparently, Ndeti had been trying to crack the nut by hand for 20 minutes when he spotted the modem, sneaked it off the set, and used it to pound the nut against a rock. Whether or not this story is true, IBM would be wise not to make fun of native peoples if the recent experience of Nike is anything to go by. The sportshoe manufacturer recently showed a TV commercial for hiking shoes that was filmed in Kenya using Samburu tribespeople. The camera zooms in on one tribesman who is holding a pair of the hiking shoes, and as it does so he says something in his native tongue. At this moment the slogan "Just Do It" appears on the screen. Unfortunately for Nike the commercial was seen by Lee Cronk, an anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati, who realised that the tribesman was actually saying "I don't want these. Give me big shoes." According to Nike representative Elizabeth Dolan, "We thought nobody in America would know what he was saying."
Far worse than the British Field Sports Society upset over David Pearce's "Killing for Kicks" page being placed above theirs on search engine lists (Wired 2.10) was the experience of the American organisation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). When they went to register www.peta.com as a domain name, they discovered that the People for the Eating of Tasty Animals had already nabbed it. Hey, it's a jungle out there.
This is Wirehead, an artpiece created by Digital Therapy Institute. It creates a collective "mind" by scanning the brainwaves between networked subjects, using EEG output to drive a multimedia display. It's one of the exhibits featured at Ex Machina, a radical interactive art exhibition of work by leading digital artists from the UK and Japan, taking place simultaneously at London's Cameraworks Gallery and the Newcastle Zone Gallery between November 6th and December 22nd. The six artists (DTI, Paul Sermion, Jane Prophet, Teji Furuhashi, Susan Collins and Yoshinori Tsuda) are using new technologies not just to construct their pieces but to provide remote access to the gallery spaces themselves. Each artwork challenges the accepted Cartesian understanding of existence using a variety of different interactive approaches, ranging from total brain upload to intimate encounters through a video monitor.
- Rachel Armstrong
The Digital Cowboy and the Digital Girl spend their time dancing in cyberspace and avoiding Dog - a "battleship-porcupine cum dog in a kennel" according to artist Paul White. All are characters in Cowboy, the latest video promo from Japanese pop idol Noriyuki Makihara. White's London-based Me Company has developed a machine aesthetic that plunges the viewer into a glutinous digital space, and its work has been commissioned by the likes of Icelandic chanteuse Björk, techno-meister Carl Cox and Nike.
- Rick Poynor
Opening next May at London's Science Museum is a new touchy-feely gallery, Challenge of Materials. As a taster, the hoardings hiding "work in progress" show a piece by Frances and Ron Geesin (co-author of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother) called Tri-Aura. Three panels of electroplated material themed around earth, fire and water hide gizmos which not only trigger lights and sound effects when you touch, but also as you approach. Eerie. Let's hope the material, Ultra, which is chemical- and solvent-resistant, is also resistant to the mauling hands of schoolchildren.
- Phil Gyford
If you're one of those people who runs recodes of BBC Micro Defender (memory required: 32K) on your 200MHz Pentium Pro (memory available: 32 Mb) you'd better hurry down to the last few days of the Retro Gaming Exhibition, running until November 2nd on Level One of the HMV store at 150 Oxford Street, London. Timed to coincide with the 15th birthday of Computer Video Games magazine ("the longest running specialist computer games mag in the world"), the exhibition will have loads of old consoles, including Spectrum, ZX80, Mattel Aquarius and Vectrex (pictured here) and will include special guest appearances from Clive Sinclair and master games programmers of yore. There's even a rumour going around that the Bobby Fischer of the UK games industry, Matthew Smith (the creator of Manic Miner), might make an appearance, but, as I say, it's only a rumour.
- Cooper James
A team at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire has been using X-rays from the laboratory's powerful synchrotron radiation source to take 3D pictures (a grain of pollen, main, and a lightbulb filament, inset) with a resolution 50 times sharper than normally possible. The object is placed in the X-ray beam in hundreds of different positions and the amount of energy passing through it recorded each time by an array of detectors. These snapshots are then combined to create a 3D image which can be sliced and viewed at any point, allowing the detailed examination of internal structures.
- James Flint