Robotperson

• The Guardian gives much-hyped new Star Wars game The Force Unleashed a lukewarm review. November’s Edge, which has arrived in the post today, is less circumspect and dispenses a 5:
  

  Lucasarts and ILM are handling the cinematic side, George Lucas himself has added his touch to the script, and when you press start for the first time the John Williams score booms out of your loudspeakers. Surely, you think, this time they’ve got it right. Wrong. But The Force Unleashed is by no means a bad game - it’s simply one that constantly makes you think of what a brilliant experience it could have been.

  I was really, really hoping that this would justify a next-gen (or rather this-gen) platform purchase. Sigh.

• This month’s US Esquire magazine has run with an historic first commercial e-ink cover, or partially e-ink cover, anyway. Boing-boing diplomatically describe it as a pathetic disappointment. It’s not quite the future yet after all.
• Nice piece by Suzanne Vega on the making of Tom’s Diner, its sample-friendly proliferation, and its role in the birth of mp3. I never knew that it’s about the same diner that featured in Seinfeld.
• I’m a bit behind in Essential Mixes, but I can’t stop listening to Deadmau5’s EM from 2 months ago, especially the last hour. It’s exactly what I’m into at the moment. He’s playing Brighton next month and my tickets are in the post already.
• I missed 808 day last month. Watch the video.

The difference between iCrossing, where I’m freelancing at the moment, and other new media agencies where I’ve worked, is that when someone finds something interesting on the internet they don’t say “that’s cool!”, they say “that’s going to get loads of links!”.

Search is in the blood here, and there’s a lot for me to learn.

There’s such a diversity of opinion on the web that you’ll always be able to find a point of view that matches your own.

Add to this our innate tendency to weight evidence that supports our POV and discount contrary evidence (”confirmation bias”), and I’m left thinking that we are probably innately unable to research objectively on the web. Look long enough and you’ll find ‘evidence’ to back up your preconceptions, whatever they are.

This was highlighted to me in a workshop I ran recently with mothers on social behaviour online. Parenting is an arena of strongly held feelings about what is right personally, as well as deep insecurity on whether parents are doing the ‘right’ thing. Mothers, it turns out, like the fact that they can go online and find people with the same processes and ways of coping because it gives them confidence about their own strategies. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that these are the best strategies for them, it’s just confirmation bias in action.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean that these aren’t the best strategies either: they could be, but it would be more by luck than judgement. This, perhaps, is no bad thing if we are to follow the gut-feeling rule for making complex decisions. Although even under this rule, mothers could probably save time time by not even bothering with the internet and doing whatever they feel is right.

Word.

<klaxon noise!> There’s a new Neil Stephenson novel out next month: Anathem. Wired has a slightly too long feature. Snip:

Set on a planet called Arbe (pronounced “arb”), Anathem documents a civilization split between two cultures: an indulgent Saecular general population (hooked on casinos, shopping in megastores, trashing the environment—sound familiar?) and the super-educated cohort known as the avaunt, or “auts,” who live a monastic existence defined by intellectual activity and circumscribed rituals.

I’ll definitely be reading it, but I can’t help wondering if he’s stepping rather too firmly on Iain M Banks’ toes with this kind of plot line. All sounds a bit Against a dark background to me. And I can probably do without the rather obvious sci-fi as commentary on modern life that seems to be going on. Still, we will see.

Out September 1st.

I have to tell you: today whilst freestyling our way through Richard Scarrys Best Storybook Ever (“Ruby, what can you see?”), Roo pointed at the cute little android on the page and said “Robot!”.

I’m not sure where she picked it up from; certainly not from me. But my circuits were glowing with pride.

That’ll do, Roo.

For one week only, the chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet is available in its entirety at Pitchfork. Terrific, nostalgic stuff. More info here.

Time to respond to some link requests and spread the robotperson Google butter. Here are some sites by friends of mine that you might find interesting:

• Stefan Hull, sometime journalist, gamer, gambler, and now Brighton Racecourse silverback has started blogging at theoccasional. Always quality.
• Graphic design for print and digital: Raj Pancholi at R27 creativelab
• Welcome Mobility: mail order disability and living aids.

• Mouth has gone dry… Eleven the game: foosball for the 21st century design crowd
• Annie
• Sci-fi geeks photographed in their homes. The Klingons on the sofa are crying out for a caption. Something mundane like “when’s the pizza ready?”, or “have you seen my Bath’lith?”. I think I recognise the AT-AT driver.
• ABC buttons. Some ideas are so simple and so brilliant they make me nauseous.
• Pete Fowler x Boxfresh clothing. Nice Tees but I’m not very keen on the tops, which look like something cheap from H&M. I do like the use of his figures as models though.
• On the up. IA job trends. This is what I need to see right now.
• Mike tips us off to a superb beatbox rendition of Leftfield’s Phat Planet. Known to everyone else as that tune off the Guiness ad. Thinking back, I was with Mike when I first heard this: played out by Fatboy on Friday night in the dance tent, Glastonbury 2000(?). Ah, memories.

This is worth a post in its own: TR2N (that’s Tron 2 - goik!) is on its way. Here’s a tiny, surreptitiously cellphone-cam bootlegged version of the trailer, although it looks more like a single preview sequence to me.

Tron is revered at Robotperson towers as anyone that has been admitted to the inner sanctum (I/O tower?) can tell you, so this is news of the most exciting variety.

What I want to know now is what is Jeff Lebowski doing on the game grid?