This one is fully automated.

I started off this blog talking about how I hate Twitter. Since then, I've come to find that I was both right (Twitter users apparently call themselves "twitterati"-ugh) and wrong. I read some interesting Wired articles about Twitter today, and even though I still don't want to use it, I was definitely fascinated. 

Apparently, Twitter has exceeded every expectation for how useful it actually can be. People have rigged their technology to tweet them when their laundry is done, when someone is moving around their home, to turn on and off their lights, even enable your houseplants to tell you when to water them. I mean, I actually kind of could use that maybe. 

On the other hand, the other Wired article talks about how much guilt social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and blogs carry with them--for not updating often enough, for not uploading pics and vids for comment, for not posting links. And then, the anxiety that comes from sharing all this information on the World Wide Web. 

I'm all for technology making my life easier, but who wants the responsibility of making their life seem interesting 24/7? What do you think? 

Speaking of technology, I just read this month's Rolling Stone, and there is a crazy article in it about this guy named Ray Kurzweil, who is an inventor who has won every tech award you can get. He's invented a few dandy little devices. One translates text into speech, so that blind people like Stevie Wonder (who says the invention has changed his life) can, for example, take a picture with their cell phone of a menu; then, their cell phone would read the menu to them. Or, if you're traveling, you can take a picture of a menu in a foreign language and it will read a translated version to you. Awesome! This guy is the smartest dude ever! But, he also thinks that by 2045, humans will merge with machines in a Rapture-style event called the Singularity, enabling humans to live forever because all their memories would be backed up onto a hard drive. Also, nanobots can enter the body and clean up toxins, attack viruses and kill diseases, and even enter trees and rocks and in essence, turn them into computers. Then, Ray Kurzweil says, the universe will be conscious. 

On one hand, I'm like, well, that's a better outlook than the Terminator-style, I, Robot point of view. On the other hand, what about the Terminator, I, Robot point of view? Doesn't he just make them more plausible? 

But he can't be all wrong. Basically, he's saying a day will come when humans can't live without technology, and honestly, can't you imagine that happening in your lifetime? I left my cell phone at home once, and it was really weird. Does a day go by that you don't use technology in some way or another? Maybe Ray really is seeing the future. 

Here is a video of Ray Kurzweil talking about the Singularity: 

This website, which is news on all things robotic, even has an article all about the day when human bodies will be hybridized with machines, to help the disabled walk by creating exoskelebots, or to clean arteries by releasing nanobots into the bloodstream.

Ask me how I can help! 

On a totally different note, Lux Interior of the Cramps died recently. The Cramps is one of my favorite bands, so I was really sad to hear about it. Here is an awesome obit for Lux on Pitchfork, including a good history of the band and several awesome performance videos if you're not familiar. 

Speaking of music, ever heard of Girl Talk? This guy Gregg Gillis makes awesome dance music by mixing up the greatest collection of samples ever. He has made the remix an art form. For cereal. 

This video, by the way, was made for the Open Source Cinema Project. This guy is making a documentary all about copyright laws, and how living in the digital age has opened doors to all of us to collaborate on all kinds of projects and use what's already out there to create something new. This is a big issue right now. You know the iconic Hope poster of Obama that was so central to his campaign? Well, the artist who created that poster, Shepard Fairey, was sued by the Associated Press because he used their photo of Obama. Shepard Fairey is countersuing because he says he used the picture to create a piece of art, thereby changing it so substantially that it cannot be called copyright infringement. Fairey can say that--his art has been taken over by the populace to the extent that you can upload your own picture and Obamicon it, and he says he loves it. "Only when someone is trying to bootleg it for profit have I ever tried to protect the copyright," he says in this interview on the Colbert Report.