h. Play

Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

I thought about that article writing on Akira, when I had to wait years before being able to watch it again. I had to go to the Fnac store to read and workout the heavy 12 manga volumes edition, month after month, to get my Neo Tokyo fix.

I had to squeeze my memory so bad to remember a maximum of what I saw of the movie. Because of the lack of information I was daydreaming about it, wondering the story over and over again.

What would have it been if I could have watched this movie anytime I wanted to during these early years? I wouldn’t have workout my memory, neither my imagination or my body by standing up hours in a back aisle of a book store. I would have jumped –I guess- to “yeah, give me some more weirdness, more blood, more sex” anime because at ten you just want to see the limits. And there’s hundreds of these. I would have done that without moving from my bedroom, my chair.

So this article rings a bell for sure. Limited knowledge access makes you work more. You have access to a few things and you learn to focus on it, instead of being hit by multiple things all the time, reducing your will to estimate, making you lazy. You are no more surprised by almost any YouTube video. You watch so many in a day, a week, a month that it’s not as extraordinary as it used to be. By over stimulating your brain, your brain becomes numb.

It’s not really a bad thing to have a lot of information if you can filter and search it. It is a great skill and makes you smarter. But it requires effort against the stream, it means being ready to say no to your brain, trying to prioritize this constant flow of data chunks. I over load sometimes, more often than ever.

For people growing up with internet –90s born people- I’m not sure how you would learn to do that except with information starvation. Is it too late?

Around May and June, each year since then I sort of think about it. I alway have a quick feeling about this time, the time I saw this movie which would totally and absolutely change my perception of stories and narration.

It was out  May 8th, 1991 in France. I must have seen it during the Ascension stuff, my parents were on a weekend trip and my cousin was pre-teen sitting me . I was 10, I was hitting my 20th+ hour of detention (I was chatty and my voice was moving into the get-busted bass frequencies) and knew that this weekend was the only way to see it because of course, my parents wouldn’t have let me do that if they had known about the punition thing, probably would have sent me to the shrink for wanting to see that Akira thing. Thankfully my cousin signed up the detention paper and allowed me to go to the theater.

 
Pretty awful French poster version but at 10, you think it’s badass!

I was with my best friend and his mom, a bit late. The movie had already started but it couldn’t matter less. Of course when we saw Kaneda we thought out loud “it’s him, Akira!” and then we stopped talking until the end because it was so fucking disturbing, dreamy, violent, amazing, eerie. It was like a kick in the balls with fingers in the eyes and a punch in the stomach all together.

At this time and a few years earlier I was digging Heroic Fantasy stuff. I had my LOTR collection, I had read all the Knights of the Round Table stories I could put my hands on, I was totally into Guillaume d’Orange and could name any part of a medieval castle and explain what it was meant for. Epic.

All of this stuff was being severely damaged with this Japanese masterpiece. Suddenly, my culture and entertainment bubble seemed so freaking old and totally uncool compared to this movie, Dragon Ball on TV (which was getting crazier and crazier, Freezer battle) and Street Fighter II being out. Like, light-years old. Swords arrows magic and helmets were so ridiculous compared to fire balls, laser beam satellites and powerful psyche it wasn’t even funny. Tintin, Spirou, Comics Superheroes, US cartoons (really I mean, really?) were all so inexistent all of sudden. As a child your imagination gets stimulated by everything. I was overwhelmed by stuff I had never thought of before, this mix of realness with unreal in every way (narration, design, themes) stimulating my imagination to much higher levels. So much more nuances. Japan seemed like the Land of Superior Brains. It started ten years of mangas and anime being my primary culture food aside of computer games.

Best 2 Wheels Design Eva, that is all.

I would have to wait three or four years –remember kids, no internet- before having Akira on tape and watch it again in the family couch. It was end of May start of June too.

Anyway, it was a deep experience that no “real movie” except maybe some Lynch’s matched ever. When Terminator 2 loudly came out this same 1991 year, it didn’t impress me. It couldn’t man. At all.

Since then I always have thought about this warm end of May day I’ve been hit by the power of imagination, big time.

Holy shit I want to watch it now.

I can’t believe how much it makes me feel sad that Gary Coleman passed away. It’s obviously weird because of the outstanding cheering I receive about the news, being emotional and stuff. But,

If I exclude myself, he was the first black person I saw in my life, before Sidney and during Michael Jackson going full white. And this little dude was having the same story as mine! Adopted by a white family and having no one like him around. Well he had Willie and I didn’t. Which was making me jealous. They seemed to have fun, man.

I was in my foster family and it was broadcast on Sunday afternoon on the French TV. I was captivated, not too much about humor and situations on screen but more about what would it be to be in a wealthy white family like I was supposed to go as it was told to me at this very young age (around 5).

So yeah, it’s just memories coming up in my mind. I can see myself sitting on the couch, not touching the ground, eyes wide opened, ready to catch this little man who looked just like me. And had almost the same name too! (everybody for years would say “Ah, like Arnold and Willie!” It’s Harold you deaf ass).

Maybe it was already making me want to be in the US. Daydreaming about these skyscrapers from the sweet French countryside.

RIP Gary Coleman.

Remember those times when we didn’t have the Universal Serial Bus? Maybe not. It was awful. We had weird connectors only used by specific stuff like the parallel port, the serial port. We had to be careful about these fucking IRQ conflicts with for example, sound cards. A la mano, with jumpers on the motherboard. Ugh.

At these times, nobody –at least in Europe- was using Personal Computers. Later came the USB port, and then the USB 2 port. These made computers so much more easier to plug devices in, making them more accessible to people, who would use more and more computers and a little by a little –with the help of others widespread technologies like TCP/IP, APIC– it would change the world and make computers easier and easier to use to the point where they are everywhere.

What I want to say is this: innovation is not innovation unless it changes the life of a large number of people. Innovation is innovation when it’s cheap and makes it through the life of everyone without them even noticing it that much.

*idea*

I know, it’s playing on words but what we call innovation is useless if it needs 20 years to make it to the market or when it’s just in the hands of a few lucky –dare I say wealthy?- nerds. It’s not innovation, it’s research.

Innovation needs to spread out and find as much people possible. You might say that I’m wrong and that Apple is a walled garden and that it works for them. But it’s not really true:

They got back in the game by switching from ppc to x86 architecture, more generic and widespread. And cheaper.

They made the iPod and iTunes available on the OS touching hundreds of millions of people, Windows (I remember being shocked about it, so not Apple). They aggressively market the mp3 player with the cheap Shuffle/Nano version.

By switching to a standard PC architecture they made their machine totally compatible, like 100% compatible to almost anything, from windows software (Bootcamp) to memory sticks and stuff. Cheaper for users. Cheaper for them.

But they totally made their mobile platform closed as hell, as they did with the Mac in the 90s. And fucking expensive. Are you surprised that Google Android, with its openness and constant improvements through cheaper phones is totally hot right now or that these cheap, opened netbooks sales went from 0 to 18% of the entire computer market share in only three years?

I am not. Microsoft did the same in the 90s with the openness of the beige PC. Bye Commodore, Atari and all. MS had the same aura that Google has now, if you remember. Oh, sure it seems less slick when MS/Google are updating stuff because they fail all the time. But they increment all the time too, with hundreds of partners while with Apple it’s either perfect (iPhone) or a massive fail (AppleTV).

A closed platform is not an innovation. It’s research with users paying a lot to beta test it.

Trying to bring that research to the masses, being agnostic and just trying to make it better to the most people possible, is IMO innovation. It took MS and his partners 25 years from Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 to have an OS working on millions of different configuration and giving people almost anything they want in 2010 with an OS. It took a year and half for Google to make their Android system as widespread and functional as possible. It’s not over but they already are going so fast that it’s hard to be sure that they’re going to fail. This little droid is everywhere like the butterfly was, once.

Business wise the Big Three are doing fine, with different approach from selling hardware (Apple) to selling services and data (Google). But one thing is sure:

“Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries — but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”

Billou, aka Bill Gates.

ps: Enough with your Android tablet prototypes. I want them, under 300 thanks. And please hurry the fuck up.

In a nutshell, because it’s going to totally change and modify our relationship with half the planet who already has a birth control pill. It means chaos at first, but it means balance at the end.

For now, contraception either equals a big responsibility and physiological issues for women or a big hassle and weak sex for men. A birth control pill for us would be great for a couple of reasons:

• Real control over fertility. For the first fucking time ever guys!

I mean, I don’t even understand how we are not a lot to demand that. Fuck condoms when you are with a partner for a pretty long time and that everything is ok STD wise. FUCK them.

Seriously, it’s the equivalent of putting a plastic bag on your head to prevent getting the flu while kissing. It’s goddamn 2010 and we as men, deserve better technology than just that only one option (vasectomy is no option as tubal ligation is not for women; they’re for special cases).

Also, as much as you should trust your partner, the reality is that it’s better to manage your fertility by yourself instead of harassing your girlfriend to not forget to take the pill or worse, having doubts about what she’s doing while relying on a piece of plastic wrapped up on your stuff. You don’t want to have children at all? With the men pill you have the entire power to do so. I want it. Millions of men want it for sure. Now that comes with two downsides that would be welcome by millions of women, smiling.

• Sharing the pain of responsibility about taking a pill each day.

With great power comes great… You get it. As a man you will have the responsibility to manage your fertility. No “oops, I forgot” is allowed guys. As for women we will have to have some sort of reminder (phone app!), we will have to count the number of pills left next day after a party wondering if we took it, etc. Women deal with that all the time since fifty years. I think we can do that too. Is it boring? Yes. But less than to open up a condom package each time you want to dip your genitals in.

Almost every woman I talked to about this situation would not trust their companion on something that important. I’m not really surprised but I’m surprised that they mostly don’t want to change that. Probably a Power issue, like traditional women who can’t have a man in the kitchen and prefer to have them doing nothing. But anyway ladies, you are free to take your pill too.

And maybe it’s going to kill this situation where nobody trusts nobody. At some point, it will be natural for generations to have a control over fertility across gender. That will create a more balanced world when one of the fundamental function of our body will be controlled independently by both sex. I think it will raise a new level of trust amongst human History. I want to see that.

• Sharing the pain of receiving a hormonal treatment.

When they talk about the men birth control pill they always emphasize the fact that it has side effects. NO SHIT. No hormonal treatment, almost no serious medication doesn’t have side effects and in this case like mood swing or lowered sex drive. It’s the same for women but they might not be pussies after all. Come on pharmaceutical companies, don’t say that it’s the main issue. That’s BS.

It’s crazy how these massive companies who own billions would rather suffocate on a market than activate one. How they can’t possibly move around men, except for the Viagra thing, first acceptation of a sexual man weakness, but seen as a sexual booster (it’s not). It seems that for them women are the constant problem. It seems like men only have “positive issues”.

So now they’re working hard on a pill that boost women libido, even though a placebo is doing almost as good in studies. Also, just get some pot cookies and you’ll be set to get busy a few hours later.

Anyway, that would be great that we reach a balance in the fertility control before the moment –if human beings make it- where we will be hermaphrodite and will not discuss that shit anymore.

Well I hope we’ll not end up looking that funny though.

note: Last research on male contraception talks about ultrasound stopping sperm production for six months. Seems nice now, make it happen. Yesterday.

Last year on this week-end I was flying to the USA for the first time ever. Didn’t plan anything but maybe show the games I was working on to as much people possible. And perfect my english.

Fast forward 12 months of living in suitcases back and forth with Paris and I’m still in LA at the end.

Yesterday.

It’s always a mix of happiness and despair to think about being here. Like it’s awesome, but it’s sort of a reset and scary start over feeling too which is… Well, I just need to breath better!

Living with someone else is a big step too but I was not that much living like a Chocolate Bear so it’s going well. I always planned the future, sort of. Possibilities.

Last year.

But the biggest thing, the overwhelming feeling is that I received so much more support, interest, love from here than from France, with people I mostly didn’t know. Bitter sweetness.

But happy. Fuck Yeah Happy actually.

Also I did these:

Make Love by Harold Bouncy Rabbeat by Harold

Enjoy yourself.

That’s funny when I think about it.

There is not a lot of products we use that are changing us as much as alcohol does. We forgot about it because beer and wine are all over the culture of hundreds of millions of people but seriously:

Weed makes you sleepy and horny and laugh. Coffee is almost the perfect opposite. Cocaine makes you chatty and friendly and brings you restlessness. But none of them are making you miserable and pathetic as alcohol can or does. When I went back to France in November I was struck by how much there is drunk people around, from 8am to 8am. All the time, hanging out. On Sunday mornings, the RER station would host vomit here and there, in the corners. During the last World Cup I saw so many people drunk as fuck, going for a ride in Paris when France was defeating Spain or Portugal that even used to it I was shocked. Like it’s 7:30pm and they can’t already walk by themselves, peeing anywhere. Creepy and gross. Being in California is such a change for that. And no, it’s not because the wine is bad.

I think you’ll have to click it.

I’ve been drunk quite a lot since I’m 15. France, cheap and widely available alcohol. I know the feeling. I know how you don’t give a shit about anything but because I’m not a big mouth character, even deadly drunk I would not do stupid things or embarrass myself too much: I would gently lay down and sleep, while feeling I’m at Six Flags for a long time. But I’ve seen so many alcohol poisoning with people passing out stuck in some extreme drunkenness that I guess it always made me aware that as casual alcohol is, it’s deadly strong if you don’t manage it. One time I woke up with a full hangover and all I wanted was some Pastis, badly. I knew I had to stop immediately. 

It strikes me that you can be so out of yourself while being drunk, like saying things you totally don’t think at all and will not remember, not being able to control your body, feeling the need of violence. How you turn aggressive, how you switch from being happy to feeling like shit in 5 seconds. 

Almost as annoying and helpless as a crack addict except that you don’t have to suck dirty cocks to get some more. You just have to go to the liquor store. Which is a good thing I guess: prohibition doesn’t solve anything.

Anyway alcohol is quite a hard drug but because it’s so widespread in our societies since 10,000 years, there’s no question about it. It’s interesting how Western Culture is blind to something that causes a lot of problems (how many early dead, how many families destroyed, how many women beaten on pure alcoholic rage; we’re talking about hundreds of thousands if not more). It’s crazy that you can be drunk in Japan and lay down on a sidewalk like a piece of shit while you can’t smoke weed without big trouble, like 5 years of jail just for marijuana possession.

Old internet picture never gets old. 

In France these days, young people are using Facebook to RSVP massive boozefests. It started in November with 3 000 people and 50 acute alcohol intoxication. A few days ago a new record fell with 10 000 people and one dead. 

Seriously having alcohol as the only legal and Occident-White-approved drug is a total disaster and a fucking joke toward drug policy and health. When I’m stoned I can write/read a complex article or just enjoy to take the sun quite surely even more then. When I’m drunk, I can’t do either of them. I just want to drink more and talk louder.

Google Android.

I have owned an HTC Hero for four months now. I’m looking around it as a user/customer but also as a developer/creator.

OHAI

The Good

As a phone experience, well it’s the best I’ve ever had with everything you like on smart phones these days: seeming less interaction with social media, useful apps and games. I’m kidding for the last, I don’t play on my phone. And I’ll talk about Android games in the bad I guess ^^ But the awesome good is: you are free. No motherfucking iTunes sync my ass ever. Never.

For the developer side, setting up the environment is easy and the SDK is well done in terms of readability. I for now didn’t see anything obscure or weird. I had never worked with Eclipse and Java before and well it’s not making me crazy yet, as I was expecting. Nice.

The Bad

Games usually suck on Android. Like really, thanks to Java The Big Butt. It might change though, with a JIT Compiler coming up. But more important is the fact that major apps like the Gmail one sucks hard. On a Google OS powered phone!  They really want us to launch a browser and go online where Gmail UI –on mobile web- is much better. Ha! Thanks but I’d rather have an app. Facebook does the same. Sorry but my browser on my phone is just to quickly check a link. On a 4” screen I don’t want 10 tabs.

Or the camera app, trackball to take a picture? Stupidest idea in the world (shaky pictures guaranteed). Also, there are some mysteries sometimes: I can’t find the Amazon app and install it on my phone, no matter where I go. Can’t find it on the Market on my phone, can’t have it with QR Code (no matches), tried in Paris, same here in LA, like this app doesn’t exist for my device. Frustrating even if hey, I was living without it last year just fine.

Also, but it applies to any app market, there’s some pretty bad written apps, would it be in terms of stability or UI. Hell, the Digg application is such a piece of shit. The Evernote one is weird and not intuitive at all etc

For the dev, I didn’t go deeply enough to say, except that I’m surprised how there’s not as much resource as I would think. Besides the traditional “Hello World” and a bunch of useful examples, well it seems like you have to try to do your stuff then. So it’s not really bad, just a little bit dry.

The Ugly

The Awful Market Fragmentation. This week an article went out about this subject.

The phone business is complicated: you have manufacturers, carriers and on top of that the Operating System, Android provided by Google. The OS is now reaching the 2.2 version next month. My phone is stuck at the 1.5 version because HTC the manufacturer, is too busy selling brand new phones updated with the 2.1 version. They said they would upgrade old phones –not phone carrier or Google job!- and they lie (update postponed two times) because they’ve never done/see that before: people were buying new phones. Now? With these little pocket computer sold at 300$ at least, people don’t want to change all the time anymore, not just for the price: we’re all setting stuff and don’t want to throw everything away and start over. But the hardware race is on, my phone is only available since 10 months and there are already some Android twice as fast with 4 times the memory embedded. They really want users to go crazy and buy the last “now seriously, it does everything super fast” device.

It’s getting worse in America Fuck Yeah, where there’s GSM and CDMA. GSM is the thing we all know with the SIM card and all, used by 3 billion people around the world. CDMA is mainly available in the US and they are of course totally incompatible (no sim card in it).

It is really annoying because it feels like a trap everywhere: even with an open source OS on a phone I bought without any contract from any carrier (which are giving full data access only on year contracts and not on prepaid cards), I am not free. Depressing.

[Dev side] The thing is my phone can totally run the last Android version as I tried with a custom ROM. There’s a parallel market where people would “cook” your phone OS bringing the last updates from Google (that’s why the Nexus One is nice: the only phone where you don’t have to wait for any manufacturers or phone carrier updates; direct from Google) and making people donate/pay for premium access and custom options. The 2.1 update brings a lot of little improvements for the user but a lot more for the dev. Therefore what version to target if you want to build an app?

For example my phone does multitouch. On Android 1.5 it’s not allowed to use it apparently, though some apps use it (Dolphin browser). On 1.5 I can’t pinch zoom Google Maps and on 2.1 I can. And it’s working perfectly.

Also, two app store? Why Google? Couldn’t it be easier if you had updated all phones to Android 1.6 and the new market for everybody? It’s not helping selling apps for sure and developers can’t live on free software all the time.

It was supposed to be simple guys, WTF? Contracts, patents and agreements between network and communication giants must be ridiculously insane behind the curtains. Add the never finished software development process on top of it, and you get a real mess.

It’s going to be very interesting with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 at the end of the year. The thing is Android has a really positive reputation amongst people, getting sick of Apple’s behavior. But the problem with open source always has been to support both users and developers (something MS is really good at; WordPress is a good example of a big scale successful open source business) and if Android’s support is basically “buy a new phone”, people will switch, even to walled garden. Remember the Vista mess when MS thought that every Windows user would upgrade their machines and vendors their drivers? Didn’t work out well. Windows 7 works from 2003 machines to now. More than 100 million licenses (which means at least 150 million computers running with it) sold in six months.

So dear Android Ecosystem, just a few words for you:

Don’t. Screw. The. Users. You. Already. Have. If you do, the’y’ll bury you into oblivion.

 
Yeah yeah yeah. Be my friend but don’t fuck with me buddy.