As the FTC lays the groundwork for a possible challenge to Google’s purchase of AdMob, it is instructive to look at something else Google has already done to gain a strong foothold in the mobile ad business. Any advertiser that bids through the AdWords system gives Google complete authority over which devices its messages are seen [...]
In another validation of the suddenly hot collective buying trend, LivingSocial has landed $25m in Series B funding from a group of investors including US Venture Partners and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC. But even with new money backing several similar companies, it is still unclear if the latest thing in e-commerce will last for long. LivingSocial [...]
Sony has every right to feel sore that Nintendo and Microsoft have stolen the limelight from it in adding motion-sensing to games. Sony had the EyeToy camera for sensing motion and putting players inside games on the PlayStation 2, long before Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Natal . Its six-axis controller has always had more motion capabilities than the [...]
We now have a date - June 17 - for the launch of OnLive, but uncertainties about the pricing and availability of the revolutionary cloud gaming service remain. Steve Perlman did tell us the service would cost $14.95 a month and would be available in the 48 contiguous US states in his presentation today at the [...]
Silicon Valley’s best-known CEO blogger now wants to become its best-known ex-CEO blogger (and yes, there may be a book in the works as well). Jonathan Schwartz, formerly of Sun Microsystems, has used his new pulpit to poke a stick at Steve Jobs. The Apple boss tried to bully Sun into submission back in 2003 [...]
I just watched this trailer and it looks……………ROTFLOL! I love the comment about Jedis — ha ha.
Whilst in Spain I had yet another surreal film watching experience. We went to see Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time (Redux) which is essentially a re-edited version of his 1994 classic, starring Tong Leung Chiu Wai (the Johnny Depp of Chinese cinema in terms of versatility who everybody says my brother looks like, btw). Whilst the dialogue was in a 50-50 mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin, the subtitles were in Spanish and I found myself understanding both forms of Chinese and also trying to translate the Spanish subtitles into English in my head!
Here’s the version of the trailer with English subtitles:
It was surreal not only for the linguistic differences and “lost in translation” effects I was dealing with, it was also surreal because Ashes of Time (Redux) is a distinctively art house piece, full of aphorisms and profound Chinese wisdoms from the wuxia era and plays as a collection of the central characters’ memories, hallucinations, reveries about lost and forbidden loves and mental illness psychosis.
Despite the Spanish subtitles, my friend left the cinema none the wiser about what the film was about and meant! All she came away with was an impression of the visuals and how the lighting was very specific — reflecting the seasons.
I contextualized it and said it’s about chance and the connectedness of seeming strangers. Each passes on a communique or a chain of actions which links back to the moment the central character lost his love to his brother in marriage — a connection of unity — and the madness which splinters and affects his perspective on life and personality thereafter. He drinks a “memory wine” to forget the pain without knowing that the wine is a gift from the woman.
Ashes of Time is definitely not as easy to follow or as simplistic as typical Hollywood films: boy meets girl, obstacle appears, obstacle is overcome and they ride happily into the sunset.
Hollywood draws from the traditions of Homer and the stepwise trials of Hercules; that’s how film arcs get structured. Homer and Chekhov and Shakespeare. Chinese films nod to different reference frames: Luo Guanzhong, Cao Xueqin, Wu Cheng En and Shi Naian.
Often Chinese films are multi-layered, complex characters, multiple time-stranded and imbued with philosophies and allegories. Hollywood versions are perceptibly different — think Infernal Affairs compared with The Departed (ambiguous, mysterious,like a puzzle to be cracked rather than a straight story about two guys from opposite tracks playing cat+mouse). Give me the Chinese version any day of the week………as much as I think Leonardo di Caprio, Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorcese are great!
Other surreal film watching experiences include:The Wonder Boys starring Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand and Tobey Macguire…..all dubbed in Spanish; K9 — The Widowmaker with Harrison Ford dubbed in German with subtitles; and Cyrano de Bergerac in Cantonese.
In any case, for me, film as a medium can transcend cultural differences in ways in which the written word in the blogosphere certainly can’t! Is the pen sharper than the sword? I’d say perspectives are sharper than both!
Yesterday something happened on the Global Sense-Making site that made me think again about senses of humor and whether we share or don’t share it with others and how this affects our insights, innovation, progress and plain old enjoyment of the Web. Then I thought wider about the social implications for the Global Brain.
Firstly, my own sense of humor encompasses this type of material (in no particular order):
(i.)Bringing Up Baby — directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn
(ii.) Life of Brian — ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ by the Monty Python crew
(x.) Chinese spoofs of Western pop songs — Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson
There’s lots more; above are just some examples.
LULU LOLS A LOT!
I have a particular fondness for naturally smart comedy (especially mistaken identity / fish out of water / idiot savant) rather than the gross out or Punk’d type, and it can be in any language or from any culture. The LOLs and funny bones are exercised regardless of those.
One of my good friends calls me “crazy little Chinese chica” because when she calls I tend to take something straightforward she told me previously, mash it up with something I’ve observed about life’s tragic-ironies and then make her laugh with what is off-the-wall tangential yet connected humor that she gets and likes.
WHITHER THE WIT?
However, I appreciate that humor doesn’t necessarily translate — particularly if the other person:
(a.)has a humor by-pass.
(b.)doesn’t like you, full-stop.
(c.)doesn’t share the same linguistic or experiential reference points.
(d.)is not privy to your group’s history of “in-jokes”.
(e.)is simply a t-r-o-l-l. [Shhh! Don’t say the word aloud or they show up --- LOL.]
LOST IN TRANSLATION
I remember once being in a cinema watching Infernal Affairs — which was subsequently remade into The Departed by Martin Scorcese, btw — and there is a really witty romantic scene in the psychiatrist’s office which was the culmination of the flirtation between the two leads and………..NO ONE laughed in the cinema except me.
Yup, I released my LOLs regardless into the darkness.
Why? Well, my mother tongue’s Cantonese, which is what the film was made in. I read the subtitles they provided for Westerners and there was definitely “lost in translation” at work, so by the time the comedy climax came…………..only I, the native speaker, picked up on the laughter cues all along the way. It’s subtle. It’s nuanced. It’s there.
We’re CONSCIOUS of it.
HUMOR AS A GLOBAL BRAIN SYNAPSE
So what does this have to do with the Global Brain?
Well, it seems no one’s really given humor much thought yet much less application. Technologists are still focusing on the issue of spirituality and conscious self-awareness of AI. In fact with a simple search on Google with the terms “global brain humor” there hardly elicits many entries! I counted less than a dozen relevant ones.
Following is a rare link which does includes some glimpses and I’m blogging about it because it’s also a great read on David Bohm’s theories of quantum mechanics — which is what the SemWeb and the Singularity brigade and the science fiction futurologists are all trying to simulate.
“You have many special mental faculties: humor, spirituality, eroticism, music, mathematics, aesthetics, nurturing, gossip and narration.”
My impression of the SemWeb and Global Brain movement to date is that they’re still adopting and refining the mathematical approach to semantic social graphs. They may say and spin they no longer use the statistical approach, to try and delineate their rankings algorithm from that of Google’s, but I’ll bet you a can of Coke the algorithm is still driven by mathematical concepts rather than humor, nurturing or narration.
To my mind, these are the key constituents of sense-making rather than the mathematical ones.
We do calculate the risks and probabilities involved when we make decisions but invariably if the narration, the nurturing (or positioning) and the humor is good this over-rides whatever mathematics we generatein our mind because we reason that, “Who knows? So the likelihood of failure is 60%. So I’m paying a premium of 10% over cost. So I can’t really afford it……..but I’m going to enjoy and have fun with it while it lasts!”
It’s the ego and the will acting in conjunction to opt for personal happiness, even momentary, in place of rational responsibility. Sometimes, it can save us from ourselves and the rigidity of society.
By no means am I saying that the mathematical element should be completely abstracted from the building of the Global Brain. I’m simply stating that the other N-dimensions also have to be taken into account. At the moment, thinking about the Global Brain is somewhat linear, uni-dimensional and disconnected from how our brains really work: the AI and neural nets branch of mathematics is being deployed to proxy consciousness, there’s taxonomies and semantics but no smart wit.
Humor is a major synapse that’s currently missing in the formulations of how to build the Global Brain. Humor actually plays its role in our ability to reflect upon the information we’re intaking from external sources and also internally how we perceive and deal with the folly of our own absurdities and idiosyncrasies as well as those of others.
This is another aspect which highlights how important perception is. What one party regards as “genius wit” is seen by another as “juvenile silliness”.
We should factor this into the Global Brain postulations, imo.
HUMOR AS A METAPHYSICAL CONSTITUENT
Dr Branko Bokun, a graduate of the Sorbonne’s sociology department, argues in his book, Humour Therapy, (published by Vita Books) that the brain is also a gland, and that its glandular activity can be manipulated by thoughts or ideas created by the brain’s mental activity.
He believes that humour therapy helps us to realise that both unhappiness and gloom are infectious.
‘That is why the pursuit of personal happiness only acquires a realistic meaning if it becomes the pursuit of other people’s happiness.’
Bokun proposes humor courses, to help restore our inborn disposition towards playfulness, joy of living, curiosity, exploration and flexibility. His suggestions include:
(i)Develop a sense of self-ridicule, for instance by talking to oneself in the mirror;
(ii)See amusing and happy films and plays, and read humorous books and magazines;
(iii)Dedicate a corner of one’s home to toys, as the mere sight and feel of them lessen tension. Hang pictures of children and animals on the walls rather than staid or gloomy ancestors;
(iv)Find a hobby, but change it the moment it is taken over-seriously. Preferably choose a hobby that cannot go against nature’s harmonies, such as sailing or gardening;
(v)Have a pet and talk to it;
(vi)See life through a haze of analogies to memorised jokes and anecdotes;
(vii)Repeat three times every morning ‘I am not the centre of the universe’; and
(viii)Remember the eleventh commandment ‘thou shalt not take thyself too seriously.’
These seem to be reasonable suggestions — although, if you get caught talking to yourself in the mirror…………someone may wrongly assume you’re being narcissistic rather than exercising your humor! LOL.
I like point (vi), though. Life is richer and funnier if you can quote analogies from a wide variety of sources spanning Shakespeare to ‘The Simpsons’ to Jackie Chan — yes, seriously; he’s a naturally hoots guy in Chinese and in English!
Jon Stewart + Stephen Colbert (The Daily Show) in Rolling Stone
So….the Global Brain has the opportunity to LOL and make sense or……..go mad / cuckoo, short-circuit because it has no GSOH (or release values) and have a nervous breakdown.
