screens, screens, screens

http://remixtheory.net/?p=391

Interview with Idris Khan

http://photoslaves.com/?p=483 I found this interview with Idris Khan which is interesting and shows his ideas and thought processes. It definitly relates to my current work and I think I need to look into his work in more depth. Interesting to hear what he has to say about the importance of time in his work.

http://photoslaves.com/ cool website with articles about contemporary art photographers, exhibitions etc.

Jad Oakes

www.jadoakes.com/time.html

In Google we trust: Our new faith. Stuff.co.nz

Millions of words have been written and broadcast about the rise of religion around the world, but rarely included in the discourse is the most powerful new spiritual force of them all.

For hundreds of millions of people there is a new portal to understanding, a gateway to the world, a tree of knowledge, a believers' bible. The legion of believers grows with every hour. They believe in Google.

The word suggests infinite power. It is derived from a mathematical term, googol, which means 1 to the power of 100. The two visionaries who founded the company called Google chose the name to signify their dream of harnessing the immensity of information flowing through cyberspace. They have succeeded. This year Google will process more than 180 billion requests for information. It has become the world's most powerful information company. It has a market capitalisation of $173 billion. And it sprang to life just 11 years ago, in September 1998.

Google inspires awe, which is one reason why the Church of Google has appeared on the internet. The site (founded in 2006 by a young Canadian, Matt MacPherson) posits this argument: ''We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined). We believe there is much more evidence in favour of Google's divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods. Thus, Googlists believe Google should rightfully be given the title of 'God.' ''

The Church of Google offers what it calls nine proofs:

1. Google is the closest thing to an omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence.

2. Google is everywhere at once (omnipresent).

3. Google answers prayers. (''As an example, you can quickly find information on alternative cancer treatments, or new and innovative medical discoveries, and generally anything that resembles a typical prayer.'')

4. Google is potentially immortal.

5. Google is infinite. (The internet can theoretically grow forever.)

6. Google remembers all.

7. Google can do no evil. (Google's corporate philosophy is ''do no evil''.)

8. Google is believed. (The term ''Google'' is searched for more than the terms ''God'', ''Jesus'', ''Allah'', ''Buddha'', ''Christianity'' and ''Islam'' combined.)

9. Evidence of Google's existence is abundant. No faith is required.

Beyond this elegant spoof, and the serious philosophical argument it makes in favour of atheism, the entire Google phenomenon takes us down the slippery path of artificial intelligence, a direction computer science appears to be heading. Every day, the vast Google machine of 500,000 computer servers processes about 500 million queries. So many people are using Google that it is becoming akin to the collective brain of western society.

So let's continue this story in a church - the Christ Lutheran Church, in St Paul, Minnesota, on June 20 this year, where my favourite-ever video clip was created and later posted on YouTube, the most popular video-sharing site in the world (and owned, of course, by Google).

It was the marriage of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz, both 28, both American graduate students. The hilarious, heart-warming video of the bridal party dancing down the aisle was meant for friends and family. Then it was posted on YouTube.

Two months later, it is now legendary. Known as ''JK Wedding Entrance Dance'', it has been viewed more than 23 million times. So far. It has spawned a video spoof (''Jill and Kevin's Divorce''), video spin-offs, and an official Jill and Kevin website: ''We would never have expected this response to our wedding entrance in a million years.''

So what makes this video so special? Why and how would a group of unknowns prompt a global response? Answer: the wisdom of crowds.

The entire viral process, where something of great quality and humanity is able to find a global audience despite humble origins, is vindicated by a fascinating book, The Wisdom of Crowds, written in 2002 by James Surowiecki, the economics correspondent of The New Yorker.

He argues that large groups hold a collective wisdom. They are always smarter than individual experts at solving problems, or even anticipating the future. His thesis is counter-intuitive, because it has always been assumed that crowds gravitate towards the mean, the mediocre middle.

No, says Surowiecki, who studied popular culture, psychology, mass marketing, artificial intelligence, military history, game theory and even ant biology in preparing the book. ''If you have a factual question, the best way to get a consistently good answer is to ask a group. They are also surprisingly good at solving problems.

''Experts, no matter how smart, only have limited amounts of information. They also have biases. It's very rare that one person can know more than a large group of people.''

Not that large groups need to agree, or are necessarily wise. ''The wisdom of crowds isn't about consensus,'' he says. ''You can't find collective wisdom via compromise. The best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.''

Which brings us back to Google. It has been able to harness the wisdom of crowds, the collective effort of many people acting independently of each other, on a scale never seen before.

Because of Google, our species' capacity and need for co-operation is evolving into a new and higher phrase of social organisation. We appear to be becoming more like a giant ant colony, a multitude of individuals with a collective brain, and a single wellspring, a super-entity which evokes power, action and belief. It has a name. We call it Google.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/2840272/In-Google-we-trust-our-new-faith