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imomusTouring the Home of the Future, the article I wrote based on your help last week, has just gone up on the Wired site. Length restrictions and the need for a neat format (I ended up structuring the piece around an unreliable tour guide showing us a house of the future) made me restrict your inventions to things that could be found indoors. Thanks again to everyone who took time out on Boxing Day to suggest stuff!
My own home of the near future will be enhanced by a computer almost as large as the one you see in this picture. I'm planning to buy a 24" iMac (I haven't had a desktop system since about 2000, my nomadic lifestyle and slim budget haven't really allowed one). And the main thing I'll be doing with it is writing a book -- "Lives of the Composers", a rambling hagiography detailing the lives of fictional musicians. The book has been commissioned by Paris publisher La Volte. It'll be written in English, translated into French, and no doubt licensed to an English-language publisher too. Its flavour will be reminiscent of the work of writers like Italo Calvino, Lucian, Marcel Schwob, Bruno Schulz, and Laurence Sterne. It'll also read a bit like my short story 7 Lies About Holger Hiller.
I've spent most of my life being literary in non-literary contexts -- telling stories in art galleries and on pop records. Now comes the terrifying moment when I find out whether I can do it between the covers of a book. In my own personal home of the future, then, something rather old-fashioned will be happening. On a big new screen.
My own home of the near future will be enhanced by a computer almost as large as the one you see in this picture. I'm planning to buy a 24" iMac (I haven't had a desktop system since about 2000, my nomadic lifestyle and slim budget haven't really allowed one). And the main thing I'll be doing with it is writing a book -- "Lives of the Composers", a rambling hagiography detailing the lives of fictional musicians. The book has been commissioned by Paris publisher La Volte. It'll be written in English, translated into French, and no doubt licensed to an English-language publisher too. Its flavour will be reminiscent of the work of writers like Italo Calvino, Lucian, Marcel Schwob, Bruno Schulz, and Laurence Sterne. It'll also read a bit like my short story 7 Lies About Holger Hiller.
I've spent most of my life being literary in non-literary contexts -- telling stories in art galleries and on pop records. Now comes the terrifying moment when I find out whether I can do it between the covers of a book. In my own personal home of the future, then, something rather old-fashioned will be happening. On a big new screen.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 08:38 am (UTC)http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
I'm looking forward to your book!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 09:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 10:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 10:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 10:10 am (UTC)Good luck, Nick. If you need an agent, I know a guy.
~W
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 11:21 am (UTC)I'm interested in seeing more of this "artist of the future" work you're doing..
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 11:53 am (UTC)In this photo, I like how they have incorporated the large ocean liner steering wheel, which conveniently opens the vault of tech-slaves at the ready, to man this dainty device, all of them jabbering in the Fortran language.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 12:04 pm (UTC)This image is what far-thinking prognosticators imagined Momus set-up to look like in the year 2009.
Pictured: Nanobots living inside a monitor similar to this one below, yet produced by a futuristic company called Mapple, who produced the product, remarkably, after a long and drawn out (http://www.mapple.net/smd/) litigation.
Yay!
Date: 2007-01-02 12:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:32 pm (UTC)Who will use your English original, or translate the French version back into English?
I have a sense that the latter would be more in-keeping with the work.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:33 pm (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 01:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 02:11 pm (UTC)Kuja
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 02:52 pm (UTC)There's a funny dialectic on this blog: all the things you praise - collectivism, the textural, the female, the non-anglo - are all the things you're not.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 03:00 pm (UTC)Enjoyed the Wired Article and your humourous incorporation of Click Opera readers suggestions with a few of your own.
As an aside: readers in the UK and Ireland may remember the wonderfully enthusiastic, naive futurism of the BBC series 'Tomorrow's World',it became unwatchable in the nineties as it sought to combat falling ratings by becoming ever more dumbed down (curious why TV moguls feel that dumb=popular), however in the Seventies (when I was a wee lad)it's gloriously optimistic futurism and oft hilariously useless or impractical prototypal inventions gave it a particular charm. It did also however showcase some inventions that became part of 'every modern household' such as the pocket calculator, the digital watch and the CD.
Thomas Scott.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 03:56 pm (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 04:39 pm (UTC)gobshites,gombeens,ludramans and other daoine amadach.
Date: 2007-01-02 04:40 pm (UTC)Thomas.S.
Spitz gig
Date: 2007-01-02 04:50 pm (UTC)I'll be attending your performance at the Spitz, and I was just wondering what time you'll be coming on? Do you know what time roughly the night will be over? I have to catch a bus out of London, you see. Thanks!
Mark
More cheese cloth
Date: 2007-01-02 04:51 pm (UTC)Pixel decadence!
(Don't forget the wireless keyboard and mouse)
-J
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 05:55 pm (UTC)Is that a funny dialectic, or is that just the definition of glamour ("what we're not")? It's also close to the definition of radicalism / liberalism that I hazarded yesterday: to be a radical means not being on the side of one's own culture, or on the side of power.
I tend either to get accused of hypocrisy ("you don't live the life you champion") or narcissism ("you hold up your lifestyle as the ideal"). Well, I suppose you can be both (an ugly narcissist, perhaps?)...
Re: Spitz gig
Date: 2007-01-02 06:17 pm (UTC)Re: More cheese cloth
Date: 2007-01-02 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 07:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 07:28 pm (UTC)tanoshimi ni shite imasu
Date: 2007-01-02 07:52 pm (UTC)thinking about this, i realized there's also plenty of material, photos, super-challenging essays, etc. in the click opera archives that could make up another book as well--at least for my money. a somewhat postmodern idea i guess: a website reformatted to book form! (that reminds me of a thought i had a long time ago about whether or not "The Collected Emails of ..." would be a cool book title or not). alas, happy new year and all the best on your efforts in 2007.
michael (and kiyomi)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 08:52 pm (UTC)I find it intriguing. I have also a friend, who is a great blogger (in spanish), but doesn't give much credit to it and wants to publish a book.
Here you both are creating a new literary form. Maybe it comes out so well, precisely because you don't give to it the importance it deserves.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 09:02 pm (UTC)Completely off-topic...
Date: 2007-01-02 09:39 pm (UTC)I have a new crew of Japanese friends who made an osechi feast. I'm also always asking them about your opinions on Japan and your relentless boosterism. They are my native reference-points to your blog and thoughts.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 12:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 06:04 pm (UTC)I spent a chunk of New Years Eve listening to some local eccentric ramble on about the BIG BIG CHANGES that are going to sweep the world within the next pair of years. The internet was just the beginning, he says, and he kept pointing to the mysterious interest the Bush administration has placed in space exploration. He was telling me the Russian or Chinese space programs are either intending or plan on doing the following things in the very near future:
a base on the moon
observational stations on asteroids/interstellar satellites
a voyage to mars
something big to be placed on a moon of Jupiter
At points in his rambling he saw me roll my eyes as I took a swig of cheap champagne and laughed to my friend. It sounded very 2001: A Space Odyssey yet he seemed very earnest and serious about all this business.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-05 02:08 pm (UTC)They won't let him waltz right in till they know he is on "our" side.
He better have the "national interest" mantra down.