VBS GIVES BIRTH TO MOTHERBOARD.tv

 
Remember way back in spring when we introduced you to Motherboard, VBS.tv's lustrous answer to the drab diaper that is the media's technology coverage? We promised to deliver you an entire brain's worth of intriguing personalities and developments in everything from robotics to video-gaming to the future of music and film-making, noting also that we would forever avoid stuff like steampunk, inane gadgets, and the assorted goings-on inside Silicon Valley boardrooms. On the heels of our success, we're pleased to announce we've taken the job one colossal step beyond: Motherboard, in cahoots with the ever-gracious humans at Dell, has graduated to its own internet web-place: Motherboard.tv!

LONDON - THE BABIES OF SPY TECH ARE ALL GROWED UP

Information is power. Money is biscuits. Sausages are members of the French aristocracy. One of these statements is timelessly true. And about to get even truer as cheap, hi-tech surveillance comes ever closer to home.

BERLIN - BY THE WAY, POTATOES

Niggemeier, Lobo, Passig and a few other important German bloggers and journalists published their smart-ass Internet Manifesto not so long ago. They explain how things should work in the internet, in the marvelous world of journalism, and so on. In ten different languages, that is. A denotative manifesto. Thanks. Meanwhile I discovered an Kumpir place around the corner. A denotative detection too. Kumpir are those stuffed potatoes. A Turkish national dish, fast food, but above all, they’re one thing: potatoes.

LONDON - ICE CREAM RAIN

Cat Kramer and Zoe Papadopoulou are artists who know some scientists, and with that combined powerhouse of knowledge they say they've come up with a way to make clouds snow down ice cream amongst the people. Ice cream. Like, mint chocolate chip snowmen and Neapolitan snow angels. Impossible, right? The explanation on their website has a lot to do with cloud seeding, though not with orgone, had us imagining the launch of a delicious rocket and a weatherman forcasting flurries of Cherry Garcia. Even with our limited scientific background, that seemed a bit implausible. We called them to figure out if they were bullshitting.

NUNAVUT - WHAT YOUR PEE WILL BE LIKE ON MARS

Scientists of all types have descended upon Devon Island in Nunavut, up around 75 degrees latitude, because it’s the closest thing on earth that approximates Mars. Like, they even call it Mars on Earth. Elaine Walker spent her summer living up there for the Haughton-Mars project. She’s the Education and Public Outreach Officer for the Mars Institute, so lots of her work is about letting people know about this project and others like it. It basically houses scientists from all over the world who study various aspects of the land and determines how to prepare the human race for the inevitable colonization of Mars. This might just be a very rich fantasy shared by few, but they are very driven people.

THE INTERNET - PROFESSIONAL LEVELS OF TIME MISMANAGEMENT

Long ago I heard about a project that intended to connect all the computers in the world and use them to decode the electromagnetic signals coming from the outer space. It had something to do with all the stuff involving alien life. If they send us a message, we must be prepared, although that's a little bit like looking at your cell phone all the time, waiting a call from Angelina Jolie, even though she doesn't know you at all. Well, the thing worked via some kind of screensaver that decoded signals while you were not using your machine. Your computer helped to illuminate the mysteries of the universe while you were having a good time in the bathroom.

WEEKEND WATCHIN - HOT NEW SUMMER MOVIE

Instead of sitting around your computer eating slices of rice cheese while staring at Youtube sensation after Youtube sensation, why not get out and enjoy a small breath of fresh air before slumping into a dungeon of a movie theater? There’s this hot new gay film called T4: Salvation that’ll drain your endorphin storage faster than doing a bump while jumping off the high dive with your dick in your hand, and you should totally check it out. Our guy Matt Kessler went to see a private viewing and gave us the scoop.

VBS - STELARC'S SCREWED-UP ART BODY

Stelarc is a Greek weirdo who lives in Australia and uses medical equipment, prosthetic limbs, electrodes, virtual-reality systems, endoscopy, and crazy cyborgian human-internet connections to produce shows that fuses the lines between art, performance art, body art, and some kind of futuristic Skinny Puppy electronics trade fair. VBS dropped in to get his thoughts on the present state of transhumanism and see what abominations of biological science he’s been working on lately.
Oh, and he also has a human ear grafted onto his arm.

TORONTO - I FOUND THE THING THAT RETURNS NO RESULTS WHEN GOOGLED

Two years ago I stumbled into a job as a personal assistant at one of those places where they outsource personal assistants over the phone. I'd graduated from art school with a sort of bogus degree and was bouncing from job to job when I responded to an ad on Craigslist. The pay isn't bad and it's steady, and all of my clients are businessmen and women. OK, when I say clients, I mean I'm working for at least 20 different people on 20 different requests on any given day. The requests are all over the place. About a quarter of them are easy, like taking someone's car in for an oil change or booking a flight to Mexico. But the rest are usually very weird and tell me more about my clients' personal lives than I need to know.

CANADA - CREEPY TECHNOLOGY: THE IMAGINARY FRIEND MACHINE

E3 used to be a shameless nerd spectacle in the 90s when there were 60,000 people hanging out in LA playing new video games and ogling over the C-list porn stars dressed as Lara Croft. Plus, since the internet hadn't strangled print media yet, video game magazines had the money to print 300-page tomes of coverage every year. People were happy. Then in 2007, the convention went invitation-only and cut attendance down to about 5,000 privileged guests. That's when things got boring and that's why the convention has been re-opened to the public. This year, Microsoft has been demonstrating their "Project Natal," which is a really frightening brand of artificial intelligence that, as shown in the video above, allows you to hang out with a virtual child that can read your facial expressions and remind you when your mom's birthday is. It doesn't help that the designer, Peter Molyneux, is basically a mad scientist. Even Steven Spielberg is hyped on this venture. Anyway, if this is the end of traditional gaming and the dawn of robot personalities finally taking over our lives, so be it. To reminisce, here are a few of the older attempts at technological revolution that paved the way for our new found virtual loneliness.