RSS feedWe’ve been saying it for years, but the Internet has a lot to answer for. Here’s a few reasons why.
Fermilab is a U.S. laboratory for research into high energy particle physics, second only to Europe’s CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics), but owns the world’s highest energy particle accelerator and collider, the Tevatron. Basically they accelerate protons and antiprotons and smash them together to try and identify their content. I won’t get into gluons and bosons, but you can check their site if you want to know more. Anyway, a current project of theirs is to measure the history of the expansion rate of the universe by photographing the dark energy which makes up 70% of the universe’s mass. To do it, they’re using a CCD (Charged Coupled Device), which is the same technology used in consumer digital cameras, of 500 megapixels. Compare that to the current 5 megapixel you’ll get at the local camera store. (via slashdot)
Apparently the other night, 64 million americans voted for American Idol. Compare that with November 2000, when 99 million voted for members of the U.S. House of Reps and 105 million voted for presnit G.W. (via GLOBALIZE THIS!)
Here’s a story about Washingtonienne, a Washington based staff assistant’s anonymous sex exploits blog, which was saved from the trash heap by a caring individual after it was dumped; Wonkette, who you may know, outed her; and the Washington Post article giving the background as well as an intereview with her after she was fired for the blog. This would sound like a regular sex scandal with a bit of high tech mixed in if it weren’t for the fact that she started the blog on 10th May and was fired and moving to New York by 23rd May.
Finally, we now have a TV show in Sydney called Mondo Thingo with Amanda Keller, original Towards 2000 member and part time breakfast radio comedienne, which I caught the last 10 minutes of tonight. Basically it is a TV version of Boing Boing and similar web sites. Not a copy mind you, but the same cultural and weird kind of stuff.
So what do all these have in common? Not too much really, but for Fermilab, before the Internet (and arguably New Scientist, which I did read back in the pre-Internet days) I wouldn’t have known how a CCD worked, who Fermilab were or why they were looking for dark energy, but more specifically, most sites are just taking this for granted and the amusing part is that they have a 500 megapixel camera. Not because that’s unbelievable, but because us geeks would like to have one.
Before the Internet who would have cared that 64 million americans voted for anything, let alone a TV show. The fact that a political anti-globalisation web site (which is a good site by the way) is highlighting it as a way of showing the dumbed down intelligence of modern human beings, makes it particularly interesting, but the fact that it was written the day after, and he had all the figures at hand to write with, and he’s not a professional journalist, says something about the modern world.
Regarding Washingtonienne, the whole story runs for only 13 days, that’s less than two weeks. The blog started on 10th May, built up popular acclaim in the space of about a week and a bit, then spread across all the tabloids in Washington, the woman was outed, fired, interviewed and the story finally closed and forgotten by 23rd May. Welcome to the Internet!