laser "tag"

no, this is not about a bunch of adolescents running around in a darkened warehouse or forest or something shining laser beams at each other. rather, it's about an interesting, novel form of graffiti (from Brian, via Mom). laser tag is a system that allows graffiti artists to "spray" their work onto the side of a building using a laser pen. the first minute or so of the video will give you the idea. there's some sort of interaction with the police, but I can't tell exactly how it went down from the video. while this would give a graffiti artist a much larger and more visible canvas than usual, it's also very non-permanent, which is either good or bad, depending on your perspective.

technovangelism

this article on ars struck me as rather interesting. why is it that the western/developed world sees the need to force their technologies (and implicitly their values) on the rest of the world. I'm not saying that everyone being online is necessarily a bad thing, but it's not necessarily a good thing, either. especially when we consider that, afaik, there's still no great way to get rid of the incredibly toxic waste from computers. I feel a bit like the Takers in Quinn's Ishmael, forcing my developments on the rest of the world. what if those people in third world countries don't want to be online? maybe they would be better served by mobile phone apps and WiMax (or whatever) than a "proper" internet connection. maybe they don't want to be brought into the technological era at all. how would you even go about deciding such a thing? how would you properly determine that a culture or society wanted to be leavers? I'm not quite sure, but I'm not convinced that it involves giving lots of money to folks for setting up computer labs in third world countries.