Tag Archives: warren ellis

Someone walks past me, on the corner of Mercer and Prince in the brilliant morning sun, wearing Google Glass, and I instinctively step back and into an alcove, away from the machine vision. Stray photons have taken seven hundred and seventy five thousand years to reach New York City from the outer halo stars of the Milky Way, and SoHo’s lone Googlenaut hoovers them up with his weak extra eyeball. I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him. I’ve never seen Glass in the wild before. The thing sits on his shades like Minimum Viable Science Fiction. Toy future.

via Warren Ellis’s Morning, Computer.

I had a similar experience recently. We went to the NY Tech Meetup, saw the launch of Electric Objects & The Satellite.

I also saw my first Google Glass – what do I call them? Glasshole sounds so aggressive, Glasstronaut too kind – wearer. He looked like the kind of young rich white guy who has the cash to spend $1500 on a tiny computer you strap to your face. I had reaction of revulsion, so of course I started seeing him everywhere. How do I express kindly and firmly that I don’t want to be recorded by him? I don’t mind if he looks at me, but I don’t want him pointing a camera at me – I’m not a public figure intentionally. I don’t want to confront him or shame him, but I really don’t like this. He’s not doing anything wrong, not anything you couldn’t do with a smartphone – but it feels rude to not do it publicly, for my consent or notice to not be involved.

Of course he jumped into the elevator I was in. I grabbed the door and excused myself.

“I think I’ll wait for the next elevator.”

Books: SUPERGOD

Books, Reviews, , , ,

supergod coverSupergod is a Warren Ellis blaspheme with a great concept. As the world ends and falls into chaos and darkness, a researcher narrates how we reached this sad state by weaponizing gods that we built ourselves. It’s explicitly about the superhero myths: why would these hyper-intelligent, superpowerful beings love us and care about our happiness?

The art is sweeping, raging battles between the weaponized gods of India, Russia, America, etc., or the blighted scavenged ruins of the apocalyptic end. In the foreground, the researcher – a Warren Ellis mouthpiece – raves about why people want gods, why gods would want us, how our flaws would lead us to misuse them in the first place. He’s got good points – we claimed the power to destroy the world with nuclear weapons and haven’t done so yet, but it often seems more an accident than our inherent goodness. I’ve got a soft spot for Ellis, ever since Transmetropolitan and Scars, and this is a good romp in his best style.