TEDx Vienna 2011 just getting started. BR 
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Category Archives: memory
Impermanence – Steve Jobs RIP
With the death of Steve Jobs – someone who shaped the technology of everyday life over the last 20 years with his obsession of design and usability – we become aware of the impermanence of life much more than through some philosophical or religious text.
Apple Homepage Oct 5, 2011
The WSJ is much more competent at writing an obituary – alas I don’t even know how long the link to the WSJ story will hold.
Apple changed their homepage to honor their founder and leader. Steve Jobs leaves the way he came and started – focused on the essentials: Ars longa vita brevis.
Turning mediocre photos into “art”
During my brief stint as a fashion photographer and assistant to a studio owner in Vienna, we had a drawer marked “ART” where the slides and prints ended up that were unusable for professional presentation. This included discolored slides when the film ruptured or at the end of the roll. And whenever we received an invitation to a competition or exhibition we went through the drawer and submitted with a success rate that was in no relation to the work put into the creation of these pieces of art.
Today even a most boring photo can be “raised” to art inside of a smartphone (in this case Instagram) and distributed globally
Sperrstund is
I have been invited to submit a paper about the future for a forthcoming book on “Ideas for Tomorrow”. The future, tomorrow, great new ideas that will change everything for the better are exciting prospects but I’m not so sure how helpful it is to look at the “future” as a point forward on an imaginary unidirectional time line. Looking at the present may be more inspiring and educational. Looking at the present is also more about social interactions and less about prospective technical achievements.
Over the past 50 years a lot of “future” has turned into a past without ever becoming present reality. Robot maids are a perfect example. “Morgen ist heute schon gestern” (Tomorrow, today will already be yesterday) was part of an advertising campaign of the Austrian shoe manufacturer Humanic in the 1970s. (the other one was “In Wirklichkeit ist die Wirklichkeit nicht wirklich wirklich, aber wirklich ist so doch” – in reality, reality is not really real, but it is real nevertheless) – but I digress).
Looking at today – in their presence – and looking at how things evolve, start, end may be a much more solid approach that I will try to explore.
It is getting late – here something about closing up: Irgendwann macht jedes Lokal a bissl zu:
Scriabin and Prostate Cancer: Etude Op.8 No.11 (Horowitz)
I don’t remember how I ended up here, but here I was and I listened. When Horowitz plays you better listen. Music on the Web is rarely selectable – it comes more randomly on web radio or Pandora. Pandora is great but you may get “similar” and not exactly what you look for. Music with images is different. Somehow different rules apply and and while some pieces are blocked (not sure who benefits from this), many are open – so I looked – and there it was – Scriabin 
with Prostate Cancer. Highly targeted advertising. Only targeted to whom? To Horowitz, Scriabin or me? Neither of as is a candidate for prostate cancer treatment. Scriabin and Horowitz know – I hope.
In my curiousity, I searched the Internet and got some highly convincing offers:
You look for it – we find it:
You can get Prostate Cancer without prescription – good to know
And if you cannot afford to get Prostate Cancer (who can?) – we cut you a deal
Time to listen to some music: