58. Long live the independent blog
I.
You might almost forget it sometimes, but the internet is more than just Instagram and TikTok. Before Big Tech claimed the World Wide Web, everyone had their own little corner of the web over which they had complete control. Internet researcher and artist Olia Lialina has collected dozens of old Geocities pages which together provide a lovely overview of the ways people used to express themselves back then.
I’ve been writing this more often lately, but I really feel that we’re slowly reclaiming the internet bit by bit. It gives me great pleasure to see people starting newsletters or taking up blogging. Elon Musk wants to turn X into a digital village square, where everyone can have their say. In practice, that means a square where everyone is trying to shout each other down. I’d rather go to my local pubs that border that village square. The pubs all offer something different, but you know the owner and which beers he has on tap. Let those people shout outside.
“Websites might just make a comeback,” wrote Ryan Broderick this week in his newsletter Garbage Day. I wrote two blogs ago that Pharrell Williams released his new album on a website. Broderick reports that Cindy Lee followed suit with an album released on Geocities. That makes two artists already bypassing Spotify. These are exceptions to the rule, and most musicians won’t follow suit straight away. Nor will the listeners. We’ve been spoiled by the convenience of streaming and aren’t going to go back en masse to downloading MP3s.
But it does show that artists, too, are looking for more creative ways to express themselves. Pharrell Williams and Cindy Lee may also have had enough of the Spotify mould. GQ writer Chris Black wonders whether people actually want to own music again, that we might have less to do with influencers and start discovering new songs outside of TikTok. “Probably not, but this is the first time I’ve seen cracks appearing in the wall.”
To that I say once again: grab a hammer, start a blog and give that wall a good whack.
II.
Just a quick word on the Humane AI Pin and the impact of negative reviews.
The AI Pin was marketed as the first true screenless AI assistant. You wear it on your chest. The little device was torn to shreds by American reviewers. Because it’s slow, gets hot, gives the wrong answers and the battery runs out quickly. These include Engadget, Engadget, The Verge, The Washington Post and YouTuber Marques Brownlee tore the gadget to shreds after getting to grips with it.
Following his review, Brownlee came under fire on social media. Apparently, his video titled The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now did not go down well with everyone. One Daniel Vassallo called it “tasteless and almost unethical to say this when you have 18 million subscribers”. Others also took issue with Brownlee for speaking negatively about the AI Pin. Reviews like this can ruin companies, they say.
In recent years, we’ve often been spoilt with tech that works well. You can rate almost every new phone as at least ‘pretty decent’, because manufacturers have mastered the product category. But every now and then, a new product comes along that simply doesn’t live up to expectations.
It would be a topsy-turvy world if you had to show mercy to a poor or mediocre product just to spare a company. The Humane AI Pin costs $700, plus a further $24 a month to keep it running. If such an expensive device doesn’t work, you have to mention that as a reviewer so that consumers don’t buy into false promises.
Brownlee responds brilliantly to the ensuing commotion: “Do negative reviews cause companies to go bankrupt, or do bad products?” In the comments, someone says: “Blaming a reviewer for a failing company is like blaming a weatherman for a tornado.”
We must be able to tear bad products apart with sound arguments and findings. Otherwise, they simply won’t improve. Humane CEO Sam Sheffer takes a sporting approach on X. Reposting Brownlee’s review, he calls the criticism “honest and well-founded”. He says that Humane listens to the feedback, learns from it and continues to work on improvements.
---PS.
Boston Dynamics, maker of robots and nightmares, presents its new humanoid robot. The updated Atlas performs movements that we, as an inept species, could never manage. This, once again, makes people find it a bit scary. But then again, what use is a robot that can do exactly the same things as us?
---David Lynch has devised a new installation on display at a design fair in Milan. It is called A Thinking Room and consists of two rooms, each containing a large chair. There are writing materials, a mirror, a clock and a few large images on the curtains covering the walls. Lynch discusses it in conversation with curator Antonio Monda.
---A very detailed analysis by Antoine Mayerowitz on which combination of characters, wheels and vehicles makes for the best build in Mario Kart 8.
It has been 20 years since André Kuipers made his first space flight. He is still the first and only Dutch astronaut to have visited the ISS. I looked back with him on his adventures amongst the stars.
In Florida last month, a piece of space debris pierced the roof of a house. According to NASA, it is part of a battery pack that was detached from the ISS in 2021. It was supposed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, but that didn’t happen. Imagine getting that on your head.
Ryan Gosling has created a follow-up to his hilarious Papyrus-sketch from 2017. In it, he played a designer who just can’t get over the fact that the film Avatar uses the Papyrus font as its logo. He’s almost over the trauma, until he discovers that the logo has changed in the second Avatar film. So good.
---In 2020, Peter Jackson made the fantastic Get Back series about The Beatles. He drew on sixty hours of footage shot during the recording of the album Let It Be. That same material had already been used in 1970 by director Michael Lindsey-Hogg for his Let It Be film. He reportedly made a sombre documentary about the band’s break-up. This film is being re-released on 8 May on Disney+. With the help of Jackson, who polished up the picture and sound quality.
In 2012, IKEA released a camera. The Knäppa, a cardboard camera. It takes two batteries, has a USB port and can take forty photos in a row. The Swedish retailer never actually launched the Knäppa, but did hand out a number of them at an Italian home furnishings fair. Watch a trailer from IKEA itself or the video below, featuring a YouTuber trying out the camera in 2024.
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