Apparently Bruce Sterling, that’s who. And since he coined the term, I guess it’s appropriate.

I’ll admit to not having paid much attention to his blog lately (I can only take so much Bollywood intrigue) but last night I happened to surf through and noticed a series of “Spime Watch” entries. The most interesting to me were “Spime Watch III” and “Spime Watch VI” (the latter because I’d read Raph Koster’s comments earlier). And now SWIII been picked up by Boing Boing (Link).

If you’re interested in objects that are one rung below self-awareness, you might want to check out Sterling’s blog (Link). You might also want to read up because this is related to my recent posts on architecture (Link 1, Link 2) … which is actually being influenced by something else I’m following.

After just looking over the Manufacturer’s Blog and now noticing that I haven’t had much visual stimuli here lately, I surfed over to Archinect’s gallery and found some interesting images in the “Construction Photos” section (Link). I was feeling in a “manufacturing” state of mind.

The first images that caught my attention were some photos of a Frank Gehry building under construction (I decided not to post an image here – one look at how they go together and you might think twice about entering one).

The next images that piqued my interest were an intriguing series of photos simply labeled “Zaha”. The structure being documented is the Phaeno Museum designed by Zaha Hadid. I suggest you go take a look and keep these structures in mind when I start posting about stuff like robotic termites. Soon.

{Image source: Archinect}

I just saw a post over on Manufacturer’s Blog and couldn’t help but question it. Go read it for yourself (Link) and then come back and read the comment I submitted here:

I’m curious. I saw similar comments on some news show a couple of years ago where a manager in India said he didn’t understand why Americans were concerned when his own office was filled with American equipment. The only problem was that the stuff he pointed to was American *branded* equipment (I know because I know the products); they were actually being manufactured in China.

I then checked a .gov website to confirm comments about the trade numbers being touted. But what I found were flat numbers for private industry and a booming export business for the U.S. government (I suspect the U.S. was selling mothballed military equipment, which – when I was in the Navy – I found to {be} relatively common and which would have coincided with the tensions between India and Pakistan around that time). But again, that was a couple of years ago.

In any case, based on that information I can’t help but be skeptical that “GE, and Whirlpool, and Westinghouse” are selling American-made products in India. The *companies* may be doing business, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s American workers at GE, Whirlpool and Westinghouse plants in the U.S. that are benefitting. More than likely, it’s shareholders who reap the benefits of this sort of arrangement.

Could you verify this to ensure that those companies are actually selling only American-made products to India? For my part, I’ll be looking into whether those large kitchen appliances being manufactured in the U.S. are making the long, expensive journey to India. Seems to me like they’re shipping a lot of air if that’s the case.

and a second comment

Sorry. Also wanted to ask how much of Texas Instruments’ overseas revenue is making its way back to the U.S. and into our economy? Or is all that money being re-invested in overseas research centers, overseas manufacturing sites and so on? I don’t see that there is necessarily a link between their overseas success and American workers other than more jobs are moving overseas to take advantage of lower wages, lower health care costs, lower government standards, greater government incentives and (tbh) reports of widespread corruption.

I wonder if blogger Pat Cleary will reply.

Terra Nova has a post relaying some interesting news. From the entry (Link):

DoNews is reporting that several Wengzhou companies are recruiting gamers to play online games. … The basic salary for these gamers is 800 Yuan per month, said the report … For comparison, 800 yuan is 99.50 US at today’s exchange rate.

And if you read the second half of the entry, one can imagine that these gamers might wind up using hijacked accounts. It’d certainly be one way to get a pharming business up and running.

I read something over on BusinessWeek yesterday about people in Asia being especially innovative in a system with few safety nets. Quite a few people who commented took issue with that observation. But I guess that word can be broadly applied. Until we walk in their shoes…

I’ve been following an entry over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) discussing the MySpace phenomenon. There are some interesting comments that are worth reading imo. The most recent comment as of this writing included this bit:

I think the first step between connecting a MMOG with a true social network is to grow it FROM an existing social network and allow a virtualization of that social network into a visual representation.

Interesting. I guess by going from Second Life to LinkedIn I’m doing this all backwards (see earlier post for reference – Link). I’ve not actively pursued making virtual person-to-virtual person contacts on LinkedIn; no time at the moment. Perhaps next week.

btw, would a cover of The Who classic song now use the lyric “don’t try to grok what we all s-s-say”?