Mark Wahl Blog

December 7, 2007 1:03 AM

Burning Man 1862. Brian Eno iPod. Worst captcha ever. Mark Wahl's blog.
posted by Meatbomb (29 comments total)

Excellent. Thanks!
posted by WPW at 1:21 AM on December 7, 2007

Wow! Thousand year song on an iPod, that’s totally oh, it’s a parody...still pretty cool, I guess.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:09 AM on December 7, 2007

Sharp choices. He knows how to say just enough.

(I had thought Neil Gaiman coined "fakelore", but Wahl's links suggest it's a bit older than American Gods.)
posted by lodurr at 2:14 AM on December 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

(... and someone should forward the 'Eno iPod' to Eno. He'd probably get a big kick out of it.)
posted by lodurr at 2:31 AM on December 7, 2007

Brian Eno? Really? Cage, maybe.. but this is a little short of the mark.
posted by ianaces at 2:32 AM on December 7, 2007

ianaces, I'm assuming it's an allusion to Eno's involvement with the Ten Thousand Year Clock.
posted by lodurr at 2:50 AM on December 7, 2007

That was surprisingly entertaining.
posted by spiderskull at 2:54 AM on December 7, 2007

Fun stuff. Just one thing:

body {margin:0}

Stop that!
posted by sidereal at 4:20 AM on December 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Up against the Wahl, motherfucker!

This guy is interesting. Thanks, meatbomb.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:22 AM on December 7, 2007

As far as the thousand-year Eno thing, here's a 639-year performance that's not a joke! (From the man who brought you 4'33", naturally.)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:26 AM on December 7, 2007

Fun!
posted by swlabr at 5:26 AM on December 7, 2007

That's a pretty neat blog, but what's with the Burning Man obsession?
posted by aldurtregi at 6:43 AM on December 7, 2007

This Mark Wahl fellow -- is he the one with the Funky Bunch?
posted by spilon at 6:52 AM on December 7, 2007

I like it.
posted by delmoi at 7:15 AM on December 7, 2007

Ahh, 1862. That really was the last good year for Burning Man, wasn't it?
posted by loquacious at 7:48 AM on December 7, 2007

Also, the "Brian Eno iPod" is actually the "10,000 Year Clock" from the Long Now Foundation which, of course, features Brian Eno as a boardmember.
posted by loquacious at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2007

Excellent find, thank you!
posted by misha at 9:39 AM on December 7, 2007

aldurtregi: Mark Wahl is active in the burner community.
posted by adamrice at 9:52 AM on December 7, 2007

Fun and refreshing - an old school blog. But too much tong.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:53 AM on December 7, 2007

This is awesome, thanks.
posted by Kwine at 10:02 AM on December 7, 2007

I was going to use this as my captcha, until I discovered this which is far more secure.
posted by quin at 10:52 AM on December 7, 2007

I like it. This Wahl guy is like a steampunk with a sense of humor.
posted by jonp72 at 11:14 AM on December 7, 2007

Also, the "Brian Eno iPod" is actually the "10,000 Year Clock"

Actually that's the first prototype, which when I worked there was on loan to a engineering school in Chicago if I recall, though one of the faces was on display at their offices. The second prototype uses a orrery to mark time, which makes it a hundred times cooler. If you find yourself in Fort Mason, be sure to stop by and check out the chimes for the clock which are built around an progressive algorithm Brian designed (CD available ).
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 4:24 PM on December 7, 2007

Clock derail: While I can't dispute that the designs are pretty cool, I do have to wonder if they're up to the 10K challenge. I mean, can we point to any clockwork devices that still function after 10000 years?
posted by lodurr at 4:11 AM on December 8, 2007

lodurr, i see it more as a thought experiment that got carried away than anything intended to actually happen, regardless of the earnest efforts of the Long Now Foundation.

Somewhere in that Eno interview, some other guy he was talking to said "What question are you trying to answer?"

Seems it is an interesting answer without a question.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:31 AM on December 8, 2007

Danny Hillis seemed pretty serious about it when he started the project.

Eno seems to me to be one of those guys who everyone listens to just because, well, he seems so darn cool when you're in the room with him, and the whole time you don't realize that the entire conversation about how to get Timmy out of the well has been steered in an entirely new direction, say, the acoustics of hand-dug wells. And while it may very well be a really interesting direction, Timmy's still in the well and not getting any closer to getting out. But we have lowered him down some cheese sandwiches and a speaker (so he can listen in to the conversation) and a microphone (so Eno can record the sounds it makes down there).

I imagine Kevin Kelly must be that way, too, because people keep listening to him even though he produces nothing of value and is often amazingly wrong when you go back to check on things. At least Eno makes art.
posted by lodurr at 5:39 AM on December 8, 2007

"when he started the project" => "when he started workign on the the project"
posted by lodurr at 5:40 AM on December 8, 2007

They have bought land already to place the clock when complete. I assure you they are quite serious.

Read the original article with Danny, it was in a special issue of Wired I picked up years ago. It was brilliant, I used to read it to friends. He answers the "What question are you trying to answer?" directly.

Don't forget, Stewart Brand is also behind this too. Not just as a board member, he is active in project and runs the monthly talks. That man is brilliant and so are the seminars.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 9:14 PM on December 8, 2007

I think this word "brilliant" (in the American-English version) is over-used. I respect Brand, I think he's a thoughtful and perceptive guy, but I've never seen any of his product that I think is "brilliant." Often he appears to miss (or perhaps just inexcusably glosses over) really important points. For example, in a TED talk, he waxed eloquent over the zero-unemployment squatter cities of the future, without mentioning that the reason for that zero-unemployment is that unemployed people starve or die for lack of medical treatment.

Hillis would qualify as brilliant in my book, because he's conceived of some really original ideas that made a big difference, and shown himself to be capable of organizing projects to make the ideas come to fruition. Eno, I don't particularly grok his aesthetic, but he seems to qualify as brilliant because he's always making a lot of connections and reaching into interesting areas and producing work that really inspires a lot of people to do something, often something wildly different from what he's doing. Brand seems to drive ideas through personal networking. So maybe he's a "brilliant networker." (Which is subtly but importantly different from being a brilliant self-promoter.)
posted by lodurr at 5:26 AM on December 9, 2007