Have you heard of Bruce Sterling‘s Spime concept? No? Let me quote Cory Doctorow, one of Sterling’s peers, who can sum up the idea of Spime better than I can.
“A Spime is a location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities. A universe of Spimes is an informational universe, and it is the use of this information that informs the most exciting part of Sterling’s argument.”
As the web becomes ever more interconnected and self-referential I’ve been thinking Spime more and more. But where, I think, Sterling refers to Spime as a physical object that, from cradle to grave, generates all sorts of tagged meta data, I think of Spime in terms of a podcasts.
Take solipsistic NATION, for example.
Nearly all the songs featured on solipsistic NATION were either emailed to me or I downloaded from various web sites and many of those songs were collaborations between many people done across the internet. Each show I select which songs to feature on solipsistic NATION and then release it as a podcast and at a later date, as a radio program.
The podcast is encoded as a MP3 and is tagged with various meta data. There’s the show’s artwork (often generously provided by folks who diplay their photography at Flickr). The MP3 also tells you the name of the show, when it was released, how large the file size is and how long the show is. In addition to the MP3, I also update my RSS feed which notifies various blogs, vendors, services and search engines whenever I release a new show.
Spime doesn’t actually exist. Yet. But if it did, I find myself wondering what a Spime-like show might be like? I imagine it would be a lot like solipsistic NATION, only more so.
Today’s show is kind of Spime-like. Here’s the data:
We’ll be talking with Bioradio about this year’s Oscillation Electronic Music Festival taking place in Albuquerque, New Mexico in Ocotber. Next, we’ll jump to Portugal to talk with Bruno Miguel to talk about his band, :papercutz. We’ll also talk with Ian White of Blip.fm, a new social media music service you really need to try. Finally, we’ll travel to San Diego and talk to Miller Puckette, author of The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music.
Speaking of social media, you can find me online on some of these social media services.
- Distraub “Article 73”
- Bioradio “Enter End” [FREE DOWNLOAD]
- Interview with Brian Botkiller of the Oscillation Electronic Music Festival
- Vertigo Venus “Vampire Hunter C”
- :papercutz “Ultravioleta (Signer Remix)”
- Interview with Bruno Miguel of :papercutz
- :papercutz “Ultravioleta”
- Roland M. Dill “The 8th Day”
- Interview with Ian White of Blip.fm
- Demons “Grey Lady”
- Interview with Miller Puckette, author of the The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music
- Yimino “Miagranov”