Protein® Forum Events

as mentioned before ... we should definitely do one of the death of film studios.

it's pretty much the "death of ..." any old skool media/industry/ that hasn't changed to adopt the interweb.

death of the dj, or should i say vinyl.

Death of retail.

death of telecoms i.e. skype

death of the rekkid shop

death of the book (amazon reader thingy?)

Death of record shops is a big one. Virgin selling up to Zavvi is a sign of things to come - they're getting out early.

Hopefully the independent shops will stick around, Newcastle has several awesome little ones, though one of them very nearly bit the dust earlier in the year simply because of a lack of customers...

Death of Privacy

St. Bride Library are running a Conference in January entitled Magazines are Dead

death of the underground.

charlie [grumblemouse] and i were talking about this last night. as society, and more to the point, media has become fully networked there if no longer any "underground" where new ideas can germinate, new sounds formed and new movements grow as one blog post or google search will result in having it on the cover of metro and the 10 o'clock news. we concluded, quite drunk, that it's time for an anti-network, a place where you can't get in and it's hard to find things. seriously considering integrating some of this thinking into the OS structure.

i'm also thinking that as much as the "death series" is a perfectly accurate title for this thread of discussion for our upcoming events, that maybe we should think of something a little more positive. the original idea was "the future of ..." but it sounds a little wanky and doesn't really focus on the fact that something is dying and something else is being created. hmmmm.

i think there is still an "underground", or rather there are underground movements. what's changed is us and the world. take clubs and music as one example:

once upon a time you just wouldn't know about a club unless you were part of an esoteric, cabal of clubbers. "time out" and "city limits" wouldn't know about a special night and you had to be given the flyer or a telephone number on the back of a piece of paper. that's the classic understanding of "underground".

same with records. you would have to be a regular at a record store before the staff would give you what you wanted or [sometimes even admit the existence of records that you asked for!], but now with downloads its all there for everyone.

so more questions arise from this: can an internet distributed mp3 ever be "underground"? or to use the rather [and probably innapropriate] old analogy: in the sea of data on the net can an mp3 ever be deep underwater?

so we have to look at the definition of the "underground"? is it a definite thing, or is it just a feeling?

is it to do with secrecy? and encryptions? secret knowledge?

the internet has changed the way we process and access information. wikipedia hasn't been around that long. yet when i am in telephonic conversation with people i use it all the time to access subject matter that the person on the other end of the phone is talking about. i cannot imagine not being to able to access it.

similarily, the people in the advertising industry used to be so obviously lacking knowledge of "the underground", relying as they once did on independent publications like i_d and the Face to receive information [which themselves were often melrey observers rather than creators]. but the advertising industry doesn't need those publications anymore they can just surf the web and within a few hours get some sort of handle on any subculture they want.

back to death. back to reality.
do things die? or do things evolve?

this is all good ian. some deep threads rolling through here. i haven't got any answers to these yet, but i'm keen to keep digging.

i've been thinking about the idea over the last couple of days and i can't help but think that it is inevitable as human evolution, media progression and our desires for faster and more accessible *everything* would drive, sorry force, all forms of media[1] into the open. no more shadows or interesting corners to hide. it's bright light, big city everywhere now.

granted you can still unplug, run away and hide, but even in the physical world, tourism is getting out of control. did anyone see the observer supplement a few weeks back about the 10 best kept secret holiday locations? what a load of rubbish. the sheer fact they fucking published them in a national newspaper blows any kind of cover on the lame selection they put together.

what's the answer? who knows. all i know right now is that i'm valuing my mates, our conversations and face to face hook-ups more so than ever and that technology is finally reaching a saturation point from which we can now *really* work out what we can do to make this place we call earth a better place.

word.

[1] all forms of media i.e. print, online, music, film etc.

ok people, just putting the wheels in motion to turn this seed into reality and so have renamed it to "protein forum events" as that is what they are going to be called. *however* we're still looking for a venue to house it, so if anyone knows of a good, cheap, friendly central/east london location then please let me know. i want to do the first on in feb, so we need to get a move on.

looks like there's some interesting things going down at CES on the drm front:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080108-drm-is-dead-for-music.html

just giving this a bump as miranda saywer's article in the observer yesterday and original blog post got me totally worked up again. more news soon.

and here's a good contender for the future of online advertising:

http://proteinos.com/blogs/2008/03/the-future-online-advertising

yes yes, first protein forum mini-event happening at 2gether08 on 2nd july in shoreditch. details here:

http://www.2gether08.com

i know it's during the day, expensive and not our usual sort of thing, but it's definitely something i wanted use to be involved with. just finalising the venue for the regular FREE! monthly protein forum, so will post more soon.

so, i've got a couple of spare tickets to 2gether if anyone is interested. they're selling for over £200, so hit me back if you wanna come.

All speakers confirmed and ready to go for our "mini-TED Shoreditch" style event tomorrow, these include:

Chris Cleverly will be talking about his Pan-African sub Saharan railway project that integrates all manor of "good things" including trackside biofuel plantations, flatpack sustainable stations/cities and mobile phone ticketing and banking.
More info here: http://miabank.com

Jason Bruges will be talking about his amazing lighting installations as well as a new range of sustainable carbon neutral LED products his studio is developing.
More info here: http://jasonbruges.com

David Dickie will be talking about Advanced Aid and his one man mission to build humanitarian relief factories that provide jobs and bring supplies closer to the people in places of continual natural disasters and war zones.
More info here: http://advancedaid.org

Should be fun.