Month: March 2013

Bristol Radical Film Festival

John Hodgson , , , , , ,

Today was the last day of the Bristol Radical Film Festival at the Cube Microplex, a wonderfully rundown small theatre converted into a centre for creativity and debate.  Mike Wayne and Deirdre O’Neill showed their film The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on Engels’ original analysis of the baleful effects of contemporary (1840s) class structure and relationships.  The film’s subtitle is: “Everything changes, everything stays the same.”  http://www.conditionoftheworkingclass.info/.   Its mixture of film and theatre (working people dramatising their own condition) was inspired by John McGrath’s 1970’s BBC Play for Today The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb3qbFcLYZc

Google glass

John Hodgson , , , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of worried comment about Google glass(es), such as the creative good blog http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is-talking-about/, and some good video parodies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KmFSmkDyr8.  I think that what we are witnessing is the beginning of a change in consciousness that will transform human life. A thousand years ago, people knew only their immediate surroundings. Very few travelled, and those who did lost daily contact with home. Now we have the potential that everyone can be constantly in touch with other people and places anywhere in the world. What will life be like in another thousand or even 100 years’ time? The glasses are a clumsy prosthesis, but we can already imagine ways in which future consciousness will be transformed. And hopefully communication and mutual understanding will help put an end to tribal divisions.

Anyway, Google’s own demo of young men and one young woman parachuting on to the  Google building, all keeping in touch with each other and with the audience in the auditorium, is impressive in a geeky-athletic way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP1gvGcXcLk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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