Dispatch #30.
Nostalgic tech, an old multi-hyphenate & optimism for entertainment.
Greetings. A little different this week, with a handful of smaller stories.
Nostalgia & Mermaids: A cult computer from the 80s, repair culture and Kris.
Friday Find: Some Sushi? Be careful.
Optimistic for Entertainment: Why the industry can look to a brighter future.
With: Traditional Indian knowledge, Floyd sale, Wikipedia’s crisis.
1. Spectrum Nostalgia
Dynamite Dan! Daley Thomson’s Decathlon! Saboteur! Jetpac!
For those of a certain vintage, these might be quite familiar. I was very young when a ZX Spectrum computer somehow landed up in our Delhi home- through a combination of luck and a very persistent older sibling. The brainchild of inventor Clive Sinclair, ZX Spectrum was an affordable computer that introduced colourful gaming and some manner of amateur programming for regular folk (or kids whose parents believed this was the future, only to find them playing games every afternoon).
I have vague but very real memories of tapping the heck out of the keyboard to make Daley Thomson run, Rondo Alla Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.11 that played through Dynamite Dan’s menu and a few other scattered visual cues from the others. It all kinda came knocking when this trailer dropped few days ago.
The Rubber Keyed Wonder is a Kickstarter funded documentary that tells the story of Clive Sinclair’s now legendary ZX Spectrum home computer, first released in 1982. This promises plenty of nostalgia and a good story about an inventive, important time in both personal computing and gaming.
2. RIP Kris Kristofferson
The singer-songwriter passed away this last week. I was not hugely familiar with his life or work, and in my world he was probably always (only) ‘the one who wrote Me & Bobby McGee’, the love for which mostly always has gone to Janis Joplin who performed it.
I now realise he had the most fascinating, chequered and wide-ranging of lives. His many decades took him across being a songwriter, actor, pilot, janitor, a father of eight. He played college football, was a Rhodes Scholar (Masters in English Literature at Oxford), a Golden Gloves boxer, an army Captain and helicopter pilot, a winner of three Grammy Awards & a Golden Globe, Country Music Hall of Famer, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awardee.
He told NPR in 1999, which I found fascinating.
I imagined myself into a pretty full life. I was certainly not equipped, by God, to be a football player, but I got to be one. And I got to be a Ranger, and a paratrooper, and a helicopter pilot, you know, and a boxer, and a lot of things that I don't think I was built to do. I just imagined 'em.
(Emphases very much mine.)
Read an obit, or just listen to the song I Hate Your Ugly Face, the first he ever wrote back when he was eleven years old, and finally released it as a bonus track on a 2009 album.
3. Fix It, Mermaid.
The level of planned and unplanned obsolescence all around us is something that bother many. Fixing something that is broken or has stopped working, has long been lost to just buying a new one. There are pockets of efforts to rebuild a ‘repair’ habit- this is as much individual as corporate and societal.
I was happy to learn about the Repair Kopitiam in Singapore (the term Kopitiam loosely means an old-style coffee shop). The idea behind Repair Kopitiam is to teach people how to mend broken appliances and then, hopefully, have them become volunteers and instructors teaching others to do the same. It works as a community repair meetup on the last Sunday of every month.
It was featured in this charming little photo piece about niche groups in Singapore, which also includes a Mermaid community (yes mermaid as in humans with fins cavorting in water), a Malay family lion dance troupe and the nation’s first acrobatic circus company.
4. Another You on Socials?
Meta announced it is testing a new feature that creates AI-generated content for you “based on your interests or current trends” — including some that incorporate your face. ****An “Imagined for You” image in your feed could mean we see options to generate a new picture in real time.
Mark Zuckerberg said that adding AI images to your feeds is the next “logical jump” for Facebook and Instagram.
tcalIndeed, this feels at once both logical and creepy. Sign of our times.
5. Friday Find:
At the foot of the Himalayas takes refuge the insensitive tyrant Shaolin Monk Back Mei.
After selling his soul to the darkest powers, he toured all of China, becoming the best exponent of Kung Fu...
So begins the description for this animated short from Argentinian studio Vascolo. Those two lines don’t quite give away how wild the piece you will watch might be like. But wild it is. Have a look at this short that “seeks to represent the epic battle that restored balance to the region despite only fighting for the last sushi piece.”
What?? Yes, exactly.
· or watch here with great character sketches & more · ECD- Martin Schurmann · Animation & CD- Ernesto Reyna ·
6. Optimism for Entertainment
There is widespread and relevant doom & gloom in the business of TV & film. Vast swathes of value both real and notional have been lost during the last decade; consolidations, sales, shutdowns continue apace, unknowns abound, questions far outnumber answers.
Some parts of the world continue on their own robust trajectories (looking at you India, Korea), while other regions wait and hope for the cyclical nature to bring back some sliver of the heydays (hey, Southeast Asia). These are regions that- while undeniably vibrant culturally & creatively- have, in the past, all too often been subject to the vicissitudes (or whims) of some ‘mothership’ (Hollywood et al). They are living & breathing an industry that has gone far beyond merely ‘disrupted’ in the last 6-8 years.
If we were to step back and look at it as the wider business of entertainment, or even wider space of ‘making’ pop culture, it becomes less easy to herald its death; because of course, humanity will continue to want and be entertained. Entertainers and their patrons (us masses) will always find a way to scratch the itch. Sometimes, there will be questions asked around the nature and ‘goodness’ of the entertainment, but the flow will ever remain in some shape or form. On the other hand, suggesting- as it still sometimes is- that the industry today will flourish once more because hey, its just the pipes of delivery (technology) that have changed, and its just the matter of grappling with it, is hardly helpful (or new). The grappling has been long and painful.
Truisms, if you will.
Lucas Shaw- who writes the very useful Screentime newsletter at Bloomberg- wrote an essay outlining five reasons for optimism in Hollywood (which may or may not translate to wider global resurgence). It makes a for a good read, but briefly these five beacons of hope are:
Streaming can make money. We now know so. It can, really.
Ads $! Advertising will save us.
A new creative class. The well worn but very relevant question of how traditional players can co-exist with contemporary creators- compete, consume, circle slowly… or find a symbiosis?
Gaming. Studios may finally have in the rearview mirror a long-dysfunctional relationship. Signs are they might be finding meaningful ways into this incredible world.
Music. The revival of this industry might show they way. “If the music industry can make money, so can anyone”
Plus, I liked this very much:
Studios, like record labels, have relationships with the best writers, actors and filmmakers. Algorithms feed people what they already like; studios and labels feed people what they didn’t know they wanted. Artists need champions.
This is from Matt Pincus, a music investor. It is a human and creative view that unfortunately is not always shared by board rooms and the Street.
But its not all roses yet, the flowers are far from blooming, we are told- “things will get worse before they get better.”
7. Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting)
Read. To distance its science education systems from centuries long British colonialism, India is leaning into its history and traditions—but at what cost? The agency governing higher education in India now requires students to get credits in courses on traditional Indian knowledge. Many worry these new courses won’t reflect the diversity of India’s multifaith, multiethnic society. This piece is an exploration that strives for nuance, more than a report and less than a hatchet job.
Know. Pink Floyd has this week agreed to sell their recorded music catalog to Sony Music in an agreement worth approximately USD $400 million. Its catalog first went up for sale in July ‘22.
Read. Wikipedia’s visibility is diminishing. Often it is merely used as training data for AI applications. It faces an existential threat of fading into obscurity or disrepair. It can be easy to forget how invaluable Wikipedia is. What it needs, they say, is recruiting more young GenZ editors.