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I note it was posted at 8:16 am
Dec. 6th, 2004 12:50 pmWilliam Gibson's blog talks about his book Pattern Recognition, the deeply scary ad agency BzzAgent, and paranoia, and about an idea ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dangerdhotrod and I thought we came up with on our own one time when we were high.
The post time is a bonus, since it remains the most significant time of day in my view of the modern era- Hiroshima- August 6, 1945 of course.
The frozen clock/watch, stuck forever at 8:16, is one of the more powerful images I recall from my youth and play a role in many arts-related projects I've concocted over the years. Example: if there's a broken clock we can put onto a stage set in any show I'm directing, chances are really good I'll reset the hands to 8:16, the beginning of the end of the world, natch. This usually annoys or confuses the set designer.
Here's an image of a watch and another image from a Hiroshima museum, the watch, I note, is a little fast.
And of course, if William Gibson is mentioned, along with the Bomb, you can bet Alan Moore isn't far behind in my mind; demonstrated by a hypertexts watchmen commentary here(found by a google search for smithsonian hiroshima pocketwatch, which is the memory I have in my head, a Smithsonian article with a picture of the watch) and specifically here, with reference to a TIME article on same (not, I note, the Smithsonian). For the really paranoid, there's also an almost-obligatory a reference to W.A.S.T.E. (in its original Pynchonian context)
Also, there's a wicked scary site at the Air Force about the Enola Gay. Not scary because of the Enola Gay qua Enola Gay. But more because there's a little script or flash something up in the top nav that uses a fighter jet targeting system metaphor. How terrifying can we be here, for christ's sake?! It's a clever little hack, but the bleep and blink of the targeting when you've "locked on" to a link is creepy.
dangerdhotrod and I thought we came up with on our own one time when we were high. The post time is a bonus, since it remains the most significant time of day in my view of the modern era- Hiroshima- August 6, 1945 of course.
The frozen clock/watch, stuck forever at 8:16, is one of the more powerful images I recall from my youth and play a role in many arts-related projects I've concocted over the years. Example: if there's a broken clock we can put onto a stage set in any show I'm directing, chances are really good I'll reset the hands to 8:16, the beginning of the end of the world, natch. This usually annoys or confuses the set designer.
Here's an image of a watch and another image from a Hiroshima museum, the watch, I note, is a little fast.
And of course, if William Gibson is mentioned, along with the Bomb, you can bet Alan Moore isn't far behind in my mind; demonstrated by a hypertexts watchmen commentary here(found by a google search for smithsonian hiroshima pocketwatch, which is the memory I have in my head, a Smithsonian article with a picture of the watch) and specifically here, with reference to a TIME article on same (not, I note, the Smithsonian). For the really paranoid, there's also an almost-obligatory a reference to W.A.S.T.E. (in its original Pynchonian context)
Also, there's a wicked scary site at the Air Force about the Enola Gay. Not scary because of the Enola Gay qua Enola Gay. But more because there's a little script or flash something up in the top nav that uses a fighter jet targeting system metaphor. How terrifying can we be here, for christ's sake?! It's a clever little hack, but the bleep and blink of the targeting when you've "locked on" to a link is creepy.