In his "devil and sulfur" talk Hugo Chavez referred to President Bush on Wednesday, Chavez held up a book by Noam Chomsky, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," and recommended it to the General Assembly and he added: "I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because the threat is in their own house. The Devil is right at home. The Devil, the Devil, himself, is right in the house." The next day Chavez adressed "The people of the United States should read this ... instead of the watching Superman movies," he told reporters later on his viral marketing tour in New York. One day later, "Hegemony or Survival," first published in 2003, had rocketed into the top 10 on Amazon, where it was ranked 20,664 the day before, and Barnes & Noble.com, from a previous ranking of 748. As of Friday night, the book was No. 1 on Amazon and No. 2 on Barnes & Noble. Noam Chomsky, 77-year-old linguist, has long been an critic of U.S. foreign policy. His other books include "9-11," a best-selling collection of interviews, and "Failed States,".

Curiosity is as old as humankind. Ever since humans exist, they want to explore the world they are living in. They want to reach the “Edge of the World” to see what’s beyond it, even if it puts their lives in great danger.

Many conquerers and explorers left their harbors and sailed the seas without having an idea where they are going not to mention whether they will survive. Many of them died at sea, but - as we know today - nobody died of falling off the “Edge of the World”.

Some weeks ago, I was attending at the MIT a presentation of Toshio Iwai work; a very smart and clever guy, but my fried made a comment on him after the presentation “that he quite not got it” and Toshio's reminder to the audience that he is actually a media artist made me suspicious to. Toshio Iwai showed all his hi-tek, interaction projects between music and visuals, including short extracts of Elektroplancton a very cute Nintendo DS game and his instrument TENORI-ON in coop with Yamaha.

It was quite a contrast to step into the IBC salon a week after attending Ars Electronica. The conference boldly calls itself the biggest international broadcasting event, specially since the American NAB has the N instead of an I; it’s national and not international, and it’s 4 times bigger than the biggest international event. It’s the American way. Anyway, IBC 2006 was quite impressive and reaffirmed how the broadcasting world is excited with new technologies emerging as saviours for the old model of doing things. Moreover, the top-up tradition of doing things seams to be falling in love with some interaction trends.

Did you know that the London based graffiti artist Banksy has most of his artworks collected on Flickr

FreeCulture

This Monday, students at the University of Southern California are holding the inaugural meeting of the USC chapter of FreeCulture, an international campus movement to support free speech, open networks, and the right to use the Internet to create and share digital culture. Activists from FreeCulture

There I was, at Ars Electronica Centre, checking the permanent collection of the festival. The Centre does appear a little bit "touristy", sort of an amusement park of new media, but it still bears important and impressive pieces, such as the distorted house of Toshio Iwai; that is just mind blowing.

On the last floor, by myself, my performance of Golan Levin and Zab Lieberman’s “The Manual Input Sessions” began. The piece was created in 2004, and presented Saturday, day when Ars Electronica took place at St. Florian monastery. The piece/performance is “a series of audiovisual vignettes which probe the expressive possibilities of hand gestures and finger movements.” Check on the website www.tmema.org/mis.

The german broadcast company DW-World just released a competition to for the best blog. It is not exclusive for blogs in german.

www.thebobs.com

I still owe an article about the St. Florian day of Ars Electronica, which I loved and apparently wasn't along with the impression.