Relevant History

Strange signs

"Soylent Green is people! PEOPLE!"

via flickr

No comment really necessary.

via flickr

[ Posted from Hotel Art, Budapest via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, signage, travel

Gellert bath

I came back to the hotel around 6:30, after spending a couple delightful hours at the Gellert baths.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Gellert Bath, Hungary, travel

Tourist day

I spent the day playing tourist, going to the Royal Palace (now some very interesting museums) and the Gellert Baths. Both were great.

I also ran around a little looking for a power adapter for my laptop, as I left mine at the Academy of Sciences yesterday. I walked around to a couple electronics stores, but they were all closed; I even went back to the Academy, but the security guards blew me off.

It's interesting: I could have solved this in Singapore or Seoul in maybe 5 minutes, even on a Sunday morning. Singapore has several electronics stores on every block, while Budapest has cafes and leather goods stores in equal abundance. Tomorrow.

[ Posted from Hotel Art, Budapest via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, travel

Stunning bourse/arcade

Every now and then I'll walk past something and think, oh why not poke my head inside. I come back out a few minutes later, thinking, I'll never forget that. This was one of those spaces: Parizsi Udvar, on the corner of Kigyo utca and Petofi Sandor utca.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: architecture, Budapest, courtyard, Hungary, travel

Frank Zappa Cafe

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Budapest, cafe, Hungary, travel

Greetings from the Archivum Cafe

I'm at a cafe and restaurant called Archivum, after about two hours' walking around and thinking about my talk.

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I left the conference a little early, and fell dead asleep for a couple hours. I had a very nice walk back to the hotel-- the sun came out, and it made me realize that I hadn't actually seen the sun in several days-- but realized on the way that there's was no way I could go to tonight's big conference dinner, and give a coherent talk tomorrow.

backlit anthony, the lesser-known cousin of flat stanley, via flickr

So I napped, worked in the room for a couple hours, then went out in search of some dinner. I headed away from the river this time, toward what I vaguely thought was a university or museum or such.

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Budapest turns out to share with London one of my absolutely favorite urban qualities: the ability to delight and surprise you, if you're willing to walk around.

frank zappa cafe, via flickr

via flickr

Archivum is great. I had this spicy chicken dish, which was excellent (though I thought I'd ordered the honey chicken, but no matter).

i've never liveblogged dinner before! via flickr

I' now faced with an Archivum coffee, which is coffee, honey, nutmeg, and milk froth. Looks good.

archivum cafe, via flickr

Now it's time to wander some more, and think some more about slides and the rhetoric of my talk.

[ Posted from Archivum Cafe, Budapest via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Hungary, food, cafe, Budapest

Quote of the day

[D]own-grading human nature is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to know the scope and limits of our freedom, as Galen Strawson has so admirably argued, in order to be free. (John Cornwell)

[ Posted from Hungarian Academy of Sciences via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: brain

Renyi Institute this morning

I'm going to go to the Renyi Institute, one of Budapest's most important centers for pure mathematics, this morning. (I know how to have a good time.) We're starting-- have started, really-- a new project on the future of science and technology, a kind of turbocharged, Web 2.0-ified version of the Delta Scan, and so I'm going to log a little time on the project by going over and talking to people there.

One of the things I'm really interested in is the big trend from Cold War brain drain-- where world-class minds tended to gravitate from the Third World (or global periphery, or global South, or whatever you like to call it), to Europe and the U.S.-- to brain circulation, where people tend to move back and forth between various countries.

Hungary has a pretty incredible tradition in pure mathematics, and the Renyi Institute is interesting to me for a couple reasons. First, I don't know that much about Hungarian science, and I figure mathematics is as good a place as any to start learning.

Second, Renyi runs a school for foreign students in mathematics, and I'm curious to understand why undergraduates come to it. I think I know the answer, but you'd think that mathematics, of all fields of inquiry, would be place-independent. After all, math is the same everywhere. It's all people standing in front of blackboards, or writing equations on pieces of paper. So why travel anywhere to do it? What's that about? Essentially, the school is a case study in brain circulation-- and conveniently for me, it's one in which Americans go abroad, rather than the other way around.

So this morning I checked the directions on the Web site, got out my map of Budapest (99% of the time the free maps you can pick up at tourist information desks or in hotel lobbies are good enough for my purposes), and spent a sleepy minute looking around for it. Turns out it's about 3 minutes' walk from here.

So I've got a little more time to shower and get some breakfast than I expected, which is cool. I'm pretty smoky, and didn't shower last night, as I got back from Tandem around midnight and was working on my end of cyberspace talk.

I'm now really excited about the talk, by the way. It's not all the time you get to come up with a new way of explaining a subject you've been working on for a couple years, but I think I've done it, and that's very satisfying. I'm going to get at least a chapter section out of it, plus an article in the conference proceedings. Mmmmm, c.v. lines...

[To the tune of Sarah Shannon, "I'll Run Away," from the album "Sarah Shannon".]

Technorati Tags: brain circulation, Budapest, end of cyberspace, future, mathematics, Renyi Institute, science, travel

Greetings from the Tandem Cafe

I made it to the Tandem Cafe, which turns out to be a small, smoky bar, full of young people drinking and, as seems typical in virtually every public space in Budapest, smoking up a storm. I'm going to smell like an ashtray by the time I get back to the hotel.

via flickr

Still, this place is great. I really like the vibe. Now to get some work done.

I realized I've got an opportunity with this talk to bring together some work that I've not previously connected to my end of cyberspace project, particularly Raymond Tallis' work on the hand, and Andy Clark's stuff on the philosophy of cyborgs (which is not far from the surface of the way I think about the subject, but which I still haven't very thoroughly exploited).

via flickr

And doing the talk in a foreign city, far from anything resembling my usual audiences, is quite liberating: it reduces the risk (if it sucks, it's not like I'm likely to see these people again), while raising the reward (if it's good, I'll get invited to other cool things, and have another chapter-- or at least a section of a chapter-- for the book).

[ Posted from Tandem Cafe, Budapest via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: blogging, Budapest, cafe, end of cyberspace, travel

Back at the hotel

I've stopped back at the hotel to upload some pictures and drop off a couple actual physical (as opposed to digital) things before heading out to Tandem, a cafe that apparently is very big with bloggers. Not something I can possibly pass up.

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The conference is really interesting. I'm going to have my hands full living up to the standard of the best speakers.

hungarian academy of sciences, via flickr

I walked along the Danube, back to the hotel, and took another bunch of pictures. By staying off Vaci utca, the main tourist pedestrian avenue, I managed to cut down the number of times I was propositioned to one.

via flickr

So essentially I've spent the day talking to philosophers, scientists, and prostitutes. Budapest is exactly how I imagined it would be.

convergence! a talk featuring stills from the sex web site beautiful agony, via flickr

[ Posted from Hotel Art, Budapest via plazes.com ]

[To the tune of Mogwai, "Auto Rock," from the album "Live at Le Bataclan, April 13, 2006".]

Technorati Tags: conference, Budapest, Hungary, travel