Relevant History

Jewish Museum Vienna

This afternoon I went to the Jewish Museum Vienna. The museum is located near Stephensplatz, in the center of the city, in a building that was once the residence of a Hungarian count, and later an art gallery. I had heard good things about it, but I was completely unprepared for how unexpectedly brilliant and moving it is. Of course, anyone who knows anything about the history of Europe should have some passing familiarity with the brilliant and tragic history of the Jewish community in Vienna. But the experience of the museum isn't powerful because it plays on your emotions in obvious ways: it's not a kind of material version of Schindler's List. It's an amazing experience for other reasons.

The bottom floor is dominated by a large room with selections from the Max Berger Collection of Judaica. The room itself has a curved wall that stretches to the top floor.

via flickr

It reminded me of Adolf Loos' Steiner House, one of the great milestones of early Viennese modernism.

steiner house, vienna

The exhibit is in one long case, with selections from the Torah etched on the glass in front of the objects.

via flickr

The placement of the words is unconventional to say the least, and the intention is twofold. First, it's meant to remind you that the objects were used in rituals that were communal and spoken, and were themselves representations of the divine: in a way, the words are what you should focus on, and the objects are their mere physical expression. Second, the words present a challenge: you have to choose to look past them to see the objects. Seeing objects and their history actually isn't easy, and the design of the exhibit highlights this fact.

via flickr

Now if this all sounds kind of postmodern, you're exactly right. Indeed, the whole museum is saturated with an awareness of the complex nature of representation: the current exhibit on stereotypes, for example, talks about this a lot (no surprise).

via flickr

It's hard to talk about stereotypes and not sound kind of saccharine or predictable: even if you try to apply some reflexivity or rigor, people who study stereotypes tend to conclude that "stereotypes are bad." I haven't seen someone (say) deconstruct Amos and Andy and conclude that black people really are awfully funny when they shuffle.

via flickr

But even the stereotypes exhibit-- inevitably titled "typical!"-- is saved by the amazingly good design. Everything about the exhibits is carefully constructed: the lighting is terrific, the artifacts are well-placed, the rooms flow into each other smoothly, and there are all kinds of interesting choices-- the scrims that hold the captions and gently divide rooms, most notably-- that make the experience a lot more compelling that I expected. Too often we associate this kind of perfectionism with a lack of passion and creativity: real creativity is messy and ragged and inspired, grunge rock rather than Chopin. But that's not at all true: perfectionism can communicate a level of reverence for craft and content that forces you to take its subject more seriously.

via flickr

That experience of consciously looking through-- looking through words etched in glass, through cloth, through one's own perceptions and limitations-- in the Berger Collection and typical! reaches a climax in the viewable storage room in the archive, on the top floor.

via flickr

Actually, that's not quite true. It's more complicated than that. In a normal museum, there are objects that are stored away and inaccessible to the public. The visible storage room, as the name suggests, makes the storage of objects... visible. There are map drawers, climate-controlled storage for textiles, and movable stacks, all the kinds of things that historians are familiar with. Even if you're not someone who's spent time in archives, you might find that infrastructure kind of interesting; but if like me, and you've literally grown up in archives (when I was a kid I went with my father to the National Archives in Rio, and sat in the reading room and read science fiction while he read notarial documents... or whatever), the experience is really striking.

via flickr

But the more I took in the storage area, the more remarkable it seemed. Some of the artifacts had been damaged in the attacks on Jews in 1938, and they'd never been repaired: you could still see the burn marks on some of the Torah covers. And the reason this collection exists is that the civilization that produced it was very nearly completely destroyed: Vienna in particular had one of the most prosperous and accomplished Jewish communities anywhere, and that world was eradicated almost overnight. The collection is a witness to that tragedy... and it exists in part because of it.

While it's described as a visible storage area, you can only see things on the outer shelves; the next shelves are faintly visible... but after that, objects recede into obscurity. Visibility shades into invisibility. You're aware of the objects, but just as aware of everything you can't see: tens of thousands of artifacts, boxes and boxes of material.

via flickr

So the collection is visible and accessible, but at the same time what you can see reminds you of everything that's invisible and inaccessible; it's dedicated to preservation, but some of what's being preserved is a record of destruction. Like the practice of history itself, it demonstrates how we can examine and ponder the records of the past, but never really get to the people and age that made them. It's like a beloved person who's physically close, but firmly and permanently out of reach. All these ideas are stock in trade among historians trained in postmodernism, and I've known them for years; but I've never seen postmodernism put to so serious a purpose, nor its ideas used with such gravity and grace.

There are times when you're confronted with something so brilliant and devastating it's almost overwhelming. Maybe it was the combination of jet lag and overwork, but the brilliance of the idea of the visible archive, the amazing care that went into it, the seriousness with which it uses concepts about history and memory that too often are used for merely clever and sophistic purposes, and the history of the artifacts themselves, made this one of those times for me. For minutes I stood there, not daring to move, not wanting it to end, amazed at how perfect and piercing it all was.

Vienna pictures

I've got lots of pictures from today's wanderings around Vienna.

via flickr

However, at this point I'm too tired to do anything with them besides put them up on Flickr.

via flickr

The photoset is here. Commentary tomorrow some time.

[To the tune of Joe Bonamassa, "So Many Roads (Live)," from the album Live from Nowhere In Particular (I give it 3 stars).]

The Laxenburg carnival

Tonight outside IIASA's headquarters I saw the carnival rides that were being set up earlier this week. This time, they were in action.

via flickr

It was delightfully surreal to see bumpers cars in this baroque square, and the kids were really enjoying themselves. There was a large tent with tables across from the rides, where parents could sit and drink beer. Though many of the riders were teens or adjults.

via flickr

The scene was a little weird, but I'm sure stranger things have happened there, sometimes involving people wearing powdered wigs.

via flickr

And given how quiet the town is, one cannot begrudge any entertainment....

via flickr

[To the tune of Stevie Ray Vaughan, "Little Wing," from the album The Sky Is Crying (I give it 2 stars).]

Day 2 in Budapest

Today was the second day of the conference on ubiquitous communication in an intelligent world. It was one of the most stimulating conferences I've been to in the last couple years, and that's saying a lot: but it was small, intimate, really well-supported, and aimed for a high level of cooperation and productivity. And it worked. Something I'm going to want to replicate.

We finished up in the afternoon, and a couple of us walked over to the Buda side of the city, then climbed up to the castle. We went over to the historic district, which I'd never been to, and took in the Hungarian Telecommunication Museum. Don't laugh. It was actually really interesting.

via flickr

From there we walked through the castle, and made our way to the Elizabeth Bridge.

via flickr

After crossing it, I headed back to the hotel, hung out for an hour, then went out to the Central European Cafe for dinner.

via flickr

Apparently this was a place where a lot of the early Hungarian network theorists used to hang out and work, so naturally I had to go there.

After that I almost went back to my room and went to bed, but decided to go for a walk instead. As I was passing an outdoor cafe, I ran into one of my fellow workshop participants, and I talked him into coming with me to the Frank Zappa Cafe.

via flickr

For those of you who don't know, Zappa was actually a pretty powerful influence in Eastern European countercultural circles: Vaclav Havel described him as "one of the gods of the Czech underground," and Radio Prague explains that

Frank Zappa's popularity in Prague is closely connected to the dark days of the dissident era, when his music and that of the Velvet Underground were blacklisted by the censors. For example, Frank Zappa's second album, Absolutely Free was smuggled into Czechoslovakia within a year of its 1967 release, and critics claim that the music influenced the famous Czech underground rock band, The Plastic People of the Universe. Zappa's tunes thus came to represent freedom and independent thought to dissidents in Czechoslovakia. Reports have it that when young kids in communist Czechoslovakia played heavy rock music, the police would tell them to "turn off that Frank Zappa music."

So, in memory of Zappa and to celebrate the spread of democracy, we sat there and drank a substantial quantity of palinka. We agreed that the cherry was the most interesting, and plum was good but simpler.

via flickr

After that I wasn't quite ready to go to bed, so I walked around some more, and found Raday Utca (where this blog's old banner was photographed). I discovered another cafe that looked promising, so I had a couple more drinks and did some writing. I figure so long as I get up tomorrow, I'll be fine: I can sleep on the train back to Vienna.

[To the tune of Bill Evans Trio, "Autumn Leaves [Take 1]," from the album Portrait In Jazz (I give it 4 stars).]

The world is flat, and Cafes Zoë are unavoidable

There's one in Menlo Park that I go to a lot.

via flickr

Tonight I found another one in Budapest, on Raday Utca. Rather different, but still the same name (allowing for the fact that Hungarians, like Asians, put family names first).

via flickr

Now I need to look for them in Vienna and London....

[To the tune of Wynton Marsalis, "Autumn Leaves," from the album Live at Blues Alley (Disc 2) (I give it 3 stars).]

Evening in Budapest

We went to a village about 45 minutes outside the city, and had dinner at a traditional restaurant on the banks of the Danube. It was one of those dinners that started with grappa and palinka, proceeded to two wines with dinner, and something else afterwards. I haven't had this much to drink since Shrivenham.

via flickr

Dinner was marvelous. I didn't go for the jumbo plate of wild boar and venison-- I didn't think my system could take anything quite that outrageously heavy-- but still it was excellent.

via flickr

When we got back to the city, I decided I had to walk a little to get some of the alcohol out of my system. (For some reason I treat booze like going to the movies: after a couple hours, I'm ready to leave the state of inebriation, and if I can will either steam or walk it off.)

via flickr

So I walked over to the river, and took in the view of the castle and Chain Bridge.

via flickr

This is one of my favorite views in the whole world. I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. It's not as a big or spectacular as the Singapore skyline or downtown Manhattan, but it's beautifully proportioned, and it's the sort of scene you can stare at for hours.

via flickr

Eventually I walked back to the hotel, avoiding the main tourist streets.

[To the tune of Kate Bush, "Running up that Hill," from the album The Whole Story (I give it 4 stars).]

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

This is one of the reasons I like coming to Budapest: the chance to spend time in buildings like this.

entrance to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, via flickr

I think of all the academies of science I've visited, this is the one that has the best location by far: on the banks of the Danube, right beside the Chain Bridge, with the castle, Parliament, and St. Stephen's all nearby. Really something.

via flickr

And it's a beautifully-maintained building. The Hungarians take their science seriously.

[To the tune of Sarah McLachlan, "Fallen," from the album Afterglow (I give it 4 stars).]

Budapest train station

Thursday night I arrived in Budapest, on the late train from Vienna. After a steady diet of Alan Furst I kind of expected something more distinctively Mitteleuropa, preferably viewed entirely in black and white; however, the real thing is a lot more Long Island Railroad or Great Western than old spy thriller.

via flickr<

Still, it did the job, and was very reliable.

I got to Budapest around 11. Even if the trains themselves were modern, the station was pleasingly turn of the century. Like any train station late at night, it had that slight air of fatigued menace. It may have been quite safe, but I just haven't spent enough time here to recognize the social cues.

via flickr.

Just before we reached the station I realized I had very little Hungarian money, so I had so spend a little time wandering around looking for either an open exchange bureau or an ATM, and trying not to go to the guys who were hanging around offering to change money. I remember using them regularly in Latin America when I was a kid, but these days-- I don't know, it seems too easy in the digital age to be legit. Eventually I did find an ATM, got some money, and grabbed a cab.

via flickr.

This was smart, because it turned out that the train station was a lot farther away from my hotel than I'd realized. I ended up getting to the hotel around midnight.

[To the tune of Misia, "Sweetness," from the album Greatest Hits (I give it 4 stars).]

In the Frankfurt Red Carpet Club

I'm in the Frankfurt airport, the closest thing the modern traveller can come to being in one of the factory scenes in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. (The happy ending is when you get to fly out of here.) This is one of the world's busiest airports, but I'm always impressed at how industrial and second-tier it feels: it's more like San Jose than San Francisco, the world's biggest business commuter airport. Even Heathrow in its old days (before Terminals 4 and 5) was nicer.

At least I'm in the Red Carpet Club. I've got a long layover between flights, so it's worth it to perch here for a little while. Though I confess whenever I'm allowed into one of these, I feel like the character in Sting's song "Take Me Dancing"-- that I'm the business equivalent of a poor boy in a rich man's car.

Which is kind of absurd, because for one thing I've put in plenty of miles and deserve to be here as much as they next person (who in this case is one a hundred thousand business travelers dressed today in white shirt and dark suit, sucking down Amstel Lights with a kind of blank determination). But more important, the fact is that this is only a privilege because the public spaces in most airports truly sucks. By comparison this feels nice, when it's really only human. And the free drinks are nice, but are a small reward for the amount of money and carbon the international traveler burns up before they're allowed in.

Yesterday was a pleasant, if somewhat hurried, start to the trip. I got into Philadelphia at 7 (and for once managed to get upgraded, escaping the rule that those regional upgrade award things are designed to make you feel like you could get something cool but also designed to be unusable-- sort of like health insurance for too many people), and spent a little time at Penn before heading downtown. Penn is pleasant, and has been on a steady upward slope for a while in terms of its safety and fresh-faced attractiveness, and I like visiting, but despite having spent some of the most intense and formative years of my life there, increasingly I feel removed from the place. It was central to my last round of self-fashioning-- intellectually I grew up there-- but I'm on to other things now.

From there I went downtown, checked in with my friends at Chemical Heritage Foundation, and then spent most of the rest of the day at Cosi, drinking coffee, working on my talk, and brainstorming with Darlene Cavalier about writing projects. Darlene is an interesting character, a former professional cheerleader turned science policy wonk and public engagement advocate. We've got an op-ed piece coming out in a magazine this fall, and are thinking about what we can work on next.

In the afternoon I gave a keynote talk at CHF's Innovation Day conference, then immediately bolted for the airport. I had a 7:30 flight, and was worried about getting stuck in traffic and security, but both were very smooth: there was virtually no traffic, and PHL has redesigned its security lines to be much more user-friendly.

After a brief layover in Dulles, it was on to Frankfurt. The flight was fine, though I didn't quite get to the level of intense, over-the-Atlantic creative thinking that's characterized some of my other travel; instead I slept more, and worked on business things. I just hope I can get in that mode on the flight home, because I've gotten a LOT of work done on planes, and would be bummed if my brain no longer responds to the combination of stimulus and lack of stimulus-- the prospect of being in another part of the world and facing the challenges of being on road, combined with the immediate reality of being sealed in a tube with only your thoughts and a couple hundred sleepy people-- that long plane flights provide.

I've got about three hours before my flight to Vienna. I think I'll see what the showers are like here.

Later. Feeling a lot more human after a longish shower. I've still got a couple hours until my flight, and I'm going to give myself a couple hours to navigate customs, get my boarding pass, etc.. I didn't put a change of clothes in my carry-on bag; maybe I should have, even though I'm pretty overloaded as it is.

One of the things I really enjoy about coming to Europe is the slight disorientation that comes from interacting with very ordinary, mundane things. Bathroom fixtures may be just different though to require you to think about how they work. Doorknobs may have different degrees of freedom than in America, and the auditory and tactile feedback is more pronounced. Signage is often clearer and more abstract. All in all, it requires you to think a little bit more about how things are made and why; they're material expressions of the fundamental contingency of our world. (On the other hand, dealing with customs agents and government bureaucracies isn't fun; if anything is amiss, you need a level of linguistic and cultural understanding that I usually don't have.)

I'll arrive in Vienna around 5:30 this afternoon, which means I should be in the city an hour or two later-- enough time to get checked into my hotel, then head out and find some dinner (something very light) and do some reading for tomorrow's conference.

Another reason to go back to Copenhagen

The new Copenhagen Concert Hall.

KONCERTHUSET - K3NC241HUS4T, via Flickr

This building, along with the national library (the so-called "Black Rock"), suggests that the Danes now have a thing for extra-interesting cultural monuments. The New York Times writes,

Like Frank Gehry’s 2003 Disney Hall in Los Angeles and Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie, now under construction in Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Nouvel’s new hall demonstrates that an intimate musical experience and boldly imaginative architecture need not be in conflict — they can actually reinforce each other....

Approached along the main road from the historic city, the hall’s cobalt blue exterior has a temporal, ghostly quality. Its translucent fabric skin is stretched over a structural frame of steel beams and tension cables that resembles scaffolding. During the day you can see figures moving about inside, as well as the vague outline of the performance space, its curved form embedded in a matrix of foyers and offices.

It is in darkness that the building comes fully to life. A montage of video images is projected across the cube’s fabric surface at night, transforming it into an enormous light box. Drifting across the cube’s surfaces, the images range from concert performers and their instruments to fragments of form and color.

This is the intoxicating medium of late-capitalist culture. You can easily imagine boxes of detergent or adult chat-line numbers finding their way into the mix.

Workshops are over!!!

I'm relaxing this evening, as the second of the workshops, and the last of my formal obligations, are done for this trip. Two conferences, one conference paper, meetings with students, a workshop in Budapest, meetings with software developers, a workshop outside Vienna-- all are now done.

old and new media, via flickr

It's been a long trip, but it's been very productive. Several of us have learned how to integrate a digital mapping tool I've been playing around with into the workshops, and I have several ideas about how to make the process even more impressive-- how to add more screens and computers, bring some of the exercises closer to participants' lives, things like that.

graphisoft park, via flickr

One reason both workshops went off so well is that we had outstanding local support. In Budapest we worked with a think-tank named Ithaka, while here in Laxenburg we were hosted by the IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis). That made a huge difference, in terms of taking a lot of the weight off us for securing venues, dealing with local arrangements, recruiting people, etc. They know the territory, they have better local connections with intellectuals here, and a better sense of who would play well. In fact, basically all I did was show up and facilitate. I could get used to this.

the blue danube, via flickr

Budapest, of course, is a place I fell in love with last year. Laxenburg turns out to be little more than an intensely picturesque village. But it's picturesque in the way that villages centered around old Hapsburg imperial hunting lodges are: the main attractions in are a modest, unassuming 30,000 square foot hunting lodge, and a several hundred acre hunting park (the elk are gone, but the riding trails are still well-maintained).

the hunting lodge, via flickr

Actually, I'm probably lowballing the size of the lodge, given that there are a number of outbuildings, servants' quarters, church, etc. And I'm not sure if you count the parade grounds or not.

Tomorrow I've got one meeting, then will go up to Vienna, drop my bags at the airport link in the train station, and walk the Ringstrasse. I hear it takes about 4-5 hours, if you make lots of stops to take pictures, have coffee, and of course go to the Hotel Sacher for their famous torte (yes, that's where it comes from). I may fast between now and then, just to be sure I appreciate it.

Budapest, Hungary, Travel, work, laxenburg, Austria

Greetings from Cafe Alibi

The French onion soup ip not bad.

The Blue Danube

Seen from Graphisoft Park

What I love most about Budapest

Wireless everywhere (where else can I Twitter my lunch?) and the most elegant coffee service anywhere.

Chicken with paprika

The best hotel I've ever been in

I made it to my hotel, the Hotel Kalvin House. It may be the coolest hotel I've ever stayed in. Basically, imagine the abandoned building that Nexus 6 designer J. F. Sebastian lived in, turned into a central European pension. That's this place.

I got here a little after midnight, and got dropped off about half a block from the hotel. I walked down the street, and found the entrance-- a big wooden door, no porter, no big welcoming sign. After a little hunting around, I found an apartment buzzer; there were about a dozen buttons, all but one of them blank.

via flickr

I buzzed, and the door unlocked. I walked in... to almost total darkness. After a few seconds, the motion sensor picked me up, and lights went on. There was a sign pointing to the left. I walked over, and didn't see a was a staircase surrounding a tiny elevator. The lights clicked off.

via flickr

I took the elevator to the second floor, and got out. No signs directing me. After a minute, the door to my right opened, and the proprietor checked me in.

My room is on the top floor, essentially the attic. The decor is basic Scandinavian hotel modern, with a few more traditional central European touches. There's free wireless, which is very cool-- I was wondering about that, but happily it's becoming the standard these days.

via flickr

Budapest, hotel, Hungary, night, Travel, Kálvin House

Back in Budapest

I landed in Budapest just before midnight, breezed through Customs, and now I'm on my way into town. I arranged for a ride with an airport shuttle through Expedia, and so far the experience has been good. Of course, we're 10 minutes frmo the airport, so we'll see how things go from here.

We just passed a car with a DVD player built into the ceiling. I'm conditioned to seeing Pixar movies on those screens, and it seemed odd that kids would be out this late. As we passed, I got a second's glimpse. No kids in the car. The driver was watching it. And it's a porn video.

Welcome to Budapest.

The place seems darker than London, in terms of the amount of public lighting that's used (or available).

My Nokia N95 seems to be getting reception here fine. I bought a Vodaphone pay-as-you-go account, and I think I enabled the international calling feature, and though it's about $1.50 to connect a call when you're outside the UK, I think it's worth it if it helps me avoid problems. Plus, just being able to keep up with the family is a huge thing. I called home when I was in Heathrow, and chatted with the kids for a couple minutes; they're not very conversational on the phone, since they can't see themselves like on iChat or Skype, but still. I like being able to do it.

My Mac is seeing a steady stream of wifi signals as we drive along. It's pretty interesting. When I was here last, I was struck by how unwired the place is, even though I couldn't get a power converter on a Sunday to save my life.

Budapest, Travel

Taking a leisurely stroll through a great European city....

Anthony took this.

via flickr

In my defense, I was looking up an address, not just randomly walking around, looking for an open wifi network.

[ Posted from the end of cyberspace via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, mobility, travel

Hot new status symbol

Pictures of yourself getting online in cool places.

via flickr

Of course, this wasn't me. This was Anthony.

Technorati Tags: Budapest, internet, Kitchen Budapest, travel

Kitchen Budapest

On my last day in Budapest, Anthony and I dropped in on Kitchen Budapest, a new digital art / prototyping / cool new stuff place, sponsored by Magyar Telecom.

via flickr

As I understand it, the company isn't looking to Kibu as a source of new products-- they don't have to create X number of prototype cell phones or products per quarter-- but instead as a source of inspiration, a place to see interesting things. Definitely nice work if you can get it!

The space isn't huge, but it's very pleasant, and has a nice buzz. It's on Raday utca, which is one of the hipper neighborhoods in the city-- sort of a paprika-dusted version of Williamsburg or SoMa-- and the building itself is a grand old stone pile. Inside, it's all open space and clean lines, but not antiseptic. They have a couple things that I hadn't seen before, but would like to get for the Institute, or just for my own home office. The black paneling on the columns, for example, is pressed wood with a magnetic laminate: presto, floor-to-ceiling magnetic boards. Very handy.

via flickr

We had just enough time to see some demos of things they're working on. Two of them completely blew me away. The first is a mind-mapping or relational mapping program that's written in Flash. They call it Zui, because it's also a zooming browser: you can dive into an area, see new details, go deeper on some particular detail, etc., etc. (here's a demo).

via flickr

The Institute makes a lot of maps, and so I'm always interested to see programs like these. What impressed me about this is that it's browser-accessible, and it's also offers a way to combine abstraction or high-level organization-- the top layer of the map-- with lots of interesting detail that reveals itself only when you call for it.

So that was very neat. But what blew me away was seeing it in combination with a touch-sensitive screen they've created.

via flickr

The system consists of a glass screen with infrared sensors, backed with paper. Behind it is a projector that throws images on the screen, and a camera that watches what users are doing.

via flickr

Put all the pieces together, and you have a system that lets you project a map, then move around it by using gestures.

via flickr

They've also created a table version with a camera mounted above. What this let you do is put physical objects on top of the map-- say, a Post-it with some words, a photograph, etc.-- which the camera then records, and integrates into the map: in other words, put a physical object on the surface, and it's transformed into a digital object on the screen. Very, very cool.

Technorati Tags: art, Budapest, convergence, design, digital culture, digital-physical, Hungary, Kitchen Budapest

Graphisoft Park

I spent some time during my lat day at Budapest in Graphisoft Park, and technology park on the outskirts of the city. It was developed by Gabor Bojar, the founder of Graphisoft, first as a home for the company, and then as space for other tech companies: Microsoft, Apple, SAP, Canon, and now a couple biotech companies have buildings there.

via flickr

The new biotech buildings are especially interesting from a purely architectural standpoint. It has some echoes of one of Mies van der Rohe's buildings, and I think the main entrance resembles Corbusier's church at Ronchamp. Anyway, it's a great space.

via flickr

The site is on what was a glass factory, and there are still some very cool old buildings on the outskirts of the site. There's a clock tower that looks like something designed when the architect had gone slightly mad.

via flickr

It also has a nice view of the Danube.

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, science cities, technology, travel

Homeward bound

I'm packed, and heading to the airport in a few hours.

via flickr

It's been a heck of a trip, and I'm sad to leave, but I'm also looking forward to going home.

via flickr

Which, all things considered, strikes me as a very good combination.

via flickr

[To the tune of U2, "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)," from the album "Achtung Baby".]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, travel

When zombies talk about the future?

via flickr

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

Technorati Tags: Budapest, conference, Hungary, travel

Couple of Jamais' pictures from the trip

via flickr

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, travel

Great dinner

Went to dinner tonight with essentially the entire research staff of Ithaka, the group that organized today's conference.

via flickr

We went to a basement place called Bor La Bor, which serves traditional Hungarian food. Giant appetizer platters, cutting boards instead of appetizer plates, then on to huge main courses.

via flickr

I went with the beef with parsley dumplings, which was surprisingly delicious.

via flickr

[To the tune of Tears For Fears, "Year Of The Knife," from the album "The Seeds Of Love".]

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

Technorati Tags: Budapest, dinner, food, Hungary, travel

Cafe Alibi

I'm having an espresso at Cafe Alibi, a lovely little place right around the corner from the hotel.

via flickr

The conference went pretty well. Now it's off to dinner, then back to the hotel to do some work-- my day job marches along, after all-- and then to prepare for tomorrow, a mix of meetings during the day and evening Institute conference calls.

via flickr

But for now, I'm just enjoying the sun going down, the lights coming on, and people going home.

via flickr

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

Technorati Tags: Budapest, cafe, Hungary, travel

Working on tomorrow's talk

After dinner I went over to the Frank Zappa cafe (which actually was quite nice) and spent some time working on tomorrow's talk.

via flickr

I've been working on several different research lines relating to the future of science, and think I can put two of them together in a way that'll be pretty interesting to my Hungarian audience.

via flickr

[To the tune of Stone Temple Pilots, "Interstate Love Song," from the album "Thank You".]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, cafe, future, science, STS, travel

Something doesn't translate quite right

via flickr

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

[To the tune of Santana, "Wishing It Was," from the album "Supernatural".]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, humor, Hungary, restaurant, signage, travel

Cool coffee services

The cafes here have very nice coffee services: the drink is served on a tray, with a little mineral water chaser.

via flickr

The mineral water isn't cold, but that works quite well in this context. I may try to get one of these before I leave.

Technorati Tags: Budapest

Charge!

I got a charger. I found a little electronics store near the hotel, and they sold me an adapter that will work almost everywhere in the world. I think if aliens landed from Garzatron 6, this thing would have the right plug.

It's roughly the size of a paving stone, and doesn't weigh much less, so I think I'm going to leave it in the suitcase, so I'll always have one.

But I can't complain. I can now power up.

I'm still going over the Academy this afternoon to see if I can get my old one, though.

[ Posted from Central Kavehaz es Etterem via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary

Lunch at Central Kavehaz es Etterem

I had a meeting this morning, to go over arrangements for our conference tomorrow. Afterwards, I came back to the hotel, dropped off my jacket (it's warm today), and Anthony, Jamais and I went to a nearby cafe and restaurant, Central.

via flickr

It's a very cool place: fairly new, but decorated in a lovely late imperial style. You can imagine sitting here and reading the latest critical review of the new Secessionist style bank, or trading gossip about the suicide of Prince Leopold. I'd passed by it a few times, and always meant to go in.

via flickr

I had the Central European mixed grill, which was every form of meat that grazes, hunts or flies between the Baltic and the Adriatic, plus potatoes, sauerkraut, and pickles. I may be able to get up from the table. I haven't tried yet.

via flickr

[ Posted from Central Kavehaz es Etterem via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, cafe, Hungary, restaurant, travel

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.

via flickr

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.

via flickr

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.

via flickr

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

What could this mean?

Graffiti in Budapest, near my hotel:

via flickr

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

Technorati Tags: Budapest, graffiti, Hungary, travel

At the conference

I made it to the conference, which is in a beautiful old building along the Danube. I got a solid nine hours' sleep, though I'd meant to only get seven. Still, I'm here, and all's well.

I'm blogging the conference on End of Cyberspace.

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

Technorati Tags: Budapest, communication, conference, Hungary, mobility, wireless, work

I'm online!

As you can see, I'm online from my room. I got a prepaid card at the front desk, and off I go. Or on I go, I mean.

[To the tune of Adiemus, "Corrente (Courante)," from the album "Borders Without Boundaries".]

The Hookers of Budapest

There's a great history of the Kew Gardens called The Hookers of Kew. The Hooker family produced several notable botanists, including two directors of Kew in the nineteenth century. Alas, the hookers I've been encountering on my walks this evening haven't been botanists.

Apparently Hungary legalized prostitution a few years ago, but this hasn't turned it into a cottage, or brothel, industry; there are still... freelancers. Actually, most of them seem to work in pairs.

I may not go out in the evenings. It's kind of disconcerting dealing with them. Actually, the thing that gets me most is how good their English is. Of course, the whole being offered the opportunity to exchange money for sex thing is pretty weird, too.

[To the tune of Django Reinhardt, "Solitude," from the album "The Best of DJango Reinhardt".]

Greetings from Budapest, I have no wifi

I'm in an Internet cafe in Budapest, as I can't get the wifi in my room working right. However, I'm hopeful that I can either straighten it out by morning, or use the wifi at the conference tomorrow.

So... here I am, 5000 miles away from home, in a pretty fascinating city dominated by giant castle complexes and beautiful bridges spanning the Danube, and I'm obsessing over an Internet connection. The world is flat. No, I'm just dumb.

Actually, Budapest is pretty cool. There's a ring of Soviet-era terribleness around parts of the city, but the area I'm in is pretty much all Art Nouveau and neoclassical, big stone buildings with wrought iron and gigantic windows on the second floor. Quite marvelous. Hungarian is only slightly less odd than Finnish, but just about everyone understands a few words of English (and the hookers are disconcertingly multilingual).

I think it should be a fascinating time, but I'm looking forward to being able to post pictures to my Flickr photo set.

Hotel Art

The hotel lobby is playing American pop music. As I was checking in, I was exhorted to "shake your groove thing," and when I next went out of my room, the theme from Ghostbusters was playing. Though somehow Django Reinhardt seems more appropriate to the time of day and mood.

I got an iron and ironing board, and smoothed out the wrinkles in my shirts. I kind of overpacked, but will still have to either wash a few things out in the sink (what I usually do), or spring for the $2 per shirt to have them washed. The ironing was a tiny challenge, as the iron was a relic of the days of the Glorious Workers' Ironing Age, when you didn't need bourgeois luxuries like steam. But I made it through, and don't think I'll look too bad.

Technorati Tags: Budapest, hotel, Hotel Art, Hungary, travel

What is it about working on planes?

I spent several hours on the plane working on the talk I'm giving at the philosophy of telecommunications convergence (I'm giving several others, but they're either completely informal or already scripted to within an inch of their lives). I worked through a new angle that brings together some stuff I've been reading on cognitive psychology with the work I've been doing on the shape of the post-cyberspace world, and while I've got some more to do to it, I'm pretty pleased with the basic framework.

I now do some of my best thinking on planes, and I'm trying to figure out why-- and how I can replicate it on the ground.

Part of it is that the flight is often the last serious block of uninterrupted, reasonably conscious time I have to work on a talk. The pressure is on, and either I deliver now or I face screwing up. But I think a big part of it is the utter neutrality of the space: the cabin is a blank space, free of distractions but generally plentiful in caffeine. It's physically blank-- other than the other passengers, there's very little to look at or be distracted by, except for the movie-- and therefore psychologically blank.

I wonder how to recreate this at home. I've been playing with ideas for a home office that involve lots of hulking Ikea bookcases, which would let me bring books home from the office and out of storage; and while I still need that, I wonder if perhaps the actual space where I sit and write should be a lot plainer-- just white or wood, without so much as a pencil cup, just a chair and whatever I carry into it.

[To the tune of Django Reinhardt, "Nuages," from the album "The Best of DJango Reinhardt".]

Technorati Tags: work, writing

Greetings from Frankfurt International Airport

I'm in Frankfurt, and have a couple hours' layover until my flight to Budapest. My flight over was fine, as uneventful as one could hope for.

The view from the plane-- we didn't land at a terminal, but instead took a bus in

This airport is huge. I've been here before-- once or twice before-- and my overwhelming impression of the place was that it's gigantic. Given that they have something like 80 flights an hour, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. And they're to everywhere: on the same board you see flights to Singapore, Denver, Dakar, Moscow, and Miami, all leaving within twenty minutes of each other.

One of my colleagues loves Frankfurt, but he flies first class, and thinks quite highly of the service he gets; I'm in a somewhat different league.

Lots and lots of flights

It still feels enormous, but it feels a bit friendlier than in the past. I think it's that this time I didn't go through a security gate that had guys with machine guns hanging around. That'll really make a relationship feel formal. I also remembered this time that the protocol is a bit different than in either the UK or US: you're supposed to completely empty your pockets (including wallet, passport, paper, etc.), but you keep your shoes on.

Don't remind me that it's almost 1 in San Francisco

I went ahead and went over to my gate, which was a bit of a tactical error: I'm now trapped here, with only a little take away thing for sustenance. Fortunately I'm not all that hungry, but it's a caution to not be too hasty about leaving the international shopping area, despite its overwhelming number of handbag, liquor, and perfume stores, and proceeding to the gate. At least the Diet Cokes there only cost two Euros, rather than three here.

The red awning of the Take Away

I can see a wireless network here, and it only costs double the already high SFO rate. Ah, the romance of travel. Still, I think I'll go online briefly, if only to post a couple things and download my e-mail. There's no way any of my friends are going to be online. Distance may be conquered by the Internet, but time zones are still an undeniable reality. On the upside, I found a table beside an electrical outlet, and had the good sense to bring my two-pin European plug, so I can watch Firefly without running down the batteries.

A display of fine watches, with a statue of a reclining Goethe visible in the background, just to the right of center

On the flight over I ran into a consultant who occasionally works with the Institute. He's on his way to Croatia for a few days, and I think we're going to be on the same flight back to the States next week. Small world.

Actually, the wifi isn't working for me, so I'm not going to upload anything, I guess. But I wonder if I should go get a seat. That would be a good idea, I think.

[To the tune of Yoshinori Sunahara, "Summer," from the album "Take Off and Landing".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Frankfurt, Germany, travel

Off to look for some food

I'm going to go find a little lunch before I get on the flight. More from Frankfurt, maybe, or more likely, Budapest!

[To the tune of Pink Floyd, "Two Suns In the Sunset," from the album "The Final Cut".]

Technorati Tags: airport, Budapest, San Francisco, SFO, travel