Archive | telecomm

Aj “Low Hug” Michel points me to a project compiling punk rock fliers from her old haunt: “Artifacts of the Improbable:Philadelphia Punk Rock Flyers 1978-1990.” Instead of a book, there are 2000 (!) compiled on a CD-ROM. Obviously too many for any one book, such a printed compilation would be more like an pictorial encyclopedia of the Philly punk scene. Nicely, 1000 lower-rez thumbnails are on the site for browsing.

And the scope goes beyond just punk shows, too, including political posters and ones from one-off shows and stores. It’s quite an index of the underground and just-below-the-surface cultural life of Philadelphia.

In a recent Philadelphia Citypaper article the project’s creator says,

“Each and every flier represents a moment in time that brought together anywhere from a couple of people to a couple of hundred,” says Lewes. “For many of the bands [and] clubs, the fliers are the only documentary evidence they existed.”

There’s always history, even where the historians don’t take notice.

The New Networks Institute is giving away PDFs of a book that “the Bells Don’t Want You to Read.” At first blush it looks interesting and may open some eyes about how our telecomm infrastructure is actually operated (and not operated in our best interest). As far as I can tell the NNI is essentially one guy, the author of the book, and so giving the book away like this will probably gain it a much bigger audience than it had otherwise as a $49.95 retail item published by this small institute.