Hello! I'm Tom Saunter

William Gibson began Neuromancer with the line “the sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Perhaps he had something like this in mind:

Image Source: Andrew Rochfort.

When plans for The Shard were unveiled my first thoughts were that its piercing aesthetic would be too harsh for the London skyline. But now it’s been ‘topped out’ and soon to open to the public, it’s time to get used to it.

I heard somewhere that Irvine Sellar, the property magnate behind the tower, intends for his creation to stand for more than 200 years. Well, of course it does, but this concept did the most to shift my perspective.

Imagine how this city will feel in two centuries: totally transformed, utterly modern and yet (hopefully) still uniquely London. The Shard is another step towards an exciting Future London.

To illustrate my point, here’s a video flyover showing the tower in context. Watch closely and you’ll see  London’s slow climb towards a cyberpunk sky:

Meet David: the 8^th generation android from Weyland Industries that pushes technological, intellectual, physical and emotional barriers in robotics:

We’re told one of these units is serving as the butler and maintenance man on Project Prometheus, so I’m sure they’ll be in safe hands…

Imagine you are in the future.

Things haven’t changed much, except for a few… augmentations.

The filmmaking team at N1ON recently flew out to Bangkok, returning with footage documenting how the city’s famously vibrant nightlife has adapted to the ‘age of augmentation’, revealing their symbiotic relationship with tech.

Here’s the teaser:

Stephan Zlotescu (Director), H1 (Director of Photography), Shamim Seifzadeh (Production Designer), MK (Makeup), Chris Sewall (Producer).

Here’s something you don’t see every day:

From the video description:

A simple plus/minus 1V signal from a beat-heavy song can be used to stimulate the motor neurons in the leg of a cockroach. This is an example of such.

Using setups like this can help us understand how neurons and muscles work, and can assist us in understanding our own nervous systems.

I’ll tell you what else this helped me understand: we’ve reached such mastery of nature that we’re now just having fun with it. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but the above example is certainly a bit macabre.