Thu, 23 Feb 2006
bibliography update
The reason for the literature spree of the recent days is my planning of the two courses
↵on computergames and online-communities I will teach during the upcoming term. In the wake of that I updated, 'enhanced', and reformatted my
↵online bibliography. Now it's laid out more clearly, I guess. Prey on it—that's why it is online.
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 | 13:03 | category:
/updates/technical
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Wed, 22 Feb 2006
cyberanthropology—anthropology of cyberculture
↑BUDKA, PHILIPP AND
↑MANFRED KREMSER. 2004. "
↑CyberAnthropology—Anthropology of CyberCulture"
[.pdf | 715KB], in
Contemporary issues in socio-cultural anthropology: Perspectives and research activities from Austria edited by S. Khittel, B. Plankensteiner and M. Six-Hohenbalken (eds.), pp. 213-226. Vienna: Loecker.
abstract:
This article investigates the historical development, the major theories and the ethnographic domains of an anthropology of cyberculture. In doing so, the authors use Arturo Escobar's influential paper on cyberanthropology, written in 1994, and connect potential research questions posed in this text with research projects recently conducted at the Viennese Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. The authors conclude that the anthropology of cyberculture is not a new sub-discipline of socio-cultural anthropology, but a new field of inquiry with clear-cut domains and areas of ethnographic research.
Wed, 22 Feb 2006 | 13:38 | category:
/literature
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computer game research 101
↑SMITH, JONAS HEIDE. 2002.
↑Computer game research 101: A brief introduction to the literature.
↑Game Research, December 2002.
abstract:
A few years ago there wasn’t much to talk about. Now, however, computer game research is booming resulting in common terminology, competing paradigms and serious discussion on the subjects of games and gaming. This article attempts to provide an introduction to the field of computer game research.
Wed, 22 Feb 2006 | 13:12 | category:
/literature
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Tue, 21 Feb 2006
co-creative media
↑MORRIS, SUE. 2004.
↑Co-creative media: Online multiplayer computer game culture.
↑Scan: Journal of media arts culture ↑1(1).
abstract:
As a new and emerging research area, computer games demand the development of new theoretical frameworks for research and analysis. In addition to the specific requirements of a new medium, the advent and rapidly rising popularity of multiplayer computer gaming creates further challenges for researchers when the text under analysis forms a locus for human interaction – structuring and mediating communication between large numbers of people, and spawning social practices and identifications within a cultural economy extending beyond the game itself. While multiplayer gaming practices develop within existing social, cultural, technological and economic structures, they are also producing significant shifts within these structures.
Here I will be discussing the gaming practices surrounding multiplayer, first-person shooter (FPS) computer games such as Quake III Arena and Half-Life Counter-Strike. Since the mid-1990s, a large and remarkably cohesive online community has developed around these games, involving hundreds of thousands of players, with up to 100,000 FPS gamers actively playing online at any one time (http://www.gamespy.com/stats, Mar 5, 2003). In addition to actual gameplay, the FPS community engages in practices of game development, criticism, commentary, debate, information exchange, file-sharing and social organisation. Online access to open-source game development tools, the provision of venues for distribution and publicity of player-generated game content and modifications, the use of the online community in game testing, and increased communication between game development companies and players are currently shifting the boundaries between the traditional roles of media producers and consumers and changing the ways in which these games are made. Study of the practices surrounding multiplayer FPS games can provide insight into new and emerging models of media production, consumption and distribution, play, community formation and challenges to existing structures of social and economic power.
Tue, 21 Feb 2006 | 18:40 | category:
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Tue, 21 Feb 2006 | 18:20 | category:
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Mon, 20 Feb 2006
gaming at a lan event
↑JANSZ, JEROEN AND LONNEKE MARTENS. 2005.
↑Gaming at a LAN event:
the social context of playing video games.
[.pdf | 235KB] ↑new media & society ↑7(
↑3):333-355.
abstract:
An exploratory survey was undertaken about the appeal of
playing video games at a Local Area Network (LAN) event
where personal computers are linked in order to play both
face-to-face and online. First, we wanted to know who
the visitors of a LAN event were, because there is hardly
any research available about this class of gamers. Second,
we wanted to know why they participated in a LAN
event. The survey showed that LAN gamers were almost
exclusively male, with a mean age of 19.5 years. They
devoted about 2.6 hours each day to gaming. They were
motivated by social contact and a need to know more
about games. The competition motive was third in the
total sample. A subgroup of heavy gamers obtained a
higher score on competition. This article emphasizes the
importance of the social context of gaming and interprets
its results as a nuance of the stereotype of the solitary,
adolescent gamer.
keywords:
gender differences, interactive media, LAN event, motives, video games
Mon, 20 Feb 2006 | 19:07 | category:
/literature
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Mon, 20 Feb 2006 | 18:07 | category:
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Sun, 19 Feb 2006
history and development of lan groups
↑SWALWELL, MELANIE. 2004.
↑The history and development of lan groups: An australasian case study.
[.pdf | 160KB] ↑Proceedings of the ↑Other Players Conference, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 6-8 December 2004.
abstract:
Few research projects have inquired into Lanning, the practice where gamers play multiplayer games with and against each other, usually over purpose built local area networks (LAN), or Lans (the exceptions are Swalwell, 2003; Jansz). Lan gaming is not only an important precursor to newer forms of networked gaming; it is also an evolving form of gaming in its own right. This paper reports on research into the history and development of several Lan gaming groups in Australasia. It addresses the development of Lans and their changes over time, through reporting on conversations with Lan organizers.
keywords:
LAN, organisation, experimentation, re- and de-territorialization, fun
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 | 20:50 | category:
/literature
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from pong to planet quake
gamemodding as post-industrial unwaged work
↑POSTIGO, HECTOR R. 2003.
↑From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-industrial transitions from leisure to work [.pdf | 88KB].
↑Information, Communication & Society ↑6(4):593–607.
abstract:
In the closing weeks of 2002, video games were featured in various popular
American news publications and media outlets such as Wired, Entertainment
Weekly, Newsweek and Time Magazine. It is becoming increasingly apparent that
video games are no longer child’s play, but rather that they are poised to become
a major entertainment form for the twenty-first century. Social analysts and
media scholars must begin to formulate an understanding of this emerging
mass-consumer phenomenon because it will increasingly impact social and
economic structures of post-industrial societies. Part of the tremendous value
generated by the American video-game industry is tied into broad global economic
shifts that have created a space where services and ephemeral products,
such as software, can be created and cheaply distributed. The predominance
of ‘high-tech’ production, the rise of the Internet, and the cultural capital
associated with computerization all have contributed to the rise of hobbyist
software developers that currently tinker with commercial video games and
freely add to them increasing levels of sophistication. This paper sees videogame
programmer hobbyists as a source of some of the significant value that
the video-game industry generates, and understands the role of the programmer
hobbyists through the lens of theories on post-industrial work. My analysis
situates the work of hobbyists on the Internet within the context of post-
Fordism and explores some of the motivations for this unwaged work. In the
sections that follow, I will analyse the potential value of the work hobbyist do
as well as analyse its transition to paid work as some commercial software
developers experiment with incorporating these fan bases into the game design
process.
keeywords:
unwaged work, mods, modders, modifications, hackers
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 | 20:20 | category:
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gamer br
↑Gamer br [46:50min | .avi | 147.3MB] by Pedro Bayeux and Flavio Soares
is a Brazilian documentary about the game scene around here. It gives voice to gamers, producers, lanhouse owners, journalists, psychologists, anthropologists, politicians, government representatives and game enthusiasts about questions as professional gaming, market, 'addiction', piracy, policies of incentive, censorship and the so discussed 'violence' in games. [my emphasis]
And finally it builds up to a very sensible discussion of 'the virtual'. All in all I take
Gamer br to be a kind of ethnological documentary. Just for the flavor, here are some snippets from the English subtitles:
"I think piracy is harmful, it makes companies lose money ... But, if it wasn't for piracy, we wouldn't have the game market we have today in Brazil."
—pablo miyazawa, journalist
"There are many reasons for us not to have a strong game industry in Brazil. The most recent of them is piracy. Well, it's not a cause of it, it's actually a consequence, of the absence of a clear policy for content to be cheaper, for it to get to people more easily, for it to be more democratic... So piracy is nothing but one consequence of a strangled market at the mercy of international products that flood into Brazil—and Brazil does not assert itself with an economy of its own."
—alfredo manevy, ministry of culture representative
"I think some games have very complex narratives, which could also be used as literary theories."
—hermano vianna, anthropologist
tnx to 2R
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 | 18:31 | category:
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Fri, 17 Feb 2006
desperately seeking phil
↑Robot goes missing at
The Sidney Morning Herald tells a hilarious story:
Philip K Dick is missing. [...] a state-of-the-art robot named after the author.
The quirky android, was lost in early January while en route to California by commercial airliner. [...]
Robotics wizard and lead designer David Hanson built the robot as a memorial to Dick, whose 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the 1982 classic Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford. [...]
In Blade Runner, set in a Los Angeles of 2019, Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckhard, a Blade Runner or policeman whose job is to track down and terminate escaped human clones known as "replicants."
The irony of the situation—a missing replica of the very author who championed "replicant" freedom—is not lost on Phil's creators.
But they still want him back.
Head over to the project's website:
↑Philip K. Dick Android Project, and blog:
↑The PKD Android.
via entry at william gibson's blog
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 | 21:49 | category:
/hardware
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Thu, 16 Feb 2006
lara croft 7.0
Computergame-heroine-turned-pop-culture-icon Lara Croft has a new likeness:
↑Karima Adebibe. Read the whole story at
↑Evolution Of Lara Croft. Just for the fun of it I raided the web's tombs and compiled the pics of all seven Lara-models. See pic above, from left to right and in chronological order:
↑Lucy Clarkson,
↑Rhona Mitra,
↑Nell McAndrew,
↑Vanessa Demouy,
↑Lara Weller,
↑Angelina Jolie, and
↑Karima Adebibe. Hint to the male audience: click the links if you'd like to have some sleepless nights—but do not forget to turn Google's
"safe search" off beforehand. Ah, hell yes,
↑2R, ya know, liek
↵sex'n'stuff sells, rite? But this
is research, as it clearly exposes how contemporary game icons are designed. For an emic discussion of this design-strategy read chapter 5
"And on the opposite side of the nipple coin..." of the brilliant
↑A Gamer's Manifesto.
via entry at mosaikum
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 | 18:34 | category:
/fieldnotes
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volkskunde vs. völkerkunde?
kulturwissenschaftliche technikforschung and cyberanthropology
Since quite a time
[the first entry is dated 25 May 2005] there is a weblog called
↑Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung published by the
↑Institut für Volkskunde of Hamburg University. The blog's
↑about is quite enlightening, but unfortunately in German only. The about's main arguments are culled from the
↑startpage of the Forschungskolleg Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung's website. There's an English version, too, and I take the liberty to quote from it extensively, especially as I second every argument given:
[...] "Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung" deals with the question of how—that is, in which ways and with which consequences—, but also in how far, technology has inscribed itself into our society and into human beings.
Doing "Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung" means to depart from two main perspectives: On one hand, it departs from the technological objects and how human beings actually handle so-called technological artefacts. On the other hand, "Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung" always investigates the situatedness of technology in everyday life ("Sitz der Technik im Leben"). The aim of such an approach is the analysis of the various influences technology exerts on the ways we shape our lives. These can be open or hidden and they can be perceived consciously or unconsciously.
The anthropological and ethnographic approach used within the "kulturwissenschaftlichen Technikforschung" (KT) aims at probing the diverse and multiple dimensions of experience in regard to technology. KT departs from the German University Subject "Volkskunde" defined as research looking into our every day lives and into everyday culture from a contemporary but also historical perspective. In order to do so, KT looks into the history and culture of technology from the perspective of the active users and handlers of technology. KT deals with the "emergence" of technological phenomena, as much as with negotiations of user conventions and meanings of technology. KT investigates questions about processes through which technology is made familiar and how it is inscribed into our everyday lives, as much as it looks into how an increasing number of life spheres are gradually immersed by technology. Last but not least, KT explores the ways of how technology submerges and broadens people's minds in regard to their perceptions, actions, ethics and other points of reference. [...]
Now you may ask what is
"Volkskunde" and how is it differentiated from
↵sociocultural anthropology? Allow me another quote, this time from
↑Alan Barnard's
"History and Theory in Anthropology":
In Germany and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, there is a further distinction, namely between
Volkskunde and
Völkerkunde. These terms have no precise English equivalents, but the distinction is a very important one.
Volkskunde usually refers to the study of folklore and local customs, including handicrafts, of one's own country. It is a particularly strong field in these parts of Europe and to some extent in Scandinavia.
Völkerkunde is the wider, comparative social science also known in Germany as
Ethnologie. (↵
Barnard 2000: 2)
Doesn't match the above, huh? Well, in the terms of Henry Kissinger we are living in
times of upheaval, meaning that academical disciplines are changing, borders and perspectives are redefined
[no surprise, as those are manifestaions of intrinsic aspects of science and every academical endeavour—if you disagree with that go back to Epistemology I ;-]. And indeed since quite some years
↑Munich's Institut für Volkskunde has added
Europäische Ethnologie to its name. This addition lured some outsiders, namely within the university's higher administration, to the following request:
"Fuse those two things, they have converged to indistinguishability already!" The "greater vision" was to have the fusage manifested in one BA-course-of-studies, and pressure towards that end was executed upon us. For roughly the last one and a half years we had intensive talks with our
Volkskunde-peers. In terms of envisioned structure the result of the talks indeed is a combined BA, but with two clearly separated MAs on top of it. The really worthwhile results of the talks are the vast clarification of indeed different methods, perspectives and approaches at large.
Volkskunde and
Völkerkunde of course are kin disciplines which share a lot—but there's a big heap they don't share. Herein lies the value of cooperation: mutual influence and benefit.
Interdisciplinarity—still one of the biggest buzzwords flying around into every direction within the ivory tower and beyond—needs
disciplines as a prerequisite. And it's not meant as a melting pot. The same is true for the respective sub-genres
↵cyberanthropology and
↑Kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung. There's still the naive, cliché-laden way of how to distinguish disciplines: Them guys are looking at Europe, and them other guys are looking on Africa; those two gangs are both looking at technology ... That way of defining and circumscribing academical endeavours is as dated as hat and helmet pictured above. They are a joke at best.
initially via entry at sblog
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 | 16:51 | category:
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Wed, 15 Feb 2006
grid
Only the dim blueish glow of the cartesian grid gives something like structure to the unfathomamble black void. My eyes just lock on the grid. Yet there is nothing else. But the void is ready and set, it waits. It waits for my input via the interface, for my creativity to give birth to something. By defining points, edges, polygons I carve volumes out of the void, or into it. Now there is something the grid can lock on. Joining, subtracting, manipulating the volumes, giving them surfaces and qualities, flipping them inside out. A world emerges. A world other individuals will be able to experience. My creation.
Wed, 15 Feb 2006 | 14:01 | category:
/fielddiary
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Tue, 14 Feb 2006
darth payne
The external HDD still works like a charm, and I am again at organizing my material. Just found the above unfinished faceskin for
↵MP2 which I did on 10 September 2004. Of course it was intended for
↵LS5, which never saw the light of day. See
↵lightsaber outtakes. It's not a great deal all in all, I know, but on a small scale the above artefact illustrates a typical process of combining elements and aspects—most artefacts stemming from modding-communities are collages of this kind. The image's backdrop is the digitally reworked face of actor
↑Timothy Gibbs who gave his likeness to Mr. Payne in MP2. The semi-transparent overlay is a recreation of the tattoo which was painted onto actor/stuntman
↑Ray Park's face to turn him into Sith-Lord Darth Maul for
↑Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace.
Tue, 14 Feb 2006 | 15:34 | category:
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Mon, 13 Feb 2006
threehundred gig aleph
After having succesfully implemented measures against the plague invading my cyberanthropologist's hut, I was so elated that I started to realize my plan to enlarge the private parts of my hut by an appendix. Meaning that I wanted some mass-storage device featuring decent read and write speed and with enough space to really organize my material. Of course, I definitely need a godbox for my project—mainly working on a laptop soon won't be feasible anymore—but I need another solution before I get my thoughts together concerning the right parts of the godbox
[this still can take ages].So this morning I went out, entered a large computer-store and haunted the storage-devices shelves. Finally I opted for a 300GB external HDD
[the terabyte-thingie they had on display definitely was too costly], which connects via USB 2.0. Aluminium-encased 300GB for 159,- Euros is not too bad, I think. Immediately after the purchase I dragged the HDD to the office and went to work ... you guessed it—I spent the better of the day on trying to install the thing. As always there is the promise of plug'n'play. Forget it. The plug part works, but the play neither worked on the laptop (XP), nor on the desktop (Win2K). Research on the Internet only proved that a lot of other people experience similar problems. Again lots of proposals for solutions. Some quite over-the-top, like fucking around a lot inside the registry ... to install a plug'n'play peripheral!—can't be arsed to do that. The manufacturers website only features a .pdf-version of the manual of which a hardcopy is included in the box, and a Win98-driver (which already is included in the box, too). The hotline, as every hotline, of course is unreachable. After having tinkered around for an hour or two I was close to carrying the HDD back to the shop. Just in time a very last thought occured to me: I already had unplugged every other USB-device, except one: my
↵new snake. Unplugging the mouse, replugging the HDD ... now it works like a charm. That's the meaning of plug'n'play: pull all plugs, fool around with all your cables a bit, plug in only one, and only one! device, then maybe play. I'll play now.
The title of this entry?
"threehundred gig aleph"?
"aleph"? wtf? It's taken from
↑William Gibson's novel
↵Mona Lisa Overdrive:
To Slick's relief, Gentry had skipped the whole business of the Shape and launched straight into his theory about the aleph thing. As always, once Gentry got going, he used words and constructions that Slick had trouble understanding, but Slick knew from experience that it was easier not to interrupt him; the trick was in pulling some kind of meaning out of the overall flow, skipping over the parts you didn't understand.
Gentry said that the Count was jacked into what amounted to a mother-huge microsoft; he thought the slab was a single solid lump of biochip. If that was true, the thing's storage capacity was virtually infinite; it would've been unthinkably expensive to manufacture. It was, Gentry said, a fairly strange thing for anyone to have built at all, although such things were rumored to exist and to have their uses, most particularly in the storage of vast amounts of confidential data. With no link to the global matrix, the data was immune to every kind of attack via cyberspace. The catch, of course, was that you couldn't access it via the matrix; it was dead storage.
"He could have anything in there," Gentry said, pausing to look down at the unconscious face. He spun on his heel and began his pacing again. "A world. Worlds. Any number of personality-constructs ..."
Mon, 13 Feb 2006 | 19:17 | category:
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Sun, 12 Feb 2006
spamming is futile
↑Blogging is futile?—far from it! Spamming-attempts now seem to be futile. Tnx a thousand times, abe! You pwn big time, my man!
Sun, 12 Feb 2006 | 16:02 | category:
/updates/technical
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Sat, 04 Feb 2006
anthropology's fate?
Montgomery McFate's article
"Anthropology and counterinsurgency" re-triggered quite some debate within anthropology. See e.g. Dustin Wax's entry at Savage Minds and the appending discussion [references below]. Now McFate has re-surfaced and last monday spoke at the Women in International Security Conference. UPI Correspondent Lucy Stallworthy has written an article on that, called
↑Experts apply anthropology to Iraq. Here's a snippet:
[...] Montgomery McFate, a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, argued for an increased understanding of the tribal nature of Iraqi society. She suggested this would benefit the U.S. forces by enabling them to adapt to the enemy.
References:
via Anthro-L
Sat, 04 Feb 2006 | 18:31 | category:
/anthropology
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wikipedia on cyberanthropology
Call it vanity, utilitarian pragmatism, idealism, or anything in-between—the full spectrum is ready to be used for your judgement. Via the
↑Anthropological fields and subfields section of
↑Wikipedia's article on anthropology I stumbled over the article
↑Cyber anthropology, which then only consisted of one sentence:
"Cyber Anthropology is supposedly a field of Anthropology dealing primarily with computers in human society."—but the article already had a horrific history of revisions and changes. Once it read:
"Cyber Anthropology is different from the other fields of Anthropology because it has to do with the finding and searching of information using computers, rather than digging in the dirt." Not surprisingly I thought
"... wtf?", shifted gears and sprang to action. So the current content of Wikipedia's article
↑Cyber anthropology is by Yours Truly.
Yes, I am perfectly aware that there is a lot of discussion about Wikipedia at the moment, but—slap me around a bit with a large trout for that—I still am an ardent believer in Wikipedia. Yes, I am
↵aware of Wikipedia's drawbacks and developed a stance towards them. Nevertheless, after I learned that even
↑my boss hacks around inside Wikipedia, correcting anthropological issues, I became convinced that it was time to engage myself, too
[vanity?]. Accordingly I created an account, embraced
↑Wikipedia's five pillars, started to assimilate
↑Wiki markup, and created the current version of
Cyber anthropology.
The anthropology-peers and -elders around me contribute to a range of encyclopedias like the Britannica, Meyers, Brockhaus, and even the MS Encarta
[shiver me timbers ;-]—I never did so
[truth is, nobody asked me yet ;-]. But now I have started to really contribute to Wikipedia
[not only adding an easter egg to the ↑Pure Pwnage entry, as I did before], and I have to confess: I am somewhat proud of that
[vanity!]. I will expand the
Cyber anthropology entry to a real and comprehensive entry, especially respecting pillars
↑1 and
↑2. It will grow parallel to my
↵chapter cyberanthropology wherein I can go beyond the pillars.
Sat, 04 Feb 2006 | 18:14 | category:
/cyberanthropology
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Wed, 01 Feb 2006
truck-canoe hybrids
One of the key moments along my path 'through' sociocultural anthropology was when several years ago I listened to
↑Kurt Beck's presentation on the cultural appropriation of the diesel-engine in the Sudan (meanwhile published as
↵Beck 2001). Diesel-powered pumps finally replaced the
saqiya, an ox-driven pump used for irrigating the fields located on the banks of river Nile. Later on followed
↵bedford's metamorphosis: hotbeds of creativity—the appropriation of the truck in Sudan (
↵Beck 2004), which inspired Gabriel Kläger's website
↑Africars—the latter includes an
↑online version of the
hotbeds of creativity featuring a ton of insightful pictures illustrating the inventions and the whole process of reworking undertaken by the blacksmiths-turned-engineers.
The diesel-engine is not only culturally appropriated in Africa, but quite naturally around the globe. In his weblog-entry
↑Improbable engineering James Gosling describes Bangkok's water-taxis, true truck-canoe hybrids:
One of my favorite hacks is the rather improbably piece of engineering known in Thailand as a longtail boat. They function as taxis and tour boats in the many waterways of Bangkok. [...]
When you look at them when they get closer, you see a truck engine mounted on the stern with a long piece of pipe stretching out toward the bow that the boatman holds on to. There's another piece of pipe welded onto the transmission pointing out toward the stern [.]
When the boatman pushes on his piece of pipe, it rotates the engine left, right, up or down. When he pushes down, it rotates the tail upward and you get to see the business end of the beast: a naked propeller just hanging out there.
Safety is not a real concern here. Balance is pretty dubious too. These boats are pretty narrow, 4ish feet at best. They're really just evolved canoes. It must take an amazing amount of skill to stay balanced, navigate, and not kill anyone. At speed ...
The engines are just regular truck engines, mounted on a U shaped yoke, bolted to the stern. Some of the engines are very large—they wouldn't look out of place in a large Fruehauf tractor. Not a lot of standardized rigs—lots of welding fun. A truly glorious hack.
The story was made known widely via an
↑entry at boingboing by Cory Doctorow. A boingboing-reader furnished some
↑background on the water-taxis:
It's not well known that those boats originate from a change in the British government's motor vehicle Construction and Use Regulations in the late 1960s. What with the new motorway construction programme well under way, the (largely old) truck fleet had begun to get in the way. So the then Ministry of Transport introduced a minimum power-to-weight ratio.
This meant that a ton of trucks with Gardner LX 105hp (mostly) or Perkins P4 engines suddenly became obsolete. Exporting second-hand trucks to places that would accept them (essentially, the third world) was not great business, so they were either scrapped or retrofitted with more wallop. Hence a mass of very reliable, very user-serviceable diesel engines going begging.
Some sly fox saw a chance, and went round the country buying the engines and shipping them to Hong Kong and Singapore for sale to chandlers. As the engine arrived complete with the reverse box and the end of a propshaft, they just put in a length of shaft and a prop. Local boat builders came up with the rest and a new, unmistakable craft was born.
They still have (even brand-new ones with much later power units, radar and GPS) the traditional eyes on each side of the bow, a custom recorded everywhere from the Mediterranean to Japan and back into pre-classical antiquity.
initially via entry at boingboing | picture by James Gosling
Wed, 01 Feb 2006 | 10:40 | category:
/anthropology
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m a x m o d
