Looking over shoulders
I came across this interesting social experiment while looking for more information on hashing algorithms. It’s called TinyURL Roulette.
TinyURL, in its most common application, is primarily a device for communication. It allows one to create a shortened version of a URL of otherwise unmanageable length. It facilitates information sharing in email messages, message board postings, IM, and the like.
The TinyURL Roulette game simply generates random URLs, such as http://tinyurl.com/boab. Since this URL maps to an entry in TinyURL’s database, one can randomly jump through the stored web addresses, which is like uncovering past traces of human interest.
It’s an interesting game. Playing it is a very voyeuristic experience. Maps, news stories, pictures, merchandise, message board posts, and the inexplicable all lie side by side. It’s like an endless issue of FOUND.
In one series of clicks, I came across the following items:
- A Las Vegas map centered on a Comfort Inn on the outskirts of town;
- A CD of trucker music called “Rig Rock Deluxe” (which, now that I viewed it, has alerted Amazon to the fact that I now might be interested in the whole Trucker Music genre);
- A self help book entitled “Addicted to Unhappiness”;
- Mercedes-Benz discussion board in German; and
- An empty Yellow Pages directory page with the words “You do not have a route now.”
This random collection of things work together in interesting ways; André Breton spoke of such interactions while playing Surrealist games such as automatic writing and the exquisite corpse. What one gets back seems like nonsense, but it works subconsciously, and brings to mind associations that may never have been uncovered without the triggering events
From Le Manifeste du Surréalisme:
In fact it is very difficult to appreciate the full value of the various elements when confronted by them. It can even be said to be impossible to appreciate them at the first reading. These elements are outwardly as strange to you … as to anyone else, and you are naturally distrustful of them. Poetically speaking, they are especially endowed with a very high degree of immediate absurdity. The peculiarity of this absurdity, on closer examination, comes from their capitulation to everything — both inadmissible and legitimate — in the world, to produce a revelation of a certain number of premises and facts generally no less objective than any others.
