Different Shades of Blue.

Also in the trailer bin with Never Let Me Go this week:

Writer-director Sofia Coppola examines anew the heavy emotional toll of a life of ridiculous privilege in the first trailer for Somewhere, with Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, and Michelle Monaghan. (Its emo-hipster kvetching aside, I’ll still probably see it.)
Team Narnia returns again with the whole gang in tow — even the nifty witch and the platitudinous Jesus-lion! — in the trailer for Michael Apted’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I remember Treader being one of the better books, but, frankly, this looks as stilted as the last two.)
Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, and Gabriel Macht have the bright idea of putting pr0n on the Internet — yes y’all, there is pr0n on the Internet…allegedly — in the Blow-like trailer for George Gallo’s Middle Men, also with James Caan, Jacinda Barrett, Laura Ramsey, and Kevin Pollak. (Eh, it lost me with the dumb Kelsey Grammar bit.)
And, just when I thought Russell Crowe resurrecting The Equalizer was the most ridiculous, Hollywood-is-broken bit of news I’d hear this week, along comes the teaser for the live-action Smurfs movie, Tone-Loc mash-up and all. Saddest thing is, this will probably make Alvin and the Chipmunks money.

“We need to train an army of Ninja Cats. Cats are natural born hunters and predators, and it is known that they indeed have 9 lives, many more than the typical human life (being one). They are also excellent at hiding themselves and would be ideal for sneaking into countries and assassinating communist leaders to lessen the ever growing threat of communism, finding key terrorist leaders and shattering the global terrorist network.”

As a highly entertaining Reddit thread well put it, “House Republicans turn to the Internets for suggestions on new legislation. Internets reacts exactly how you’d expect.” The lack of their own ideas aside, the fact that nobody on the GOP saw this egregious messaging #fail coming from a mile away speaks volumes about their Internet savvy. Series of tubes! (FWIW, here’s the counter-argument — More than anything, it’s a list-builder.)

Putting the Hot back in Hotmail.

“I’ve been using a pre-release version of the service for a couple of weeks now, and I’m a huge fan. The new Hotmail is fast, well-designed, and adds a host of features that bring it up to par with other e-mail services, including Gmail. Indeed, it has several features that I wish Gmail included.” Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo previews the coming Hotmail overhaul. As someone who’s stuck around the old home even as all the cool kids flocked to gmail (which I use for listserv e-mails), I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Govt’s in Ur PC Taking Ur Net! …or not.

“This statement describes a framework to support policies that advance our global competitiveness and preserve the Internet as a powerful platform for innovation, free speech, and job creation. I remain open to all ideas on the best approach to achieve our country’s vital goals with respect to high-speed broadband for all Americans, and the Commission proceeding to follow will seek comment on multiple legal theories and invite new ideas.“In happier news on the Obama tech policy front (and after a disconcerting public wobble in the final days before the decision), FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlines a “third way” for Internet oversight that includes Net Neutrality and gives the agency Title II (i.e. regulatory) authority over transmission services, to prevent bad behavior by internet services providers (ISPs) controlling the pipe. (Net neutrality is explained here, but the “First Amendment of the Internet” is a good way of looking at it. Basically, it means ISPs can’t privilege and/or block content on a whim.)

While the Big ISPs begin to mount their counter-offensive, the usual blatherers on the Right are, naturally, decrying the decision as Phase 2 in the administration’s socialist-cryptofascist takeover to take over all things good and wonderful. Suffice to say, they don’t seem to understand the issue or the Internet very well. (Also, this is really a side matter, but, regarding the highly goofy “Big Guvmint is taking over the Internet!” meme: This is completely and utterly not true in any way. But, just so we all have the history straight: Big Guvmint created the Internet. If you haven’t heard of DARPA or J.C. Licklider, think Al Gore.)

Luce Canon (and FORTUNE’s fool).

“From the mid-1930s through the late ’50s, Time Inc. was probably the largest news organization in the world, with bureaus on every continent…The company’s success was partly a result of shrewd management. But it was also a result of Luce, who had looked into the future and seen an increasingly integrated nation bound together by railroads, highways, radio, movies and the rise of a national corporate culture. As a result, Americans would need a vast amount of information and an efficient way of accessing it. Luce embraced that future and created vehicles that served the needs of his rapidly changing times.”

On the release of his long-awaited The Publisher, an extensive biography of TIME/LIFE founder Henry Luce, Columbia historian (and my dissertation advisor) Alan Brinkley discusses how Luce may have coped with the Digital Age. “Luce — for all his flaws — was an innovator, a visionary and a man of vast and daunting self-confidence. Were he to live in our time, trying once again to revolutionize the spread of knowledge, he might find his talents much in demand.“

And, in very related news, Boing Boing posts Chris Ware’s recently rejected throwback cover for Fortune‘s annual 500 issue. “It hearkens back to the golden age of Fortune as an exemplar of beautifully designed and illustrated magazines…’and he filled the image with tons of satirical imagery, like the U.S. Treasury being raided by Wall Street, China dumping money into the ocean, homes being flooded, homes being foreclosed, and CEOs dancing a jig while society devolves into chaos. The cover, needless to say, was rejected.’”

Thus Passeth the Small Talk.

“An application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.“

Well, that should really facilitate the stalking (and now everyone will know right away I like sunsets and long walks on the beach…) The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson reports in on Recognizr, a smartphone app soon likely to cause all kinds of consternation and unwanted advances in a town near you.

Infinite Space, in a Nutshell.

“If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?” From Al Gore to the Series of Tubes: By way of Webgoddess, a very concise timeline of the history of the Internet.

This Used to Be My Playground.

“Back in the proverbial day, GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth. After a spectacular dot com purchase of $3.65 billion and an equally spectacular dot com bust, its closure marks the end of one of the earliest ages of the social web.“

We’re still a few weeks shy of the tenth anniversary ’round these parts. Nonetheless, GitM’s original home is, as of this morning, defunct: Yahoo has followed through on their April announcement and is closing Geocities today. So long, old bird — the neighborhood(s) just won’t be the same without ya.

Into this Neutral Air.

“The response from Net Neutrality opponents has been fast and furious — but short on facts. The arguments and rhetoric being pushed by the phone and cable industry mostly consist of long-discredited arguments and myths…this policy debate must be bound by facts and reality, not by misdirection and discredited falsehoods.” The Free Press‘s S. Derek Turner refutes ten lousy arguments against Net Neutrality (PDF).

We Control The Verti…ooh, new Tweet!

“Over the last several years, the problem of attention has migrated right into the center of our cultural attention. We hunt it in neurology labs, lament its decline on op-ed pages, fetishize it in grassroots quality-of-life movements, diagnose its absence in more and more of our children every year, cultivate it in yoga class twice a week, harness it as the engine of self-help empires, and pump it up to superhuman levels with drugs originally intended to treat Alzheimer’s and narcolepsy…We are, in short, terminally distracted. And distracted, the alarmists will remind you, was once a synonym for insane.”

Or, as Matt Johnson put it 25 years ago, I’ve been filled with useless information, spewed out by papers and radio stations…Another year older and what have i done? All my aspirations have shriveled in the sun. And don’t get me started on blogs, e-mails, youtubes, and tweets. In a New York Magazine cover story, Sam Anderson runs the gamut from Buddhism to Lifehacking to ascertain whether technology has really propelled us into a “crisis of attention”. (By way of Dangerous Meta, a blog that’s invariably worth the distraction.) And his conclusion? Maybe, but thems the breaks, folks. There’s no going back at this point. “This is what the web-threatened punditry often fails to recognize: Focus is a paradox — it has distraction built into it. The two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness…The truly wise will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction.“

Which just goes to show, the real key to harnessing distraction is…wait, hold on a tic, gotta get back to you. There’s a new funny hamster vid on Youtube.

Tag: Internet