Rebecca Black and QWOP

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXs-QE2-464

Back at the beginning of 2008, I started something I call the Google Suggestions Time Capsule Project. Every Sunday, I've taken a moment to type the 26 letters of the alphabet into my Google Search and make note of what suggested search items come up as Google's 26 picks for the most likely information I would be looking for.

Using this as a way of tracking the zeitgeist, the popular culture meme-space of the predominantly American-culture internet has been interesting, and there've been some notable shifts that have happened over the almost three and a half years that I've been tracking this. Here's a few I'd like to point out today.

The very first list I made note of contained Zoey Zane as the suggestion for the letter z, which may well prove to be the only time the assumed name of a murdered internet porn actress will come up as the number one suggestion for a letter.

Here's that first list:

Sunday, January 6 2008, 11 am CST, Saskatchewan Canada:
amazon, best buy, craigslist, dictionary, ebay, facebook, google, hotmail, imdb, john lewis, kohls, limewire, myspace, next, orkut, paypal, qvc, redtube, sears, target, utube, verizon, wikipedia, xtube, youtube, zoey zane.

Two weeks later, Zoey's name was gone from the list. In fact, it's turned out to be relatively rare for people's names to appear in this list at all. "Obama" appeared at the beginning of March 2008, only to be replaced by google's social networking site "Orkut" before the month was done. In November 2008, for one week only, we saw "John McCain", "Obama" and "Sarah Palin" appear as the suggestions for j, o and s: this was in the week of the American elections, of course.

The following week "Jennifer Hudson" appeared as the replacement suggestion for j, a remarkable bit of pop culture since she came in seventh in the 2004 American Idol competition, received a 2006 Academy Award for her role in the film Dreamgirls, but it was the release of her debut record album in 2008 that finally vaulted her to the top of the google list for six weeks.

Interestingly, Obama, now the president of the US, also stayed at the top of the list for six weeks, while John McCain lasted one and Sarah Palin lasted three. Obama returned to the list in January 2009, this time staying there for seven weeks. But after that, we were not to see another person's name at the top of the list until this week.

Rebecca Black, the internet teen sensation people love to hate, appears this week as the top response for the letter r. Her video, Friday, is currently at almost 100 million views on YouTube, but the like/dislike ratio is what's completely unusual: almost 2 million people have given the video a thumbs down, and only a quarter million have given it thumbs up. Wired Magazine published a cover story in 2008 about people who are "internet famous", Rebecca seems to be a shining example of that term.

Speaking of internet famous, ever hear of QWOP? It just finished a seven week run as the top result for q. This simple flash game asks you to control an olympic runner using four letters on your keyboard. For me, this one was remarkable because unlike the Rebecca Black story I've seen almost no one in the media talking about this game, and yet it's the number one search suggestion. Yet another example of how the internet has become its own medium? You bet.


Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton


UPDATE: in a surprising turn of events, after reaching over 165 million views, Rebecca's video was removed from YouTube on June 13 2011, just as the video blog version of the entry was about to be posted. Apparently, the creators of Rebecca's video had decided to start asking people to pay a fee for every view of the video, and she retaliated by demanding that her video be pulled off of YouTube.
Good luck, Rebecca!
Next: Courage


A direct link to Rebecca Black's video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

New video - Evidence for Seeing the Future?

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo_Mq6LKhI8

New video - Infinite Division

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV5H1u5eq5E

To read along with this blog entry go to http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2010/12/infinite-division.html

Livin on the Edge of the World

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOGtj5J3wBI

This song was written back in 1982, was not part of the live show that most of the other songs on this 1983 album were written for, but it had a tangential connection to the ideas from the rest of the album and seemed like a good one to include because of that.

Over the last few months, in blog entries like Just Geometry, Bees and Tangential Thinking, More Tangential Thinking and At Right Angles to Spacetime, we've been returning to some of the basic ideas behind my approach to visualizing the extra spatial dimensions. I've talked before about how I went for decades showing people the basic ideas of my approach, drawing little diagrams on napkins or whatever was available, but until I read Michio Kaku's Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, I had always thought that my approach was useful for visualizing nothing more than the seven dimensions of our reality. Kaku's book gave me a way of thinking how my logic could be extended to ten spatial dimensions, but even seven is mind-blowing enough!

So, way back in 1982 I was already fascinated by the concepts of extra spatial dimensions, and that was a part of what I was thinking about as I created this song - if you are operating from a realm which is not confined to our 4D spacetime, from a fifth dimension which is somehow "outside" of our reality at another angle, then the title of this song is a way of thinking about that concept. Here's the lyrics:

LIVIN ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
- words and music by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

What am I s’posed to do with you when you’re so far away
I need to have your near me
How am I s’posed to get the news, the issues of the day
Who’s gonna set me straight?
Hey hey hey

What were you tryin to say to me the day you made it clear
You said “Look inside yourself now”
But you don’t know the things I see, you’ve never felt the fear
As I stand before the mirror

Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world, hey hey hey

I’ve got to be stronger, gotta take control
Got to give my life some order
I can’t take it any longer, don’t know where to go
Then you tell I must grow

Well can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world, hey hey hey

Sometimes I scare myself
I take me by surprise
Sometimes I scare myself
Believin my own lies

Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
Can’t you see I’m livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
Livin on the edge of the world
I am livin on the edge of the world
Hey hey hey

Next: Rebecca Black and QWOP

New video - Threes

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bupd9LPub1Y

Wow! My YouTube channel now has over 17,000 subscribers. Thanks everyone for your continued support. Click to tweet this video: http://www.clicktotweet.com/zETp8
To read along with this video blog go to http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2010/12/threes.html

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs, March Report

1. Changing Your Brain
2. What Is Reality?
3. Timelike Entanglement
4. The Quantum Observer
5. Photons and Free Will
6. The Quantum Mind
7. Language and the Mind
8. Is Spacetime Flat or Curved?
9. Novelty
10. Cymatics

Previous lists:
. April 08 . May 08 . June 08 . July 08 . August 08
. September 08 . October 08 . November 08 . December 08 .
. Top 100 Blog Entries of 2008 . May 09 . June 09 . July 09
. August 09 . September 09 . October 09 . November 09 .
. December 09 . Top 100 Blog Entries of 2009 .
. January 10 . February 10 . March 10 . April 10 . May 10 .
. June 10 . July 10 . August 10 . September 10 . October 10 .
. November 10 . December 10 . Top 100 Entries of 2010 .
. January 11 . February 11 .

Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days.

And as of March 26th, 2011, here are the twenty-six Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time. Items marked in bold are new or have risen since last month.

1. Jumping Jesus (1)
2. What's Around the Corner? (2)
3. Mandelbulbs (3)
4. An Expanding 4D Sphere (4)
5. Just Six Things: The I Ching (5)
6. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (6)
7. The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project (7)
8. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (8)
9. Vibrations and Fractals (10)
10. How to Time Travel (9)
11. Light Has No Speed (11)
12. Dancing on the Timeline (12)
13. Our Universe Within the Omniverse (13)
14. Poll 44 - The Biocentric Universe Theory (14)
15. 10-10-10 Look Before You Leap (17)
15. Monkeys Love Metallica (15)
16. Magnets and Morality (16)
18. Consciousness in Frames per Second (18)
19. Is Reality an Illusion? (new)
20. Simultaneous Inspiration (19)
21. Polls Archive 54 - Is Time Moving Faster? (20)
22. Poll 43 - Is the Multiverse Real? (21)
23. Alien Mathematics (22)
24. Seeing Time, Feeling Colors, Tasting Light (23)
25. When's a Knot Not a Knot? (24)
26. Complexity from Simplicity (26)

Which means that this worthy submission is leaving our top 26 of all time list this month.

Flow (25)


By the way, if you're new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project. If you are interested in the 26 songs attached to this project, this blog shows a video for each of the songs and provides more links with lyrics and discussion. The Annotated Tenth Dimension Video provides another cornucopia of discussion topics to be connected to over at YouTube. And as always, here's a reminder that the Tenth Dimension Forum is a good place to converse with other people about these ideas.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Courage

New video - Bees and Tangential Thinking

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a26ej-H7aU

To read along go to http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2010/11/poll-69-bees-and-tangential-thinking.html