Sustainable Holidays With Living Christmas Trees

So, it’s that time of year again, when everyone is switching gears into pre-holiday mode. And while you probably already have enough to worry about, with the seemingly infinite list of concerns and to-dos that is so characteristic of this season, perhaps you are also worried about the impact of your holiday activities on the environment. Here at Future-ish, we obviously spend a lot of time talking about the future, but tradition is pretty important too, so this post is dedicated to the adaptation of one popular holiday tradition for a modern, more sustainable age.

There are only twelve days left until Christmas! If you don’t have your Christmas tree yet, maybe you are going through the real tree vs. artificial tree dilemma. Understandably, some people are uncomfortable chopping down a tree to display in their home, only to drag its dried-up remains out to the curb a few weeks later. And artificial trees have their own problems, since the majority of them are produced unsustainably. However, starting just a few years ago, a bunch of businesses have sprung up around the business model of renting living Christmas trees. Customers can order the tree online, have it delivered to their home, and then have it taken away after Christmas, to either get planted or returned to the nursery until next year. The idea of renting a tree may seem strange at first, but it’s all a part of the recent (and growing) trend of collaborative consumption, which is characterized by a shift in priorities, with a decreased emphasis on ownership. It’s more common than you think, too—Netflix and Zipcar are two of the more well-known businesses built around this idea, but it has also been implemented for clothing, books, and even beds. And as the planet’s resources get scarcer, this business model will only make more and more sense. Anyway, tree rental services are available near many metropolitan areas (a quick Google search should hopefully yield something), but even if this trend hasn’t yet reached your town, you can still find your own living Christmas tree. EM

CNN's ECOSPHERE Visualizes #COP17 Tweets for Climate Change Summit

For the next two weeks (November 28—December 9), world leaders are meeting in the city of Durban, South Africa, to discuss crucial climate change issues at the 17^th Conference of Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Much anticipation has surrounded this year’s COP because many are hoping that this summit will result in a new global climate agreement. The Kyoto Protocol is the only existing legally binding agreement of this sort, and it commits most developed countries to a set of emissions targets, but the first commitment period expires in 2012. COP17 presents an opportunity to set new targets and extend the Protocol, but it is uncertain whether or not the world’s leaders will take advantage of this opportunity. The world’s top emitters, the United States and China, are not currently a part of the Kyoto Protocol, and unless they agree to take part in the second commitment period, several other developed countries (including Japan, Canada and Russia) are unlikely to agree to extend the Protocol.

Anyway, long story short—COP17 is a pretty big deal, and appropriately, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the event. CNN’s ECOSPHERE project is a real-time visualization of how online discussion is evolving on topics related to climate change and COP17. ECOSPHERE aggregates tweets tagged with #COP17 and groups them into specific topics or discussions. The visualization is an interactive 3-D globe, covered in virtual “topic plants” that grow larger or faster depending on the conversation surrounding that particular topic. Individual tweets will feed the growth of the appropriate topic plant, so feel free to join the discussion by submitting your own #COP17 tweets! Or, just interact with the rather cool visualization--you can zoom in on specific topic plants, or even individual tweets! EM

Google Music Launches in America

As many of you may have already heard, Google Music is now available for free to all users in the U.S. Users can upload and stream up to 20,000 of their own songs in their personal cloud-based library, which enables them to access their music from anywhere. Songs and albums can also be purchased from the newly opened music store in the Android Market, and songs purchased from the store will not count toward the 20,000-song limit.

According to the Official Google Blog, the store offers more than 13 million songs from artists on more than 1,000 labels, including major players such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI, as well as indie labels such as Matador Records and XL Recordings. The tracks will be DRM-free, and shareable via Google+. The store also features a Free Song of the Day, as well as exclusive content, including never-before-released live recordings from The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Shakira, and more.

Future-ish has previously covered cloud-based music storage offerings from Amazon and Apple launched Amazon Cloud Drive earlier this year. Apple also made their paid service, iTunes Match, available in early November 2011 as well. Google’s entry into this emerging market is certainly very timely and it remains to be seen which of these three services music lovers will gravitate to as we all slowly, but inevitably, move into the cloud. Information Week’s Eric Zeman offers an early compare-and-contrast of the three services, evaluating factors such as sound quality and accessibility. Read, and then take your pick. EM

Music, Art, & Architecture at the Guggenheim

MGMT, the neo-psychedelic band which achieved mainstream renown for its electro-pop gems such as “Kids” and “Time to Pretend,” recently made two appearances at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to play at the afterparty for the museum’s 2011 International Gala. This year’s gala featured a retrospective of the works of the artist Maurizio Cattelan.

Cattelan’s hyperrealist art is known for being subversive, and often shocking. To complement this aesthetic, MGMT performed new music written specifically for the occasion. They stated in a press release:

“We’re creating a musical experience that works for the building, and for the construction and presentation of the Cattelan exhibition. The art exhibition is done in a completely original way, so it deserves music which is completely original. The Guggenheim performance won’t be a traditional MGMT show, but it will be _______.”

The music is largely in the vein of their experimental sophomore album, Congratulations, rather than the more radio-friendly Oracular Spectacular. The performances occurred on November 10 and 11. EM

A clip from the show is available below:

Massive Symphony Will Create an Orchestra of Smartphones

On Thursday November 11, 2011, smartphone users across the world will have the opportunity to participate in what promises to be “the largest orchestra in the world.” Massive Symphony is a volunteer-run project that aims to turn the world’s smartphones into a massive orchestra on Nov. 11, 2011 (11/11/11) at 11:11 (GM+1). The free app is currently available for Android and the iOS version will be available soon. The app will synchronize all the devices on which it is installed, down to the exact millisecond. At exactly 11 hours, 11 minutes, 11 seconds and 111 milliseconds, the devices will begin performing one minute of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—arguably the most famous piece of classical music ever written, so quite the natural choice for this project. Users can either join in the first symphony, or alternatively, the music will repeat every hour until 10:11 “so that every time zone on the Earth is able to join in the great symphony.” After the song is played, a map will show the number of people in each country that have participated.



At the time of this writing, the Android app has a little over 3,000 downloads. We can only hope that as this week progresses, the project will gain momentum. “Play to change the world,” the video proclaims, emphasizing the project’s overarching message of cooperation. “Change is here…Together.” It’s a lofty goal, but it’s certainly one worth working toward. The digital age we live in offers a myriad of possibilities, changing the way we live, the way we work, and the way we work together. The makers of Massive Symphony are hoping to show that it’s a change for the better. EM.

Life in a Day Now Available on YouTube

Life in a Day, YouTube’s experiment in crowd-sourcing a feature-length film, premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, but it is now available on—where else?—YouTube. The film, for those of you who are not familiar with it, describes itself as “a historic film capturing for future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.” It is a 90-minute documentary-style movie pieced together from 4,500 hours of YouTube user-submitted footage from July 24, 2010.

What’s so special about July 24, 2010? It’s a tricky question to answer. The date itself is unremarkable—no holiday, no major historical event, nothing—it was simply chosen out of convenience. But through the experience of viewing the film, it becomes clear that it’s nevertheless incorrect to say that there is nothing special about July 24, 2010. Some of the moments captured in the film are mundane, and some are life-changing, but taken together, these moments create the impression that being alive on July 24, 2010 is all at once beautiful, funny, sad, joyful, and so much more.

Life in a Day is the first film of its kind, and it represents a pivotal moment in both cinema and digital media. As director Kevin Macdonald said in an interview with National Geographic, “The film is doing something that wouldn’t have been possible pre-Internet, specifically pre-YouTube. The idea that you can ask thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people all to contribute to a project and all to communicate about it and learn about it at the same time belongs essentially to this age that we live in. Life in a Day couldn’t have existed 100 years ago, 20 years ago, even 6 years ago.” EM