Korean giant monsters, podthrusting, and exploit code
I’ve just published a quick cultural analysis of the awesome Korean giant monster movie The Host over at Wired. This is probably one of the most original and compelling giant monster flicks since the first Godzilla, largely because it’s motivated by strong political feeling as well as the urge to entertain. Plus, the special effects are fantastic.
In my Techsploitation column, I’ve been a little goofy of late. I wrote a parody of new Web 2.0 crap called Web Trenz, in which I discussed fake “trends” such as “podthrusting,” a sex offender social network called “MyMirandaSpace” and a method of exploiting workers in the developing world called “Annoturk.” Sadly, I received a lot of e-mails from confused people who really wanted to know more about Annoturk in particular. I guess the urge to outsource is so strong that it defies logic.
I also wrote about the hacker practice of “exploiting” software code, and questioned whether there wasn’t a political angle to one hacker’s recent exploit, written to undermine the anonymizing tool Tor.
