The idea is to have a music concert in which everyone in the audience listens through a set of headphones. If you're not under the cans, it's just the sound of milling about, that bizarre kind of sining along that people do when they have headphones on and can't hear themselves, and the like. The idea started in London and has since spread to cities throughout the world:
“In
some ways Plug, held here Saturday, is just what you'd expect from a music fest: rotating performances in front of a live audience, socializing and plenty of beer. But the headphones (bring your own) replace a traditional concert's amplified speakers, and much of the socializing happens over a computer terminal linked to an IRC chat room, populated by members of the global audience listening to the performances over the internet. [...]
The idea of a live show experienced solely through headphones originated eight years ago in France when a Paris musician named Erik Minkkinen streamed a concert from his closet. As the story goes, three people in Japan tuned in. Despite the tiny audience, the idea evolved into a decentralized organization under the name le placard, or the closet, a kind of open-source music festival where anyone can establish a streaming and/or listening room. More than just a gimmick, the format of in-person performances experienced through headphones appeals to a certain type of performer, one inspired by intimacy and a you're-either-listening-or-you're-not audience. At a headphone concert, there's no shouting over uninterested listeners' conversations. [...]
Listeners were able to congregate from all over the globe in le placard's IRC channel to talk with fellow headphoners witnessing the performances in person at the warehouse. The feed even had a local pirate radio broadcast on 104.1 FM. All the performances were relatively silent for those not wearing headphones, and the atmosphere at the San Francisco warehouse was respectful. Participants lauded the chat room's role, and said the customizable experience cultivated the more communal potentials of performance. ”It's pretty cool,“ said Chris Cones, 31, who performed under the name Skullcaster. ”We have a chat terminal over there, talking to my friend in France.“
[Wired]
enseCam is a 
The human body is the best computer, say scientists. [...] A Japanese company has discovered that the best cables may be your arms and legs. According to NTT Laboratories, your whole body is the perfect conductor for electronic data, meaning that information such as music and films could be downloaded in seconds via your elbow. NTT, the Japanese telecoms group, and the team of scientists that invented the Red Tacton system, envisage a future in which the human body acts as a non-stop conduit for information. Wireless networks — often hampered by intermittent service — will eventually be replaced, NTT says, by “human area networks”.
mags float to the top. Wait long enough and that mound of landfill on the edge of town will be reduced to a perfect molehill of glossy men's magazines:
images with a resolution up to 20,000 pixels by 40,000 lines, an image so large that it would take 1,200 typical computer screens to fully display. The camera’s high resolution will enable the identification of objects as small as a coffee table while the camera orbits 300 kilometers above the planet’s surface.
They're often playful and sometimes silly, but that's the lighthearted-yet-indomitable spirit that characterizes the effort.]
