Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists
Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society. Adam Thierer discusses two distinct approaches to understanding and debating current technological advances and gives some examples of current thought leaders who fall in one of two camps, technophiles and technophobes. Going through his list of cultural / social beliefs and economic / business beliefs, i find it interesting that i’m more of an internet pessimist where culture and society are concerned and that i’m more of an internet optimist where economy and business are concerned.
The Interaction & Interface Design Car Wreck: Julian Bleecker visits the LA Auto Show.
John’s Phone hands-on
BERG shares some hands-on impressions of John’s Phone, a minimalist mobile phone that i previously mentioned.
I was surprised to learn that the phone has a display (albeit a small one in a not particularly obvious position). This strikes me as a strange design decision and maybe it wasn’t a decision at all, but rather a necessary compromise for technical reasons.
The economics of Terrorism
Both Foreign Policy and the NYTimes report on the economics of terrorism (via):
In his October 2004 address to the American people, bin Laden noted that the 9/11 attacks cost al Qaeda only a fraction of the damage inflicted upon the United States. “Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event,” he said, “while America in the incident and its aftermath lost – according to the lowest estimates – more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars.”
The Bygone Bureau presents the Best New Blogs of 2010.
Prescience
So you know: Nicola Tesla predicted the Blackberry in 1909 (read the original article) and Robert Sloss predicted the iPhone in 1910…
The November Reading List
Some noteworthy things i particularly enjoyed reading in November:
- What we can learn from procrastination by James Surowiecki.
- Program or Be Programmed: Douglas Rushkoff on choice. The third chapter from his new book Program or Be Programmed.
- All Natural: Why Breasts Are the Key to the Future of Regenerative Medicine
- An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969) by Joseph Gelmis: Worth reading for the plot outline of 2001 in Kubrick’s words alone.
- Open User Interfaces Suck: An argument that open development processes are detrimental to user experience. I tend to agree with that.
- Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition: Interesting overview of the field. I’m pretty sure speech recognition owes a lot of its popularity to Star Trek.
- Lessons from the Chewbacca Incident: Michael Heilemann analyzes the number and reading behavior of visitors from several high profile aggregators and hubs.
- The Way We Live Now – Achieving Techno-Literacy: Kevin Kelly on home-schooling. I found his definition of techno-literacy and its importance in education very insightful.
- The Case of the Vanishing Blonde: A woman disappears from her hotel room to be found hours later, raped and left for dead. When the woman sues the hotel, a private investigator starts digging… Just great reporting on a true crime story.
- Me and the Wii: Chris Hecker shares his experience in talking with press. A cautionary tale.
- Burning Home: A short story by Tim Maly, who curated the 50 posts about cyborgs project.
- Moving up the stack: On our changing priorities regarding technology with growing age. I like the term “grown-up computing”.
- Developers don’t rush to new platforms: Marco Arment on the fallacy that if you build a platform, the developers will come automatically.
- The Mac App Store isn’t for today’s Mac developers: Marco Arment thinks that the Mac App Store will lead to a huge influx of new Developers to the Mac. I wouldn’t find that surprising at all.
- The Escapist on the Philosophy of Game Design, in four parts: one, two, three, four.
- Book review: Form+Code: Regine Debatty reviews Form+Code, a book about creative coding in design, architecture and art.
- The Problem With Microsoft’s New Way To Play Video Games: A critical look at controller-less gaming.
- How Wii and Kinect Hack Into Your Emotions: Wired on the emotional qualities of embodied interaction.
- Cataclysm coming…: The Shattering has already changed the face of Azeroth forever, and the Cataclysm is about to come in a few days. Tom Chatfield explores the significance and implications of Cataclysm for WoW players, Blizzard and the games industry for Boing Boing.
- Why Don’t We Finish More Video Games? I’m terrible at finishing video games and always have been. Right now i’m forcing myself to finish all the Xbox 360 games i bought last year before i allow myself to buy any new ones…
The Analogue Facebook
Link: Creative Review – The analogue Facebook
The Boardgame Remix Kit – new ways to play your favourite board games. This is brilliant. I just hope they won’t be sued out of existence or something stupid like that. Available as an ebook, printed book, cards and an iPhone app.
50 Cyborgs in 5 Minutes
Remember the 50 posts about Cyborgs project? Tim Maly, who curated the whole project adapted his fabulous contribution What’s a Cyborg? as a 5 minute Ignite talk:
Ignite Toronto 4: Tim Maly: Happy Birthday, “Cyborg”! from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.
