-
Absolutely fascinating article on the adoption of new technologies among Amish communities. It doesn't necessarily seem like such a bad way to live, although obviously they'd need to remove God from the business before I'd sign up.
-
Del linked to this set of lovely photos of various buildings in London. And now I'm doing the same, because she's right, it's ace.
Category: Digitalia
Links For Wednesday 18th February 2009
-
Interesting talk on models for a relationship with creativity. It's a bit hippy dippy in places, but then, her big book is called "Eat, Pray, Love" so what d'you expect? Still, it's worth thinking about for a few interesting lines of argument.
-
Matt Jones takes a look at some of the issues surrounding running geolocation based services, and the opportunities they offer us for the future. Particularly pertinent: "location is a matter of routine. We're in work, college, at home, at our corner shop, at our favourite pub. These patterns are worn into our personal maps of the city, and usually it's the exceptions to it that we record, or share – a special excursion, or perhaps a unexpected diversion – pleasant or otherwise that we want to broadcast for companionship, or assistance."
Links For Monday 16th February 2009
-
Boring to 90% of you, but for those of us who run sites with multiple routes-to-content, this'll help make sure that it's the most human-comprehensible on that is listed in Google's index. Apparently Yahoo and MSN will respect the tag, as well. Good news.
Links For Friday 13th February 2009
-
More in link, but in brief, on Monday, the police acquire new powers to stop journalists documenting their behaviour. These powers are a disgusting breach of civil liberties, and give the police unprecdenent powers to be able to prevent their critics from speaking out. There is a protest/media event organised outside New Scotland Yard at 11am on Monday the 16th. I would seriously urge anyone who is free and in London, or can get to London, to get down there with a camera in hand.
Links For Thursday 12th February 2009
-
With Valenties Day about to heave into view for another year, my friend Del writes about falling in love, and produces one of the finest, most impassioned and general beautiful pieces of writing I've seen in a while. Go and read it.
-
Jamais Cascio is too clever by half. And he has written a book, for to expand your brains on the subject of climate engineering, and the ways in which we might survive these here end times what are upon us. Read it, unless you want to wind up a slave to the hideous race of lizard overlords that will doubtless come to dominate the planet once the ice caps melt and the atmosphere fills up with noxious fumes.
Links For Tuesday 10th February 2009
-
This is a really nice looking noticeboard. Better than standard cork, anyway. Hmmm…
Links For Monday 9th February 2009
-
One of those things that requires a stack of practice, but something I wouldn't mind getting good at. I'm the sort of person that like to be able to see how the trick is done, so this sort thing is catnip to me.
Links For Friday 6th February 2009
-
Handly list of tools, many of which I hadn't seen before, and will have to try out.
-
Just an aide memoire so I don't forget the name or era.
Links For Thursday 5th February 2009
-
Anyone interested in this? Herzog + weird German Electro sounds like a moral victory to me.
-
According to one set of maths, it might actually work out cheaper for the paper to give away Kindles for a while, and then switch to digital only. The logic is flawed in a number of places (the move would cripple their ability to pick up new readers in the short term for example), but it's still fascinating to see that even with e-paper equivalent as expensive as the Kindle, the maths looks to be becoming favourable.
-
Jamais Cascio explaining quite clearly why the academic program offered by the recently opened "Singularity University" is a load of old trousers, and offering a rather more sensible sounding educational program for teaching people to think about the coming years/decades.
-
"Broken gets fixed. Shoddy lasts forever." Having recognised that as true, I don't particularly need to refer to the actual this link myself, but I thought I'd mark anyway it just as an action to ensure I commit it to memory.
The Internet Of Trees
I have been kicking around this idea of a papernet (in brief: internet content in an auto-printed form) with a few folks. I’m currently building a OS X app that will do the early stages of what I want in a papernet endpoint in my ever diminishing free time, and generally thinking about how the beast might work and basically sorting through ideas raised by other clever bastards involved in the discussion so that I’ve got a scope document to hold myself to. (Yes, I write scope documents for my spare time development projects. How else am I supposed to know when they’re done?)
And I’m sure a lot of you are thinking “why in fuck are you thinking about paper, Al? Isn’t it doomed, and ecologically unsound to boot?” Well, maybe paper’s doomed. And, in theory, I can probably lash something together so that my iphone does this already. But electronic paper will be with us soon, and the idea is not locked into the literal dead tree artefact. The point is that I have something to read, on the bus, every morning. Something I can hold in my hand, that, crucially, does not require either power or a net connection. The idea’s transferable with technology. But for right now, we’re still working from the dead tree standard because most of the planet does not have an iphone, despite Steve Jobs’ best efforts.
But anyway, I had this all percolating at the back of my mind, and then my on-line grocery shop from Ocado turned up. (I am painfully middle class, I know. You’ll all know I’m afflicted by the recession when I start talking about shopping at Lidl.) And, well, take a look at the receipt that came with it. (Yes, I have cropped it to remove costs, because that’s between me and anyone that can be arsed with replicating this shopping list on the website.)
There’s a bit of papernet, right fucking there. It’s tacked to the front of my fridge, and for the last couple of days I have glanced at it in order to know I needed to use up before it went off when cooking of an evening. Electronic shopping giving rise to the physical thing I use as part of a task I cannot accomplish at a computer (until they invent a USB hob, anyway). Wonder how long it’ll take before your average supermarket shop does this with their till recipts?
(Oh, and they threw in a free copy of Saturday’s Times with my delivery, so I got my on the bus reading, too.)