Tuesday, January 05. 2010The Trillion Node NetworkTrillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”, a remark made by Thomas J. Watson of IBM in 1943. But what if the number of computing devices connected to each other would reach the number of one trillion? A short animation. ----- Via NextNature Personal comment: I like the sentence "people in information" and not "information in the computers" which could become our future. Another way to speak about ubiquitous computing.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Interaction design, Science & technology
at
14:14
Defined tags for this entry: computing, culture & society, information, interaction design, science & technology
Favorite explorations of 2009As we bid farewell to 2009, it’s a good time to look back at our explorations of the year. Here are some of our most popular and peculiar posts, in case you missed them the first time around. 1. The Comeback of the ‘ugly’ fruits
2. Children’s dictionary dumps ‘nature’ words
3. Boomeranged Metaphors
4. Virtual Money - cows, coins, credit, airtime
5. Michael Jacksons appearance in heaven
6. Why are carrots orange? It is political
7. Plastic BirdsBird spotting is not a typical activity for us next nature explorers, yet these ‘plastic’ birds spotted by photographer Chris Jordan are the most macabre thus far. One wonders what Darwin would have thought of these Albatross babies fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents. Are we ready for a plastic planet? 8. Designing Bugs that Eat Plastic
9. Cavemen impacted environment already
10. Doggerland – a lost worldSo you think climate change is new? So you think the flooding of landmass by the oceans is a new? So you must have not heard of the times when people walked from London to Amsterdam. 11. Modern FossilsSo what happened to that old floppy drive, ipod or tape recorder? Time to dig up some of those modern fossils. ----- Via NextNature Grand Tour of the Known Universe
Every satellite, moon, planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and its correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date. Watch the video HERE. ----- Googling my brain out. When techno-evolution is another case of change, adapt, shop and/or dieEver since Google pushed other search engines such as Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista out of the water, it has become the jumping off point for any question or query known to connected man, writes Camilla Grey. A quick peek at Google‘s Year End ‘Zeitgeist’ report reveals how much the connected world relies on the service for answers to common issues. And, as the iPhone marketing has recently asserted ‘…there’s an app for that’, insinuating that whatever you need to know, learn, work out, buy and find technology and the internet can help. Great. But something strange is happening to my brain. Yes, Google helps me work out aspect ratio conversions. Yes, Google told me that Waitrose on Holloway Road opens at 8.30am. But, the other day, when I couldn’t find my favourite pair of earrings, my instinctive response, my first move in solving the problem was to think: ‘I’ll Google where my earrings are.’ So what does this mean? It’s all very well using the internet to solve problems we can’t figure out by ourselves, but the more we use it, the fewer problems we will be able to solve. Our brains, surely, will become less adept at things we’ve always taken for granted, such as remembering names, dates, locations, spellings and sums. Sounds scary, but evolution is scary. One minute you’re all scuttling around on four legs, huddling in caves for warmth, the next thing you know, your neighbour up the road is towering over you on two legs, warming their hands against a fire and thinking about inventing the wheel. We’ve taken remembering things for granted because, apart from books and such, we’ve had to. But maybe, as that becomes increasingly unnecessary, think of what we will be able to do with all that extra head space! With petty problem solving and useless memories not such an issue, other parts of our brains, such as our imaginations, can develop and get better. Ray Kurzweil’s vision for The University of Singularity is precisely to harness this opportunity. As they say, ‘With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, SU hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges’. This kind of statement throws into question everything we thought about learning and academia. Even the notion of ‘knowledge’ becomes questionable and possibly irrelevant. As a member of the generation that bridges the gap between those who grew up with the Internet and those who didn’t, the idea of Googling the location of my earrings feels unnerving. But what about the ankle-biters behind me? A colleague of mine recently watched his child attempt to work a TV using the touch action of an iPhone. The future is snapping at our heels and it’s going to be a case of change, adapt or die. Eye is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy single issues. Take out a subscription, and get Eye delivered to your door, anywhere in the world. ----- Via Eye Magazine Related Links:Personal comment:
"Free you brain, use Google"? Monday, January 04. 2010Response to 'Secrecy, Privacy, Publicy' PostA large surge of interest in the ideas driving yesterday's 'Secrecy, Privacy, Publicy' post (see below). Erick Shonfeld of Techcrunch jumped right in:
via Erick Schonfeld www.techcrunch.com Turns out that Schonfeld and Andrew Keen were involved in a discussion about 'the death of privacy' when my post broke. Keen has had a long series of tweets since, including these (reverse choronology) @jobsworth is the Calcutta model of an absence of privacy preferable to Anglo-American model of guarding individual autonomy? 6 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to jobsworth All semi-out of context, since I am not displaying the replies from others, but it shows the line that Keen is developing. I look forward to something more substantial from Andrew in the near term. My good friend Euan Semple jumps in:
I will update this post as more responses come online. ----- Via /Message Personal comment: La vie "publique", par défaut?
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Interaction design
at
17:04
Defined tags for this entry: culture & society, interaction design, privacy, social, surveillance, theory
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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