Technology
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Technology Lends A Hand
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 24, 2010 by admin in Technology
Monday, May 24th, 2010A handy roundup of the latest in (ahem) digital technology.
I have a confession to make. I’ve never really enjoyed being an organic life form. The whole process is so dirty and oily and smelly and, well…ORGANIC. I’ve always assumed that I’ll live long enough to transfer my body to a plasteel replacement and live forever. So I’m always keeping an eye on robotic technology, and usually bitching about it. I was a little impressed by this BBC News video though, which demonstrates a hand that not only responds to the users intentions to move it, but provides tactile feedback as well. Called the SmartHand, and developed by a team of European, Israeli, and Icelandic scientists, the hand is expected to find wide use for those who have lost a hand and been forced to make do with the crude claws and prosthetics that were the only option available prior to the last couple of years. As I tried to get a finger on the pulse of robot hand technology in 2010, I realized there’s so much going on this field that it’s hard to get a grasp on all the recent developments. There are two distinct fields of development going on though; devices that are designed as prosthetics, like the SmartHand featured in that BBC link or the iLimb (made by BeBionic), or devices that are amazingly sophisticated, but certainly not something you’d stick on the end of your arm, like Ishikawa Komuro Labs’ amazing high speed robot hands, or Shadow Robot Company’s dainty CyberGlove. More clips below. Read the rest of this entry »
Too Much Information
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 19, 2010 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Why I’m kicking my techno-addiction and joining an Amish community.
Personal computers and the Internet have made so many amazing things possible. Like spending an hour trying to convert a PDF to another format. Or getting Word to stop changing the format of everything you type. Or watching an amazing HD video clip on Vimeo that freezes every ten seconds. Or enabling one Russian guy to send millions of people an e-mail that tells them how to increase their penis size, even if they don’t have one. I jest of course; I love the ways in which technology can enhance our lives. Which is precisely why I’m going to do away with a tremendous amount of it in the coming months. And then slowly reintroduce it as I see fit. I’ve talked before about the various ways technology is impacting our lives, and maybe even making us crazy. Well, I’ve been thinking about this for several years, and I’m not the only one who ponders the issue. Back in 2005, Dr. Edward Hallowell – a psychiatrist who specializes in ADD – identified a related disorder he calls “attention deficit trait”, which is essentially a sort of “acquired ADD”. In this interview, he points out something that I’m always saying, which is that “No one really multitasks. You just spend less time on any one thing.” I have this trait bad, and so do a lot of people I know. It doesn’t help that I’m something of an information addict, with occasional flareups of Wikiphilia. I often find my life to be an almost surreal meta-reference to itself . And in that vein find it hilarious that there are web sites like Zen Habits that are devoted to making life simpler. Why would you need a computer, an internet connection, and a web site if you were trying to simplify things? Likewise with the video clips below, which are chock full of meta irony. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, but what kills me in both instances is that they both take fascinating and perhaps useless information, and present it in a way that’s technologically sophisticated, but probably least suited to conveying the information. A list of facts would have been much more effective, but not nearly as fun and distracting! As they say on the intranets: “it makes teh head asplode”. Read the rest of this entry »
Life After Facebook – The Open Source Project “Diaspora”?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 13, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Yes, Facebook is beginning to show the signs of a dying culture. But does a brand that evokes images of translocated, beleaguered refugees stand a chance as a replacement?
If you’re at all in touch with the evolution of web trends, you can probably sense change in the air. One of the really great things about the web is that when something is really cool, people gravitate to it, and when it develops a high “suck quotient”, people just walk away and find the next cool thing. Google, for instance, has repeatedly done a masterful job of keeping the cool quotient just slightly ahead of the suck curve. Facebook? Not so much. The “information highway” is strewn with the debris of discarded innovation. Like the term “information highway”, for instance. And I’m confident that Facebook will soon be joining MySpace and Napster and IM and mp3.com and e-cards and a million other once-popular web doodads in that great wasteland on the web. So what’s next? Personally, I think it will still be a form of networked sharing, but someone’s going to figure out a way to make it work without constantly tinkering with it to try to monetize every user interaction. The browser you’re using to read this was free. Wikipedia is free. Your email program is probably free. So why not social networking? And by “free” I mean free of advertising. Or fees. Or freakish privacy issues. A project that’s generated considerable buzz in the tech press the last few weeks is Diaspora, an “open source Facebook”. These young developers are definitely on to something, but in spite of exposure that has reached even the New York Times and raising over 120 grand (and growing) in startup capital in just a couple of weeks, they may be missing it on a few beats. First of all, their idea requires the user to download software to connect. Maybe they can sell the idea that being a “seed” is somehow desirable, but this is the kind of territory that’s usually only broached by fairly tech-savvy users. Another biggy is the name. Do you really want a brand that references a permanently displaced and relocated collective? Who knows. Maybe it could work. One more significant hurdle is actually operating within the terms of use of all the sites (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that they plan to integrate into their idea. Whether this particular bunch of youngsters pulls it off or not, I wish them well, because they’re at least tapping us all on the shoulder and reminding us that there were fun times before Facebook, and there will be fun times after as well. Read the rest of this entry »
You Will Soon Be Dead To Me, Facebook
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 8, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, May 8th, 2010I’m in a relationship with Facebook, and it’s complicated.
 Rest In Peace, My Love |
We asked recently if Facebook was “over”. Well, the results are in. And the answer is no. I think “dead” would be more accurate. Sure, hundreds of millions of people will continue to use it, but hundreds of millions of people still use Hotmail. And toilet paper. And other things that they don’t necessarily enjoy using, but kind of have to. So why am I suddenly going so harsh on Facebook? Well, partly it’s my own whiny techno-ennui. It just became boring to me some time last year, after doing the one thing I valued it for, which was reconnecting with some valued old friends, and meeting a few new ones. But mainly because of two other things. First of all, the fact that the people behind Facebook have no interest in the user other than as a data mining resource, as evident in their constantly eroding privacy policies and repeated interface changes that do nothing but bury content and confound users about what their privacy settings are doing. Bet you didn’t know Facebook even censors your Inbox messages, did you. The other main reason is that while they do all of these things that are geared toward user data collection to increase their market value, they’ve managed to position themselves as a “utility”, but one that falls short in dozens of ways while distracting many people from more flexible and purposeful forms of communication. Although different users experience the phenomena in different ways, the illusion of being “in touch” with people on Facebook is a compelling one, but in my and many of my friends experience, an illusion that profoundly detracts from real communication, and occasionally actually impedes work when someone is dumb enough to use it as a primary communication channel. But what finally got me in terms of all these interface and privacy changes was the recent rollout of Community Pages. Try some of the paranoia-inducing things listed on this page, and you’ll see what I mean. I’m gearing up to archive my content and contacts, and delete my posts (which FB makes rather difficult), and completely backburner my account as a real tool. How about you? Are you over it? I’m not being melodramatic, by way, just check out Gizmodo’s Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Technology Making You Crazy?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 2, 2010 by admin in Technology
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010Well, I think we know the answer to that. But is it killing you too?
Because of your technology-damaged attention span, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t read this entire piece. If you aren’t sure how your attention span rates, take the quiz; I didn’t have the patience, probably because of my technology abuse issues. As something of a techno-addict, I’ve been thinking about rehab for a while; just quitting it cold turkey and then re-introducing it slowly to see how much I can handle. Why? Because for a number of years, I’ve unscientifically asserted that many of the mental and emotional maladies that people suffer these days – fatigue, patchy memory, poor attention, anxiety – were due to the media overload most of us experience. Well, now some of the science is in. Yes, you can be addicted to technology. And yes, it is affecting not only our relationships, work, and home life, but the health of our children as well. One of the most dramatic negative impacts I personally see on an ongoing basis has to do with attention span and disruption of time and activities. So aside from the more obvious irritation caused by poor texting and cell phone etiquette, why should this be a big deal? The Wired piece Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains includes an interview with Maggie Jackson (author of the rather dramatically-titled Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age