Research
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A good word for a good cause
@BlakeHunskicer has a kickstarter project, Fleeing the War at Home: An interactive documentary introducing the crisis in Syria through the personal histories and dreams of Syrian refugees, with a few days and a few thousand dollars left to go. Blake is one of the graduate students I got to know this last year as a visiting… Continue reading
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Time for public radio ratings winners to take a bow
I like and subscribe to Radio INK, which is the main way I stay current with what’s happening in mainstream radio. And Radio INK loves WTOP, the news station in Washington. Do a search for site:http://www.radioink.com WTOP and you’ll get many pages of praise running from Radio INK to WTOP — all of it, I… Continue reading
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The biggest picture
I want to plug something I am very much looking forward to, and encourage you strongly to attend. It’s called The Overview Effect, and it’s the premiere of a film by that title. Here are the details: Friday, December 7, 2012 – 5:30pm – 7:00pm Askwith Lecture Hall Longfellow Hall 13 Appian Way Harvard University Cambridge, MA The world-premiere… Continue reading
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Let’s name the crossover point
Over dinner in Amsterdam recently, George Dyson — who knows a thing or two about the history of computing — told me that a crossover of sorts has happened, or is happening now. The crossover is between a time when we erased storage media to make room for fresh data and a time when we… Continue reading
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The only issue that matters
Geologists have an informal name for the history of human influence on the Earth. They call it the Anthropocene. It makes sense. We have been raiding the earth for its contents, and polluting its atmosphere, land and oceans for as long as we’ve been here, and it shows. By any objective perspective other than our… Continue reading
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Adaptive myopia
When I was a kid I had near-perfect vision. I remember being able to read street signs and license plates at a distance, and feeling good about that. But I don’t think that was exceptional. Unless we are damaged in some way, the eyes we are born with tend to be optically correct. Until… what?… Continue reading
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Aerial map mashing
Thanks to Jeff Warren (also here) of GrassRootsMapping and Public Laboratory, I now know — and am highly turned on by — the possibilities of mapping in the wild. That is, mapping by the 99.xxx+% of us who are not in the mapping business, and are in the best multiple positions to map the world(s)… Continue reading
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Broadband vs. Internet
By design, the Internet supports everything you can do with it. As deployed, it is no more capable than the infrastructures that carry it. Here in the U.S. most of the infrastructures that carry the Internet are owned by telephone and cable companies. Those companies are not only in a position to limit use of the… Continue reading
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Circular quoting
So I’m writing about financialization. Kevin Phillips‘ prophetic book on the subject, Bad Money, is open on my desk. (He published it in early 2007, in advance of The Crash.) But it doesn’t contain the definitional quote that I need. So I turn to Wikipedia. There, in the Financialization entry, we are treated to this… Continue reading
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Why not link to sources?
A few minutes ago I saw Stephen Hawking trending on Twitter, clicked on the link, and found myself on the Twitter Search page, where the two top tweets from news organizations were these: HuffPo’s link goes to a brief story with no links to any sources. I see there’s a tiny AP symbol next to the… Continue reading
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Dorothy Parker quote question
I’d like to find authoritative sources for two Dorothy Parker quotes. Here’s the first: “I prefer the company of younger men. Their stories are shorter.” No idea where I got that one. It’s too right not to be real, but I can’t find a source yet. (That’s a job I’m giving ya’ll.) The second quote… Continue reading
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Geography forever
When I was walking to school in the second grade, I found myself behind a group of older kids, arguing about what subjects they hated most. The consensus was geography. At the time I didn’t know what geography was, but I became determined to find out. When I did, two things happened. First, I realized… Continue reading
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Curing High School
So I’m in the midst of my first encounter with PeerIndex, which I found through this Petervan’s Blog post. I’d been pointed to PeerIndex before, and to other services like it, and have always found them aversive. But this time the lead came from a friend and business associate, so I thought I’d check it out.… Continue reading
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Some context on privacy
Searches: privacy: 1,390,000,000 privacy+policy: 3,400,000,000 results “privacy policy”: 837,000,000 results So if you’re looking for something about privacy that’s not a site with a privacy policy, you’re also looking at a high haystack/needle ratio. Just saying. Not sure what else that data says, such as it is. But it’s interesting. Continue reading
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What does cognitive science say about privacy and the Net?
Here’s what one dictionary says: World English Dictionary privacy (ˈpraɪvəsɪ, ˈprɪvəsɪ) — n 1. the condition of being private or withdrawn; seclusion 2. the condition of being secret; secrecy 3. philosophy the condition of being necessarily restricted to a single person Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009 © William Collins Sons… Continue reading