metasurface

Technofetish: Taking it down a notch

2007-01-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

This week's technofetish award goes to all those who are drooling about the new Apple iPhone. My reaction at the announcement was: *sigh* a phone. Apart from being a little turned off by the hype (can't anyone see how the slavish followers reflect the 90s Microsoft fan club or is that just an ex-Seattlite privilege), I have to admit that I am not excited by the fact that it is an all in one package - phone, camera, internet device, media player. I actually like my appliances being separate so that when one gets outdated it is less expensive (in theory) to upgrade. Furthermore, the whole phone thing (what Jobs calls the killer app) didn't interest me simply because, surprise, I rarely use a phone (cell or otherwise).

Kottke has a wonderful distillation of all the recent writing about the iPhone.

While I thought the design of the phone and interface was very beautiful both, at closer inspection, leave a little to be desired. I don't want to go into detail (see some of the mentions in the Kottke piece) but I will say that the iPhone does begin to spark my interest when you think of small computers such as the oqo. I am more than eager to see a full-fledged OS X machine in a package slightly larger than the oqo or the iPhone with features like voice recognition and touchscreen/stylus input.

Heck, you could make calls through something like skype if you really needed, as I have ascertained from exhaustive informal research and eavesdropping, to tell your friends about the incredibly mundane things about your life that you wouldn't normally tell anyone (except perhaps your gastroenterologist).

I think if Apple did a small form factor sub-notebook with touch/voice/stylus and it could perform some of the same tasks as both the iPhone and appleTV devices, then I think they'd be looking a more than the 1% market share they are hoping to attract (which I am sure they will get) and would have a product that is perhaps more attractive to the Japanese and European market where space is premium.

But Apple Inc. is more about cleaning up: Taking the jumble that is out there and making it better. My bet, though, is that the iPhone is just a test technology that is a stepping stone to a larger more powerful device (sub-notebook? tablet? both?).

Note: Blake, a grad student, asked why voice recognition and speech-to-text technology that has been around for a while wasn't incorporated to make facilitate speedier texting.

The Gimli Glider

2007-01-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

Found this on Digg and thought the experience for both pilots and passengers sounds horrifying. It is a quick and captivating read.
More on the incident: 1, 2

Note: Apparently the incident is a result of bad metric conversion. This happens to me all the time when I convert to the decabet!

Media Diet

2007-01-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

The last post got me to thinking about mythologies. One that I see students buying into all the time is that media are inert. When I taught Introduction to Visual Communications, I was surprised by how students were unaware of the "mediatedness" of their daily lives. After all, sometimes I go home with "plastic poisoning" from spending too much time in front of the computer only to go online minutes after the kids go to bed. But I also spend a lot of time in social situations. Could I be the one believing in something that is fundamentally incorrect?

So, as a sort of New Year's experiment, I am going to follow New York Magazine's lead and write about my Media Diet. Here it is:

Wednesday: 7:15 - 7:30 - Check email and quickly review nytimes.com, cnn.com, commondreams.org, huffingtonpost.com, digg.com, gizmodo.com, and surf for CFPs (calls for papers)

7:35 - 8:00 - Watch Arthur while feeding the kids.

8:40 - 9:00 - Listened to iPod on my commute (car stereo doesn't work): Oldies - Police (Roxanne), Pink Floyd (Wish you were here), Beatles (Strawberry fields)

9:00 - 9:10 - Walked to work from far reaches of parking lot listening to iPod (too cold to read): Jazz - John Coltrane (Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye), Ahmad Jamal (The Awakening)

9:30 - 9:50 - Review CFPs (calls for papers)

10:00 - 10:10 - Review digg.com, drawn.ca, boingboing.com

11:05 - 11:25 - email

11:25 - 11:30 - prepare last post

1:00 - 1:20 - prepare this post

(more later)

Happy New Year (Now, Don't Mess it Up!)

2007-01-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

Open Democracy is an interesting website that:

is the leading independent website on global current affairs - free to read, free to participate, free to the world...offering stimulating, critical analysis, promoting dialogue and debate on issues of global importance and linking citizens from around the world.

This article captured my attention recently. How many mythologies have you bought into recently?

What we know now

2006-12-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a list of 50 interesting things that we now know that we didn't know at this time last year.

How to handle telemarketers

2006-12-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

Why is it that I joined the no-calling list yet I still get telemarketers calling at dinner time? Here is sweet revenge. This has to be the best trick played on a telemarketer. It's very funny.

From Neatorama

Tuesday Lovin': 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials

2006-12-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

Very funny list of failed holiday specials. There are such goodies as: Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Canadian Christmas with David Cronenberg, and Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas.

Feeling Lucky, Punk?

2006-12-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday Schadenfruende: Tom Delay's Blog

2006-12-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

If I've got the story correctly, Tom Delay started a blog and was so overwhelmed by negative comments that he took it down. But not before some wily person copied and re-posted it. Read the nice, warm and fuzzy comments.

Warning: After the first few posts it deteriorates into puerile name calling and is rather distasteful.

Looking Back: New Old Photographs

2006-12-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

By chance I came across these two collections of photos from the 30s and 40s. They both candidly reveal a very different America. It gave me pause to think about an 8mm film I'd seen years ago when I had gone with a friend to visit his grandparents. The color film was of New York in the late 1940s or early 50s and was fascinating. It's one thing to see a city represented in a Hollywood film but quite another in a home movie. It is in some ways more magical because it is evidence made by someone you know and trust. Of course, the stories that accompany a viewing help make it vividly real.

The comments on both these collections work similarly.

Happy X-Mas

2006-12-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

from Crooks and Liars

RIP: Big Bird

2006-11-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

A sad day for muppets everywhere.

Design in a Small Town 9: Proximity

2006-10-31T23:56:00.000-08:00

(I am in storytelling mode tonight, forgive me)

My father teaches Entomology at the university and his department, which houses an insect museum, shares the building with the Food Science and Human Nutrition department.

Many entomology researchers rear insects in effort to keep live samples to study. Apparently someone had been rearing Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches only to have them...um, escape. Needless to say, they have begun to appear throughout the building. Without invitation, I might add.

There is nothing more that needs to be said. You put two and two together. Food and cockroaches.

What does this have to do with design, you ask? Well, who on earth thought it was a great idea to put the entomologists and the food science people together? This was bound to happen, I suppose.

BONUS: Roach Cam! (from South Carolina)

Yeah for Politicians!!

2006-11-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections

About this Time

2006-10-31T22:54:00.000-08:00

When I was an undergraduate I was at the mercy of my fellow classmates when it came time to find rides home for the holidays. Precious few friends, it seemed, were making that 300 mile trek across the state. One year, I happened to finish early and was very fortunate to catch a ride with a friend who lived 80 miles from my hometown and who was gracious enough to drive me to my front door before turning around and continuing on for another hour and a half.

I remember it was a cold November evening and my friend had decided to leave the major highways and take a back road in an attempt to cut time. We had to pass through several small towns on the way. Without warning the crystal clear night turned into a thick fog and as we entered the first town it was as if we had entered a dream. The town was completely deserted and apart from the one or two street lights the town was unlit - not a single house was illuminated from within.

It really bothered us. I remember we drove a little faster to get past this place. The fog lifted and the second small town we passed through was bright and full of life. It was very strange.

When I got to my parent's home, it was late and I was greeted by my sister, who was also visiting, and after getting settled I told about the creepy little town and she replied, "I have something really scary to tell you."

I am not a brave soul and the tone my sister set with those words really got to me. I sat down on the couch and grabbed a pillow for security.

My sister went on to explain how earlier in the evening my dad had casually admitted that, while we lived in our previous home (a creaky old Dutch colonial job a block or so away), he had had reoccurring nightmares about someone falling into a well. This was the first time he had admitted this to anyone and my mother, who had researched the history of the home, remarked that there had been a well that sat where the back porch was now. To take it further my mother now felt it safe to admit that she too had had strange experiences: a number of times she had seen out of the corner of her eye someone standing near her only to turn quickly to see nothing. This was beyond the usual sense that we often get at times.

My sister's confession, however, was beyond belief and to this day still makes me uncomfortable. She revealed that on more than one occasion she had awoken to find a young woman standing at the foot of her bed. She has since told me that, unable to speak or scream out of sheer terror, she would squeeze her eyes shut until she knew the girl had gone. Mind you these encounters happened not when my sister was a child but when she was teenager.

I had a hard time sleeping that night. In my mind I thought back to all the strange things I had experienced such as the times my cat would hiss and growl at things that weren't there or the time my sister's friend came to spend the night and pulled the blinds down and up again only to return to the living room later to find the blinds down again. I remember this because I took the blame for it and it seemed unusual that the blinds would be pulled down (they never were used at all in the room).

I don't know how much of these stories is embellishment and distortion over time. But I do know that when I recently revisited the house (a friend lives there now) that I felt nothing. The only awkward vibe I felt was when I remarked to my friend that I'd forgotten how small the bathrooms were.

But maybe he is not telling me something. Maybe, just maybe, he has inherited the nightmares and lonely little girl at the foot of the bed.

Happy Halloween.

Thursday Lovin': Resentful Rover

2006-10-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

Mars Rover Beginning To Hate Mars

PASADENA, CA—After nearly three years of nonstop data collection, Spirit has begun transmitting obscene gestures and confusing rants.

Friday Lovin': Poodle People Unite! (and exercise)

2006-10-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

I am not quite sure what to say about this:

Wednesday Lovin': Movie Pitches

2006-10-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Found this on Digg.com:

Erik Blevin's Kick Ass Movie Pitches

Dubai as Metaphor

2006-10-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

image: Â© 2005 Harry Lambert

My sisters-in-law have vacationed in Dubai for a decade now and have remarked on what an utter and complete transformation has happened there. Once desert, the city is now home to some new and visionary architectural projects.

The money it must take to create, say, what will be the world's tallest building or to do massive terra forming is mind-boggling. No wonder architects and engineers are lining up to strut their stuff in Dubai.

The problem is that as forward-looking as the work is and as seductive the visual forms are, the power use to keep those structures functioning (cooling for instance) is very old world. I haven't seen many proposals (not that I have looked very hard) that, for instance, use solar as an integrated element - one that would make the buildings sustainable. The focus then seems to be on extravagant form.

Dubai then becomes symbolic of our time. With money comes the potential for something truly great that could be used as a model throughout the world. Instead it is used for an investment in surface.

Thinking outside the box

2006-10-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it was reported that Muslims were offended by the shape of an Apple store in New York City because of its vague similarity to the Ka'ba, a holy site in Mecca. Needless to say, the story played up to stereotypes about Muslims as irrationally fastiduous to the point of militancy regarding anything even moderately resembling religious symbols and artifacts. Well, the story appears to be a pitiful extrapolation from one person's statement.

However, reading the comments today on a site dedicated to fanatic mac users is really very interesting and does so much to destroy many stereotypes about Muslims . It shows how light and entertaining things can be when we don't fall into prejudice and, instead, embrace our techno-fetishes.

Old School Collision Control

2006-10-12T01:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is the time of day or what but I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this:

Rosa Parks (Her Chevy?)

2006-10-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Slate has a good article criticizing a new Chevy commercial. The commercial uses a number of images that, because of their juxtaposition to inane imagery and music, make the commercial...well, kind of "icky".

Proof: There is only one me

2006-10-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
0

people with my name

in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Wednesday Lovin': Your Last Elevator Ride (or not)

2006-10-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

I love this trompe l'oeil painting in an elevator.

Mirror Neurons and the Agony of Bad Advertising

2006-10-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

The AIA (American Institute of Architects) have run this image in their magazine adverts for some time now. The caption next to the image reads: "Mom's cranky. Dad's irritable. The kids are grouchy. Everybody needs counseling. With an architect."

Ok.

This ad is really quite awful for so many reasons. First of all the image of the woman screaming does nothing to promote architecture. Secondly, the scream annoys me to no end. I actually think this is due primarily to my mirror neurons. I see someone screaming, it makes me uncomfortable because she looks to be in pain, and now I, just in looking at her, relate to that pain and make a mental connection to the AIA. Great! The advertising firm has now united the AIA and the idea of pain.

But probably the most offensive thing about the advert is the fact that this comes off as sort of a cheap bit of advertising. The image looks like the redundantly bland images spat out by stock image firms and it seems as though the advertising firm slapped on the copy to make it fit the client.

Architects and the field of architecture deserve better than this. There needs to be something in the AIA's advertising that talks about the exciting new developments in architecture or, in contrast, how the contemporary AIA continues a very rich history.

Whatever, just please, no more screaming ladies.

FOREST FOR THE TREES UPDATE:

It just came to me. It seems that the image of the screaming woman plays into stereotypes of the hysterical woman who is so overwhelmed and unable to handle life's pressures. Only to be rescued by the professional (read: male) architect. Mom's cranky, huh?