Random thoughts...
* I can't get excited about a RFID-SpimeWorld-blogjectsphere-InternetOfThings future where we get to google the location of our shoes in the morning. Data-tagging everything so we know where all our stuff is seems to me to be an essentially Autism Spectrum enterprise. RFID socks are right up there with the Segway in the
list of infantilising technologies, to my admittedly cranky and fairly slow mind. I don't wanna walk, I wanna be carried along by an electric pushchair. Shut the fuck up. Walking won't kill you. And find your own fucking shoes.
* And why doesn't my phone (well the phone that I had til I broke it) have a GPS locator so people can check to see if I'm in the office without calling me? Now that would be useful. Dodgeball and BuddyPing are workarounds. If you're talking about locative services, why not start with, I don't know, PEOPLE? Personal privacy doesn't become an issue if you can turn it off, right?
Oops, my son doesn't need to know that I'm fucking eight girls
in an abandoned hospital outside Peoria, let me just switch this off...
* Rapid prototyping, or fabbing, where a virtual object is piped into a box of lasers and plastics and
made physical, is interesting to me. But, ultimately, this is going to be
used to generate models of Darth Vader cornholing hobbits. It's unavoidable. Unless people start thinking, and soon, about the large scale and recycling. You know what's going to be very useful over
the next twenty years? Being able to fab shelter parts and tarps. Also, Lifestraws (google it. Look
for your shoes while you're at it).
* Is your blog or website your main page? How much information does it tell you about the world around you and your personal network of friends and acquaintances? Not much? Me too, currently. I mean,
if we're going to talk about flows of information and our environment becoming trackable and loggable and updateable on the fly, we can at least put the onus on things that are actually important to us. A
local weather service should be talking to my website while I'm not around, for instance. Technorati and Icerocket should be posting on my website to tell me who's been talking about my friends and me.
* Of course, my homepage is slashdot.org on one machine and cnn.com on another, so I'm talking out
of my hat. But still. This is kind of the sort of thing people are talking about when they mention Digital Lifestyle Aggregators -- a modular start page that sucks in information from all over the place to give you
everything you need. There are already a few different versions of prototype DLAs available for use, which mostly require you to know how to find and recognise a RSS feed URL.
* What is the point of making it easier to find, gather and read
lots of different information streams? This is where SpimeWorld makes
sense to me. It generates history. And history is what we learn from,
so that the mistakes we make are at least new. And combining
viewpoints gives us a better, more complete look at the present. Which
in turn allows the future to leak in. And that's what I'm interested in.
Whatever all that means.
list of infantilising technologies, to my admittedly cranky and fairly slow mind. I don't wanna walk, I wanna be carried along by an electric pushchair. Shut the fuck up. Walking won't kill you. And find your own fucking shoes.
* And why doesn't my phone (well the phone that I had til I broke it) have a GPS locator so people can check to see if I'm in the office without calling me? Now that would be useful. Dodgeball and BuddyPing are workarounds. If you're talking about locative services, why not start with, I don't know, PEOPLE? Personal privacy doesn't become an issue if you can turn it off, right?
Oops, my son doesn't need to know that I'm fucking eight girls
in an abandoned hospital outside Peoria, let me just switch this off...
* Rapid prototyping, or fabbing, where a virtual object is piped into a box of lasers and plastics and
made physical, is interesting to me. But, ultimately, this is going to be
used to generate models of Darth Vader cornholing hobbits. It's unavoidable. Unless people start thinking, and soon, about the large scale and recycling. You know what's going to be very useful over
the next twenty years? Being able to fab shelter parts and tarps. Also, Lifestraws (google it. Look
for your shoes while you're at it).
* Is your blog or website your main page? How much information does it tell you about the world around you and your personal network of friends and acquaintances? Not much? Me too, currently. I mean,
if we're going to talk about flows of information and our environment becoming trackable and loggable and updateable on the fly, we can at least put the onus on things that are actually important to us. A
local weather service should be talking to my website while I'm not around, for instance. Technorati and Icerocket should be posting on my website to tell me who's been talking about my friends and me.
* Of course, my homepage is slashdot.org on one machine and cnn.com on another, so I'm talking out
of my hat. But still. This is kind of the sort of thing people are talking about when they mention Digital Lifestyle Aggregators -- a modular start page that sucks in information from all over the place to give you
everything you need. There are already a few different versions of prototype DLAs available for use, which mostly require you to know how to find and recognise a RSS feed URL.
* What is the point of making it easier to find, gather and read
lots of different information streams? This is where SpimeWorld makes
sense to me. It generates history. And history is what we learn from,
so that the mistakes we make are at least new. And combining
viewpoints gives us a better, more complete look at the present. Which
in turn allows the future to leak in. And that's what I'm interested in.
Whatever all that means.