Posts Tagged ‘google’

Nature’s Way


02 Jun

I love this age of hot and cold running information! Random songs used to wander around in my head for days. What was that song? Who sang it? Now, with minimal effort, and a few well chosen inquiries, it takes very little time for a song to move from inside my head to inside my iTunes library.

“It’s nature’s way of telling you something’s wro-ong”; my head sang to me. I was sitting on the patio having dinner with Linda. I sang her the snippet. “Who sang that?”, she asked. “I think it was Free“, said I. “They also did “Alright Now”, Linda offered. “Then it wasn’t “Free”, said I.

A quick trip to iTunes on the kitchen computer identified “Spirit” as the group that sang Nature’s Way in the early 70′s.
It also provided a plethora of subsequent covers. Then to top it all off, a short search of youtube uncovered this video:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTK2LHZKPQ]

I know I’m not the only one to believe that this is amazing. Why isn’t everyone amazed? How old do you have to be for it to be amazing? Will those who aren’t amazed finally be impressed when they can hum the song and a Google-created audio-algorithm can identify it? Is it possible that, in this time and place, an attitude of “anything is possible” has supplanted “wonder”.

Google’s Android: An Open Source Nightmare


13 Nov

The youtube video you see here has been produced by Google. It starts out, innocently enough, as a demo of some of the features that have been developed for Android (Google’s mobile phone operating system).

Spoiler Alert!!: If you are a fan or devotee of open source software this video ends badly with Sergey Brin pounding a stake through the heart of the open-source community.

Am I, perhaps, being a bit overdramatic? I’m not so sure. Watch for yourself as Brin announces a $10 million financial incentive that seems guaranteed to pervert the intrinsic, community centered, value system that has come to characterize FOSS (free and open source software).
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_avwGFsv60U]

So many metaphors come to mind but a tragedy-in-the-making of this magnitude calls for Shakespeare.

    Romeo and Juliet: It is the scene where Romeo is trying to make nice to Juliet’s disfunctional family. While attempting to prevent violence between Tibault (Juliet’s boorish kinsman) and Mercutio (Romeo’s likeable, wise-ass cousin) Romeo accidentally gets Mercutio killed.
    (more…)

Persistent History: I Post Therefore I Am


26 May

“An increasing amount of our social interaction with other people (and people-like agents) will be occurring online. Visualizations of these interactions can have a huge impact on how legible these social environments are, what behaviors they encourage, and how appealing they are.�

Judith Donath, a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, makes this observation in a visually rich tome entitled Elsewhere Mapping.
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She goes on to suggest “A Conversation Mapping can construct a rendering of each participant from the history of that person’s interactions in the environment. Such a depiction is meaningful: it can help make each person stand out as an individual. Persistent history is the information world’s version of a body.�

I love this last statement! It offers a very interesting explanation for the popularity of a wide range of online behavior. If virtual existence is important to me, and I’m convinced that my continued online existence is contingent upon the creation of a persistent and significant online presence, I will do everything I can to make that happen. (more…)

netorio.us

Making Persistent History One Post At a Time


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