Relevant History

Robot parade

Interesting article about how people come to develop emotional attachments to robots. I blogged about it on End of Cyberspace, if it's behind a subscription firewall.

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, robotics

Social software and nostalgia

Guardian commentator John Harris draws an interesting line from the Led Zeppelin reunion and Police tour, to Hollywood's love of remakes, to social networking software: what connects them, he argues, is "an almost neurotic retrospection" that seems to define this decade.

Across the globe, 18 million people subscribe to Friends Reunited, keen to rekindle playground bonds that are usually best forgotten, and one of the appeals of more cutting-edge social networking to anyone over 20 is much the same.

A case might be made for all this future denial being an inevitable response to our horizons being cast in terms of post-9/11 dread and ecological apocalypse - but past generations had the threat of the cold war going nuclear to deal with, and they managed to keep moving ahead. More relevant, perhaps, is the reinvention of what age entails, and the power wielded by people who affect to stay young by endlessly reviving their past....

[F]xating on the past is an in-built aspect of the human condition, but limited technology used to keep it in check. We had space and productive capacity only for so much stuff: a hidden hand cleared the cultural world of outdated clutter. And now? Bandwidth and memory grow exponentially, TV channels extend into the distance, and providing the means by which the classes of 77, 87 and 97 can get back in touch is a cinch. The same technology that we once thought would propel us into a fast-changing future stokes nostalgic appetites and condemns us to a present so laden with repetition that it's beginning to feed back on itself.

Essentially, the drama that Ellen Ullman described several years ago about the differences between computer and human memory is playing out on a grander, more social and public, scale.

[To the tune of Todd Rundgren, "Dust In The Wind," from the album "Something/Anything? (Disc 2)".]

Technorati Tags: memory, history, social software

Insane, yet amazing, coffee drink

This afternoon, after Sue Thomas' talk on transliteracy (which I liked, but which revealed how much I dislike the term "literacy"), we walked up to Caffe Del Doge to talk about my end of cyberspace book, and her new project on nature and cyberspace.

I've been off coffee for the last week, as I suspected that I'd feel better if I cut way down on the java (but not the caffeine-- I'm drinking copious quantities of tea now). After the first day, when I had a headache, I've been fine, and have in fact felt better. Clearly, my body now reacts pretty strongly to coffee: sometimes it's necessary, but I shouldn't drink it on a regular basis.

It turns out Doge has these amazingly extravagant coffee drinks, served in martini glasses. Sue ordered one that's espresso and melted chocolate, whipped into essentially a mousse; I got a Marco Polo, which is espresso infused with cardamon, under a geological layer of whipped cream and more cardamon.

via flickr

Pretty unusual, but stunningly good.

via flickr

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Hey Jude," from the album "The Beatles 1".]

Technorati Tags: cafe, Palo Alto

Not only does he do cool work, Eric Paulos has bolder fashion sense than me

But I'll bet my shirt has more pockets.

Taken by Marc Davis with a cool camera cell phone that basically did everything but use face recognition technology to tag the picture. It's like having Eschelon in your pants!

via flickr

Tags: MobileMash-Up 2007, lunch, Crowne Plaza Cabaña, Eric Paulos, Palo Alto

The Victorians live on, it seems

In my previous incarnation as an historian of Victorian science, I was drawn to the people I wrote about for two reasons: the best of them were intellectual omnivores; and they had incredible work habits. Both of these are traits I admire and aspire to, but never quite make my own.

Recently, while reading an article by Nigel Thirft about the impact of information technologies on our perception of space and bodies (part of my slow but steady work on the end of cyberspace), I came across a very intriguing reference to Raymond Tallis' book The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Naturally, I looked him up, and found a Guardian profile from 2006:

If there were a statue of the Unknown Polymath it should look like Raymond Tallis: rangy, bearded, wide-eyed with disciplined wonder. For 30 years he has been rising at five in the morning to write for two hours before going off to work as a doctor. He has been a GP, a research scientist, and a professor of gerontology, one of Britain's leading experts, who has published more than 70 scientific papers and co-edited a 1,500-page standard textbook of gerontological medicine. But in the solitary hours of the early morning he has also been a distinguished literary critic, poet and philosopher who has written a radio play about the death of Wittgenstein.

Clearly, people who can get up very early in the morning have an advantage over the rest of us. Working at night, it seems, isn't the same. (Of course, most evenings I consider myself productive if I make the kids' lunches and do some e-mail.)

[To the tune of Plush, "No Education," from the album "Fed".]

Technorati Tags: academia, end of cyberspace, postacademic, reading

So long and thanks for all the fish

I did an end-of-cyberspace-and-what-it-means-for-products talk tonight for the Silicon Valley chapter of the Product Management Institute. A good time, but I've definitely reached the stage where it's time to stop doing talks, and focus again on writing the book.

[To the tune of Radiohead, "Optimistic," from the album "Kid A".]

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, writing

Suspect Nation redux

There's a copy of Suspect Nation on Google Video now.

And nope, I'm not in it. The B-roll of Draegers survives, but I'm in documentary oblivion. Still, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

[via Stef]

Technorati Tags: England, policy, politics, privacy, RFID, security

Suspect Nation

For the time being, at least, Suspect Nation, a British documentary that I was interviewed for back in September, is available on YouTube. Most of it is about technology and the decline of civil liberties in the UK, but they spent some time in the U.S. as well. (Here's a Guardian article about it.)

Don't know if I actually made it in, or am languishing on the cutting-room floor. Given that they got Al Gore and various other cool people on-camera, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm nowhere to be seen.

Update: Looks like the B-roll that they shot in the store made it in, but I didn't. Ah well.... Still, it's a good show.

Later update: There's a weird gap in the film-- actually, a section that appears twice. So I can't really tell if I made it or not. Who knows?

Technorati Tags: England, policy, politics, privacy, RFID, security

The only man in Santa Cruz wearing a jacket

I'm in Santa Cruz this afternoon, doing an end of cyberspace talk for a Santa Cruz futurists' group. I don't get down to Santa Cruz much, and when I do, I'm always headed to the university: downtown is the wrong direction. So being down here is a bit of a change.

via flickr

Downtown is pretty bustling on a Sunday afternoon, in a pleasant way, but I'm the only person wearing a jacket. Flannel and shorts, and various forms of exotic yet extremely comfortable footwear, seem to be the uniform du jour around here. I kind of stick out a little.

via flickr

The place I've touched down is a cafe called Gelatomania, which is a weird combination. On one hand, it has the kind of bright happy tourist-friendly colors and chrome accents that suggests overpriced jelly beans and rows of little bears with "I heart Santa Cruz." But it's got free wifi, they make a mean chai, and it's got an oxygen bar.

via flickr

Or maybe this IS what the tourists around here like. Who knows.

Lazy Sunday

I'm enjoying a cup of coffee and reading Adam Greenfield's Everyware. This is not particularly unusual; what is new is that now I can write about it from the garage, thanks to the second AirPort Express in the laundry room that's boosting our wifi signal.

Ah, the joys of connectivity.

I woke up early-- as I always pledge to do on Sunday mornings, but rarely manage-- so I could get a couple hours' reading and work on my end of cyberspace project. My son got up not long after me, watched about 10 minutes of TV, then decided it was more fun to follow Daddy out to the garage. After a while he was lured back by the promise of breakfast, so now it's just me and the Beatles.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever," from the album "1967-1970 (Disc 1)".]

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, work