natecooper.net

This article by the New York Times was on Digg’s front page and by now must be common knowledge. The sacrifice of privacy our new president-elect must make will undoubtably be difficult especially since, as this article points out, Obama is as addicted to his smart phone as the rest of modern, western civilization.

What was more astounding to me, however, was this sentence from the article:

“Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.”

Really? Really? First president to have a laptop on his desk? I can’t say I would be shocked to discover that Bush was a technophobe — I understand the luddite philosophy even if I disagree with it. But if Obama were to for some reason not use a computer I would fear for our country. So a step in the right direction but shockingly one 16 years over-due (if not more).

The passage of Prop 1a is a great opportunity and for me somewhat surprising given this is the first time I’ve voted in a major election outside of California. (As is of course the disappointing passage of Prop 8). The California High Speed Rail Blog has published an excellent list of Next Steps concerning where to go from here to support the High Speed Rail system. In my mind the biggest thing on that list as far as forward thinking planning has to support of current infrastructure (point 6). However, supporting existing rail infrastructure alone is simply one piece of the puzzle. A drastic restructuring of zoning and city planning must simultaneously occur to not only ensure the success of the system but to restructure California to absorb the overwhelming population growth expected in the coming decades.

To be sure, California is going to grow larger and the High Speed Rail project is a landmark affirmation for focusing that growth in existing urban centers in the state. However, the cities themselves need to act resolutely to capitalize on the significant investment to enact change. While in the past several decades urban centers across the state have been financing transit infrastructure improvements — the latest and most notable being Los Angeles county’s Measure R; what has lagged in the state is significant rewriting of archaic (more…)

For reasons I cannot go into at this time I have been advising over the course of the pass several weeks a person older than myself in the ways us younger people (can I still claim that?) use social networks. Most specifically we’ve been looking at Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve been hesitant in my advice for a few reasons: 1. I am basing my lessons purely on my own personal observations with no real outside citations and 2. I have had at length conversations with others my age (I’m 28) about how we don’t fully understand how people who are younger than us use these resources.

However, in thinking about these things I have just proven correct one of my tenets of social web sites. I had been telling my tutee that Facebook is more casual and merely an extension of real-world relationships and twitter is a bit edgier in that it does not rely on approval for connections to be made. Instead Twitter is less about friendship and more about reputation. Browsing around the web today I just discovered some evidence which seems to prove me correct.

I just read an article from Kottke.org about Facebook and Twitter and decided to look Jason Kottke up on both networks. Given Jason’s status as an internet celebrity it’s not surprising he has a large number of Twitter followers (nearly 10,000 as of this writing). A glance at his Facebook page is quite a contrast, however. He has a mere 13 friends. Interestingly he does have a public profile meaning that anyone can browse through a large amount of info on him — that’s something for a separate post.

This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who regularly uses both forums but given that I have been teaching someone social etiquette on these sites it’s nice to have outside verification of my assumptions. I wonder if anyone has done a comprehensive book on how people use Web 2.0. I suspect that it would be outdated shortly after writing it. Until then we’ll have to live with Internet Party as a singular source on the topic.

A compelling argument for why companies shouldn’t be avoiding social media. Statistics seem to indicate that individuals want a more open dialog but only a small number of Fortune 500 companies maintain a blog.

(via britopian.com)

ha ha…

love you pao..

It’s amazing that up until this point Happy Accidents has escaped me. It’s been out since 2000 and stars Vincent D’Onofrio and Marisa Tomei. On the surface this is a sort of quirky, cute indie romantic comedy produced by IFC when there really was a sort of thing called “independent film” in the U.S. To some extent this would be enough for me. On a deeper level, however, Happy Accidents follows a line of logic concerning the nature of time-travel and the question of emotion and memory that started in 1962 with a little french film called La Jetee.

That film, perhaps my favorite short film, is probably the best known from French director Chris Marker and is shot entirely as a series of photo stills. It is a sort of pre-pc powerpoint presentation with no moving action. It relies on a narrator to drive the story. Despite this form it manages to tell a complex and moving story of a man who is sent back from a dystopic future to the present day. He and the woman develop a relationship which is doomed by his future overlords who do not him to disturb the time-line. (spoiler) This eventually causes his death — witnessed by himself as a child.

If this sounds familiar to you it could be perhaps because La Jetee is the basis for the 1995 Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys and (more…)

Click the pic for more photos. Kind of an interesting installation from a layout perspective.

(via badbanana)

(via MOCOLOCO)

Near Future Laboratory has a great article about the problem of trying to integrate everyday things into a computing paradigm.

“There’s a weird conceit in here, that the activities and practices of normal human beings will involve data processing and algorithms of some sort, which is an awfully big assumption. So big, in fact, that it has distilled down to a way of seeing the world as consisting of bits of data that can be processed into information that then will naturally yield some value to people.

Why not start with people and their practices and follow this through, without the assumption that something computational or data process-y is meant to fall out from that.”

Very powerful challenge to developers and criticism to those who exploit it. Check it out.

About a year ago (wow! I’ve been blogging pretty consistently for over a year now with nary a hiccup!) I posted about the overabundance and annoyance of Facebook invites due to their inclusion of an apps interface.

A year (and a Facebook redesign) later the problem is still persistent.